"I'm not aware of any games which need the HD to run, patches or no patches."
FFXI is supposed to require the hard drive. However, Microsoft has stated that they want their developers to work with both scenarios. Time will tell, so I'll let that argument rest for now. (That's what I get for talking about the 360 even though I don't own one.;) )
There is a perceptual difference about the lack of a hard drive, though. As I mentioned, not many (and I mean very low numbers of people) wanted the Core system.
I can't believe I misread that summary. He's talking about emailing via voice, not having the voice play back his emails. Yes, I'm an idiot, that's what I get when I post before my first coffee.
"I'd like to hear options for sending email via voice, which I hope is easy, and I'd love to hear of any solutions that allow effective coding via voice, which seems much more difficult."
I've wondered about this myself. I tend to use my computer with the headphones on. Often, I'm listening to music or.. well just plain silence, just the standard dings of Windows. I do pay attention, though, to the sounds coming from the computer. (i.e. the traditional hoo-hoo of recieving an email.) I've always wondered about what more could be done with sound to make the user more aware of the goings on with their computer, especially when a number of apps are actively working. I think I was inspired by an episode of Futurama I caught. One of the character's personalities was in the Pilot's body. The Pilot, whose personality was in yet another body was trying to describe how to interact with the ship. I remember him saying "Can you hear that faint little tone? That's the status of..".. or something or other.
In any event, it's fun to imagine. I wouldn't mind if a soft low-volume voice were to say "You have recieved an email from: John Smith." I had a job a few years ago where that would have been a nice little feature since messages would come in that required urgent attention. My solution to the problem at the time was to use a custom filter that would specficially notify me of important messages by bringing a little window up to the surface. That was fairly annoying, though, when the computer was busy and it was slow as molasses to get the window to go away.
Mario Bros. != Super Mario Bros. != Super Mario 2 != Super Mario 3 != Super Mario World != Yoshi's Island != Super Mario 64 != Mario Sunshine != New Mario Bros.
I'll grant you a little credit with Mario Kart. Fundamentally, it's the same game across it's handfull of variations. The big difference there, though, involves the number of people playing. Mario Kart - 2 Players. Mario Kart 64 - 4 Players. Mario Kart Double Dash - 16 players, though I doubt this happened often. Mario Kart DS - HOLY GRAIL, INTERNET PLAY!
It's a LOT easier to pick on the PSP with regards to ho-hum sequals. Oh, and they cost more. I still can't believe I actually paid $50 for Liberty City Stories.
"The $399 price gets you some extra accessories, none of which are essential - or included with previous consoles."
Wrong. For $299, you don't get ANY option to save your games. The Nintendo 64 cartridges had memory in them so you saved directly to the game. Even though NOBODY wanted the Core system, I'll concede to $339. The cost of the core unit with a memory card. I'll just ignore the whole backwards compatibility and some games not running on it until you upgrade thing.
"It's a matter of scale, really. Longhorn is the biggest failed project in software development history, at least in the private sector."
Doesn't Vista have to have been cancelled or something before it can be called a failure? Yeah yeah, I know, the Inquirer said it, that doesn't mean it actually holds water.
"For example, when I point out the glaring digital encoding artifacts we get on a lot of Digital TV here, people look at me like I'm crazy or have some kind of super-sight."
I'm actually surprised we don't see more comments about the encoding artifacts. One of the main reasons I'm seriously uninterested in HD right now is that every time I go to Circuit City and look at the TVs, there's always a significant portion of them showing pixellated stuff that looks like it's been run through Real Player. Honestly, in those cases, I prefer good ol NTSC.
"If you seriously need to look to bring a cup to your mouth, you need to work on your coordination..."
Considering how many coffee drinkers we have around her, I'm amazed this was modded up. I can't believe you actually thought I was talking about an open-lidded drink.
"It's most certainly NOT the same as drinking coffee of listening to the radio..."
Bullshit. In both cases, you take your eyes off the road to either line up the coffee cup to your mouth OR to fiddle with the options on the stereo. You can shake your head all you like, but there were plenty of studies showing the dangers involved with both of the cases you described.
"Does the prospect of realistic physics really ruin a game?"
