This only applies when you're talking about binomial distributions (ie: Either Yes/No, On/Off, Orgasm/No Orgasm).
EVERYTHING can be broken down to a binomial distribution. Let's take the 1-10 scale for something different... Women. You can throw out the "She's a 7, or she's a 9" argument, because the criteria is personal (not universally agreed upon) and it always boils down to a "Yes/No" question anyway.
I've seen a lot of games get low scores just based on one aspect of the game. Possibly some aspect that the gamer doesn't even care about. I've seen a ratings breakdown like Controls=95% , Replay Value = 95%, Enjoyment=95%, Graphics=85%. And then the final rating ends up being around 85%. In some ways that makes sense.
Sure, and the reverse is also true. Some times you might have everything rate an 85% and have the final score being a 90%, because of the synergy involved. "The only exceptional part is how all these things came together to make a better game stronger impact."
A good description allows me to decide how much I might enjoy that game. After all, we all enjoy different things.
I'm not sure if you noticed, but there are large sections of text either directly above, or directly below the score. This text typically describes the game.
Totally offtopic, but I wish they wouldn't use BMI
I've been using a combination of Weight and "Fitness Age" as my indicators. If my weight AND age goes up, it's a bad trend.
If I go up a few pounds and my fitness age is equal or lower, as I see it as gaining more muscle mass. That kinda thing.
I assumed that she meant that the balance board was an optional Wii accessory (that is, not something that comes with the Wii system), not that it was optional for Wii Fit.
Considering you can't buy the board separately, wouldn't that be like saying "WiiFit" itself is optional?
I see a lot of people complaining that it's not a REAL workout, or it's just a gimmick. Knowing that the Wii Fit is sold out almost everywhere, how many of you have actually tried it?
In general that's a criticism of something many people throw blindly at the Wii or Guitar Hero, or Rock Band simply because they don't understand it. They're quick to criticize and say "Why don't you just play [real] tennis, play a [real] guitar, or shoot a [real] Nazi?" and they miss the entire point.
In general however, I can understand if people think Wii Fit isn't a workout. Some people may either beyond the point where the exercises are on the easy side of what they are used to, or they are of the apathetic side that doesn't put much into it and walks away too soon. This being slashdot, my money's on the latter.
You will get out of it, what you put into it and if someone steps on the board and does 10 minutes or less of exercise then they won't feel anything.
So far my largest complaints aren't of the board or the game, it's the inability to chain exercises or set up a schedule. I'd like to set up routines that go seamlessly from one to the next like a routine to give me "30 minutes - Ab exercises" or "30 minutes - Cardio".
Ok, I'm watching the video and apparently the woman doing the voice over wasn't one of the 15 people using Wii Fit as she called the balance board "optional".
Sorry, but running in place is only so exciting, and it's the only game (that I have unlocked anyway) that doesn't require the board.
Let's be serious here. There are VERY few games that are IMPOSSIBLE.
In current game design you are correct, but original arcade games were designed to not have a conclusion. You would just play for as long as possible and get the high score.
The end of EVERY game of Missile Command, has you dying from being overwhelmed. The concept of "beating" an early arcade game came from technical limitations where the chip would malfunction and you'd hit a "kill screen"; that became the artificial "ending" if you were good enough to say... clear over 200 levels of Pacman.
This is also why these games are so timeless. 50 years from now when we may be playing games that will look far more realistic, control better, be bigger and far more immersive than anything today. GTA4 will look small and primitive by comparison, yet Tetris and Pacman shall remain "timeless".
And let us not forget the speed. While I have no qualms giving OO.o to my customers when they have me build them a new box, I would never recommend OO.o to a business that was using hardware older than 1 to 2 years. It is just too damned slow.
Compare OO.o,even the older 1.5,to say,Office 2K(best damned Office released IMHO) the speed will blow you away,even with the hidden Office service disabled.
Though I agree that Open Office is damn bloated compared to MS Office in terms of Memory usage (the same spreadhseet takes over 100 megs of ram in OpenOffice, vs 15 megs in Excel isn't uncommon) I've learned to live with it, due to the cost/benefit of simply buying more Memory. RAM is damn cheap and has Far more utility, so I would rather buy 1 gig of (laptop) RAM for $50, than buy MS Office.
