My experience with iRivers is a bit old (it's before there was a libmtp), but here goes.
libmtp should work, in the normal "well, it's supposed to work" sense, (as listed at http://libmtp.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=compa tibility) but note I've never used that model. The sparse Syncropated page doesn't say if it actually *uses* libmtp, and in fact, I can't see any mention of MTP on their website; it only mentions mass storage.
My iRiver required some incantation when turning on the device to put it into mass storage mode, I would assume this is still the case. I think you had to hold stop while turning it on, but it's been so long and it was so immediately frustrating that I've purged that experience from my brain. It could have been anything.
Since this is an Ask article... I use an iAudio X5 (http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/product_X5_fea ture.php). The mother company is Korean, so the website and docs can be a bit funny with the English at times, but otherwise it's a great product. Rockbox (http://www.rockbox.org/) is a safe firmware replacement, and it also, well, rocks. In either firmware, the device is a simple mass storage device (with no funny business other than an obnoxious adapter necessary for USB), and KDE ([insert dig on Gnome]) picks it up immediately.
For actually syncing, I'm a junkie for simplicity: I use rsync and a directory full of symlinks to the music I want.
The "from scratch" (or, actually, from scratch discounting the bare essentials) method still exists in Gentoo. It's just old news, I guess the review...-like... thing wanted to focus on the installer because it's improved, I guess (I haven't had to use 2007.0 media yet).
And the founder (drobbins) has already come back from Microsoft and left again because he no longer fit in.
"Never say never, but customers don't seem to be interested in it," Jobs told Reuters in an interview after Apple reported blow-out quarterly results. "The subscription model has failed so far."
eMusic is considered to be the #2 player in the online music business, and they're subscription based. You can argue how much of eMusic's #2-ness is because of DRM backlash, or favoring independent labels, or whatever, but eMusic is proof that subscriptions are not a deal-breaker, and certainly not failures. And before anyone confuses the subject, subscription != rental. Once a credit goes towards a track on eMusic (citing them as that's what I'm familiar with), you get to download that from wherever you want, as many times as you want, and you can do whatever you want with the file.
Andrew M. St. Laurent does an IMO excellent job of explaining the predominant licenses, how they differ, why they differ, which phrases of the license are the important ones and which ones are just fuzzy, and other considerations, including how you should select a license (don't forget that just because your work is "self-started", you don't have free license choice, depending on if and what you link against).
I recommend that, and I recommend all of the above comments saying to stick to one of the big licenses.
on Gentoo has a cowsay ASCII art of a cow (the humorously named Larry the Cow, which is definitely female) asking "Have you mooed today?" Not as cool as the other ones above, but it's something.
kdebase-3.y.z.tar.bz2 (I've seen it as far back as 3.1, and I just checked and it's still in 3.5.6)'s configure script makes the following superfluous check:
checking for easter eggs... none found
You can find other goodies in configure scripts around the software universe, but I don't remember what or where they are.:(
Running smaller apps with less functionality MAY reduce your memory usage!
This article would be great if it had non-obvious content. Outside of the advice of "use things that don't use as much memory", the only thing the article provides is "find a way to make your favorite apps use less memory", and then some ambiguous and non-definitive help on 2.6's swappiness setting. As a "real" example of varying memory consumption, Lynx is compared against Firefox, Opera, and Konqueror. Great! Why not look at mutt vs. Thunderbird and KMail? irssi vs. XChat? And then why not just say "hey -- why not just use everything on the console/in ncurses?" Not that this is too surprising, the article is entirely about memory consumption, and only mentions lost features as a passing thought. (Disclaimer: I'm not ragging on any of the apps above, so don't start the flames.)
Not that the advice is bad, especially the section on looking for useless services and kernel bloat, but the rehash of it for the umpteenth time is just... *sigh* The section on swap is a bit misleading, as well. It is right, as it is written, but it fails to mention that swap is a good thing; if you're swapping out your running applications all the time, yes, something is wrong (your workload for the hardware, most likely), but otherwise you want to see swap being used. It makes room for stuff you're actually using. There are some clever VM behaviors out there (one example putting pages in swap *in case* they will need to be swapped out later [thus saving you the trouble]), but I don't remember which are in the default kernel.