Out of curiosity, are we talking 'realistic physics' as in "behaves EXACTLY like it would in the real world" or do we mean realistic as in "does a lot more bouncing around in a way that vaguely reflects what would happen in reality." Okay, that's not a very precise question, so I'll use an example: Grand Theft Auto's pyshics are comically unrealistic. You can do things to cars that are mind-bogglingly unlikely. (i.e. you can PUSH a firetruck...) However, there are still a LOT of physics going on. Cars bounce, they roll, traction's an issue, and so on. In that respect, I could see somebody describing GTA's physics as realistic even though reality is only being hinted at with the game. So.. that's my question: Are we talking about more interactivity with regards to how the world works, or are we talking about what would really happen?
If it's the former, then I would answer your question with a simple 'yes'. In general, it gives you more choices in how to interact with the game. GTA in particular, did a wonderful job here. One of my favorite techniques in that game was to push cars into the path of where I know the bad guy is going to come from. Whereas, in the Die Hard games for the PSOne, that would simply have been impossible because it just plain didn't have the physics that GTA has. If it's the latter, then my knee-jerk reply is 'hell no'. Reality wasn't designed around fun. Again, I draw on GTA as an example. Imagine trying to have an adrenaline filled chase fest with the cops, only to have your car totaled because some idiot pedestrian walked out right in front of you. Though I suppose a fun game could be made around this, I can imagine it being rather frustrating. It would be even MORE irksome if some physics were there, but not others.
"Just because Oblivion in particular is a good game, doesn't mean it wouldn't be better if the world were more believable."
Never played Oblivion, but I suspect you're right. Just like chocolate sauce wouldn't neccessarily make pizza better. Hmm.. I shouldn't post after skipping lunch.
What kind of work do you do? What kind of problems do you have during the interview process etc? Apologies for the broad questions here, but I'm generally curious about how people with disabilities cope within the work force.
"On a positive note, the screen was beautiful and the movie playback was fantastic."
Question: Does it playback xvid or divx movies? Right now I have a library of stuff I've ripped to my desktop machine. Sometimes I like to lay down with my TabletPC and watch movies over the network. Just curious if the Nokia tablet would more or less do the same job or if I'd find myself frustrated with it.
"Nope, didn't see anything about only governments can censor, did you? Perhaps you should have taken your own advice and looked up the 'definition' yourself."
*sigh* The problem here isn't about the definition of the word, it's about the imagery it creates and the inequity that causes. For example, FCC said no to Janet Jackson's Superbowl Nipple. People jumped in and claimed the FCC was censoring Janet Jackson's nipple. Well, okay, probably a good use of the term. The problem is the imagery conjured up by the statement. "The FCC censored her nipple? You mean we can't find it ANYWHWERE unless we go underground? Will the FBI show up if I optain a copy of the photo?" Of course, this isn't even within a lightyear of what happened. FCC said that it couldn't be broadcast on free channels. Standard of programming, yadda yadda yadda. Hardly the same thing. Just like being turned away from McDonald's because you're wearing pants is hardly worthy of the term 'censored'.
In any event, you may technically be right, but the word 'censored' is painting the wrong picture in this particular story.
" Since they are now getting into the security business, this gives them what could be seen as an unfair advantage.... However, if he goes to microsoft.com, he can go there since the hosts file is subverted in the OS. Since he can't spend the time to figure out why he can't access the others, he purchases Microsoft's AV solution."
So... a protection in place that gives this guy an easy out to a site that Microsoft controls is actually evil because it goes there first instead of going to any of Microsoft's competitors.
Well, I have to admit, that's an inexpensive way to get a +5 Insightful.
"Toys for Bob haven't made games for PC's for a long time, even if a sequel would be made, what platform(s) would be able to run it?"
If I had my pick, it'd be the Nintendo DS. No, not because I'm a raving Nintendo Fanboy (well, I am, but that's not the reason this time) and no, not because I have some weird idea of how the touch screen would be great for it. I want them to work on a simpler system. One of the things that left a bad taste in my mouth about SCIII (yes, I know TFB didn't make that game, don't hit reply telling me it wasn't their fault.) is that they tried to 'improve' everything, causing the game to be rather complex. I'm hoping that by using a console, they'll be forced to focus on the 'fun' gameplay and the excellent storyline.