Its much cheaper to buy a game or two (maybe 30) than it is to buy a console and then buy games for it...
Only if you're talking "Current gen". A Used Gamecube is $30 at Gamestop, and a Used X-box is $60. There are a Ton of good Co-op games for cheap (NHL HITZ is an all time favorite). Hell instead of buying the extra controller, buy 2 Gamecubes and an extra memory card in case you both want to game solo at some point.
The US gets a great (and frequently updated) selection. Price however is debatable. I'm not a fan of Renting movies from the service, I would rather they offered an option to "buy" it like they do for TV shows (even if it cost more than their current rent prices).
This is *exactly* why the average consumer should utilize encryption. Encryption isn't about hiding your information, it's about protecting your privacy. If you don't want the government to search your laptop all you have to do is encrypt your data. Granted, if you encrypt the whole disk you could be asked to provide the password. That's why you should use an encrypted volume.
Why not do both? An encrypted volume can exist within an Encrypted partition, and would provide a tougher shell to crack if the lappy itself is lost or stolen.
And just why are you taking personal patient data around with you on a laptop in the first place? You're probably violating HIPAA just having the data unencrypted on the laptop drive, which isn't stored in a secure environment.
Who said it was unencrypted? If HIPAA data is encrypted on his laptop he would not be in violation. Showing it to an unauthorized 3rd party (border security) would be a violation, which is the basis of his scenario.
I LOVE TrueCrypt.
Granted I don't have Child porn or anything like it on my computer, but I do have a 256 bit Encrypted hidden volume on a laptop that has a 256 bit Encrypted system volume (both using different encryption algorithms and both have different complex passwords.)
I'd be dead before they could get in to see my stuff (which is honestly not worth the effort, but I prefer to keep my business, "My business").
I've used both, the les paul is definitely easier to play with.
I suppose it depends on the person, but I find the Rock Band guitar far superior for one very tiny add-on that makes a HUGE difference in how I play. I admit it, I "suck at the slide" and that pretty much condemns me to being a "Medium Hero".
The Rock Band guitar however has those little plastic stoppers above the green fret, and below the orange fret which prevents me from overshooting the slide. This makes it much easier for me to gauge where my hand is, and actually play the harder difficulties. If GH supported this guitar I might play it more.
I played through a lot of RE4 on the PC (with a usb controller don't worry) and I was not impressed.
The PC version was the worst of the bunch, but that was largely due to the controls (I know an RE game with shitty controls shoud seem redundant) but I'm not sure how the joystick converision works. They mapped the "aim" function to the arrows rather than the mouse, how does the controller translate it?
Constant fretting about health and ammo (didn't halo teach us how to make health systems fun instead of annoying?),
In a survival horror (or survival action as I'd classify this) one is actually supposed to fear dying; being able to self regenreate health by hiding is somewhat counter productive no?
repetitive gameplay (though the environments were amazingly varied), being freaked out constantly which just makes me have to quit for the day after 15 minutes.
You Being freaked out means they are doing a good job. If it's to the point where you only play 15 minutes at a clip, perhaps "thrillers/horror/suspense" games are really meant for you.
The third person perspective was very annoying and made the game way harder than it had to be.
Ironic that i have the polar oposite opinion. I feel being in 3rd person better lets you empathise with the protagonist, and in the case of Metroid games makes jumping puzzle more natural,but it's all personal preference I suppose.
Mostly I just couldn't enjoy it- it's like guild wars on crack.. if you have to get to an area just 2 map-sectors away, you just know every last inch of it is going to be gueling battle.
Ah yes a challenge. It really isn't that difficult on the default setting, however it doesn't "play the game for you" like Halo or Bioshock does on the lowest difficulty. Personally I thought it was fairly balanced. What about it did you feel was overly (unfairly) difficult?
I remember that the last area I was in was around where you drop into a cage with one of those blinded ogres and have to kill it to open the cage door. How far is that?
