FF:III on the S-NES is probably in my top 5 games of all time. But I don't think I've ever actually beaten the game, because I can't stand Kefka's tower at the end! You have to control 2 (3?) different teams walking through, hitting switches and stuff for each other. My desire to not use a walkthrough meant I got into about a million mob-fights while I was wandering around.
The other game I haven't seen mentioned yet at all is Lion King for the Sega Genesis. Good god! The entire game, after the 3rd level, is a wall!
I think the onus should be upon the ISP to provide what you mentioned. The only traffic I see a need to provide extreme allowances for would be something like 911 VoIP calls. The IPv6 RFCs provide for differing levels of traffic prioritization, but I see this as a tool mainly for the enterprise. It is not generally feasible (as yet) for a company to run its entire LAN using fibre. Therefore, inside a corporate network, maybe you want to give VoIP traffic preferential treatment.
However, when you're operating at the ISP level, I think most everything needs to be handled more or less independently. I wouldn't think it would be fair (or right) for me to get great connections to WoW or EVE at the expense of other games' traffic. And how would the ISP decide exactly which games or which VoIP services get highest priority (I'll give you a hint, it starts with $ and rhymes with 'cold hard bash') If you are OK with them filtering/blocking, what about ISP-level efforts to curb torrents/other P2P technologies? I'm certain they would love to take all of that traffic off their network. Sure, it would probably be circumvented rather easily, but an obstacle is an obstacle.
It's not that I don't trust the ISPs; I just don't trust them.
This came up last time I was following a Net Neutrality-related thread. I'm not sure everyone is using the same definition of NN. The definition I generally go by is that Net Neutrality would force ISPs (at all tiers) to offer their full resources to everyone. That is, they cannot give any certain clients/sites preferential treatment. Imagine if "the tubes" were all clogged up with tons of traffic - the companies that paid their ISP a "protection fee" would see their packets moving before the rest of the 'Net.
Using this definition, I am very confused, as I would expect Kahn to support this type of thing. He talks about innovation a lot. I always thought the prevailing consensus was that if ISPs have their way and quash NN, little companies would be effectively "locked out" of the Internet.
I think in this respect, the Star Trek animated series and the Stargate one cancel each other out. Like matter/antimatter. We'll just pretend that neither ever existed.
Yeah, the 15-character password is a result of moving to INFOCON-4 and actually only affects my laptop user accounts. I can still use my CAC and other credentials to login to public-facing systems with much more reasonable passwords. Strange logic, that.
Also, Myspace passwords don't expire (do they!?). At work, I have to have an alphanumeric+ password, at least 15 characters long. It expires every 90 days and cannot be the same as any of the last 7 passwords.
IMHO, this is a ridiculously draconian security policy (but then again it IS the US Government). I normally have a MUCH stronger set of shorter passwords (8-10 chars) that I use for most things. However, because of the perceived risks in this situation, I can't use my normal passwords (at least not more than once). And since my password rotates so often, it is difficult to memorize every 3 months. Hence the weakest point in my chain is that all of mine are stored in a password vault program.
Net Neutrality is the "good" thing. Net Neutrality means that the Providers Of The Tubes cannot prioritize (i.e., charge more) for one type of traffic or destination than another. That is to say, if all of the users on an ISP spend their days watching YouTube, a Net Neutral ISP can't do much about it. The ISPs would like to be able to throttle down some traffic unless they get paid. So suddenly, you have all these people trying to watch YouTube, but the ISP is artificially choking the access. Priority is given to people downloading Fur or something. This would in turn frustrate users (except the furries) and drive them away from the "restricted" areas of the Net.
I'm sure that lots of nice arguments have been made in Congress. VoIP, for example, is a case where generally you want prioritization. You don't want your Vonage 9-1-1 call to be stuck because your kid is raiding Molten Core.
As an addendum to myself, I was a little sad that there was little/no mention of the fact that hopefully the new Congress will be able to write some coherent, sensible legislation regarding this issue. This was an academic exercise basically performed in a vacuum.
/Still upset that Ted Stevens wasn't up for re-election this year.
