I'll concede I forgot to mention PS2 and PS1 games. I also forgot the 360 plays some XBox games.:P
The PS2 definitely had more show stopping quality games than Gamecube and is a great asset to the PS3's playable library... PROVIDED that the recently crippled backwards compatibility gets continually less crippled with time. On that same token, I certainly want to see much better backwards compatibility on the 360 at a much faster pace.
AFAIK, Wii's Gamecube backwards compatibility does not exist in a software emulation layer, which is probably why I've already eliminated from my mind the 360 AND the PS3 BC.
But I'll take issue that "just about everything that comes out on the 360 will come out on the PS3 as well, but not vice versa" when the unshakeable list of exclusive titles already has the first defector, Devil May Cry. I won't humor rumors that Final Fantasy is going that way, though, but rumors are rumors and sometimes that grain of salt one should take rumors with is completely necessary.
The only system that's going to get true exclusives that can't be ported without major retooling of the games themselves is the Wii. PS3/360? Ah, not so much.
Prices are funny. Microsoft is obviously milking every dime they can get out of gamers who buy a system before they drop the prices. While there is no sign of that happening, you can pretty much count on any PS3 price drop to be matched by a 360 price drop of equal or greater value.
That "validation" of the PS3 strategy by way of price is a bit misleading, though. Sony equates the PS3 to fine equipment whose price indicates its value. But it's a genuinely expensive device to make. What the PS3 price points have proven to the people who figure out the prices of consoles is that consoles have been too cheap and the market could sustain them at higher prices than previously thought.
Other very expensive consoles have gone down in flames for home use... but the median price for the majority of consoles at the market at any given time has been a $200 - $250 sweet spot. The only thing that Microsoft and Sony have done is show that the sweet spot can be coaxed higher.
What I don't understand is why Microsoft isn't playing a price war yet. They've got the biggest userbase for this generation, most established games (excluding Wii's ability to play Gamecube games), and they're turning a profit on current consoles sold. Sony's machine costs $800 and putting pressure on them to lower a price point could hasten any future demise... if it's in the cards.
My only stab at trying to understand is that Microsoft eventually wants to buy the Sony gaming division, but I'll be the first to suggest that's an outrageous claim. Hmmm...
I've seen lots of spoof Paypal emails and some of them look frighteningly close to the real thing. Even if Paypal's sending legitimate email, what is it? Emailed receipts? Just what I want hopping from mail server to mail server. Emailed promotions? No thanks, does anyone REALLY want those?
If it's that important, do what businesses have been doing for a good century: certified postal mail. If you don't wanna pay the dollar fifty for it, then it must not be very important and, by definition, it makes it non-essential.
Is it at all possible that Nintendo didn't expect the system to do so well in the US? DS-Lite is still the #1 seller in Japan while here its sales are more down to earth. By looking at that performance and equating DS = Wii, I'd call it reasonable to assume that they didn't expect demand to be so high.
There was a time when there wasn't Political Correctness. The hate and prejudice that went with that era hasn't gone away, it's just swept under rugs. I'd argue not giving people the freedom to say downright ignorant things and expose themselves is perhaps more dangerous than knowing outright who is ignorant.
Fixed. This is why I should be working instead of browsing the/.
So, in summing up, I think you are wrong, and also possibly stupid. Politically correct is only ever used as an insult by right-wing conservatives who want to be able to insult "niggers", women (who should be staying at home bare foot and pregnant anyway, not actually being real people), and similar groups in society who have little power anyway. And that defense of the language police is the wrong and stupid defense of a head-in-the-clouds pretend-utopia liberal arts major. By alluding to "groups in society who have little power," you are exposing the inherant defect: speech that is intended to protect should protect all equally, not just a minority.
My point, if you were to push aside the seething hatred towards one that dared insult your precious institution of "political correctness", is that the world at large makes people wear "verbal masks" in public that are lifted when they're being a computer so they don't have to face up to what they say.
