" . . . I don't feel like researching a real work of fiction and would rather just reference a video game I played". Obviously I can't get into the author's head, but...
Are games excluded from being art? What about HL2 makes it "fake fiction"? There are those (myself included) that feel that games could (and more narrowly, should) be considered art. What makes a story written in 500 pages more worthy than one written in 500 megabytes?
If we're going to invite people to look at games as art, naturally, we'll get some essays over symbolism and parallels and the same kind of analysis we subject other art to.
employees are nothing but numbers. I really want to know why companies do this to their employees. Personally, I see it as if they can't take care of their own, why would they take care of you?
I have a completely untested conjecture of a hypothesis that suggests, with salt, that the larger and farther removed stakeholders are from the actual customers: physically, financially, and otherwise, the more dehumanizing the whole organization.
You simply don't find locally owned and operated shops treating employees as worthless drones, customers as sheep to slaughter, and their business as just a couple of numbers in an investment portfolio. They put their own personal stake into the success of it. They take pride in providing a beneficial service to the community they serve and carve a chunk of the dream for their very own. Nothing at all like CEOs taking over a company making 4000 the salary of regular employees and shareholders trading with others because they're not being aggressive enough and not posting a large enough profit year over year.
If you care at all about how people are treated (and I recognize that not everyone would care and, while sad, it's ok), you owe it to yourself to find those kitchy little places and buy your games or hobby gear or clothes or hardware or whatever there. It does involve putting your money where your mouth is since they can't command Huge Huge $avings (tm), but following your ethos isn't always easy.
Not all tracks are released for radio play. Each album typically yields one or two strong singles that get cleaned and trimmed for radio. Not only do remaining tracks would have to be similarly edited, radio edits also might trim spill-over from the prior song, extend the post so dj's to talk on top of the intro, and shorten to better hit the 2:30 sweet spot.
Cleaning language is a primary goal of the radio edit, sure, but they take the opportunity to do more tricks.
Microsoft screws Java: they're LAZY and EVIL and BOYCOTT BOYCOTT BOYCOTT. Apple screws Java: they're very busy. Oh ye gods and little fishes! How hard can this be:
Apple does not have a near-monopoly on desktop operating systems and web browsers - if they fail to support Java, Java users and developers have another excuse for not buying Macs. Boo hoo. You are free to use Linux instead. If they promote Mac-only APIs and extensions for Java at the expense of the cross-platform ones then the only takers will be developers who are happy to target a few % of the market. I don't think the point is who is or isn't a monopoly. The point is that if it were Microsoft releasing Vista and it didn't work out of the gate with Java there would be (even more) outcry and laughing and finger pointing. When Apple releases Leopart and it didn't work out of the gate with Java there's just shrugs and "oh, well, I guess they're busy."
Leopard was late. With the extra time, Apple could have gotten that right but chose not to. Historically this has happened many times with Java. "They're busy" isn't any more an excuse than "I'm busy" would be to my boss when the deadline creeps up. As their customers, WE are their collective bosses.
Personally, it's not even that big a deal. F Java. BUT, let's call a spade a spade and recognize that, you know, maybe Apple really should get its act together already.
Personally, I think Sony's stated committment to 3 more years of PS2 is just them protecting their bottom flanks. Wii is the least costly console, but if you include PS2 in the group, now the PS2 is the least costly. DS is a fun system with fun games and backwards compatibility with lots of GBA games but PS2 has it's own set of fun games along with backwards compatibility lots of PSX games.
If you can't afford a PS3 (or don't find it compelling enough), they'd still much rather get your money than you hand it over to Microsoft or Nintendo.
I wonder if the brain has a usable life though? Right now, our brains only last for about 80-100 years..... I wonder if there would be any strange side effects from giving it 1000 years worth of experience? I'm sub thirty so someone else might be better at this assertion, but, I feel like I was much more productive when I was younger and I think it just has to do with my brain "time-compressing" all the code and projects I've ever done and grouping them together as "when I was young" so now I feel lethargic in comparison, even though I do a lot more AND still have time to dick around on/.
If we really did accomplish this, imagine how much faster we could progress technologically......allow devs to drop into one of these things and we could have software that would normally take months to build developed in mere minutes! Technological singularity without creating AI? Count me in! Less renegade robots that way and I can drop my Old Glory robot insurance.
