The popularity or acclaim of Halo isn't really because it's terribly revolutionary, because it's not. It is famous and celebrated because it is the first example of a console FPS *done right*. For that Bungie has to get a huge kudos from everyone. Console FPSes before Halo were extremely poor - even lauded games like Goldeneye were impossible to really control. Halo didn't innovate much, but it sure as hell nailed the execution.
Though they DID invent the "recharging health meter" thing that's oh-so-popular with console FPSes these days. I like it. It takes the medpack-hunting angle out of the game, and doesn't punish players for taking a *wee* bit much damage in the last encounter, and having little chance to survive the next one. It forces players to be smart and pick their fights without making it into a strict numbers game.
Oh, and need I remind you that despite the fact that Bungie didn't invent co-op, it was one of the VERY VERY few co-op FPSes of its day, consoles or otherwise. Hell, there really hasn't been a single good co-op shooter on consoles *or* PCs until Gears of War just now. They brought gamers' attentions back to co-op, and that deserves props.
Don't get me wrong, I was a huge photography nut back in high school - had an old-school film SLR that I loved to death. But each have their own place eh? If I'm out with friends, having some fun, I don't take along a 3-lb clunker will generate gorgeous photos but be a bitch in every other way. I take the little 5MP thing that slips into my pocket. If I go to Disneyworld I'll take the little guy just 'cos it's a pretty shite idea to lug around something that large on a roller coaster, etc etc.
Everyone interested in real photography should have an SLR, I agree, but for the average Joe that just wants some fond memories, anything will do, even a halfway decent cell phone camera.
"Because: (a) some people commit actual crimes (like, the kind with victims) on the internet, and the ISP's logs are equivalent to the film from the CCTV camera across the street from a robbed bank;"
The CCTV camera doesn't watch *every* person in the world, 24/7/365.
Let's take a look at another example: telephones. You wouldn't tap a guy's phone until he was suspected of a crime, so why would you "tap" a guy's internet connection when he hasn't done anything to warrant suspicion? I'm all in favour of law enforcement being able to obtain warrants and order log keeping for particular users suspected of crimes, but doing it by default across the board is too extreme.
Really? Could've sworn it was the opposite. I've had *far far far far* argue the preposterous impossibility of evolution with me, and only a small handful that would even admit to speciation. You sir, seem to be the minority.
Agreed. The click is a useful way to confirm your selection. I found that the site needlessly responded to my mouse movements just because I was in-transit to another location. Or worse, if I paused too long in one place it would take that as my choice and run with it. The only way to tell the difference between passing over a button and intending to click it is *time* spent there. This is time I would rather spend being productive, and not waiting for the system to realize that this button is indeed the one I want to go through.
The click makes the interface faster, it is only limited by how quickly one can move his/her mouse (and damn, I can move pretty quick). An interesting study to be sure, but as an actual interface it leaves much to be desired.
... Not to mention that the site itself is bloated and looks pretty. Can you imagine adapting that kind of interface for more practical applications, where user speed becomes an issue? Can you imagine programming an IDE with a no-click interface? Ewwwwww.
Agreed. Right now I'm listening to online radio with iTunes, fiddling with some build errors in XCode, toying around in the shell ftp'ing a file that a build script failed to fetch, sharing a file with my roommate (who runs Windows) across the LAN using HTTP (as opposed to SMB), and looking at my Monday appointments in iCal. All of this functionality out of the box - it is bar none the best 'nix I've ever used (and continue to use).
"Last time I was in the USA, I couldn't even find anywhere that offered gravy in a side dish for my fries!"
I honestly don't know what other use we would have for cheese curds if not for poutine.
Mmmm... Slight plug: If any of you are ever in Ottawa, you might want to drop in on La Maison Acadienne (corner of King Edward/Somerset) - it's got the craziest, awesomest, most heart-attack-inducing poutines in this world.
I wonder if one can have a USB key that has a "wipe" switch. If a border guard really wants to see it, I'll nuke the drive before handing it over. For work data it's never the only copy, and I can relatively easily arrange for a replacement copy sent once I get to my destination anyway.
Can I refuse to hand the laptop over, turn around, and go home? If I was heading down 'cross the border and the Americans tried to take my work laptop, I'd probably turn around and go home. I'm pretty sure my boss would rather not have a copy of the product's source floating around god knows where, even if it is encrypted.