Okay, I may be a bit narrow-minded about this. The story was really what appealed to me. I firmly believe that one of the biggest reasons that everybody wants a sequel to this game is that the second one teased us with a longer story. There's a Mark II? Zelnick married Talana? The Ur-quan ran to the clouds of Magellan, did they eventually return? I want to hear more. That was a great little sci-fi universe they created.
"So there's people in the game industry who need to be convinced that another real Star Control game is a good idea?"
To be fair, the third one was a stinker. I don't think it was widely known that TFB did NOT work on SCIII. I can imagine quite a few people assuming that whatever magic there was to the second game turned out to be a fluke.
"...how patterns projected on a screen could be qualified as a sculpture."
Depends on what the display looks like, I suppose. I mean if it's just a big screen with imagery, well then yeah I see your point. But if the screen is mounted on a sculpture then.. well you've got a sculpture.
"...says the marketing guy to the engineer.;) If you are not in marketing, you should be."
Heh. Actually I'd rather be the PHB. "Video recording is a big complicated problem. If we hire 1,000 engineers, we'll have this problem licked by next week!"
"Bulk storage of data is so pervasive these days. Perhaps none of us really appreciate what a challenge this was."
I understand that it was a challenge. Read the sentence immediately following the one you quoted. I wasn't saying it wasn't a big f'n deal. I wasn't saying that those guys didn't do incredible work. I wasn't even saying that their work was overrated. What I was saying that the significance of 'only six men' is virtually nil. 100 men wouldn't have made it go faster. It wasn't a 'throw more people' at it problem.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm not aware of any games which need the HD to run, patches or no patches."
;) )
FFXI is supposed to require the hard drive. However, Microsoft has stated that they want their developers to work with both scenarios. Time will tell, so I'll let that argument rest for now. (That's what I get for talking about the 360 even though I don't own one.
There is a perceptual difference about the lack of a hard drive, though. As I mentioned, not many (and I mean very low numbers of people) wanted the Core system.
I can't believe I misread that summary. He's talking about emailing via voice, not having the voice play back his emails. Yes, I'm an idiot, that's what I get when I post before my first coffee.
"Isn't CSS prior art for this? Plenty of DVDs have commercials you can't fast forward or otherwise skip."
Despite popular belief, patents are specific enough that moving this into the DVR space is an entirely different patent.
"I'd like to hear options for sending email via voice, which I hope is easy, and I'd love to hear of any solutions that allow effective coding via voice, which seems much more difficult."
I've wondered about this myself. I tend to use my computer with the headphones on. Often, I'm listening to music or.. well just plain silence, just the standard dings of Windows. I do pay attention, though, to the sounds coming from the computer. (i.e. the traditional hoo-hoo of recieving an email.) I've always wondered about what more could be done with sound to make the user more aware of the goings on with their computer, especially when a number of apps are actively working. I think I was inspired by an episode of Futurama I caught. One of the character's personalities was in the Pilot's body. The Pilot, whose personality was in yet another body was trying to describe how to interact with the ship. I remember him saying "Can you hear that faint little tone? That's the status of..".. or something or other.
In any event, it's fun to imagine. I wouldn't mind if a soft low-volume voice were to say "You have recieved an email from: John Smith." I had a job a few years ago where that would have been a nice little feature since messages would come in that required urgent attention. My solution to the problem at the time was to use a custom filter that would specficially notify me of important messages by bringing a little window up to the surface. That was fairly annoying, though, when the computer was busy and it was slow as molasses to get the window to go away.
"Super Mario Bros 37 and Mario Cart 56!!!"
Mario Bros. != Super Mario Bros. != Super Mario 2 != Super Mario 3 != Super Mario World != Yoshi's Island != Super Mario 64 != Mario Sunshine != New Mario Bros.
I'll grant you a little credit with Mario Kart. Fundamentally, it's the same game across it's handfull of variations. The big difference there, though, involves the number of people playing. Mario Kart - 2 Players. Mario Kart 64 - 4 Players. Mario Kart Double Dash - 16 players, though I doubt this happened often. Mario Kart DS - HOLY GRAIL, INTERNET PLAY!
