Class dependencies are different depending on the compiler, so there are a few situations where the JVM executing the code makes a difference. Java 5 isn't that new, so it's not even really bleeding-edge stuff.
Indeed. It is mentioned at the closing of the article.
Personally I'm a bit frustrated by this being a noteworthy topic... I'm a Java dev and I really wish accomodating pre-java 5 JVMs wasn't ever needed. Reminds me too much of web development.
The stylus and control pad are enough to play Starcraft on it. The second screen might not be all that useful, so they can just use it to track scores or units or research progress or whatever else you don't need to click on. With the DS letting you play anyone in the world via WiFi and the controls to make it work, Starcraft can experience a resurrection as a handheld game.
There's so much great free security software out there (Avast, for instance) that for the educated consumer, the price of Norton or McAfee should be a moot point in my opinion. Not to mention that those two products are far more resource intensive than their free counterparts.
I don't know what prices one would be looking at when it comes to commercial version of Avast, or how much actual support contracts cost a company if it wants Norton on say, 1500 desktops. But for the typical consumer, paying for security software is just a waste of money.
As for McAfee's 50% discount, the latest Norton is free with rebates at certain points in the year, so as long as you wait until then to buy it, you can even get Norton free.
Why renew a license when you can just buy a newer release in a store?
Guild Wars has had "observer mode" up and running for a long time now. That lets you see not only the top guild's skill builds, but their strategy! You know how they act and react, and you learn *when* to use the skills they bring.
Yet, the top guilds remain the top guilds because they're just better at doing what they do than anyone else. So, top WoW PVP folks should probably just have more confidence in their own abilities ^_^
It's not like having a speed limit and not enforcing it. DRM is like having a speed limit of 65mph and installing electronic governors on every car that limit it to a top speed of 65mph. If instead of DRM the RIAA and MPAA just ticketed people for $75 when they discovered they were violating copyright, then we'd have a better comparison.
Heh, well don't go ahead making up differences between you and me. I think the U.S.'s entire approach to combating terrorism is pathetic and ridiculous. Capturing data on citizens, as you put it, is a tremendous waste of energy and needless invasion of privacy. We know where terrorists are funded from, we know where they go for training. And instead of acting on that knowledge, our government agencies spy on us. WTF. When all we're left to deal with is secrets, then I can maybe understand doing some more snooping around. But we are a LONG way from resorting to anything of the sort.
The War on Drugs is also dumb as heck, I totally agree. I think your point is really about how wasteful our government is, yeah?
As for the Aspirin comment... well, Aspirin may be "more deadly" than terrorism but that's a bit of a skewed way to look at things. Hippos might be "more deadly" than terrorism for all I know, but that doesn't mean ANYTHING because surely no-one is going to send U.S. troops into the Nile river to bring about democracy to hippos and/or kill them good. You know, whatever awesome strategy our government would come up with:-) The point is, it's in my personal power to prevent death by hippo/Aspirin, but it can't do anything about terrorism. That's where the government (and our troops) comes in. I just wish they'd be more competent and focus on some better solutions.
I once made a comment.. maybe on Slashdot but I forget: if terrorists really want to piss us off, all they have to do is "leak" a "plot" to blow up an airplane using explosive undergarments. Instantly we'd all have to fly "commando" for the next couple of months. Yay for security personnel being too rubbish to do their job and instead trying to cover their asses.
Dude if I could I'd mod you insightful. Thanks for the info next time I'm in a big crowd in D.C. I'll know to stay the hell away from any Aspirin-popping male senior citizens.
While we're at it let's propose a "War on Natural Causes" because that has also killed way more people than terrorism has in the U.S.
Yeah I agree people need to see "terrorism is not a threat" in print more. What they should be seeing in print is "Tel-Aviv: 12 killed 26 wounded. Aspirin for the lose!"
Basically, because my car can't read mp3 DVDs. (*let alone* FLAC files altogether!) If all "data CD" players were replaced by "data DVD" players, then I would care less about file size.
As for size vs quality, well, with the speakers I usually use (or headphones), I honestly can't tell the difference between lossless and well-compressed music. But that's another topic.
Yes, storage is still a big issue. CDs still hold 700 megs, meaning that the number of FLAC songs they can hold (as opposed to compressed songs like ogg or mp3) is much smaller.
CD players would all have to become DVD players to make up for the difference.