Until Dell and its OEM brethren start producing hardware that are mainstream fashion symbols, Apple will have no trouble maintaining its explosive growth. People in general don't want bloated hardware that does everything they don't need to do. They want hardware that gets the job done, and looks really nifty and suave while doing it. Apple has been able to do a pretty good job of this so far, and while some manufacturers (Dell comes to mind) have made many improvements to the usability of their hardware, they still have a long way to go.
Far too true. The point here isn't to shield your children from all of the ugliness and potential (non-serious) dangers of the world. I know I learned a lot about people, the world, and how it all goes around from my time in school - things that my protective parents would never have exposed me to had they homeschooled me.
Not to mention the fact that school is a wonderful place for kids to have fun and make friends (and enemies, but such is a lesson of life that must be learned). Little Johnny might get to know some kids from soccer practice, but that's nothing compared to being able to hop on a bike down the street to Timmy's house.
"15.4" @ 5 lbs laptop isn't portable? A 7 hour battery isn't long enough?"
Show me a 15.4" laptop that weighs 5lbs that qualifies as a desktop replacement (i.e., plenty of RAM, large HDD, game-capable video card, etc). Please. And then show me one that has a battery that is realistically rated at 7h (real life performance, pulling the number out of your ass doesn't count). I've only seen a handful of laptops in my life that can run >7h on a single charge, and all of them have been small ultra-portable types, and all while compromising basic features like wifi.
"First you say that as you get "older" (implying middle age or older here from your context), you don't want to do things like put together a computer, then you say you are in college, and apparently live there from your comments, so really old, yup."
Did I at any point imply that I was middle aged? Cripes, I don't need people throwing words in my mouth here. Back in my high school days I'd jump at the opportunity to build a new box. Fast forward a few years and now I'd rather just pull something out of the box, plug it in, and have it do what I want. I've got much more interesting (not to mention mandatory and time consuming) things to spend my time on, I don't want to spend eons tweaking hardware/software so it's "just right" (also part of why I got the Mac).
"There is no "if I need to..." with my PC. I have to have it. Between programming, writing papers, researching, hosting, desigining, and generally amusing myself it is essential and no console can compare to it."
See, I do all of the above, but the realization I made was that the only item in that list that required anything even remotely powerful was gaming. So I separated it from the rest of the those tasks, so I have close-to perfect solutions for both. I've got a very portable laptop that does all of the above *except gaming* perfectly, keeping me mobile with a long battery life, lightweight, and leaving plenty of room on me for other important things. At home I have my Xbox hooked up to a LCD (which serves as a nice extended desktop for the Mac) - all the gaming power I could ever want.
I thought about it for a while before going down this route. I was a major PC gamer at one point, but the best solution for someone like me was to get a portable-class laptop, and a full-on desktop. Economically and logistically that wasn't feasible, so I went for the next best thing. I am now almost exclusively a console gamer - to me it's all the same now. It's entertainment so I can forget about that term paper for a few hours.
I've been sucked into the desktop replacement thing before, and I'm not inclined to do it again. I've been schooled the hard way that performance and mobility are by and large mutually exclusive qualities, and any solution that promises to deliver both usually gets away half-assing it.
As a college student there are two things I do. I work, and I game. I do not game in class, nor do I game at the library, nor at a coffee shop, nor anywhere that isn't home. A desktop replacement laptop only gets in the way of, well, work. I can lug around this MacBook, a relatively slim 5.2lbs and 13.3" screen, and get all my work done. I have no limitations of where I can put the thing - it's not a desktop replacement monster that can't last me an hour on batteries. It lasts a ludicrously long time on battery power, which is more than can be said for any desktop replacement I've ever owned/used.
Oh, and I have a TV tuner for my laptop. It works through USB2 and quite well to boot. Since I really don't watch TV in class or the library, it takes up space in my apartment, not my laptop. Best $50 I've ever spent.
Did I mention that the xbox and its controllers (including all wires and several games) fit into my backpack, and that I can cart it to various places without incident? Try social gaming on a gaming PC, or even moving that sucker.