Actually, he's under the Republican flag in Congress. I don't think he's likely to win the Republican primary, though, so it'd remain to be seen if he'd want to jump ships to the Libertarian side of things, but they've already got their 4 candidates lined up.
Even if he WAS Libertarian, it wouldn't be outside their scope to reform patent law, since it's a government-backed and granted monopoly and defended in a court of law at that.
The nit pick then would be that it takes Congress to do that and not The President.
You do not OWN the network you are just renting it. But you're subscribing to an ISP proper, not an ISP* (* some limitations of connectivity and authenticity of traffic apply). Internet traffic comes in all shapes and ports and by blocking certain things and intentionally dicking around with that traffic they are misrepresenting what they're selling. It's even MORE nefarious if you consider that, for high speed, you may not even have a competitor able to pick you up on it.
Imagine if the mail worked that way. The love letter you send gets altered to read that you hate them and never want to hear from them again. The sorrow filled response asking what they did wrong gets replaced with a directive to go to hell. All is fine because, after all, it's THEIR mail trucks.
Lets hope these sorts of filtering issues don't ever take a political slant where dissidents' web pages and text get altered in-flight and turn into glowing approvals. (Pro Tip: eventually, if this stuff isn't protected against NOW, it will.)
While your story is most inspirational:
. . . but testing on real hardware was an invaluable experience that an emulator cannot replicate. That's only because cycle-accurate emulators are hard. By classic definition, though, an emulator is just like the real thing.
Testing on actual hardware overcomes the limitation of an inaccurate emulator AND has the (probably more important) benefit of being able to show off your work in person and develop pride for it, which helps feed the motivation to continue developing.
The sad thing here is I think Nintento is missing the opportunity for a new product. They're not missing the opportunity for a new product, they're reserving that new product for themselves.
During end-of-life of the SNES, they did exactly that in Japan. You bought a flash cartridge preloaded with a game and could then take it to a vending machine where you would insert it in a slot and buy a new game that was loaded into it. The biggest of those games was Rockman & Forte (which was also available in classic blown ROM cartridge format)
What I find particularly interesting is that while Nintendo was at the bottom of the pecking order for gaming*, there weren't a whole lot of "illegal" mod busts. There were NES, SNES, and GB copiers but they got the hammer right quick, while the GBA and DS ones were sort of left alone until recently. Obviously they learned that those devices garner interest in the platform itself and when they shut one down, ten more pop up in place. Now that Wii and DS have the spotlight, they can, once again, become ham-handed since now the underground is no longer a help but a potential loss of their newly found massive profits.
* Yes, the Game Boy dominated the portable market, but overall Nintendo was nowhere near Sony with its sparkling golden boy Playstation/Playstation 2.
And to think Satoru Iwata was recently quoted:
. . . it [is] important that Nintendo [doesn't] lose its internal momentum or [becomes] an arrogant company that [rests] on its laurels.
"So glad I bought 3 extra Wii-motes, now that SSBB will use the classic controller... Thanks Nintendo!"
I'd take that over:
"The motion controls suck in a fighting game like this! Thanks Nintendo!" Those who would want motion controls could always check out Naruto. That control scheme looks pretty interesting.
The Smash Brothers crowd is a hard one to please, absolutely.
Quote:
its anti-monopoly regulation and it is necessary. if such regulations werent around, united states would be controlled by around 4-5 big robber barons as of now. up to now there was not a regulation for individual media channels for this. this new thing is good. It already pretty much is.
TFS:
Several waivers exist for some current ownerships, but would not be passed on to new owners. And so, will also get worse since it will effectively lock the barons in place forevermore. If they were really serious, they'd bust up some of them up now.
Clearly both politicians and established corporations love this bill.
360 surpassing Wii by only a couple dozen thousand units isn't nearly as interesting as the 360 outselling the PS3 5:1. Sony's gotta be hurtin'.
Now, if Smash Bros. and Mario Kart weren't pushed back, and if Wii wasn't in such short supply, I wonder if the 360 would keep it's lead. Either way, can the 360 sustain the current lead for the next 3 months?