It's a LOT easier to pick on the PSP with regards to ho-hum sequals. Oh, and they cost more. I still can't believe I actually paid $50 for Liberty City Stories.
"The $399 price gets you some extra accessories, none of which are essential - or included with previous consoles."
Wrong. For $299, you don't get ANY option to save your games. The Nintendo 64 cartridges had memory in them so you saved directly to the game. Even though NOBODY wanted the Core system, I'll concede to $339. The cost of the core unit with a memory card. I'll just ignore the whole backwards compatibility and some games not running on it until you upgrade thing.
"By comparison, that's not much less than the 360 ($299)."
$399, you mean.
"It's a matter of scale, really. Longhorn is the biggest failed project in software development history, at least in the private sector."
Doesn't Vista have to have been cancelled or something before it can be called a failure? Yeah yeah, I know, the Inquirer said it, that doesn't mean it actually holds water.
"For example, when I point out the glaring digital encoding artifacts we get on a lot of Digital TV here, people look at me like I'm crazy or have some kind of super-sight."
I'm actually surprised we don't see more comments about the encoding artifacts. One of the main reasons I'm seriously uninterested in HD right now is that every time I go to Circuit City and look at the TVs, there's always a significant portion of them showing pixellated stuff that looks like it's been run through Real Player. Honestly, in those cases, I prefer good ol NTSC.
"If you seriously need to look to bring a cup to your mouth, you need to work on your coordination..."
Considering how many coffee drinkers we have around her, I'm amazed this was modded up. I can't believe you actually thought I was talking about an open-lidded drink.
"It's most certainly NOT the same as drinking coffee of listening to the radio..."
Bullshit. In both cases, you take your eyes off the road to either line up the coffee cup to your mouth OR to fiddle with the options on the stereo. You can shake your head all you like, but there were plenty of studies showing the dangers involved with both of the cases you described.
"Does the prospect of realistic physics really ruin a game?"
Out of curiosity, are we talking 'realistic physics' as in "behaves EXACTLY like it would in the real world" or do we mean realistic as in "does a lot more bouncing around in a way that vaguely reflects what would happen in reality." Okay, that's not a very precise question, so I'll use an example: Grand Theft Auto's pyshics are comically unrealistic. You can do things to cars that are mind-bogglingly unlikely. (i.e. you can PUSH a firetruck...) However, there are still a LOT of physics going on. Cars bounce, they roll, traction's an issue, and so on. In that respect, I could see somebody describing GTA's physics as realistic even though reality is only being hinted at with the game. So.. that's my question: Are we talking about more interactivity with regards to how the world works, or are we talking about what would really happen?
If it's the former, then I would answer your question with a simple 'yes'. In general, it gives you more choices in how to interact with the game. GTA in particular, did a wonderful job here. One of my favorite techniques in that game was to push cars into the path of where I know the bad guy is going to come from. Whereas, in the Die Hard games for the PSOne, that would simply have been impossible because it just plain didn't have the physics that GTA has. If it's the latter, then my knee-jerk reply is 'hell no'. Reality wasn't designed around fun. Again, I draw on GTA as an example. Imagine trying to have an adrenaline filled chase fest with the cops, only to have your car totaled because some idiot pedestrian walked out right in front of you. Though I suppose a fun game could be made around this, I can imagine it being rather frustrating. It would be even MORE irksome if some physics were there, but not others.
"Just because Oblivion in particular is a good game, doesn't mean it wouldn't be better if the world were more believable."
Never played Oblivion, but I suspect you're right. Just like chocolate sauce wouldn't neccessarily make pizza better. Hmm.. I shouldn't post after skipping lunch.
What kind of work do you do? What kind of problems do you have during the interview process etc? Apologies for the broad questions here, but I'm generally curious about how people with disabilities cope within the work force.
"On a positive note, the screen was beautiful and the movie playback was fantastic."
Question: Does it playback xvid or divx movies? Right now I have a library of stuff I've ripped to my desktop machine. Sometimes I like to lay down with my TabletPC and watch movies over the network. Just curious if the Nokia tablet would more or less do the same job or if I'd find myself frustrated with it.