Ok, this was a very long-winded, if well-written, series of words telling us what we already knew. Increased latency/etc might make downloading a video/torrent/AI annoying, but it will downright kill a game like WoW. The first time you lag out it's like "Ok, annoying". The hundredth time, maybe you don't login anymo.
I am not going to validate your argument, but even if it is true, I guarantee you that the money raised for the sick kids is several orders of magnitude greater than any related merch revenues. Hell, the t-shirts they sell for Child's Play are going 100% to the charity. How would you suggest organizing and promoting a charity of this size without some type of name behind it? Do you also deny the legitamacy of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation?
I started playing RPGs at a young age, too. However, my parties in the original FF inevitably consisted of FART, POOP>/b>, and some other, more unmentionable, 4-letter names.
Needless to say, I didn't experience the game as it was intended until some time later. But I have been hooked ever since.
Turn-X Alphonse, maybe it's different from hospital to hospital, but from what I've heard/seen, many hospitals (esp Child's Play partners) are putting more effort into making things more "comfortable" for the kids. A lot of hospitals now have carts that can be parked in a kid's room that contain a gamecube/ps2/xbox and many games, for example. Also, with the increased risk many of these kids have to communicable diseases, I think the common "play area" mentality is in decline somewhat. That is one of the big reasons they cannot accept used games/systems. Therefore in many of these hospitals it is entirely within the realm of possibility that a child will have a system of their "own" for an extended period of time. YMMV
I agree with the first response above. I can understand your line of thinking, Turn-X Alphonse, but a lot of these kids DO have a lot of time. Maybe not from our perspective, but 2 weeks in hospital can seem like 2 years to a child. I think they would be more absorbed by a good RPG than a standard 'action' game.
It seems like you're thinking like these kids will be playing the game while in a waiting room for an hour or two. Think more along the lines of being in the waiting room for a few weeks (months, years...).
I'm not sure if this counts, since the audio is all taken from Avenue Q, but I've always loved the WoW version of "The Internet is for Porn". http://youtube.com/watch?v=jhTxRssxfuI/
Is there a rumble feature built-in with the WiiMote? That would be one way to give tactile feedback. Obviously there will be input cutoffs.
How many people ever actually beat the old Nintendo track & field games by running on the pad? Everyone used their hands to just slap the hell out of it.
That's funny. I also felt like this. But then I was like "wait, this shadowrun stuff, didn't I read this all in Neuromancer and Johnny Mnemonic?"
An interesting side note - Gibson can't STAND shadowrun. Detests it. Mostly, from what I've heard, because of their "fantasy" concessions - the dragons, the magic, etc. True Gibsonian cyberpunk is straight up technology and its use as a metaphor for the direction of humanity.
This reminds me of the old Batman movie, when the joker/riddler/penguin group dehydrates the UN into little piles of flakes.
But seriously, is it really as simple as adding water? IANAD, but I would assume that plasma has some fundamental differences than water. Maybe it would just be as simple as a medic carrying blood-flakes for everyone, and only a few doses of the necessary plasma or whatever catalyst is needed.
Quite right - Submitter is not looking for a word processing tool, necessarily. Just something that allows you to fall back to an earlier revision if necessary, and maintain accountability for changes. Subversion is really rather robust in this respect. You can branch off toward infinite if you'd like.
In a nutshell: You set up the central repository, and then everyone who might work on a file maps a directory to this trunk. Whenever you make a change to a document, you check that in to the central Subversion repository. It makes a note of who did what, and will update everyone else's copy of the document when they perform an update. In the event that two people change the same doc at the same time, it allows an outside agent (admin or the like) to see who added (or deleted) what, and accept changes accordingly. It is very handy for maintaining a productive work environment, especially with regard to coding, for example. Everyone can maintain a full copy of the code that is (hopefully) compile-able for testing, even if they are only responsible for a small functional subset.
As a disclaimer, my use of Subversion is limited to an isolated network. It is entirely self-contained and inaccessible from outside, so we don't have to worry about security or any fancy remote-access modes. Also, it is only used for tracking changes in Python and C files and basic.doc files. I'm not sure how it handles more advanced file types.
That being said, WizKids and FanPro (the current purveyors of the PNP Shadowrun) have NOTHING to do with this game. In fact, Rob Boyle, the lead developer of the SR line at WK/FanPro, has a warning up on the official Shadowrun site that lets you know it is only "loosely" based on any type of previous Shadowrun developments.
