Wide-spread HDTV penetration will happen when they become commonplace in a variety of retail outlets for a comparable price to what one could purchase a classic CRT-based TV now. Maybe in 4-6 years??? (pure speculation there on my part) By then, Nintendo would recongize that trend and have thier next console take advantage of HDTV resolutions.
heck, even the loose cart (which i have) still runs for about $35. A loose cart Earthbound runs commonly $50 (again, I have it too - because my wife is a huge Earthbound fan).
Also, even more of an issue of tetherig, is how Wal-Mart (at least around here.... and I live near the birth place of Wal-Mart) arrang their controllers and screen. Generally, the controllers are "tethered" to a divider between two glass door section where they keep the games and consoles. The monitor/tv-screen are above you at the top of the isle. One woul dhave to step back and point the controll at whereever the sensor bar was located (which is another issue) and hope people don't wack passerbys upside the heads accidentally in the aisles. That and the number of of unattended small children that could potentially destroy the controllers. Wal-Mart "could" set up a special kiosk area, but, honestly, I have never seen any special kiosks set up at Wal-Marts to showcase game consoles.
Interesting you bring up this example, as I am finishing up a contract project that does something extremely similar (searching on name, grade, and team). My method, programmatically speaking, is searching for a subset of employees. I have an Employee class with a "static" (I put this in quotes at it is a PHP4 class, where there is no specific keywords to indicate a method as static, just implicity used and documented as a static call as the method call is not executed against a class instance) method to return a "resultset" (array of Employee objects) based on the filter criteria.
The method has a basic SQL statement in it, with the universally parameterized elements already defined. An additional function is called to "parse" my form filter fields. The function that parses the filter returns two values: on decribing the additional WHERE elements with the needed parameterization and an array of the parmeter values. This way, I can still dynamically introduce WHERE clause expressions, but still require parameters into the parsing of the SQL statement to prevent injection. A simplified example would be (using, for example, an email address and a department id - using Oracle SQL syntax & PHP):
function parseFormFields($aFilter, &$aArgs)
{
$aWHERE = array();
foreach ($aFilter as $sField => $sValue)
{
switch($sField)
{
case "name":
$aWHERE[] = "NAME LIKE '%' ||:NAME_FILTER || '%'";
$aArgs["NAME_FILTER"] = $sValue;
break;
case "department":
$aWHERE[] = "DEPT =:DEPT_FILTER";
$aArgs["DEPT_FILTER"] = $sValue;
break;
}
}
return implode(" AND ", $aWHERE);
}
This would return a suitable WHERE clause expression and fill in the $aArgs argument with proper parmeter values that I could merge with another array or simply iterate through and bind these parameter with the actual parsed statement done by the code that called this particular function.
The "dynamic" part of the SQL statement is just building the additional WHERE expressions needed to finish the query. The parameters are there to keep the actual user_defined content bound as parameters to the parsed query to keep injections in check.
Indeed, the last few project I have done use COMPLETELY parameterized queries. The only time the SQL statement structure for a command is remotely dynamically built is to add additional caluses based on specific criteria and allows no user-generated input to actually build the clause specifics. With these practices, we have absolutely *NO* SQL injection vunerabilities.
The other side of the coin, that people still forget about, also, is data that is queried and made for display in HTML browsers. Without properly escaping all the data displayed, script kiddies can store HTML/JavaScript. However, this is easily diverted (HTMLEncode for the ASP folksies, htmlspecialschars for the PHP camp, to name a couple) with an html encoding function, which most popular web application systems provide.
Finally... someone who can price episodal content at a point where even *I* would want to give it a shot. Unless the episodes last a measly hour of gameplay or so, sound like a decent deal.
That freaking soundtrack in DEFCON is incredible, but always puts me into a rather meloncholy mood. Reminds me of highly emotive version of what some of the Fallout themes were.
AS blighter mentioned about the nuncuk here is more information about what the Wii package will come with (in the US, at least): the console, wii remote, nunchuk (which plugs into the expansion port of the remote), and wii sports. Also, the Wii has a spot to plug in 4 Gamecube controllers and slots for up to 2 Gamecube memory cards (since the Wii is supposedly 100% backwards compatible with gamecube games... i.e. you can play Wii games or GC games on the same system. Note, the Wii won't work with some of the GC peripherials that plugged into to the odd expansion ports of the GC (for example, the GBA addon for the GC will certainly not work or fit anywhere on the Wii).