It's so easy to fall into the "SUV mentality" when purchasing a laptop. "What if I need to ford a river while driving little Johnny to soccer practice?". I've figured out my exact needs, and I don't have anything extraneous in my hardware. I don't have a beast of a video card in my machine "just in case" I need to game on the go, because I simply never do.
I would like you to see you build a machine (sans LCD or input devices, to make it easier for you) that can play FEAR on 1440x900 (sort of kind of HD) at high detail (not ultra, just high), for $600. Hell, FEAR at this point is already a year old and considered last-gen.
And while you're bashing motherboards and crawling around in little aluminum enclosures, I hit the on button on my console, have a blast, and I'm done with zero hassle. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy building a new machine as much as anyone, but as I get older I find myself not wanting to be bothered with every tiny detail of my hobbies.
You give the whole "PC's do more than game!" argument that many PC game apologists like to use. Sure. But I don't need that $2K machine to do my work. I'm running on a very comfortable $1000 Mac laptop that goes with me everywhere and is smooth as silk for everything *except* gaming. Total investment cost: $1000 + $600. Don't tell me you can achieve the same kind of work mobility and gaming prowess for THAT kind of price.
"...gamers who want HD have been using their PCs as their primary platform with a phat 20"+ LCD attached that can do 1680x1050 or more widescreen."
That's an amazing generalization. Being able to run new top-of-line games on a 20"+ LCD doing 1680x1050 costs quite a bit, both in initial investment and constantly chasing the upgrade curve. I never did it - my PC is still too crappy to play Half-Life 2 at anything above 800x600. I am not inclined to sink thousands into such a machine when now a console can do HD for a fraction of the price.
Assuming a console lifetime of 5 years... $600 for consoles plus some accessories.
vs... $4K+ to maintain a system at good game-ability (ability to run all new games at relative high resolution and settings) over 5 years.
Disclaimer: I have an "HDTV" in the form of LCD hooked up to Xbox360.
The whole HDTV argument is kind of moot. The status quo of video gamings certainly do not demand HDTVs, but IMHO that's a limitation that game developers are trying to overcome. For years we've been stuck in the world of ultra-huge text just so it's readable on a crappy tube set. We've been unable to communicate detailed information to the gamer. Think about the resolution as a mode of information bandwidth. The more resolution you have to work with (within limits) means the more data you can pass to the gamer. This is why RTS games work on PCs but not on consoles (beyond the obvious control difficulties) - these games demand that a lot of information (unit health, unit selection, unit status, squads, tactics, waypoints, etc) be visible all at once, which before the HD era has simply not been possible.
The way I see it, the HDTV thing is good. It further reduces the gap between PC and console gaming, allowing game developers to put games that would never have worked on a 480i tube TV on a console. To me this is a lot more than being able to see the tiny glint on a suit of armour - there is more to the HD issue than mere aesthetics.
Sometimes I don't get the hype over the MGS franchise. It's always been pretty boring, and in the odd moment where it's not, it's generally downright frustrating. It's a stealth game that makes you look top-down, so that you have a hell of a time just seeing what's in FRONT of you, so you end up relying on radar most of the time.
Honestly, if I wanted to use a green circle with moving dots for enemies for navigation, I'd go back to the NES.
That's a minor gripe though. My main beef with the MGS series is that I do more *watching* than I do *playing*. The whole game is one (very well produced) long movie. This is well and good, but I'm here to play a game, not watch a perpetual cutscene. I lost track of the number of times in MGS2 where I got to play the game proper for 1 minute, then sat through 5min of cutscenes, rinse and repeat.
Nothing in the PS3 lineup particularly piques my interest. White Knight's Story looks good, and looks like it might be a more novel way to do your standard RPG battles, but beyond that there's nothing Sony has that I want. MGS? Sick of that franchise. FF? Never liked it - besides FF7 all of the FF games have bored me to TEARS.
I really have to object against the use of the word "genocide" in your post. The Japanese in WW2 were known to be especially brutal to the Chinese civilian populace, but what went on was classic pillage & rape, it's a long way from genocide. Don't use that word just to sound dramatic. I'ts like accusing a rapist of being a serial killer. They may both be terrible crimes, but they are not synonymous.