I agree with most of the postings here. I've been a shadowrunner of somesort since I bought the Second Edition in the early 90's. Never played the Genesis game, but I own the SNES game, many of the novels, and tons of the PNP books.
That being said, I DID RTFA. And I wept. Let me tell you why. I totally grok "starting" over. There is simply too much in the Shadowrun universe to drop into a new game. A game company is going to need a lot more people to buy this thing than just Shadowrun fanboys like me. And while they're at it, they don't have to stay 100% faithful to the "canon", if you ask me. However, I am highly skeptical of the Lineage/RNA organisations being introducted.
So let's talk about game-style. OK, yes, there are definitely instances (quite often) when you perform as a team in Shadowrun. Christ though, anyone familiar with Shadowrun can tell you that the ultimate expression of this dystopian cyberpunk setting would be an MMORPG similar to Anarchy. The Bladerunner-esqe cityscapes would be amazing. But most importantly, the very nature of the setting lends itself perfectly to an MMO. Unlike SWG, there is no Jedi class. There are no huge, big-name heroes that everyone wants to be - runners live hard and die fast. Players could be samurai, riggers, deckers (scuse me, hackers now) - but even more interesting would be service classes. What if players could become fixers or arms-dealers or fences? Living spaces would also be a good tool; the players could squat on the streets or live in luxury.
In the end, I will probably still have to at least rent the damn game, but I don't see myself putting anything more into this "series" unless the gameplay evolves DRASTICALLY in the next iteration. And given the opinions I've seen, I'm not sure there will be another one. They could have slapped together the world's crappiest turn-based RPG, but if it mentioned Fuchi, deckers, and/or dragons, the fanboys would come out of the woodwork. Now, I'm not sure WHO is going to buy this.
Lastly, the closest movie I can think of to Shadowrun would be Johnny Mnemonic. I'm not saying it's good. But it's a helluva lot closer than "The Matrix".
Slashdot Mirror
The other game I haven't seen mentioned yet at all is Lion King for the Sega Genesis. Good god! The entire game, after the 3rd level, is a wall!
Yes.
However, when you're operating at the ISP level, I think most everything needs to be handled more or less independently. I wouldn't think it would be fair (or right) for me to get great connections to WoW or EVE at the expense of other games' traffic. And how would the ISP decide exactly which games or which VoIP services get highest priority (I'll give you a hint, it starts with $ and rhymes with 'cold hard bash') If you are OK with them filtering/blocking, what about ISP-level efforts to curb torrents/other P2P technologies? I'm certain they would love to take all of that traffic off their network. Sure, it would probably be circumvented rather easily, but an obstacle is an obstacle.
It's not that I don't trust the ISPs; I just don't trust them.
Using this definition, I am very confused, as I would expect Kahn to support this type of thing. He talks about innovation a lot. I always thought the prevailing consensus was that if ISPs have their way and quash NN, little companies would be effectively "locked out" of the Internet.
Am I wrong here?
I think in this respect, the Star Trek animated series and the Stargate one cancel each other out. Like matter/antimatter. We'll just pretend that neither ever existed.
Yeah, the 15-character password is a result of moving to INFOCON-4 and actually only affects my laptop user accounts. I can still use my CAC and other credentials to login to public-facing systems with much more reasonable passwords. Strange logic, that.
IMHO, this is a ridiculously draconian security policy (but then again it IS the US Government). I normally have a MUCH stronger set of shorter passwords (8-10 chars) that I use for most things. However, because of the perceived risks in this situation, I can't use my normal passwords (at least not more than once). And since my password rotates so often, it is difficult to memorize every 3 months. Hence the weakest point in my chain is that all of mine are stored in a password vault program.
I'm sure that lots of nice arguments have been made in Congress. VoIP, for example, is a case where generally you want prioritization. You don't want your Vonage 9-1-1 call to be stuck because your kid is raiding Molten Core.
There, now you don't have to RTFA.
I am not going to validate your argument, but even if it is true, I guarantee you that the money raised for the sick kids is several orders of magnitude greater than any related merch revenues. Hell, the t-shirts they sell for Child's Play are going 100% to the charity. How would you suggest organizing and promoting a charity of this size without some type of name behind it? Do you also deny the legitamacy of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation?