Here's some real advice for running Linux (or anything) on old hardware: be rational. Ignore what machines you have and decide what you want. Then when you've done that, figure out what you want on your desktop, and what you just want. Offload anything that you don't need to have right in front of you. Want apache to serve a couple dinky files to friends? Okay, great, put THAT on your old P2. MythTV backend sucking up some cycles on the desktop? Move it to a VIA EPIA box and let it hog there and leave your desktop for desktoppy things. Being "lean" isn't worth it if it means you're ditching functionality you want. Don't try to struggle against old hardware if you want an awesome desktop and Beryl and the whole shebang. Sometimes you just have to let go of that 133 MHz Pentium you loved a decade ago.
Black box development sucks. Hard. No one in their right mind wants to do it. No one should have to do it. Speaking as a developer, anyone who has done any work on MS support in Star/OpenOffice deserves credit just for having the patience to bother.
Wherever the author says "business/enterprise/IT environment", he forgets a critical proper noun: he means "Microsoft-centric business/enterprise/IT environment".
Author Gripe #1: Ancient (1998) StarOffice sucked at Word/PowerPoint files. Author Gripe #2: In 2004, nothing played with Exchange, and "you can't function" without Exchange. Author Gripe #3: In 2006, one version of Evolution on one distro didn't have a "subscribe" button for Exchange Server public folders.
Author Solution: Give up on Linux.
Okay... Note that none of the above have much to do with Linux. And I don't mean to be a "omg it's userspace, not the kernel" zealotroll, but really. His gripes are in two apps. The last gripe is particularly weak; I'm not knowledgeable if the problem is fixed in Evolution (or if it's even a bug), but what is potentially "there are missing buttons" does not "Linux unprepared for the enterprise environment!!!" make.
On an unrelated note (and I don't mean this as ad hominim or anything, just curious), is this site anything more than a NetQoS company blog? These kinds of posts hitting/. are getting tired. I liked it when articles were on something resembling reporting, and not random people complaining and submitters/editors going "hey, that's about Linux, and we have a couple wacky category icons with penguins..."
Can't speak for the other distros, but Gentoo has very good 64-bit support, and it seems that a lot of people feel it is one of the best at it. Both AMD64 and EM64T are supported with the "amd64" arch, so don't get put off by their docs.
You can build pretty much all of your standard desktop software in native 64-bit mode, with some exceptions (generally game console emulators and other games [closed source or sometimes even open source, unfortunately], certain media libraries, and browser plugins), but Gentoo also makes the 32-bit emulation libraries pretty painless to install and use. I've had an AMD64 desktop on ~amd64 for over a year now, and it's been smooth sailing (as far as Gentoo can be considered smooth sailing).
So, as far as Gentoo goes, 64-bit is fine for most things, but if you need some specific software, skip it for now and install using x86 media (which will run the system in 32-bit mode). Example: I run a spare Pentium D mid-tower in 32-bit just because zSNES has been so fragile on my desktop.
Reading the/. part of the teaser, I was all worried. But the actual article doesn't mention bupkis about Gen Con Indy. In fact, it specifically mentions So Cal:
"Gen Con So Cal, a video game, fantasy, and science-fiction-oriented event completed its 2006 run at the Anaheim Convention Center earlier this month. If a deal were inked, Gen Con would join forces with the upcoming IDG show, a morphed version of E3 that will now cater to general consumers. The IDG event expects to attract no less than 25,000 attendees next October, according to its organizers.
If the two events colocate at the LACC..."
While they don't continue to specifically say So Cal in the remainder of the article, context seems to be that all references to "Gen Con" are Gen Con So Cal, since they state, "Sources say Gen Con still has a tentative agreement with the City of Los Angeles to hold its 2007 event at the LACC in early November" while there is certainly still going to be a Gen Con Indy.
Thanks for the heart attack. I'm taking a level of ranger, with/. editors as my favored enemy.
The author's reaction, that is. A lot of the above comments are saying the article is garbage and FUD and paranoia and etc., and maybe it is, but keep in mind that for a lot of people (and probably, a lot of projects), this kind of paranoia is going to be the first thing that crosses their mind with they see patches from Novell.
You say you're looking to achieve a "FDA approved software development process." And your IT director decided that Java is the magic bullet.
This should be setting off some kind of warning in your head.
A software development _process_ has little to do with implementation language. What you're looking for is a way to verify that you and the rest of your developers can rigorously apply software engineering principles in your organization and (reasonably) predict cost, development times, etc.