Someone makes "nigger" comments in public gets the Michael Richards treatment. Someone seriously claims women should be barefoot and pregnant on TV will get picked apart. Writing in a newspaper that minorities deserve what they get generates backlash to the editor.
Meanwhile, on the internet you can write whatever you want with very little chance of getting called on it, especially if you aren't all that important. Public shame for language and message content goes out the window as long as it's online.
You can't discuss anything intellectually controversial because of the atmosphere of groupthink that the generation of Politically Correct language seems to encourage (as in, can't say "this", say "that" instead). Online speech seems to be free of that since you're one-on-one on your computer, but a pristine pool of ideas and challenges gets pissed in by a bunch of jerks.
There was a time when there wasn't Political Correctness. The hate and prejudice that went with that era hasn't gone away, it's just swept under rugs. I'd argue not giving people the freedom to say downright ignorant things and expose themselves is perhaps less dangerous than knowing outright who is ignorant.
When you can't say intellectually controversial things in public, on TV, in print, or anywhere else that repressed need eventually bubbles out from somewhere. Unfortunately, when it's on the internet and self-authored and published, the respective screening (getting beat up, losing your license, reputation flushed down the toilet) leaves and we're left with a river of hateful slime.
Like Ghostbusters 2. Only more serious. I suppose this makes this post controversial, as well.
If everyone upset with that were to take up letters to congress asking them to amend the constitution to get rid of that antiquated electoral college, I wonder if they would ever do it?
Presidental candidates like having to concentrate campaigns in selected states since they modify the final outcome more than predom. blue/red states or states with low populations. That way they also get to pander to said states with promises of subsidies and how they're so totally awesome and the union wouldn't be the same without them. As opposed to having limited influence in states directly and having real conversations about real issues on a federal level.
Rather than a rounding error, it's more like an error in weighted average coefficients.:)
Incorrectly encoded discs are par for the course. While that link has an awful lot of information on it, one thing to take out of it is that sometimes studios just don't care what kind of quality is coming out of the authoring houses. SciFi playing some Dead Like Me prompted me to get the DVD box sets and it looks downright horrible in spots on just about every DVD player.
The question then becomes, does the PS3 follow the footsteps of the PS2 as a finicky, low-quality DVD player or does it rival stand alone players? I don't think we'll know into well into the future of Blu-Ray when the discs start getting churned out as a commodity (like DVDs today) instead of meticulously babied discs (like DVDs were when they started to hit the scene).
While TFA is about MMOGs, the bulk are MMORPGs so this is potentially valid.
Single player games play to the ego. YOU are given a quest of great importance. Only YOU could defeat the really f'ing strong bad guy. No one but YOU can organize a rag-tag bunch of badasses to smash evil and bring blah blah blah to the blah blah blah.
How many single player games are there that represent you amongst a whole group of potential heroes? If you decide to slack off and not do what you're supposed to, does someone else stand up and carry the torch instead?
No. The worlds and it's advancing timeline is on your whim only. MMORPGs will NEVER be able to capture that so long as the entire world isn't instanced to a specific group of players. And, even then, if the game does that what's the point of it being MASSIVELY multiplayer, anyway?
The fact that MMORPGs work at all are a testament to the addictive qualities of constantly levelling up for the next best thing and to stay on the cutting edge of new content. It's very "metagame" in that respect. But for the same reason not EVERYONE in real life can be a mover and a shaker, it can't really work online any better than it already does.
"You haven't thought about it, you're just regurgitating anti-gun propaganda."
Why would I encourage laws that will take away the weapons I already own? There's lots of good reasons for just about every citizen to own a firearm. When 911 takes 20 minutes to respond and police are not responsible for delays -- as in you can't sue the police for not getting to a scene of a crime fast enough to prevent it -- having a firearm on your person just makes sense. Even putting aside crime: as human development encroaches deeper into forests and once human-free areas, you hear more and more about roaming wolves, bears, mountain lions, alligators, you name it. You gonna call animal control and sit tight while watching some guy get mauled because the ONE advantage humans have over animals is the ability to end it all in one shot has been taken away?