And might I add that your evidence is entirely anecdotal? The presence of one (or even many) families with no killed/culled/harvested members is not proof that such systems do not exist. I myself know many Chinese who have lost at least one relative to the political purges, or otherwise perished in the ensuing mayhem. I make no attempt to justify Comatose's numbers, since I honestly do not know the bodycount off the top of my head (a bit morbid for idle trivia, no?), but honestly, this shit does happen.
That said, I also object to the notion that China is in every possibly way worse than Nazi Germany. Honestly, there's a pretty wide gap between collateral civilian death from brutal political revolution... and systematic extermination via concentration camps and gas chambers. Genocide is, in my books anyway, a whole lot worse than your standard vanilla repression.
The post below assumes that you are interested in robotics as a career path, not as a weekend hobbyist thing.
I'm in a robotics undergrad degree at the University of Waterloo (the Mechatronics program, to be specific), and I've involved in quite a bit of robotics on campus as well as on the internship level. My suggestion is: don't stop at undergrad, or even masters. You can get INTO robotics with an undergrad or masters degree, sure, but if you want to touch any of the very interesting work, or have high-level control over a project, a phD is almost without a doubt a necessity.
If you just want to get your hands dirty and have fun, go for a controls-related degree. Remember that there are many different sides to robotics: control systems, electronics, mechanics, etc. To be effective in the field you need to have a basic knowledge of all areas, and specialize in whatever interests you the most. A degree would go a long way. The traditional mechanical or electrical engineerings are good in this regard, and there are many robotics-centric and controls-centric programs starting to appear that would give you more specialized knowledge.
Second, from a programming perspective anyway (since it's the only one I'm qualified to speak from), they are perfectly entitled to this form of discrimination. I've seen the type of coding that goes on at these game colleges, and I would NEVER give up a CSer (even a mediocre one) in exchange for a Full Sail/Digipen/etc coder. Seriously. The depth of "programming" these schools get into is laughably simplistic and wouldn't fly further than scripting a level.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not so bad. You can be a fossil fuel 35 million years from now when the apes rule the Earth!
The popularity or acclaim of Halo isn't really because it's terribly revolutionary, because it's not. It is famous and celebrated because it is the first example of a console FPS *done right*. For that Bungie has to get a huge kudos from everyone. Console FPSes before Halo were extremely poor - even lauded games like Goldeneye were impossible to really control. Halo didn't innovate much, but it sure as hell nailed the execution.
Though they DID invent the "recharging health meter" thing that's oh-so-popular with console FPSes these days. I like it. It takes the medpack-hunting angle out of the game, and doesn't punish players for taking a *wee* bit much damage in the last encounter, and having little chance to survive the next one. It forces players to be smart and pick their fights without making it into a strict numbers game.
Oh, and need I remind you that despite the fact that Bungie didn't invent co-op, it was one of the VERY VERY few co-op FPSes of its day, consoles or otherwise. Hell, there really hasn't been a single good co-op shooter on consoles *or* PCs until Gears of War just now. They brought gamers' attentions back to co-op, and that deserves props.
Don't get me wrong, I was a huge photography nut back in high school - had an old-school film SLR that I loved to death. But each have their own place eh? If I'm out with friends, having some fun, I don't take along a 3-lb clunker will generate gorgeous photos but be a bitch in every other way. I take the little 5MP thing that slips into my pocket. If I go to Disneyworld I'll take the little guy just 'cos it's a pretty shite idea to lug around something that large on a roller coaster, etc etc.
Everyone interested in real photography should have an SLR, I agree, but for the average Joe that just wants some fond memories, anything will do, even a halfway decent cell phone camera.
"Because: (a) some people commit actual crimes (like, the kind with victims) on the internet, and the ISP's logs are equivalent to the film from the CCTV camera across the street from a robbed bank;"
The CCTV camera doesn't watch *every* person in the world, 24/7/365.
Let's take a look at another example: telephones. You wouldn't tap a guy's phone until he was suspected of a crime, so why would you "tap" a guy's internet connection when he hasn't done anything to warrant suspicion? I'm all in favour of law enforcement being able to obtain warrants and order log keeping for particular users suspected of crimes, but doing it by default across the board is too extreme.
"Most Christians do beleive in evolution..."
Really? Could've sworn it was the opposite. I've had *far far far far* argue the preposterous impossibility of evolution with me, and only a small handful that would even admit to speciation. You sir, seem to be the minority.