It was designed to live horizontally OR vertically. They show it in the vertical mode because many of the ID from Nintendo thought the Wii looked really good in it's stand, but it is NOT necessaary,
IIRC, Iwata at the E3 2006 presentation stated that, while the Wii is in standby mode, it would draw about as much power as a small LED light. Don't know if that has changed since then.
They did make Ultima VI for the C64 - kind of a pain in the ass to play with the interface it was designed for (and the first Ultima game I would completely recommend the PC or Amiga version to play instead)
I'm not so sure. Many C64 program *REQUIRE* the user to "switch disks" and then hit a key to continue (for multi-disc games). The various flavors of disk drive for the C64 has no auto detect routine to indicate to a program that a new disk has been inserted. While many emulator enthusists can deal with and manage switching disk images to emulate the switching disks operation, many causal users on something like a Wii may be confused or not understand why they have to do this.
Now, enterprising developers who want to release multi-disk games C64 can go into the original assembly and make it into an executable that requires no disk flips, or even provide an emulator-only opcode to automatically switch disk images that are attached to the games... IF they want to bother with that.
Fortunately, there are a LOT of C64 games not on disk or require on one disk side, as well as not necessarily require a write back to the disk (which is not really the problem tho). Just some of the cool ones are multi disk:)
Archon, Wasteland (if the whole swapping floppies thing could be eliminated), Bard's Tale Games, and (not EA, however) the AD&D Gold Box games.
However, getting a nice integrated version of DOSBox for the Wii (one where the emulator and game and config is preset for each game download) could also open up a whole slew of classic DOS games too (like the PC versions of the AD&D Gold Box games, Wasteland, etc...)!
Slashdot Mirror
Wide-spread HDTV penetration will happen when they become commonplace in a variety of retail outlets for a comparable price to what one could purchase a classic CRT-based TV now. Maybe in 4-6 years??? (pure speculation there on my part) By then, Nintendo would recongize that trend and have thier next console take advantage of HDTV resolutions.
... different /. news items are dupes. no, wait, that's not right....
Regardless if you don't like those games, they did provide a lot of influence in the field of CRPGs in general.
yeah, you can make a little bit o' cash of off that. here is what ebay is selling them for (hope link works, sorted by highest price first): http://search.ebay.com/earthbound_W0QQfrppZ50QQfso oZ2QQfsopZ3QQmaxrecordsreturnedZ300QQsbrsrtZl
heck, even the loose cart (which i have) still runs for about $35. A loose cart Earthbound runs commonly $50 (again, I have it too - because my wife is a huge Earthbound fan).
...being certifiably insane helps you reach that coveted IT "prima donna" status.
argh... beat me to it!!!
Forget that!
Sony needs a Full Nelson... RRRrggh!!
Also, even more of an issue of tetherig, is how Wal-Mart (at least around here.... and I live near the birth place of Wal-Mart) arrang their controllers and screen. Generally, the controllers are "tethered" to a divider between two glass door section where they keep the games and consoles. The monitor/tv-screen are above you at the top of the isle. One woul dhave to step back and point the controll at whereever the sensor bar was located (which is another issue) and hope people don't wack passerbys upside the heads accidentally in the aisles. That and the number of of unattended small children that could potentially destroy the controllers. Wal-Mart "could" set up a special kiosk area, but, honestly, I have never seen any special kiosks set up at Wal-Marts to showcase game consoles.
and then, the collective sound of GH players worldwide breaking their fingers is heard
(sorry for the poor indentation of the code)
Interesting you bring up this example, as I am finishing up a contract project that does something extremely similar (searching on name, grade, and team). My method, programmatically speaking, is searching for a subset of employees. I have an Employee class with a "static" (I put this in quotes at it is a PHP4 class, where there is no specific keywords to indicate a method as static, just implicity used and documented as a static call as the method call is not executed against a class instance) method to return a "resultset" (array of Employee objects) based on the filter criteria.