There are sick kids dying in hospitals all over the country and you are trolling guys that are on the Internet talking about video games?
Karma: Retarded
Needless to say, I didn't experience the game as it was intended until some time later. But I have been hooked ever since.
just my 2 cents.
It seems like you're thinking like these kids will be playing the game while in a waiting room for an hour or two. Think more along the lines of being in the waiting room for a few weeks (months, years...).
It hasn't aired yet AC (of course, that might not stop some of you hooligans)
-Matt
Note: Mine is the "higher end" 15". Didn't check the "low end", but I'm assuming it can support 3GB RAM as well.
How many people ever actually beat the old Nintendo track & field games by running on the pad? Everyone used their hands to just slap the hell out of it.
An interesting side note - Gibson can't STAND shadowrun. Detests it. Mostly, from what I've heard, because of their "fantasy" concessions - the dragons, the magic, etc. True Gibsonian cyberpunk is straight up technology and its use as a metaphor for the direction of humanity.
But seriously, is it really as simple as adding water? IANAD, but I would assume that plasma has some fundamental differences than water. Maybe it would just be as simple as a medic carrying blood-flakes for everyone, and only a few doses of the necessary plasma or whatever catalyst is needed.
In a nutshell: You set up the central repository, and then everyone who might work on a file maps a directory to this trunk. Whenever you make a change to a document, you check that in to the central Subversion repository. It makes a note of who did what, and will update everyone else's copy of the document when they perform an update. In the event that two people change the same doc at the same time, it allows an outside agent (admin or the like) to see who added (or deleted) what, and accept changes accordingly. It is very handy for maintaining a productive work environment, especially with regard to coding, for example. Everyone can maintain a full copy of the code that is (hopefully) compile-able for testing, even if they are only responsible for a small functional subset.
As a disclaimer, my use of Subversion is limited to an isolated network. It is entirely self-contained and inaccessible from outside, so we don't have to worry about security or any fancy remote-access modes. Also, it is only used for tracking changes in Python and C files and basic .doc files. I'm not sure how it handles more advanced file types.
That being said, WizKids and FanPro (the current purveyors of the PNP Shadowrun) have NOTHING to do with this game. In fact, Rob Boyle, the lead developer of the SR line at WK/FanPro, has a warning up on the official Shadowrun site that lets you know it is only "loosely" based on any type of previous Shadowrun developments.
That being said, I DID RTFA. And I wept. Let me tell you why. I totally grok "starting" over. There is simply too much in the Shadowrun universe to drop into a new game. A game company is going to need a lot more people to buy this thing than just Shadowrun fanboys like me. And while they're at it, they don't have to stay 100% faithful to the "canon", if you ask me. However, I am highly skeptical of the Lineage/RNA organisations being introducted.
So let's talk about game-style. OK, yes, there are definitely instances (quite often) when you perform as a team in Shadowrun. Christ though, anyone familiar with Shadowrun can tell you that the ultimate expression of this dystopian cyberpunk setting would be an MMORPG similar to Anarchy. The Bladerunner-esqe cityscapes would be amazing. But most importantly, the very nature of the setting lends itself perfectly to an MMO. Unlike SWG, there is no Jedi class. There are no huge, big-name heroes that everyone wants to be - runners live hard and die fast. Players could be samurai, riggers, deckers (scuse me, hackers now) - but even more interesting would be service classes. What if players could become fixers or arms-dealers or fences? Living spaces would also be a good tool; the players could squat on the streets or live in luxury. In the end, I will probably still have to at least rent the damn game, but I don't see myself putting anything more into this "series" unless the gameplay evolves DRASTICALLY in the next iteration. And given the opinions I've seen, I'm not sure there will be another one. They could have slapped together the world's crappiest turn-based RPG, but if it mentioned Fuchi, deckers, and/or dragons, the fanboys would come out of the woodwork. Now, I'm not sure WHO is going to buy this.
Lastly, the closest movie I can think of to Shadowrun would be Johnny Mnemonic. I'm not saying it's good. But it's a helluva lot closer than "The Matrix".