So now that I'm clear that I'm not anti-gun, clearly of all the things your gun can protect you from, taking down the US military is NOT one of them.
"If you believe the US Armed Forces would, as a whole, wage all out war against their families, friends and neighbors, then you are beyond reasoning with."
Certainly not as a whole. US military must not follow illegal orders. I'd hate to bring up lightbulb jokes, but, how many government agents did it take at Waco? Ruby Ridge? All you gotta do is stop calling people friends, family, neighbors, citizens and start calling them traitors and terrorists. Soldiers aren't stupid, though. I expect many wouldn't comply. But, at what price? Russian style shoot-the-retreating-soliders-in-the-back-as-they- run-away?
Besides, it doesn't matter your intention. If you and any number of concerned citizens march on Washington with guns blazing seeking to correct an abuse of unconstitutional power, you're going to be shredded meat staining the pavement. End of story.
"Having hand guns and rifles is not a trivial thing. These are the tools that can be used to take one's liberty back - when you don't have any other options. It's why there is a 2nd Amendment."
Maybe in the 18th century, but today I'd like to see any of that stand up to US Armed Forces tanks, snipers, bombs, chemical, biological, nuclear weapons. I mean, they can plunge a 50 cal bullet into your local power station from a mile and a half away and completely disable communications for 20 miles around. If every gun owner were to rise up and revolt RIGHT NOW, it'd be over in a week. Maybe I'd be one of the lucky ones killed in the revolt rather than have to suffer the indignities that would follow THAT.
If I were more of a conspiracy nut, I'd say taking away 2nd Amendment rights has less to do about "retaking the country" and more to do with keeping honest citizens unarmed so criminals can pillage freely, thereby engineering the "crisis of the moment" that can get just about any dreg through Congress as a law.
"For right now they are still duly elected and answerable to the public. If you draw their attention to important matters like this, most of them will take action."
IF politically expedient. Look at the nonsense with all the "think of the children" stuff being tossed about. Being the lawmaker that's going above and beyond the mere protection of children is good press and good voteablility. You're, um, not going to be the one AGAINST children, are you?
Even when it's the right thing to do and there is outcry about it, politicians get their staff to conduct some polls and figure out the path of least potential political damage to themselves or their buddies and that's what they do.
No doubt a lot of these guys start out thinking they're going to make the world a different place. When they get high enough, they get hooked. Power is a drug. Congressional members get many perks and privilages. Even if they maintain a good heart and want to change things for the better, seniority is everything and if they don't continually get elected then they don't have any pull.
"If we fail to take action on this issue . . . the Congress . . . will be replaced with a perfect congress."
Eventually? Like an entropy of good? What about the old timers that, at this point, are probably never going to be "dethroned?" The likes of Ted Kennedy, Ted Stevens, Patrick Leahy, Orrin Hatch? Not exactly like walking down a hallway fo pleasant dreams. What about every time Mickey Mouse is on the edge of getting put into the public domain congress, regardless of which party is in power, always retroactively extends the privilage of copyright? I mean. Come. On.
Maybe if the legislative branch had term limits we might be able to get some new blood in there more regularly, maybe even make it more difficult (read: prohibitively expensive) for special interests and corps to buy lifer politicians.
(That felt good to get out. Not trying to troll or anything.)
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
They sure as hell were gonna make sure that's clear as crystal.
It's a mistake to ask congress for a definitive non-porous law. The citizenry are no friend, only the companies behind the lobbiests that line their pockets. If they put their foot down right now and cemented some law it seal away what final rights we are "illicitly" enjoying.
Am I naive to believe that someday, some day, the US will have a congress that's for the people?
According to the bottom of just one function of the KTM reference:
"Requires Ktmw32.dll."
Why would a kernel add-on require a.dll, exactly? Did I miss some Windows fundamental about it's kernel? And if it's not really a result of a kernel enhancement, is this yet another potentially useful technology specificly excluded from earlier versions of Windows entirely for business purposes instead of technological limitations?