:NAME_FILTER || '%'"; :DEPT_FILTER";
The method has a basic SQL statement in it, with the universally parameterized elements already defined. An additional function is called to "parse" my form filter fields. The function that parses the filter returns two values: on decribing the additional WHERE elements with the needed parameterization and an array of the parmeter values. This way, I can still dynamically introduce WHERE clause expressions, but still require parameters into the parsing of the SQL statement to prevent injection. A simplified example would be (using, for example, an email address and a department id - using Oracle SQL syntax & PHP):
function parseFormFields($aFilter, &$aArgs)
{
$aWHERE = array();
foreach ($aFilter as $sField => $sValue)
{
switch($sField)
{
case "name":
$aWHERE[] = "NAME LIKE '%' ||
$aArgs["NAME_FILTER"] = $sValue;
break;
case "department":
$aWHERE[] = "DEPT =
$aArgs["DEPT_FILTER"] = $sValue;
break;
}
}
return implode(" AND ", $aWHERE);
}
This would return a suitable WHERE clause expression and fill in the $aArgs argument with proper parmeter values that I could merge with another array or simply iterate through and bind these parameter with the actual parsed statement done by the code that called this particular function.
The "dynamic" part of the SQL statement is just building the additional WHERE expressions needed to finish the query. The parameters are there to keep the actual user_defined content bound as parameters to the parsed query to keep injections in check.
Hope this explained my method worth a damn....
Indeed, the last few project I have done use COMPLETELY parameterized queries. The only time the SQL statement structure for a command is remotely dynamically built is to add additional caluses based on specific criteria and allows no user-generated input to actually build the clause specifics. With these practices, we have absolutely *NO* SQL injection vunerabilities.
The other side of the coin, that people still forget about, also, is data that is queried and made for display in HTML browsers. Without properly escaping all the data displayed, script kiddies can store HTML/JavaScript. However, this is easily diverted (HTMLEncode for the ASP folksies, htmlspecialschars for the PHP camp, to name a couple) with an html encoding function, which most popular web application systems provide.
Well, that's hardly a linked list then, is it?
Finally... someone who can price episodal content at a point where even *I* would want to give it a shot. Unless the episodes last a measly hour of gameplay or so, sound like a decent deal.
You can find ground pork around here readily (Tulsa, Oklahoma).
That freaking soundtrack in DEFCON is incredible, but always puts me into a rather meloncholy mood. Reminds me of highly emotive version of what some of the Fallout themes were.
AS blighter mentioned about the nuncuk here is more information about what the Wii package will come with (in the US, at least): the console, wii remote, nunchuk (which plugs into the expansion port of the remote), and wii sports. Also, the Wii has a spot to plug in 4 Gamecube controllers and slots for up to 2 Gamecube memory cards (since the Wii is supposedly 100% backwards compatible with gamecube games... i.e. you can play Wii games or GC games on the same system. Note, the Wii won't work with some of the GC peripherials that plugged into to the odd expansion ports of the GC (for example, the GBA addon for the GC will certainly not work or fit anywhere on the Wii).
OOPS
:-P
Mod me "-1 STUPID"... I swear I read PS3, not PS2
To be fair, the PS3 will not require a memory card either (both versions have some sort of hard drive).
It was designed to live horizontally OR vertically. They show it in the vertical mode because many of the ID from Nintendo thought the Wii looked really good in it's stand, but it is NOT necessaary,
IIRC, Iwata at the E3 2006 presentation stated that, while the Wii is in standby mode, it would draw about as much power as a small LED light. Don't know if that has changed since then.
They did make Ultima VI for the C64 - kind of a pain in the ass to play with the interface it was designed for (and the first Ultima game I would completely recommend the PC or Amiga version to play instead)
I'm not so sure. Many C64 program *REQUIRE* the user to "switch disks" and then hit a key to continue (for multi-disc games). The various flavors of disk drive for the C64 has no auto detect routine to indicate to a program that a new disk has been inserted. While many emulator enthusists can deal with and manage switching disk images to emulate the switching disks operation, many causal users on something like a Wii may be confused or not understand why they have to do this.
:)
Now, enterprising developers who want to release multi-disk games C64 can go into the original assembly and make it into an executable that requires no disk flips, or even provide an emulator-only opcode to automatically switch disk images that are attached to the games... IF they want to bother with that.
Fortunately, there are a LOT of C64 games not on disk or require on one disk side, as well as not necessarily require a write back to the disk (which is not really the problem tho). Just some of the cool ones are multi disk
Archon, Wasteland (if the whole swapping floppies thing could be eliminated), Bard's Tale Games, and (not EA, however) the AD&D Gold Box games.
However, getting a nice integrated version of DOSBox for the Wii (one where the emulator and game and config is preset for each game download) could also open up a whole slew of classic DOS games too (like the PC versions of the AD&D Gold Box games, Wasteland, etc...)!