Agreed. The click is a useful way to confirm your selection. I found that the site needlessly responded to my mouse movements just because I was in-transit to another location. Or worse, if I paused too long in one place it would take that as my choice and run with it. The only way to tell the difference between passing over a button and intending to click it is *time* spent there. This is time I would rather spend being productive, and not waiting for the system to realize that this button is indeed the one I want to go through.
The click makes the interface faster, it is only limited by how quickly one can move his/her mouse (and damn, I can move pretty quick). An interesting study to be sure, but as an actual interface it leaves much to be desired.
... Not to mention that the site itself is bloated and looks pretty. Can you imagine adapting that kind of interface for more practical applications, where user speed becomes an issue? Can you imagine programming an IDE with a no-click interface? Ewwwwww.
I thought OSX is already resolution independent? My coworker runs OSX on a gorgeous 24" Dell LCD.
Agreed. Right now I'm listening to online radio with iTunes, fiddling with some build errors in XCode, toying around in the shell ftp'ing a file that a build script failed to fetch, sharing a file with my roommate (who runs Windows) across the LAN using HTTP (as opposed to SMB), and looking at my Monday appointments in iCal. All of this functionality out of the box - it is bar none the best 'nix I've ever used (and continue to use).
Short answer: No. Only the 17" model has WUXGA resolution.
"Last time I was in the USA, I couldn't even find anywhere that offered gravy in a side dish for my fries!"
I honestly don't know what other use we would have for cheese curds if not for poutine.
Mmmm... Slight plug: If any of you are ever in Ottawa, you might want to drop in on La Maison Acadienne (corner of King Edward/Somerset) - it's got the craziest, awesomest, most heart-attack-inducing poutines in this world.
I wonder if one can have a USB key that has a "wipe" switch. If a border guard really wants to see it, I'll nuke the drive before handing it over. For work data it's never the only copy, and I can relatively easily arrange for a replacement copy sent once I get to my destination anyway.
Can I refuse to hand the laptop over, turn around, and go home? If I was heading down 'cross the border and the Americans tried to take my work laptop, I'd probably turn around and go home. I'm pretty sure my boss would rather not have a copy of the product's source floating around god knows where, even if it is encrypted.
Until Dell and its OEM brethren start producing hardware that are mainstream fashion symbols, Apple will have no trouble maintaining its explosive growth. People in general don't want bloated hardware that does everything they don't need to do. They want hardware that gets the job done, and looks really nifty and suave while doing it. Apple has been able to do a pretty good job of this so far, and while some manufacturers (Dell comes to mind) have made many improvements to the usability of their hardware, they still have a long way to go.
Far too true. The point here isn't to shield your children from all of the ugliness and potential (non-serious) dangers of the world. I know I learned a lot about people, the world, and how it all goes around from my time in school - things that my protective parents would never have exposed me to had they homeschooled me.
Not to mention the fact that school is a wonderful place for kids to have fun and make friends (and enemies, but such is a lesson of life that must be learned). Little Johnny might get to know some kids from soccer practice, but that's nothing compared to being able to hop on a bike down the street to Timmy's house.
Are we even talking about the same things here?
"15.4" @ 5 lbs laptop isn't portable? A 7 hour battery isn't long enough?"
Show me a 15.4" laptop that weighs 5lbs that qualifies as a desktop replacement (i.e., plenty of RAM, large HDD, game-capable video card, etc). Please. And then show me one that has a battery that is realistically rated at 7h (real life performance, pulling the number out of your ass doesn't count). I've only seen a handful of laptops in my life that can run >7h on a single charge, and all of them have been small ultra-portable types, and all while compromising basic features like wifi.
"First you say that as you get "older" (implying middle age or older here from your context), you don't want to do things like put together a computer, then you say you are in college, and apparently live there from your comments, so really old, yup."
Did I at any point imply that I was middle aged? Cripes, I don't need people throwing words in my mouth here. Back in my high school days I'd jump at the opportunity to build a new box. Fast forward a few years and now I'd rather just pull something out of the box, plug it in, and have it do what I want. I've got much more interesting (not to mention mandatory and time consuming) things to spend my time on, I don't want to spend eons tweaking hardware/software so it's "just right" (also part of why I got the Mac).