I will never accept the clear effort from a handful of online opinion-makers to force this term into the mainstream. Tell me about it. The funniest is when some of my friends try to use it in verbal conversation. "es-kay-you". Well, SKU you, buddy! >:O
Disclosure of the deal followed a decision by House Democratic leaders to pull a competing version of the measure from the floor because they lacked the votes to prevail over Republican opponents and GOP parliamentary maneuvers. Oh please. -1 Flamebait. Democrats have a majority vote. Maybe not enough to counter a veto but certainly enough to pass the hockey puck up to the Prez. Implying it was "GOP parliamentary maneuvers" is kinda like saying I don't have the money to buy a stick of gum because they moved the shelf.
The Dems caved. I'm not sure why though. The people have spoken and put them in trusted seats of power and they CAVED. I'm sure there are lot of home teams cheering from the stands only to have the players go, "ah, well, it's a lot of work to play the game. Let's concede."
They don't give a crap about geeks or gamers. And yet, here the SDK is, in February. A mere 13 months after the iPhone was announced. Even as GP post implied, how much nailing down does the iPhone OS API need, really? Or has it already in Service Pack 1?
Also, Macs have 3d accelleration and, shocking I know, you CAN get games for them. They don't come out of the sky, evidently there are developers who are pretty comfortable there.
And, Apple TV? Why let people play geek codecs when you could force people to use your DRM-locked money-generating format?
Slashdot Mirror
Are games excluded from being art? What about HL2 makes it "fake fiction"? There are those (myself included) that feel that games could (and more narrowly, should) be considered art. What makes a story written in 500 pages more worthy than one written in 500 megabytes?
If we're going to invite people to look at games as art, naturally, we'll get some essays over symbolism and parallels and the same kind of analysis we subject other art to.
I have a completely untested conjecture of a hypothesis that suggests, with salt, that the larger and farther removed stakeholders are from the actual customers: physically, financially, and otherwise, the more dehumanizing the whole organization.
You simply don't find locally owned and operated shops treating employees as worthless drones, customers as sheep to slaughter, and their business as just a couple of numbers in an investment portfolio. They put their own personal stake into the success of it. They take pride in providing a beneficial service to the community they serve and carve a chunk of the dream for their very own. Nothing at all like CEOs taking over a company making 4000 the salary of regular employees and shareholders trading with others because they're not being aggressive enough and not posting a large enough profit year over year.
If you care at all about how people are treated (and I recognize that not everyone would care and, while sad, it's ok), you owe it to yourself to find those kitchy little places and buy your games or hobby gear or clothes or hardware or whatever there. It does involve putting your money where your mouth is since they can't command Huge Huge $avings (tm), but following your ethos isn't always easy.
Not all tracks are released for radio play. Each album typically yields one or two strong singles that get cleaned and trimmed for radio. Not only do remaining tracks would have to be similarly edited, radio edits also might trim spill-over from the prior song, extend the post so dj's to talk on top of the intro, and shorten to better hit the 2:30 sweet spot.
Cleaning language is a primary goal of the radio edit, sure, but they take the opportunity to do more tricks.
Apple screws Java: they're very busy. Oh ye gods and little fishes! How hard can this be:
Apple does not have a near-monopoly on desktop operating systems and web browsers - if they fail to support Java, Java users and developers have another excuse for not buying Macs. Boo hoo. You are free to use Linux instead. If they promote Mac-only APIs and extensions for Java at the expense of the cross-platform ones then the only takers will be developers who are happy to target a few % of the market. I don't think the point is who is or isn't a monopoly. The point is that if it were Microsoft releasing Vista and it didn't work out of the gate with Java there would be (even more) outcry and laughing and finger pointing. When Apple releases Leopart and it didn't work out of the gate with Java there's just shrugs and "oh, well, I guess they're busy."
Leopard was late. With the extra time, Apple could have gotten that right but chose not to. Historically this has happened many times with Java. "They're busy" isn't any more an excuse than "I'm busy" would be to my boss when the deadline creeps up. As their customers, WE are their collective bosses.
Personally, it's not even that big a deal. F Java. BUT, let's call a spade a spade and recognize that, you know, maybe Apple really should get its act together already.
Avenue Q
What do I win? Do you really have to ask?
Personally, I think Sony's stated committment to 3 more years of PS2 is just them protecting their bottom flanks. Wii is the least costly console, but if you include PS2 in the group, now the PS2 is the least costly. DS is a fun system with fun games and backwards compatibility with lots of GBA games but PS2 has it's own set of fun games along with backwards compatibility lots of PSX games.
If you can't afford a PS3 (or don't find it compelling enough), they'd still much rather get your money than you hand it over to Microsoft or Nintendo.