Hard drive space may be cheap, but recordable media hasn't grown in size (well, there is Blu-Ray but the cost is prohibitive to the point of not being worth discussing). So yes, file size is still a big deal unless you don't listen to music on recorded CDs (for instance, mp3 CD in the car).
Yes that's a very good point. Game standards are completely different from movie standards when it comes to what determines a "mature audience" rating. Movies can "get away" with a lot more and stay within their target rating category. The PG-13 Bond movies would, if translated directly into games, be rated M with 100% certainty.
Personally I see all of these ratings as absolute rubbish and if I could I'd do away with them altogether (it's not like books have a rating -- the typical Stephen King novel is a good bit worse than any M-rated game, and those are found in the "young adult" (i.e. 12+ or whatever) section of libraries.
Well perhaps their full-time testers will get an MMO pretty soon here, and maybe one of those 90+ hour RPGs to boot. That should keep them busy while other games continue getting however little playtime they do.
Then again, supposing 85 hours into a game that was rated Teen there is some nude ninja combat (M-rated), does the ESRB get in any trouble for that? If not, then they can just decide on some "max time played" for a game (say, 20 hours, i.e. ~4 days' worth of a full-time employee's "clean playing time") and that will be fine.
As I see it, games self-censor when they want to get a particular rating from the ESRB. But the same is true of films. Crazy Man Lucas will not make his films R-rated because he doesn't want them to be. Though, that's not so much self-censorship as it is... self-restraint I guess.
Otherwise, I don't really see much self-censoring at the expense of the final product. Gears of War has its share of bloody violence and vulgar language. Same goes for F.E.A.R. Games that want it in there, put it in there.
Well, maybe Oblivion would've put in bare breasts (aka b3wbz) if it would've retained a Teen (or whatever) rating. So I can see some self-censoring there. But the game doesn't really suffer from it.
Really, saying that games fall short of film when it comes to being emotionally powerful, etc. because they self-censor is IMO rubbish. Good writing, good music, good directing -- these are sufficient. They're arguably necessary.
Anyway, the article is more about *controversial* games and defending those. Well, I agree about having to stand up for one's creative decisions. I also wish less things were considered "controversial" to begin with. If Uwe Boll can defend his "creative" decisions by beating idiots up in a boxing ring, no video game designer needs to defend anything IMO.
Hmmm well I was under the impression that after Black Isle fell apart the dev team had changed somewhat, but you're right, it barely did! I guess there was no excuse for NWN to be as rubbish as it was compared to BG II, haha. (BG I and II are some of my favorite RPGs)
Well, I'm still worried the ES series will suffer the same fate in terms of going from good to mediocre. That is, ES 5 will be on the level of NWN or something.
I wonder if this means that Elder Scrolls games will go the way of Baldur's Gate (aspired to but never reached by subsequent games by the developer (or, rather, what's left of the developer)). I'm curious about Fallout 3, but ES matters more to me, and I'm hoping the rest of Bethesda's designers will be able to determine what worked about those games and what didn't.
Anyway, he was planning on retiring after Oblivion anyway, so it's only a good thing he's staying in the industry to help on another RPG. Auto-leveling of monsters in Oblivion notwithstanding, he's still one of the best designers out there.
Except that so far Nintendo has been total rubbish at keeping release dates unless they announce them as they approach. I'd love a solid release date from those guys as well (I'll probably get a Wii when Brawl hits shelves), but I doubt we'll get it.
Bungie was good about Halo 2 so I expect the same of Halo 3. I just hope they're giving themselves enough time to make it killer. They didn't with Halo 2.
All it boils down to is "either we have overestimated how many advanced civilizations ought to exist out there, or we are rubbish at looking for them." Hmmm well I'm a frickin genius so I'll tackle this one no prob: looking for something that is single-digit lightyears away at best (forget about the 'at worst' because we'll be kinda burned away by then by the sun and all) means you have a LOT of time-lag between any sort of response, even if you do get it, and that's assuming you sent it in the right direction to begin with. So, yes we are rubbish at looking for them, and we can't help it because light speed is the best we can do and the sky is big.
Given we don't know how to efficiently locate other civilizations, there's no way to tell whether we're off on how many ought to exist. So the paradox is crap.
As far as saying how advanced they ought to be, that's just childish speculation. Colonizing a galaxy would require something that goes well beyond our current grasp of physics given the resources and time scale involved. Sure, it does seem like we have a long way to go in terms of our understanding of the universe, but to say that with enough of an understanding we'll be all over the galaxy is REALLY optimistic.