"There is no "if I need to..." with my PC. I have to have it. Between programming, writing papers, researching, hosting, desigining, and generally amusing myself it is essential and no console can compare to it."
See, I do all of the above, but the realization I made was that the only item in that list that required anything even remotely powerful was gaming. So I separated it from the rest of the those tasks, so I have close-to perfect solutions for both. I've got a very portable laptop that does all of the above *except gaming* perfectly, keeping me mobile with a long battery life, lightweight, and leaving plenty of room on me for other important things. At home I have my Xbox hooked up to a LCD (which serves as a nice extended desktop for the Mac) - all the gaming power I could ever want.
I thought about it for a while before going down this route. I was a major PC gamer at one point, but the best solution for someone like me was to get a portable-class laptop, and a full-on desktop. Economically and logistically that wasn't feasible, so I went for the next best thing. I am now almost exclusively a console gamer - to me it's all the same now. It's entertainment so I can forget about that term paper for a few hours.
Meanwhile I'm still portable...
I've been sucked into the desktop replacement thing before, and I'm not inclined to do it again. I've been schooled the hard way that performance and mobility are by and large mutually exclusive qualities, and any solution that promises to deliver both usually gets away half-assing it.
As a college student there are two things I do. I work, and I game. I do not game in class, nor do I game at the library, nor at a coffee shop, nor anywhere that isn't home. A desktop replacement laptop only gets in the way of, well, work. I can lug around this MacBook, a relatively slim 5.2lbs and 13.3" screen, and get all my work done. I have no limitations of where I can put the thing - it's not a desktop replacement monster that can't last me an hour on batteries. It lasts a ludicrously long time on battery power, which is more than can be said for any desktop replacement I've ever owned/used.
Oh, and I have a TV tuner for my laptop. It works through USB2 and quite well to boot. Since I really don't watch TV in class or the library, it takes up space in my apartment, not my laptop. Best $50 I've ever spent.
Did I mention that the xbox and its controllers (including all wires and several games) fit into my backpack, and that I can cart it to various places without incident? Try social gaming on a gaming PC, or even moving that sucker.
It's so easy to fall into the "SUV mentality" when purchasing a laptop. "What if I need to ford a river while driving little Johnny to soccer practice?". I've figured out my exact needs, and I don't have anything extraneous in my hardware. I don't have a beast of a video card in my machine "just in case" I need to game on the go, because I simply never do.
I would like you to see you build a machine (sans LCD or input devices, to make it easier for you) that can play FEAR on 1440x900 (sort of kind of HD) at high detail (not ultra, just high), for $600. Hell, FEAR at this point is already a year old and considered last-gen.
And while you're bashing motherboards and crawling around in little aluminum enclosures, I hit the on button on my console, have a blast, and I'm done with zero hassle. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy building a new machine as much as anyone, but as I get older I find myself not wanting to be bothered with every tiny detail of my hobbies.
You give the whole "PC's do more than game!" argument that many PC game apologists like to use. Sure. But I don't need that $2K machine to do my work. I'm running on a very comfortable $1000 Mac laptop that goes with me everywhere and is smooth as silk for everything *except* gaming. Total investment cost: $1000 + $600. Don't tell me you can achieve the same kind of work mobility and gaming prowess for THAT kind of price.
"...gamers who want HD have been using their PCs as their primary platform with a phat 20"+ LCD attached that can do 1680x1050 or more widescreen."
That's an amazing generalization. Being able to run new top-of-line games on a 20"+ LCD doing 1680x1050 costs quite a bit, both in initial investment and constantly chasing the upgrade curve. I never did it - my PC is still too crappy to play Half-Life 2 at anything above 800x600. I am not inclined to sink thousands into such a machine when now a console can do HD for a fraction of the price.
Assuming a console lifetime of 5 years... $600 for consoles plus some accessories.
vs... $4K+ to maintain a system at good game-ability (ability to run all new games at relative high resolution and settings) over 5 years.
One is affordable for me. The other never was.
Disclaimer: I have an "HDTV" in the form of LCD hooked up to Xbox360.