You should have your developers reading the Capability Maturity Model, not books on Java. The government loves the CMM. I'd suspect a critical organization like the FDA would want CMM Level 5 (as hardcore in software engineering as you can get) out of your _organization_.
That is, the process is people, not implementation language. Java being the green light is a load of malarkey (or at least, it should be).
...that early demise which hasn't happened yet really hurt the Xbox...
*roll eyes*
The article calls Microsoft an "also-ran console maker in a Sony-dominated market" with respect to the Xbox. Please. Xbox had its problems (especially in Japan), but Microsoft went from 0% market share to beating out Nintendo's Gamecube, a company with established name.
They've sold 22 million units for chrissakes! There are ghosts of consoles (like the Dreamcast) that would have killed for that kind of "early demise".
You do realize what you just said doesn't make any sense, right?... This is the category you just put yourself in. The catergory the new controller was made to encourage.
You do realize that my entire post is about how I feel the controller's a bad idea, even if I'm placed in that category?
Even if one were to accept your assumptions about the controller being easy to use/understand, it's going up against over a decade and a half of me knowing how to use a standard controller. And millions of other people's same knowledge. It's entirely plausible that there are lots of people who have no interest in learning this new input method, or will learn it and rather play games the "old" way.
You seem to assume two things:
The wand is a good controller for casual gamers
Casual gamers, after the wand's introduction, will want to use only the wand
My post was not "the Nintendo Revolution is doomed to failure because of the wand", just casting a light on the fact that hey, maybe Nintendo isn't blessed with perfection, and that I (and perhaps others) am less than thrilled with the wand concept. We have quite a lot of ways to go before the assumptions (or assertions, in your post) around this thing pan out.
Maybe I'm just not seeing something here, but I don't see how your first sentence has anything to do with the second. What makes you think Nintendo and other game companies can't/won't make games that have you wave the new controller around and be easily playable in 20 minute chunks?
When I take a break it is actually resting. How some people follow up a busy day with an hour of TV where they sit back and let the screen gloss them over, I do the same now with NetHack. If I actually have the time to be interested in a game for a couple hours, I play Oblivion, but I'm drifting off the point.
Most games are playable in 20 minute chunks. Even the more crazy possible implementations of games with the wand, I'd imagine. The trick for me isn't 20 minutes of play time, it's play time where I can feel rested at the end. And I'd be curious as to the reasoning behind a game that used the wand so passively that I could possibly feel rejuvenated when I was done playing without the wand seeming gimmicky, or an afterthought.
I don't think Nintendo can't pull it off, but I am very skeptical towards getting what I want out of games that use the wand.
Also, your speculation about having to "stand and spin around to turn" is absurd. Why on earth would anyone make a game that required you to be facing away from the screen at any point?
Embellishment on my part. But if you've seen the promo video from Nintendo when they first showed off the controller, it's not that far from their minds (or marketing's, anyway).
Yes, I don't want a revolution, and yes, I think most games aren't taking the right approach to things, but I don't think that's contradictory. At least not depending on how one implements "revolution".
I'd kill to see LucasArts-style adventure games big again. Maniac Mansion, Sam & Max (I died inside when the sequel was cancelled), etc. I wouldn't mind seeing more text adventures, even, although even I will admit that those don't have much market draw.
I want more games that remember they are games and not mini-Hollywoods. I'm definitely a guy who pines for the old days of gaming -- and some consider this living in the past (and maybe they're right, but dammit, I'd be a console consumer now if I could) -- but there are two vague categories I want: nods to old, lost genres and fresh games. Not fresh reimplementations of games.
I loved the Zelda games up to (and to a lesser degree, through) the Ocarina of Time. That's about when the game got tired to me. It wasn't because the controller was boring, it was because the game itself was. I've saved Hyrule before and I'm sure I'll be given the opportunity to countless times again, and I don't care about it anymore (even if I get to do it with a new controller).
Nintendo's efforts here seem well-intended but they don't fit what I'm looking for. The same games with new controllers don't do it for me. Katamari is a decidedly different game. I can't think of anything remotely like it in the past.
Some of my favorite console games have been the quirky ones -- Blast Corps for N64, Snake Rattle 'n Roll for NES, Maniac Mansion for PC/NES (I was introduced to the genre by the NES version), E.V.O. for SNES, Katamari Damacy, etc. I don't think a new controller will get Nintendo, or the rest of the industry, out of its funk. I'd be happier if there were more Takahashis than wand-controller implementations.