A) Home consoles only get demos in stores and homes. To "sell" a casual friend on your experience you'll probably have them over at your home. I would say I only regularly visit and get visits from maybe 3 of my friends, the really close ones. Meanwhile I play my DS lots of places in public where there's a queue to be made and the "ooh, that's neat!" factor from friends I'm less familiar with means more exposure.
B) Multiplayer on home consoles just needs one system and a few controllers. Handhelds require a system purchase to link up and play with each other. I remember picking up a GBA to enjoy Four Swords with my buds. Now that I think about it, could the big push for online multiplayer on home consoles be a stab to get more sales of hardware bigger than just a controller?
Which is part of the problem of why I'm not thrilled about the next Metal Gear game. I want to play a game, not watch a bunch of movies and listen to a radio show. All they need is a "Sponsored by Ovaltine" somewhere on the box.;)
Neo-Geo arcade boards certainly had legs. They've been in service for quite a long time now. It's been, what, over fifteen years now? It's at least 3 years older than that other very popular (read by arcade operators: money making) Capcom CPS-2 platform.
I still find Neo-Geo based games in arcades. And thankfully MAME does a good job emulating the platform so people can play and enjoy what might not have been very popular. I personally enjoyed Shock Troopers, Magical Drop, Blazing Star, Sengoku, Panic Bomber, to name a few.
"These aren't lone voices either, there seems to be a general consensus that the PS3 is difficult to develop for."
I remember that being said about the PS2 architecture. Given enough time, developers would have pretty much solved all of the major hurdles and have a pretty good archive of code snippets they can reuse.
Unlike the PS2 downright dominating sales, though, the PS3 is last in a race of three. The question becomes whether the developers will have enough incentive to stick around on the PS3 and get comfortable with it.
Perhaps Microsoft thinks that people who would buy the Premium model now wouldn't if they knew a "Super Premium" model is coming out soon. If they assume rightly, then sales of 360 would dip. If their caution is warranted, the dip in sales would be a large enough number to make the 360 look less strong from a userbase perspective.
So if they were going to release this, they wouldn't announce it until very close to when available. If they weren't going to, they wouldn't say they're releasing it either.
We're not making it, and, if we were, we wouldn't tell you early.
This is one feature I really like. I remember using NVTools to make all my windows in XP 75% transparent so I could "multitask" my screen real estate. Some applications which bypass the regular Windows GDI API tended to not be transparent and it usually was all for the best (games, mostly).
While I hardly ever have to perform screenshots, I guess now you just need to set up your desktop for a snapshot just like you might have to set up to get a halfway decent picture of anything in real life.
(I don't have Vista, but surely there's a way to turn off Aero if it's that big a deal?)
"Come on, people, that's a big part of why so many Americans have abandoned Detroit for Japanese quality."
Don't Honda and Toyota and Nissan build cars for North America IN North America?
My father told me stories about the first job he had, welding for GM on an assembly line. He laughed at how horrible some of his work was when the supervisor let it all slide and told him not to worry about it. After about 1980, my parents never owned an American built car. I've never owned an American built car in my life.
At the risk of sounding inflamitory, considering how vocal the PA guys are about games that suck, this had better be one of the best adventure games of all time.
After all, you can't have such vocal critics of bad games actually be RESPONSIBLE for a bad game, right?
I don't hold loyalties to any developer or publisher... but I have a feeling finding an unbiased review, positive or negative, of this one when it comes out is going to be next to impossible.
"There are still DOS, Win3.1/95/98/ME/NT and 2K systems out in great numbers. Many of the newer integrated chipsets do not have drivers for the older OSes. BUT, thanks to the ubiquity of the SoundBlaster card, those older OSes can still have audio. I don't see this as a huge and growing market. No, it is a dying market, but the need still exists."
Provided they find old cards. Sound Blaster Live and above have no legacy support. Does Creative still even produce any Sound Blaster 16 cards, or has the stock in all stores just been sitting there all this time?