I'd say less than halfway through the game but far enough to make a determination as to if you like that type of game.
I bought the Wii mostly for fun family games for me and my girls. I purchased Resident Evil 4 for Wii just for laughs but I was blown away. Not even using the gun molds for the controller either just the remote and nunckuk. Absolutely fun to play it this way, I was very surprised how fun it was.
Actually RE4 is one of the best games I ever played and, the Wii version is the best available. If you just picked this up on a whim, then you are in for a treat.
Although this does not mean I am ready to pay $400 for one of these players. I think i would be willing to pay $100, if the players came down in price to that level I think the format would take off. Right now the main thing that is holding it back is price.
Which is a shame that HD DVD lost, it already had $99 players.
Bullshit. Youtube and Itunes movies are slideshows on that hardware. And grandma needs her skateboarding dogs.
Are you kidding me? A Pentium 3 class computer went from 450 Mhz - 1.4 Ghz and this laptop lands ~ in the middle of that. It's a 900 Mhz, processor, with 512 megs of ram on a custom streamlined OS running firefox. Sure you won't do any video transcoding with it, but it's enough to handle something as mundane as iTunes, or YouTube.
I know it threatens their business model, but the majority of home users would be fine running a Pentium 3 caliber chip with a DVD burner and a big Hard drive.
Are consumers actually getting to the point where they buy what they need rather than the high end, of what they want?
Imagine if this were to happen to the automotive industry...
Slashdot Mirror
Play Recursive D&D then. Get yourself a WoW account and have your DM run the campaign from a tavern in Azeroth.
1.) I, for one, welcome our new Slashdot-trolling parental overlords!
2.) In Soviet Russia, children worry about YOU!!!
3.) ????????????
4.) Profit!
EVERYTHING can be broken down to a binomial distribution. Let's take the 1-10 scale for something different... Women. You can throw out the "She's a 7, or she's a 9" argument, because the criteria is personal (not universally agreed upon) and it always boils down to a "Yes/No" question anyway.
Sure, and the reverse is also true. Some times you might have everything rate an 85% and have the final score being a 90%, because of the synergy involved. "The only exceptional part is how all these things came together to make a better game stronger impact."
I'm not sure if you noticed, but there are large sections of text either directly above, or directly below the score. This text typically describes the game.
You just described my favorite past time! and no I'm not talking about Rock Band, were you?
It's presumed to be both. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrodinger's_Cat
I've been using a combination of Weight and "Fitness Age" as my indicators. If my weight AND age goes up, it's a bad trend. If I go up a few pounds and my fitness age is equal or lower, as I see it as gaining more muscle mass. That kinda thing.
Considering you can't buy the board separately, wouldn't that be like saying "WiiFit" itself is optional?
In general that's a criticism of something many people throw blindly at the Wii or Guitar Hero, or Rock Band simply because they don't understand it. They're quick to criticize and say "Why don't you just play [real] tennis, play a [real] guitar, or shoot a [real] Nazi?" and they miss the entire point.
In general however, I can understand if people think Wii Fit isn't a workout. Some people may either beyond the point where the exercises are on the easy side of what they are used to, or they are of the apathetic side that doesn't put much into it and walks away too soon. This being slashdot, my money's on the latter.
You will get out of it, what you put into it and if someone steps on the board and does 10 minutes or less of exercise then they won't feel anything.
So far my largest complaints aren't of the board or the game, it's the inability to chain exercises or set up a schedule. I'd like to set up routines that go seamlessly from one to the next like a routine to give me "30 minutes - Ab exercises" or "30 minutes - Cardio".
Ok, I'm watching the video and apparently the woman doing the voice over wasn't one of the 15 people using Wii Fit as she called the balance board "optional". Sorry, but running in place is only so exciting, and it's the only game (that I have unlocked anyway) that doesn't require the board.
In current game design you are correct, but original arcade games were designed to not have a conclusion. You would just play for as long as possible and get the high score.
The end of EVERY game of Missile Command, has you dying from being overwhelmed. The concept of "beating" an early arcade game came from technical limitations where the chip would malfunction and you'd hit a "kill screen"; that became the artificial "ending" if you were good enough to say ... clear over 200 levels of Pacman.