As a video game (esp. Nintendo) zealot turned dissident, I think Takahashi may be on to something. There's been an awful lot of stabs (again, esp. by Nintendo) to "broaden the audience", getting more casual gamers playing. And hey, if Nintendo thinks this controller helps, that's their decision to make.
But, speaking as an overworked graduate student in CS who once floated through K-12, I can say I don't have time for these "revolutions" in the game industry. Katamari Damacy is the only console game I've played in a long while that I actually loved, and part of that was because I could play for 20 minutes (make the moon!) and get a healthy dose of fun and entertainment (ah, the screams of people trapped in their office buildings...) and then put the game down and get back to work.
That doesn't have any direct bearing on the controller, but the controller is representative of this push into new audiences, and I think a symptom of that is companies like Nintendo are starting to ignore old audiences. I'm not interested in using my controller as a light gun (complete with me having to stand and spin around to turn), or as a sword and shield for Zelda, or whatever other recent rumor/fanboy postulating has come up with. I want to sit down for take a break for twenty minutes.
Granted that Takahashi's track record is pretty short, and not growing at any fast rate, but when reading his interviews (and playing his games) he's always felt like, to me, someone that got it -- I want my games to be fun, lazy, and distractions, not things I need to devote my life and body to (okay, I'm out of shape, sue me).
My casual gamer friends may find using the controller as a wand to be interesting, and Nintendo may think that it's pure gold (and the majority of the industry press may agree), but I just want a simple game I know how to play and can do so without large effort.
For me, Takahashi is right. And it makes me wonder if Nintendo is marginalizing one audience in favor of another.
Ditto.
And it's worth pointing out that even ignoring the hardware MPEG2 decoder, the via driver has performed better than the closed-source nvidia driver for me on video sometimes. There was a period of a couple months where nvidia (and hence X.org) would suck up near 100% CPU (on a dual-core system) when doing Xv in MythTV. Some time recently nvidia started acting sanely again but I don't know why or when. MythTV even warned about using new nvidia drivers for a while, on their website.
So the point is, the question is hardly black and white. I'd use nVidia on anything I wanted to do modern gaming on and happily load their proprietary drivers to do it. But I can get fully capable open source drivers for MythTV playback or SNES-level OpenGL (zSNES), and it'd be over my dead body that those kinds of usages required me to load a proprietary driver.
And also, my laptop has a Radeon Mobility 7500, and although I hear the open source drivers (radeon, in the kernel) aren't as "good" as the proprietary drivers, it can still play a decent game of Neverwinter Nights.
Application, people.
Slashdot Mirror
Yay mangled links.
Anyway, as people are mentioning, Amarok is popular, and for very good reason. It uses libmtp to do its syncing, so that advice should carry over.
My experience with iRivers is a bit old (it's before there was a libmtp), but here goes.
a tibility) but note I've never used that model. The sparse Syncropated page doesn't say if it actually *uses* libmtp, and in fact, I can't see any mention of MTP on their website; it only mentions mass storage.
a ture.php). The mother company is Korean, so the website and docs can be a bit funny with the English at times, but otherwise it's a great product. Rockbox (http://www.rockbox.org/) is a safe firmware replacement, and it also, well, rocks. In either firmware, the device is a simple mass storage device (with no funny business other than an obnoxious adapter necessary for USB), and KDE ([insert dig on Gnome]) picks it up immediately.
libmtp should work, in the normal "well, it's supposed to work" sense, (as listed at http://libmtp.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=comp
My iRiver required some incantation when turning on the device to put it into mass storage mode, I would assume this is still the case. I think you had to hold stop while turning it on, but it's been so long and it was so immediately frustrating that I've purged that experience from my brain. It could have been anything.
Since this is an Ask article... I use an iAudio X5 (http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/product_X5_fe
For actually syncing, I'm a junkie for simplicity: I use rsync and a directory full of symlinks to the music I want.
The "from scratch" (or, actually, from scratch discounting the bare essentials) method still exists in Gentoo. It's just old news, I guess the review...-like... thing wanted to focus on the installer because it's improved, I guess (I haven't had to use 2007.0 media yet).
And the founder (drobbins) has already come back from Microsoft and left again because he no longer fit in.
And risk actually being informative to people who didn't likely already know because they care about the game?
This isn't convenientinformationinausefulmannerdot...