Slashdot Mirror
I'll concede I forgot to mention PS2 and PS1 games. I also forgot the 360 plays some XBox games. :P
The PS2 definitely had more show stopping quality games than Gamecube and is a great asset to the PS3's playable library... PROVIDED that the recently crippled backwards compatibility gets continually less crippled with time. On that same token, I certainly want to see much better backwards compatibility on the 360 at a much faster pace.
AFAIK, Wii's Gamecube backwards compatibility does not exist in a software emulation layer, which is probably why I've already eliminated from my mind the 360 AND the PS3 BC.
But I'll take issue that "just about everything that comes out on the 360 will come out on the PS3 as well, but not vice versa" when the unshakeable list of exclusive titles already has the first defector, Devil May Cry. I won't humor rumors that Final Fantasy is going that way, though, but rumors are rumors and sometimes that grain of salt one should take rumors with is completely necessary.
The only system that's going to get true exclusives that can't be ported without major retooling of the games themselves is the Wii. PS3/360? Ah, not so much.
Prices are funny. Microsoft is obviously milking every dime they can get out of gamers who buy a system before they drop the prices. While there is no sign of that happening, you can pretty much count on any PS3 price drop to be matched by a 360 price drop of equal or greater value.
That "validation" of the PS3 strategy by way of price is a bit misleading, though. Sony equates the PS3 to fine equipment whose price indicates its value. But it's a genuinely expensive device to make. What the PS3 price points have proven to the people who figure out the prices of consoles is that consoles have been too cheap and the market could sustain them at higher prices than previously thought.
Other very expensive consoles have gone down in flames for home use... but the median price for the majority of consoles at the market at any given time has been a $200 - $250 sweet spot. The only thing that Microsoft and Sony have done is show that the sweet spot can be coaxed higher.
What I don't understand is why Microsoft isn't playing a price war yet. They've got the biggest userbase for this generation, most established games (excluding Wii's ability to play Gamecube games), and they're turning a profit on current consoles sold. Sony's machine costs $800 and putting pressure on them to lower a price point could hasten any future demise... if it's in the cards.
My only stab at trying to understand is that Microsoft eventually wants to buy the Sony gaming division, but I'll be the first to suggest that's an outrageous claim. Hmmm...
How about Paypal just gives up sending email?
I've seen lots of spoof Paypal emails and some of them look frighteningly close to the real thing. Even if Paypal's sending legitimate email, what is it? Emailed receipts? Just what I want hopping from mail server to mail server. Emailed promotions? No thanks, does anyone REALLY want those?
If it's that important, do what businesses have been doing for a good century: certified postal mail. If you don't wanna pay the dollar fifty for it, then it must not be very important and, by definition, it makes it non-essential.
Is it at all possible that Nintendo didn't expect the system to do so well in the US? DS-Lite is still the #1 seller in Japan while here its sales are more down to earth. By looking at that performance and equating DS = Wii, I'd call it reasonable to assume that they didn't expect demand to be so high.
There was a time when there wasn't Political Correctness. The hate and prejudice that went with that era hasn't gone away, it's just swept under rugs. I'd argue not giving people the freedom to say downright ignorant things and expose themselves is perhaps more dangerous than knowing outright who is ignorant.
/.
Fixed. This is why I should be working instead of browsing the
So, in summing up, I think you are wrong, and also possibly stupid. Politically correct is only ever used as an insult by right-wing conservatives who want to be able to insult "niggers", women (who should be staying at home bare foot and pregnant anyway, not actually being real people), and similar groups in society who have little power anyway.
And that defense of the language police is the wrong and stupid defense of a head-in-the-clouds pretend-utopia liberal arts major. By alluding to "groups in society who have little power," you are exposing the inherant defect: speech that is intended to protect should protect all equally, not just a minority.
My point, if you were to push aside the seething hatred towards one that dared insult your precious institution of "political correctness", is that the world at large makes people wear "verbal masks" in public that are lifted when they're being a computer so they don't have to face up to what they say.
Someone makes "nigger" comments in public gets the Michael Richards treatment. Someone seriously claims women should be barefoot and pregnant on TV will get picked apart. Writing in a newspaper that minorities deserve what they get generates backlash to the editor.