Oh, well that's not how *I* go about Guild Wars:-) that's how I figure people like the writer of the article go about it, hehe. As for me, I'm an ex-ZoS, ex-alpha currently leading my own PVE guild and it's great fun, so yeah I know exactly what you're talking about and I agree. Add Sciros Darkblade to Friends if you ever want to party up with my scary war:-P
Hehe well my point wasn't about porting the game per se. It was about playing a Smash Bros Melee port on a PC at all given the controls. Dash-dancing with mouse/keyboard... I don't think so ^_^
Yeah I can't wait until they port Smash Bros to the PC so I can get to wavedashing and edge-hogging all my buddies with keyboard+mouse precision:-P
The PC's library of games (genre-wise, not size-wise naturally) isn't more complete than that of consoles... and PCs compete with consoles for gamers' entertainment dollars just the same, so I think the PC is really on the same level as, say, any given console.
I can only really see having a "universal" gaming platform when there are no meaningful (yeah, possibly a poor choice of words) exclusive titles on any system but one.
Heh what a ranty post. But yeah, I guess what I'm trying to say is that because I play games on my 360, DS, Cube, PS2, *and* my PC, none of them is universal in any sense from my POV.
Actually I wasn't necessarily thinking of the Bible Belt... indeed portions of the Midwest are no better when it comes to what I was talking about (they are less racist, but just as homogenous in terms of religious beliefs). I just wanted to say, that though you mention one can "hide" his/her beliefs, I personally do not see how that is a very acceptable solution. In fact, I think the choice between keeping your beliefs secret (and maybe pretending they are something else in order to keep that secret) and letting them be known at the expense of being [partially] ostrasized [by some people] is not an easy nor a welcome one to make!
Granted the US is one of the most religious countries in the world (Vatican City taking top honors there), I think that a black man or a woman is more likely to be elected than an atheist based purely on population statistics:-P
But I understand what you're saying, in that while the US has pretty much overcome racial and gender discrimination, it's nowhere near that stage when it comes to religion (or lack thereof). In many parts of the country, it's arguably "better" to be a black woman than a white male atheist as far as the community accepting you. Ideally none of these factors would make any difference.
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Class dependencies are different depending on the compiler, so there are a few situations where the JVM executing the code makes a difference. Java 5 isn't that new, so it's not even really bleeding-edge stuff.
Indeed. It is mentioned at the closing of the article.
Personally I'm a bit frustrated by this being a noteworthy topic... I'm a Java dev and I really wish accomodating pre-java 5 JVMs wasn't ever needed. Reminds me too much of web development.
Well they should be, cause they're so friggin ugly.
The stylus and control pad are enough to play Starcraft on it. The second screen might not be all that useful, so they can just use it to track scores or units or research progress or whatever else you don't need to click on. With the DS letting you play anyone in the world via WiFi and the controls to make it work, Starcraft can experience a resurrection as a handheld game.
I know I'd buy it.
There's so much great free security software out there (Avast, for instance) that for the educated consumer, the price of Norton or McAfee should be a moot point in my opinion. Not to mention that those two products are far more resource intensive than their free counterparts.
I don't know what prices one would be looking at when it comes to commercial version of Avast, or how much actual support contracts cost a company if it wants Norton on say, 1500 desktops. But for the typical consumer, paying for security software is just a waste of money.
As for McAfee's 50% discount, the latest Norton is free with rebates at certain points in the year, so as long as you wait until then to buy it, you can even get Norton free.
Why renew a license when you can just buy a newer release in a store?
Guild Wars has had "observer mode" up and running for a long time now. That lets you see not only the top guild's skill builds, but their strategy! You know how they act and react, and you learn *when* to use the skills they bring.
Yet, the top guilds remain the top guilds because they're just better at doing what they do than anyone else. So, top WoW PVP folks should probably just have more confidence in their own abilities ^_^
It's not like having a speed limit and not enforcing it. DRM is like having a speed limit of 65mph and installing electronic governors on every car that limit it to a top speed of 65mph. If instead of DRM the RIAA and MPAA just ticketed people for $75 when they discovered they were violating copyright, then we'd have a better comparison.
Heh, well don't go ahead making up differences between you and me. I think the U.S.'s entire approach to combating terrorism is pathetic and ridiculous. Capturing data on citizens, as you put it, is a tremendous waste of energy and needless invasion of privacy. We know where terrorists are funded from, we know where they go for training. And instead of acting on that knowledge, our government agencies spy on us. WTF. When all we're left to deal with is secrets, then I can maybe understand doing some more snooping around. But we are a LONG way from resorting to anything of the sort.