...try O'Reilly's Understanding Open Source and Free Software Licensing, which you can find (gratis) at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/osfreesoft/book/
Andrew M. St. Laurent does an IMO excellent job of explaining the predominant licenses, how they differ, why they differ, which phrases of the license are the important ones and which ones are just fuzzy, and other considerations, including how you should select a license (don't forget that just because your work is "self-started", you don't have free license choice, depending on if and what you link against).
I recommend that, and I recommend all of the above comments saying to stick to one of the big licenses.
Er, you don't need the -v in the emerge moo command. I was checking if it did anything different when verbose, and pasted the wrong command.
The Operating System most secure is the Operating System less used.
I've written the most secure operating system in the world. No, you can't have it. I forgot where I put it.
Running smaller apps with less functionality MAY reduce your memory usage!
This article would be great if it had non-obvious content. Outside of the advice of "use things that don't use as much memory", the only thing the article provides is "find a way to make your favorite apps use less memory", and then some ambiguous and non-definitive help on 2.6's swappiness setting. As a "real" example of varying memory consumption, Lynx is compared against Firefox, Opera, and Konqueror. Great! Why not look at mutt vs. Thunderbird and KMail? irssi vs. XChat? And then why not just say "hey -- why not just use everything on the console/in ncurses?" Not that this is too surprising, the article is entirely about memory consumption, and only mentions lost features as a passing thought. (Disclaimer: I'm not ragging on any of the apps above, so don't start the flames.)
Not that the advice is bad, especially the section on looking for useless services and kernel bloat, but the rehash of it for the umpteenth time is just... *sigh* The section on swap is a bit misleading, as well. It is right, as it is written, but it fails to mention that swap is a good thing; if you're swapping out your running applications all the time, yes, something is wrong (your workload for the hardware, most likely), but otherwise you want to see swap being used. It makes room for stuff you're actually using. There are some clever VM behaviors out there (one example putting pages in swap *in case* they will need to be swapped out later [thus saving you the trouble]), but I don't remember which are in the default kernel.
Here's some real advice for running Linux (or anything) on old hardware: be rational. Ignore what machines you have and decide what you want. Then when you've done that, figure out what you want on your desktop, and what you just want. Offload anything that you don't need to have right in front of you. Want apache to serve a couple dinky files to friends? Okay, great, put THAT on your old P2. MythTV backend sucking up some cycles on the desktop? Move it to a VIA EPIA box and let it hog there and leave your desktop for desktoppy things. Being "lean" isn't worth it if it means you're ditching functionality you want. Don't try to struggle against old hardware if you want an awesome desktop and Beryl and the whole shebang. Sometimes you just have to let go of that 133 MHz Pentium you loved a decade ago.
Because time alone isn't a magic bullet?
Black box development sucks. Hard. No one in their right mind wants to do it. No one should have to do it. Speaking as a developer, anyone who has done any work on MS support in Star/OpenOffice deserves credit just for having the patience to bother.
Dumb. Bordering on flamebait.
/. are getting tired. I liked it when articles were on something resembling reporting, and not random people complaining and submitters/editors going "hey, that's about Linux, and we have a couple wacky category icons with penguins..."
Wherever the author says "business/enterprise/IT environment", he forgets a critical proper noun: he means "Microsoft-centric business/enterprise/IT environment".
Author Gripe #1: Ancient (1998) StarOffice sucked at Word/PowerPoint files.
Author Gripe #2: In 2004, nothing played with Exchange, and "you can't function" without Exchange.
Author Gripe #3: In 2006, one version of Evolution on one distro didn't have a "subscribe" button for Exchange Server public folders.
Author Solution: Give up on Linux.
Okay... Note that none of the above have much to do with Linux. And I don't mean to be a "omg it's userspace, not the kernel" zealotroll, but really. His gripes are in two apps. The last gripe is particularly weak; I'm not knowledgeable if the problem is fixed in Evolution (or if it's even a bug), but what is potentially "there are missing buttons" does not "Linux unprepared for the enterprise environment!!!" make.
On an unrelated note (and I don't mean this as ad hominim or anything, just curious), is this site anything more than a NetQoS company blog? These kinds of posts hitting
Can't speak for the other distros, but Gentoo has very good 64-bit support, and it seems that a lot of people feel it is one of the best at it. Both AMD64 and EM64T are supported with the "amd64" arch, so don't get put off by their docs.