Meanwhile, on the internet you can write whatever you want with very little chance of getting called on it, especially if you aren't all that important. Public shame for language and message content goes out the window as long as it's online.
You can't discuss anything intellectually controversial because of the atmosphere of groupthink that the generation of Politically Correct language seems to encourage (as in, can't say "this", say "that" instead). Online speech seems to be free of that since you're one-on-one on your computer, but a pristine pool of ideas and challenges gets pissed in by a bunch of jerks.
There was a time when there wasn't Political Correctness. The hate and prejudice that went with that era hasn't gone away, it's just swept under rugs. I'd argue not giving people the freedom to say downright ignorant things and expose themselves is perhaps less dangerous than knowing outright who is ignorant.
Care to apologize?
No.
When you can't say intellectually controversial things in public, on TV, in print, or anywhere else that repressed need eventually bubbles out from somewhere. Unfortunately, when it's on the internet and self-authored and published, the respective screening (getting beat up, losing your license, reputation flushed down the toilet) leaves and we're left with a river of hateful slime.
Like Ghostbusters 2. Only more serious. I suppose this makes this post controversial, as well.
If everyone upset with that were to take up letters to congress asking them to amend the constitution to get rid of that antiquated electoral college, I wonder if they would ever do it?
:)
Presidental candidates like having to concentrate campaigns in selected states since they modify the final outcome more than predom. blue/red states or states with low populations. That way they also get to pander to said states with promises of subsidies and how they're so totally awesome and the union wouldn't be the same without them. As opposed to having limited influence in states directly and having real conversations about real issues on a federal level.
Rather than a rounding error, it's more like an error in weighted average coefficients.
Incorrectly encoded discs are par for the course. While that link has an awful lot of information on it, one thing to take out of it is that sometimes studios just don't care what kind of quality is coming out of the authoring houses. SciFi playing some Dead Like Me prompted me to get the DVD box sets and it looks downright horrible in spots on just about every DVD player.
The question then becomes, does the PS3 follow the footsteps of the PS2 as a finicky, low-quality DVD player or does it rival stand alone players? I don't think we'll know into well into the future of Blu-Ray when the discs start getting churned out as a commodity (like DVDs today) instead of meticulously babied discs (like DVDs were when they started to hit the scene).
While TFA is about MMOGs, the bulk are MMORPGs so this is potentially valid.
Single player games play to the ego. YOU are given a quest of great importance. Only YOU could defeat the really f'ing strong bad guy. No one but YOU can organize a rag-tag bunch of badasses to smash evil and bring blah blah blah to the blah blah blah.
How many single player games are there that represent you amongst a whole group of potential heroes? If you decide to slack off and not do what you're supposed to, does someone else stand up and carry the torch instead?
No. The worlds and it's advancing timeline is on your whim only. MMORPGs will NEVER be able to capture that so long as the entire world isn't instanced to a specific group of players. And, even then, if the game does that what's the point of it being MASSIVELY multiplayer, anyway?
The fact that MMORPGs work at all are a testament to the addictive qualities of constantly levelling up for the next best thing and to stay on the cutting edge of new content. It's very "metagame" in that respect. But for the same reason not EVERYONE in real life can be a mover and a shaker, it can't really work online any better than it already does.
"You haven't thought about it, you're just regurgitating anti-gun propaganda."
- run-away?
Why would I encourage laws that will take away the weapons I already own? There's lots of good reasons for just about every citizen to own a firearm. When 911 takes 20 minutes to respond and police are not responsible for delays -- as in you can't sue the police for not getting to a scene of a crime fast enough to prevent it -- having a firearm on your person just makes sense. Even putting aside crime: as human development encroaches deeper into forests and once human-free areas, you hear more and more about roaming wolves, bears, mountain lions, alligators, you name it. You gonna call animal control and sit tight while watching some guy get mauled because the ONE advantage humans have over animals is the ability to end it all in one shot has been taken away?
So now that I'm clear that I'm not anti-gun, clearly of all the things your gun can protect you from, taking down the US military is NOT one of them.