... well, Aspirin may be "more deadly" than terrorism but that's a bit of a skewed way to look at things. Hippos might be "more deadly" than terrorism for all I know, but that doesn't mean ANYTHING because surely no-one is going to send U.S. troops into the Nile river to bring about democracy to hippos and/or kill them good. You know, whatever awesome strategy our government would come up with :-) The point is, it's in my personal power to prevent death by hippo/Aspirin, but it can't do anything about terrorism. That's where the government (and our troops) comes in. I just wish they'd be more competent and focus on some better solutions.
The War on Drugs is also dumb as heck, I totally agree. I think your point is really about how wasteful our government is, yeah?
As for the Aspirin comment
I once made a comment.. maybe on Slashdot but I forget: if terrorists really want to piss us off, all they have to do is "leak" a "plot" to blow up an airplane using explosive undergarments. Instantly we'd all have to fly "commando" for the next couple of months. Yay for security personnel being too rubbish to do their job and instead trying to cover their asses.
Dude if I could I'd mod you insightful. Thanks for the info next time I'm in a big crowd in D.C. I'll know to stay the hell away from any Aspirin-popping male senior citizens.
While we're at it let's propose a "War on Natural Causes" because that has also killed way more people than terrorism has in the U.S.
Yeah I agree people need to see "terrorism is not a threat" in print more. What they should be seeing in print is "Tel-Aviv: 12 killed 26 wounded. Aspirin for the lose!"
Basically, because my car can't read mp3 DVDs. (*let alone* FLAC files altogether!) If all "data CD" players were replaced by "data DVD" players, then I would care less about file size.
As for size vs quality, well, with the speakers I usually use (or headphones), I honestly can't tell the difference between lossless and well-compressed music. But that's another topic.
Yes, storage is still a big issue. CDs still hold 700 megs, meaning that the number of FLAC songs they can hold (as opposed to compressed songs like ogg or mp3) is much smaller.
CD players would all have to become DVD players to make up for the difference.
Hard drive space may be cheap, but recordable media hasn't grown in size (well, there is Blu-Ray but the cost is prohibitive to the point of not being worth discussing). So yes, file size is still a big deal unless you don't listen to music on recorded CDs (for instance, mp3 CD in the car).
Yes that's a very good point. Game standards are completely different from movie standards when it comes to what determines a "mature audience" rating. Movies can "get away" with a lot more and stay within their target rating category. The PG-13 Bond movies would, if translated directly into games, be rated M with 100% certainty.
Personally I see all of these ratings as absolute rubbish and if I could I'd do away with them altogether (it's not like books have a rating -- the typical Stephen King novel is a good bit worse than any M-rated game, and those are found in the "young adult" (i.e. 12+ or whatever) section of libraries.
Well perhaps their full-time testers will get an MMO pretty soon here, and maybe one of those 90+ hour RPGs to boot. That should keep them busy while other games continue getting however little playtime they do.
Then again, supposing 85 hours into a game that was rated Teen there is some nude ninja combat (M-rated), does the ESRB get in any trouble for that? If not, then they can just decide on some "max time played" for a game (say, 20 hours, i.e. ~4 days' worth of a full-time employee's "clean playing time") and that will be fine.
We take the heat for the good of all pirates! OU is also one of the top party schools in the country. Yes it's awesome.
As I see it, games self-censor when they want to get a particular rating from the ESRB. But the same is true of films. Crazy Man Lucas will not make his films R-rated because he doesn't want them to be. Though, that's not so much self-censorship as it is ... self-restraint I guess.
Otherwise, I don't really see much self-censoring at the expense of the final product. Gears of War has its share of bloody violence and vulgar language. Same goes for F.E.A.R. Games that want it in there, put it in there.
Well, maybe Oblivion would've put in bare breasts (aka b3wbz) if it would've retained a Teen (or whatever) rating. So I can see some self-censoring there. But the game doesn't really suffer from it.
Really, saying that games fall short of film when it comes to being emotionally powerful, etc. because they self-censor is IMO rubbish. Good writing, good music, good directing -- these are sufficient. They're arguably necessary.
Anyway, the article is more about *controversial* games and defending those. Well, I agree about having to stand up for one's creative decisions. I also wish less things were considered "controversial" to begin with. If Uwe Boll can defend his "creative" decisions by beating idiots up in a boxing ring, no video game designer needs to defend anything IMO.