You can build pretty much all of your standard desktop software in native 64-bit mode, with some exceptions (generally game console emulators and other games [closed source or sometimes even open source, unfortunately], certain media libraries, and browser plugins), but Gentoo also makes the 32-bit emulation libraries pretty painless to install and use. I've had an AMD64 desktop on ~amd64 for over a year now, and it's been smooth sailing (as far as Gentoo can be considered smooth sailing).
So, as far as Gentoo goes, 64-bit is fine for most things, but if you need some specific software, skip it for now and install using x86 media (which will run the system in 32-bit mode). Example: I run a spare Pentium D mid-tower in 32-bit just because zSNES has been so fragile on my desktop.
Reading the /. part of the teaser, I was all worried. But the actual article doesn't mention bupkis about Gen Con Indy. In fact, it specifically mentions So Cal:
/. editors as my favored enemy.
"Gen Con So Cal, a video game, fantasy, and science-fiction-oriented event completed its 2006 run at the Anaheim Convention Center earlier this month. If a deal were inked, Gen Con would join forces with the upcoming IDG show, a morphed version of E3 that will now cater to general consumers. The IDG event expects to attract no less than 25,000 attendees next October, according to its organizers.
If the two events colocate at the LACC..."
While they don't continue to specifically say So Cal in the remainder of the article, context seems to be that all references to "Gen Con" are Gen Con So Cal, since they state, "Sources say Gen Con still has a tentative agreement with the City of Los Angeles to hold its 2007 event at the LACC in early November" while there is certainly still going to be a Gen Con Indy.
Thanks for the heart attack. I'm taking a level of ranger, with
The author's reaction, that is. A lot of the above comments are saying the article is garbage and FUD and paranoia and etc., and maybe it is, but keep in mind that for a lot of people (and probably, a lot of projects), this kind of paranoia is going to be the first thing that crosses their mind with they see patches from Novell.
"How will this possibly screw us later?"
Get used to these responses, it's the new Novell.
I thought this was going to be a controller to survive gamer rage, which would be far more marketable.
Or maybe that's the idea. Get pissed off at your favorite ridiculously demanding platformer, and get in shape while doing it!
You say you're looking to achieve a "FDA approved software development process." And your IT director decided that Java is the magic bullet.
This should be setting off some kind of warning in your head.
A software development _process_ has little to do with implementation language. What you're looking for is a way to verify that you and the rest of your developers can rigorously apply software engineering principles in your organization and (reasonably) predict cost, development times, etc.
You should have your developers reading the Capability Maturity Model, not books on Java. The government loves the CMM. I'd suspect a critical organization like the FDA would want CMM Level 5 (as hardcore in software engineering as you can get) out of your _organization_.
That is, the process is people, not implementation language. Java being the green light is a load of malarkey (or at least, it should be).
The latest release of Konqueror (3.5.2) does not incorrectly show scrollbars, so it "actually" passes.
...that early demise which hasn't happened yet really hurt the Xbox...
*roll eyes*
The article calls Microsoft an "also-ran console maker in a Sony-dominated market" with respect to the Xbox. Please. Xbox had its problems (especially in Japan), but Microsoft went from 0% market share to beating out Nintendo's Gamecube, a company with established name.
They've sold 22 million units for chrissakes! There are ghosts of consoles (like the Dreamcast) that would have killed for that kind of "early demise".
Whatever.
Even if one were to accept your assumptions about the controller being easy to use/understand, it's going up against over a decade and a half of me knowing how to use a standard controller. And millions of other people's same knowledge. It's entirely plausible that there are lots of people who have no interest in learning this new input method, or will learn it and rather play games the "old" way.
You seem to assume two things:
My post was not "the Nintendo Revolution is doomed to failure because of the wand", just casting a light on the fact that hey, maybe Nintendo isn't blessed with perfection, and that I (and perhaps others) am less than thrilled with the wand concept. We have quite a lot of ways to go before the assumptions (or assertions, in your post) around this thing pan out.
Most games are playable in 20 minute chunks. Even the more crazy possible implementations of games with the wand, I'd imagine. The trick for me isn't 20 minutes of play time, it's play time where I can feel rested at the end. And I'd be curious as to the reasoning behind a game that used the wand so passively that I could possibly feel rejuvenated when I was done playing without the wand seeming gimmicky, or an afterthought.