Right now, our brains only last for about 80-100 years.....
I wonder if there would be any strange side effects from giving it 1000 years worth of experience? I'm sub thirty so someone else might be better at this assertion, but, I feel like I was much more productive when I was younger and I think it just has to do with my brain "time-compressing" all the code and projects I've ever done and grouping them together as "when I was young" so now I feel lethargic in comparison, even though I do a lot more AND still have time to dick around on
Actually, he's under the Republican flag in Congress. I don't think he's likely to win the Republican primary, though, so it'd remain to be seen if he'd want to jump ships to the Libertarian side of things, but they've already got their 4 candidates lined up.
Even if he WAS Libertarian, it wouldn't be outside their scope to reform patent law, since it's a government-backed and granted monopoly and defended in a court of law at that.
The nit pick then would be that it takes Congress to do that and not The President.
Please remind them that Android hell is a real place and they will be sent there at the first sign of defiance.
When was the last time you heard of Windows, the Big Mac, and the Credit Card as "US-Made"? All have done damage to the world at large.
Another vote for kdawsonfud.
Imagine if the mail worked that way. The love letter you send gets altered to read that you hate them and never want to hear from them again. The sorrow filled response asking what they did wrong gets replaced with a directive to go to hell. All is fine because, after all, it's THEIR mail trucks.
Lets hope these sorts of filtering issues don't ever take a political slant where dissidents' web pages and text get altered in-flight and turn into glowing approvals. (Pro Tip: eventually, if this stuff isn't protected against NOW, it will.)
Testing on actual hardware overcomes the limitation of an inaccurate emulator AND has the (probably more important) benefit of being able to show off your work in person and develop pride for it, which helps feed the motivation to continue developing.
During end-of-life of the SNES, they did exactly that in Japan. You bought a flash cartridge preloaded with a game and could then take it to a vending machine where you would insert it in a slot and buy a new game that was loaded into it. The biggest of those games was Rockman & Forte (which was also available in classic blown ROM cartridge format)
What I find particularly interesting is that while Nintendo was at the bottom of the pecking order for gaming*, there weren't a whole lot of "illegal" mod busts. There were NES, SNES, and GB copiers but they got the hammer right quick, while the GBA and DS ones were sort of left alone until recently. Obviously they learned that those devices garner interest in the platform itself and when they shut one down, ten more pop up in place. Now that Wii and DS have the spotlight, they can, once again, become ham-handed since now the underground is no longer a help but a potential loss of their newly found massive profits.
* Yes, the Game Boy dominated the portable market, but overall Nintendo was nowhere near Sony with its sparkling golden boy Playstation/Playstation 2.
And to think Satoru Iwata was recently quoted: . . . it [is] important that Nintendo [doesn't] lose its internal momentum or [becomes] an arrogant company that [rests] on its laurels.
I'd take that over:
"The motion controls suck in a fighting game like this! Thanks Nintendo!" Those who would want motion controls could always check out Naruto. That control scheme looks pretty interesting.
The Smash Brothers crowd is a hard one to please, absolutely.
So, how much to buy all the votes? I sure "President of Argentina" would look good on the ol' resume. Might be a good investment.
(plan, not bill)
TFS: Several waivers exist for some current ownerships, but would not be passed on to new owners. And so, will also get worse since it will effectively lock the barons in place forevermore. If they were really serious, they'd bust up some of them up now.
Clearly both politicians and established corporations love this bill.
360 surpassing Wii by only a couple dozen thousand units isn't nearly as interesting as the 360 outselling the PS3 5:1. Sony's gotta be hurtin'.
Now, if Smash Bros. and Mario Kart weren't pushed back, and if Wii wasn't in such short supply, I wonder if the 360 would keep it's lead. Either way, can the 360 sustain the current lead for the next 3 months?
The Dems caved. I'm not sure why though. The people have spoken and put them in trusted seats of power and they CAVED. I'm sure there are lot of home teams cheering from the stands only to have the players go, "ah, well, it's a lot of work to play the game. Let's concede."
I'm disappointed.
Also, Macs have 3d accelleration and, shocking I know, you CAN get games for them. They don't come out of the sky, evidently there are developers who are pretty comfortable there.
And, Apple TV? Why let people play geek codecs when you could force people to use your DRM-locked money-generating format?
Looks like I'm wearing the Cloak of Bad Spelling.