"Nope, didn't see anything about only governments can censor, did you? Perhaps you should have taken your own advice and looked up the 'definition' yourself."
*sigh* The problem here isn't about the definition of the word, it's about the imagery it creates and the inequity that causes. For example, FCC said no to Janet Jackson's Superbowl Nipple. People jumped in and claimed the FCC was censoring Janet Jackson's nipple. Well, okay, probably a good use of the term. The problem is the imagery conjured up by the statement. "The FCC censored her nipple? You mean we can't find it ANYWHWERE unless we go underground? Will the FBI show up if I optain a copy of the photo?" Of course, this isn't even within a lightyear of what happened. FCC said that it couldn't be broadcast on free channels. Standard of programming, yadda yadda yadda. Hardly the same thing. Just like being turned away from McDonald's because you're wearing pants is hardly worthy of the term 'censored'.
In any event, you may technically be right, but the word 'censored' is painting the wrong picture in this particular story.
" Since they are now getting into the security business, this gives them what could be seen as an unfair advantage. ... However, if he goes to microsoft.com, he can go there since the hosts file is subverted in the OS. Since he can't spend the time to figure out why he can't access the others, he purchases Microsoft's AV solution."
So... a protection in place that gives this guy an easy out to a site that Microsoft controls is actually evil because it goes there first instead of going to any of Microsoft's competitors.
Well, I have to admit, that's an inexpensive way to get a +5 Insightful.
"Finally our ten years of worshipping Dogar and Kazor at #starcontrol brings good news to our Hyperwave broadcaster."
Hey! I thought I told you to say warship!!
"Toys for Bob haven't made games for PC's for a long time, even if a sequel would be made, what platform(s) would be able to run it?"
If I had my pick, it'd be the Nintendo DS. No, not because I'm a raving Nintendo Fanboy (well, I am, but that's not the reason this time) and no, not because I have some weird idea of how the touch screen would be great for it. I want them to work on a simpler system. One of the things that left a bad taste in my mouth about SCIII (yes, I know TFB didn't make that game, don't hit reply telling me it wasn't their fault.) is that they tried to 'improve' everything, causing the game to be rather complex. I'm hoping that by using a console, they'll be forced to focus on the 'fun' gameplay and the excellent storyline.
Okay, I may be a bit narrow-minded about this. The story was really what appealed to me. I firmly believe that one of the biggest reasons that everybody wants a sequel to this game is that the second one teased us with a longer story. There's a Mark II? Zelnick married Talana? The Ur-quan ran to the clouds of Magellan, did they eventually return? I want to hear more. That was a great little sci-fi universe they created.
"So there's people in the game industry who need to be convinced that another real Star Control game is a good idea?"
To be fair, the third one was a stinker. I don't think it was widely known that TFB did NOT work on SCIII. I can imagine quite a few people assuming that whatever magic there was to the second game turned out to be a fluke.
"This is disrespectful to Sidney Poitier's character John Prentice in "Guess who's coming to dinner". It's also a poor analogy. Zonk, are you stoned?"
It was a Star Trek reference, double dumb ass.
"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"
oo oo oo! Now say wessel!
"...how patterns projected on a screen could be qualified as a sculpture."
Depends on what the display looks like, I suppose. I mean if it's just a big screen with imagery, well then yeah I see your point. But if the screen is mounted on a sculpture then.. well you've got a sculpture.
" ...says the marketing guy to the engineer. ;) If you are not in marketing, you should be."
Heh. Actually I'd rather be the PHB. "Video recording is a big complicated problem. If we hire 1,000 engineers, we'll have this problem licked by next week!"
"One could just as easily argue that the Japanese arguilty of rehashing the same old ideas."
I think his point is that the Japanese market is more receptive to quirky ideas than the American one.
"Bulk storage of data is so pervasive these days. Perhaps none of us really appreciate what a challenge this was."
I understand that it was a challenge. Read the sentence immediately following the one you quoted. I wasn't saying it wasn't a big f'n deal. I wasn't saying that those guys didn't do incredible work. I wasn't even saying that their work was overrated. What I was saying that the significance of 'only six men' is virtually nil. 100 men wouldn't have made it go faster. It wasn't a 'throw more people' at it problem.
Honestly, guys.