The whole HDTV argument is kind of moot. The status quo of video gamings certainly do not demand HDTVs, but IMHO that's a limitation that game developers are trying to overcome. For years we've been stuck in the world of ultra-huge text just so it's readable on a crappy tube set. We've been unable to communicate detailed information to the gamer. Think about the resolution as a mode of information bandwidth. The more resolution you have to work with (within limits) means the more data you can pass to the gamer. This is why RTS games work on PCs but not on consoles (beyond the obvious control difficulties) - these games demand that a lot of information (unit health, unit selection, unit status, squads, tactics, waypoints, etc) be visible all at once, which before the HD era has simply not been possible.
The way I see it, the HDTV thing is good. It further reduces the gap between PC and console gaming, allowing game developers to put games that would never have worked on a 480i tube TV on a console. To me this is a lot more than being able to see the tiny glint on a suit of armour - there is more to the HD issue than mere aesthetics.
Sometimes I don't get the hype over the MGS franchise. It's always been pretty boring, and in the odd moment where it's not, it's generally downright frustrating. It's a stealth game that makes you look top-down, so that you have a hell of a time just seeing what's in FRONT of you, so you end up relying on radar most of the time.
Honestly, if I wanted to use a green circle with moving dots for enemies for navigation, I'd go back to the NES.
That's a minor gripe though. My main beef with the MGS series is that I do more *watching* than I do *playing*. The whole game is one (very well produced) long movie. This is well and good, but I'm here to play a game, not watch a perpetual cutscene. I lost track of the number of times in MGS2 where I got to play the game proper for 1 minute, then sat through 5min of cutscenes, rinse and repeat.
Nothing in the PS3 lineup particularly piques my interest. White Knight's Story looks good, and looks like it might be a more novel way to do your standard RPG battles, but beyond that there's nothing Sony has that I want. MGS? Sick of that franchise. FF? Never liked it - besides FF7 all of the FF games have bored me to TEARS.
Disclaimer: I am a Chinese Canadian.
I really have to object against the use of the word "genocide" in your post. The Japanese in WW2 were known to be especially brutal to the Chinese civilian populace, but what went on was classic pillage & rape, it's a long way from genocide. Don't use that word just to sound dramatic. I'ts like accusing a rapist of being a serial killer. They may both be terrible crimes, but they are not synonymous.
And might I add that your evidence is entirely anecdotal? The presence of one (or even many) families with no killed/culled/harvested members is not proof that such systems do not exist. I myself know many Chinese who have lost at least one relative to the political purges, or otherwise perished in the ensuing mayhem. I make no attempt to justify Comatose's numbers, since I honestly do not know the bodycount off the top of my head (a bit morbid for idle trivia, no?), but honestly, this shit does happen.
That said, I also object to the notion that China is in every possibly way worse than Nazi Germany. Honestly, there's a pretty wide gap between collateral civilian death from brutal political revolution... and systematic extermination via concentration camps and gas chambers. Genocide is, in my books anyway, a whole lot worse than your standard vanilla repression.
Great joke. We should induct you into the Comedy Hall of Fame.
The post below assumes that you are interested in robotics as a career path, not as a weekend hobbyist thing.
I'm in a robotics undergrad degree at the University of Waterloo (the Mechatronics program, to be specific), and I've involved in quite a bit of robotics on campus as well as on the internship level. My suggestion is: don't stop at undergrad, or even masters. You can get INTO robotics with an undergrad or masters degree, sure, but if you want to touch any of the very interesting work, or have high-level control over a project, a phD is almost without a doubt a necessity.
If you just want to get your hands dirty and have fun, go for a controls-related degree. Remember that there are many different sides to robotics: control systems, electronics, mechanics, etc. To be effective in the field you need to have a basic knowledge of all areas, and specialize in whatever interests you the most. A degree would go a long way. The traditional mechanical or electrical engineerings are good in this regard, and there are many robotics-centric and controls-centric programs starting to appear that would give you more specialized knowledge.
First off, it's "libel".
Second, from a programming perspective anyway (since it's the only one I'm qualified to speak from), they are perfectly entitled to this form of discrimination. I've seen the type of coding that goes on at these game colleges, and I would NEVER give up a CSer (even a mediocre one) in exchange for a Full Sail/Digipen/etc coder. Seriously. The depth of "programming" these schools get into is laughably simplistic and wouldn't fly further than scripting a level.
Not to mention that Toronto probably has a MUCH higher population density than a backwater UK town.