This is also why these games are so timeless. 50 years from now when we may be playing games that will look far more realistic, control better, be bigger and far more immersive than anything today. GTA4 will look small and primitive by comparison, yet Tetris and Pacman shall remain "timeless".
Compare OO.o,even the older 1.5,to say,Office 2K(best damned Office released IMHO) the speed will blow you away,even with the hidden Office service disabled.
Though I agree that Open Office is damn bloated compared to MS Office in terms of Memory usage (the same spreadhseet takes over 100 megs of ram in OpenOffice, vs 15 megs in Excel isn't uncommon) I've learned to live with it, due to the cost/benefit of simply buying more Memory. RAM is damn cheap and has Far more utility, so I would rather buy 1 gig of (laptop) RAM for $50, than buy MS Office.
Only if you're talking "Current gen". A Used Gamecube is $30 at Gamestop, and a Used X-box is $60. There are a Ton of good Co-op games for cheap (NHL HITZ is an all time favorite). Hell instead of buying the extra controller, buy 2 Gamecubes and an extra memory card in case you both want to game solo at some point.
Why not just sign a deal with Netflix to do their Video Streaming feature via the XMB?
The US gets a great (and frequently updated) selection. Price however is debatable. I'm not a fan of Renting movies from the service, I would rather they offered an option to "buy" it like they do for TV shows (even if it cost more than their current rent prices).
Why not do both? An encrypted volume can exist within an Encrypted partition, and would provide a tougher shell to crack if the lappy itself is lost or stolen.
Who said it was unencrypted? If HIPAA data is encrypted on his laptop he would not be in violation. Showing it to an unauthorized 3rd party (border security) would be a violation, which is the basis of his scenario.
I'd be dead before they could get in to see my stuff (which is honestly not worth the effort, but I prefer to keep my business, "My business").
I suppose it depends on the person, but I find the Rock Band guitar far superior for one very tiny add-on that makes a HUGE difference in how I play. I admit it, I "suck at the slide" and that pretty much condemns me to being a "Medium Hero".
The Rock Band guitar however has those little plastic stoppers above the green fret, and below the orange fret which prevents me from overshooting the slide. This makes it much easier for me to gauge where my hand is, and actually play the harder difficulties. If GH supported this guitar I might play it more.
The PC version was the worst of the bunch, but that was largely due to the controls (I know an RE game with shitty controls shoud seem redundant) but I'm not sure how the joystick converision works. They mapped the "aim" function to the arrows rather than the mouse, how does the controller translate it?
In a survival horror (or survival action as I'd classify this) one is actually supposed to fear dying; being able to self regenreate health by hiding is somewhat counter productive no?You Being freaked out means they are doing a good job. If it's to the point where you only play 15 minutes at a clip, perhaps "thrillers/horror/suspense" games are really meant for you.
Ironic that i have the polar oposite opinion. I feel being in 3rd person better lets you empathise with the protagonist, and in the case of Metroid games makes jumping puzzle more natural,but it's all personal preference I suppose.
Ah yes a challenge. It really isn't that difficult on the default setting, however it doesn't "play the game for you" like Halo or Bioshock does on the lowest difficulty. Personally I thought it was fairly balanced. What about it did you feel was overly (unfairly) difficult?
I'd say less than halfway through the game but far enough to make a determination as to if you like that type of game.
Actually RE4 is one of the best games I ever played and, the Wii version is the best available. If you just picked this up on a whim, then you are in for a treat.
Which is a shame that HD DVD lost, it already had $99 players.
Are you kidding me? A Pentium 3 class computer went from 450 Mhz - 1.4 Ghz and this laptop lands ~ in the middle of that. It's a 900 Mhz, processor, with 512 megs of ram on a custom streamlined OS running firefox. Sure you won't do any video transcoding with it, but it's enough to handle something as mundane as iTunes, or YouTube.
Are consumers actually getting to the point where they buy what they need rather than the high end, of what they want?
Imagine if this were to happen to the automotive industry...