Hmmm well I was under the impression that after Black Isle fell apart the dev team had changed somewhat, but you're right, it barely did! I guess there was no excuse for NWN to be as rubbish as it was compared to BG II, haha. (BG I and II are some of my favorite RPGs)
Well, I'm still worried the ES series will suffer the same fate in terms of going from good to mediocre. That is, ES 5 will be on the level of NWN or something.
I wonder if this means that Elder Scrolls games will go the way of Baldur's Gate (aspired to but never reached by subsequent games by the developer (or, rather, what's left of the developer)). I'm curious about Fallout 3, but ES matters more to me, and I'm hoping the rest of Bethesda's designers will be able to determine what worked about those games and what didn't.
Anyway, he was planning on retiring after Oblivion anyway, so it's only a good thing he's staying in the industry to help on another RPG. Auto-leveling of monsters in Oblivion notwithstanding, he's still one of the best designers out there.
Except that so far Nintendo has been total rubbish at keeping release dates unless they announce them as they approach. I'd love a solid release date from those guys as well (I'll probably get a Wii when Brawl hits shelves), but I doubt we'll get it.
Bungie was good about Halo 2 so I expect the same of Halo 3. I just hope they're giving themselves enough time to make it killer. They didn't with Halo 2.
Dude Shaq is an alien.
All it boils down to is "either we have overestimated how many advanced civilizations ought to exist out there, or we are rubbish at looking for them." Hmmm well I'm a frickin genius so I'll tackle this one no prob: looking for something that is single-digit lightyears away at best (forget about the 'at worst' because we'll be kinda burned away by then by the sun and all) means you have a LOT of time-lag between any sort of response, even if you do get it, and that's assuming you sent it in the right direction to begin with. So, yes we are rubbish at looking for them, and we can't help it because light speed is the best we can do and the sky is big. Given we don't know how to efficiently locate other civilizations, there's no way to tell whether we're off on how many ought to exist. So the paradox is crap. As far as saying how advanced they ought to be, that's just childish speculation. Colonizing a galaxy would require something that goes well beyond our current grasp of physics given the resources and time scale involved. Sure, it does seem like we have a long way to go in terms of our understanding of the universe, but to say that with enough of an understanding we'll be all over the galaxy is REALLY optimistic.
Oh, well that's not how *I* go about Guild Wars :-) that's how I figure people like the writer of the article go about it, hehe. As for me, I'm an ex-ZoS, ex-alpha currently leading my own PVE guild and it's great fun, so yeah I know exactly what you're talking about and I agree. Add Sciros Darkblade to Friends if you ever want to party up with my scary war :-P
Hehe well my point wasn't about porting the game per se. It was about playing a Smash Bros Melee port on a PC at all given the controls. Dash-dancing with mouse/keyboard... I don't think so ^_^
Yeah I can't wait until they port Smash Bros to the PC so I can get to wavedashing and edge-hogging all my buddies with keyboard+mouse precision :-P
The PC's library of games (genre-wise, not size-wise naturally) isn't more complete than that of consoles... and PCs compete with consoles for gamers' entertainment dollars just the same, so I think the PC is really on the same level as, say, any given console.
I can only really see having a "universal" gaming platform when there are no meaningful (yeah, possibly a poor choice of words) exclusive titles on any system but one.
Heh what a ranty post. But yeah, I guess what I'm trying to say is that because I play games on my 360, DS, Cube, PS2, *and* my PC, none of them is universal in any sense from my POV.
Actually I wasn't necessarily thinking of the Bible Belt ... indeed portions of the Midwest are no better when it comes to what I was talking about (they are less racist, but just as homogenous in terms of religious beliefs). I just wanted to say, that though you mention one can "hide" his/her beliefs, I personally do not see how that is a very acceptable solution. In fact, I think the choice between keeping your beliefs secret (and maybe pretending they are something else in order to keep that secret) and letting them be known at the expense of being [partially] ostrasized [by some people] is not an easy nor a welcome one to make!
Granted the US is one of the most religious countries in the world (Vatican City taking top honors there), I think that a black man or a woman is more likely to be elected than an atheist based purely on population statistics :-P
But I understand what you're saying, in that while the US has pretty much overcome racial and gender discrimination, it's nowhere near that stage when it comes to religion (or lack thereof). In many parts of the country, it's arguably "better" to be a black woman than a white male atheist as far as the community accepting you. Ideally none of these factors would make any difference.