I don't think Nintendo can't pull it off, but I am very skeptical towards getting what I want out of games that use the wand.
Embellishment on my part. But if you've seen the promo video from Nintendo when they first showed off the controller, it's not that far from their minds (or marketing's, anyway).Yes, I don't want a revolution, and yes, I think most games aren't taking the right approach to things, but I don't think that's contradictory. At least not depending on how one implements "revolution".
I'd kill to see LucasArts-style adventure games big again. Maniac Mansion, Sam & Max (I died inside when the sequel was cancelled), etc. I wouldn't mind seeing more text adventures, even, although even I will admit that those don't have much market draw.
I want more games that remember they are games and not mini-Hollywoods. I'm definitely a guy who pines for the old days of gaming -- and some consider this living in the past (and maybe they're right, but dammit, I'd be a console consumer now if I could) -- but there are two vague categories I want: nods to old, lost genres and fresh games. Not fresh reimplementations of games.
I loved the Zelda games up to (and to a lesser degree, through) the Ocarina of Time. That's about when the game got tired to me. It wasn't because the controller was boring, it was because the game itself was. I've saved Hyrule before and I'm sure I'll be given the opportunity to countless times again, and I don't care about it anymore (even if I get to do it with a new controller).
Nintendo's efforts here seem well-intended but they don't fit what I'm looking for. The same games with new controllers don't do it for me. Katamari is a decidedly different game. I can't think of anything remotely like it in the past.
Some of my favorite console games have been the quirky ones -- Blast Corps for N64, Snake Rattle 'n Roll for NES, Maniac Mansion for PC/NES (I was introduced to the genre by the NES version), E.V.O. for SNES, Katamari Damacy, etc. I don't think a new controller will get Nintendo, or the rest of the industry, out of its funk. I'd be happier if there were more Takahashis than wand-controller implementations.
But it could be that I'm a grump.
As a video game (esp. Nintendo) zealot turned dissident, I think Takahashi may be on to something. There's been an awful lot of stabs (again, esp. by Nintendo) to "broaden the audience", getting more casual gamers playing. And hey, if Nintendo thinks this controller helps, that's their decision to make.
But, speaking as an overworked graduate student in CS who once floated through K-12, I can say I don't have time for these "revolutions" in the game industry. Katamari Damacy is the only console game I've played in a long while that I actually loved, and part of that was because I could play for 20 minutes (make the moon!) and get a healthy dose of fun and entertainment (ah, the screams of people trapped in their office buildings...) and then put the game down and get back to work.
That doesn't have any direct bearing on the controller, but the controller is representative of this push into new audiences, and I think a symptom of that is companies like Nintendo are starting to ignore old audiences. I'm not interested in using my controller as a light gun (complete with me having to stand and spin around to turn), or as a sword and shield for Zelda, or whatever other recent rumor/fanboy postulating has come up with. I want to sit down for take a break for twenty minutes.
Granted that Takahashi's track record is pretty short, and not growing at any fast rate, but when reading his interviews (and playing his games) he's always felt like, to me, someone that got it -- I want my games to be fun, lazy, and distractions, not things I need to devote my life and body to (okay, I'm out of shape, sue me).
My casual gamer friends may find using the controller as a wand to be interesting, and Nintendo may think that it's pure gold (and the majority of the industry press may agree), but I just want a simple game I know how to play and can do so without large effort.
For me, Takahashi is right. And it makes me wonder if Nintendo is marginalizing one audience in favor of another.
Ditto. And it's worth pointing out that even ignoring the hardware MPEG2 decoder, the via driver has performed better than the closed-source nvidia driver for me on video sometimes. There was a period of a couple months where nvidia (and hence X.org) would suck up near 100% CPU (on a dual-core system) when doing Xv in MythTV. Some time recently nvidia started acting sanely again but I don't know why or when. MythTV even warned about using new nvidia drivers for a while, on their website. So the point is, the question is hardly black and white. I'd use nVidia on anything I wanted to do modern gaming on and happily load their proprietary drivers to do it. But I can get fully capable open source drivers for MythTV playback or SNES-level OpenGL (zSNES), and it'd be over my dead body that those kinds of usages required me to load a proprietary driver. And also, my laptop has a Radeon Mobility 7500, and although I hear the open source drivers (radeon, in the kernel) aren't as "good" as the proprietary drivers, it can still play a decent game of Neverwinter Nights. Application, people.