"If you believe the US Armed Forces would, as a whole, wage all out war against their families, friends and neighbors, then you are beyond reasoning with."
Certainly not as a whole. US military must not follow illegal orders. I'd hate to bring up lightbulb jokes, but, how many government agents did it take at Waco? Ruby Ridge? All you gotta do is stop calling people friends, family, neighbors, citizens and start calling them traitors and terrorists. Soldiers aren't stupid, though. I expect many wouldn't comply. But, at what price? Russian style shoot-the-retreating-soliders-in-the-back-as-they
Besides, it doesn't matter your intention. If you and any number of concerned citizens march on Washington with guns blazing seeking to correct an abuse of unconstitutional power, you're going to be shredded meat staining the pavement. End of story.
"Having hand guns and rifles is not a trivial thing. These are the tools that can be used to take one's liberty back - when you don't have any other options. It's why there is a 2nd Amendment."
Maybe in the 18th century, but today I'd like to see any of that stand up to US Armed Forces tanks, snipers, bombs, chemical, biological, nuclear weapons. I mean, they can plunge a 50 cal bullet into your local power station from a mile and a half away and completely disable communications for 20 miles around. If every gun owner were to rise up and revolt RIGHT NOW, it'd be over in a week. Maybe I'd be one of the lucky ones killed in the revolt rather than have to suffer the indignities that would follow THAT.
If I were more of a conspiracy nut, I'd say taking away 2nd Amendment rights has less to do about "retaking the country" and more to do with keeping honest citizens unarmed so criminals can pillage freely, thereby engineering the "crisis of the moment" that can get just about any dreg through Congress as a law.
"For right now they are still duly elected and answerable to the public. If you draw their attention to important matters like this, most of them will take action."
IF politically expedient. Look at the nonsense with all the "think of the children" stuff being tossed about. Being the lawmaker that's going above and beyond the mere protection of children is good press and good voteablility. You're, um, not going to be the one AGAINST children, are you?
Even when it's the right thing to do and there is outcry about it, politicians get their staff to conduct some polls and figure out the path of least potential political damage to themselves or their buddies and that's what they do.
No doubt a lot of these guys start out thinking they're going to make the world a different place. When they get high enough, they get hooked. Power is a drug. Congressional members get many perks and privilages. Even if they maintain a good heart and want to change things for the better, seniority is everything and if they don't continually get elected then they don't have any pull.
"If we fail to take action on this issue . . . the Congress . . . will be replaced with a perfect congress."
Eventually? Like an entropy of good? What about the old timers that, at this point, are probably never going to be "dethroned?" The likes of Ted Kennedy, Ted Stevens, Patrick Leahy, Orrin Hatch? Not exactly like walking down a hallway fo pleasant dreams. What about every time Mickey Mouse is on the edge of getting put into the public domain congress, regardless of which party is in power, always retroactively extends the privilage of copyright? I mean. Come. On.
Maybe if the legislative branch had term limits we might be able to get some new blood in there more regularly, maybe even make it more difficult (read: prohibitively expensive) for special interests and corps to buy lifer politicians.
(That felt good to get out. Not trying to troll or anything.)
Yup. The 16th Amendment:
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."
They sure as hell were gonna make sure that's clear as crystal.
It's a mistake to ask congress for a definitive non-porous law. The citizenry are no friend, only the companies behind the lobbiests that line their pockets. If they put their foot down right now and cemented some law it seal away what final rights we are "illicitly" enjoying.
Am I naive to believe that someday, some day, the US will have a congress that's for the people?
According to the bottom of just one function of the KTM reference:
.dll, exactly? Did I miss some Windows fundamental about it's kernel? And if it's not really a result of a kernel enhancement, is this yet another potentially useful technology specificly excluded from earlier versions of Windows entirely for business purposes instead of technological limitations?
"Requires Ktmw32.dll."
Why would a kernel add-on require a
A) Home consoles only get demos in stores and homes. To "sell" a casual friend on your experience you'll probably have them over at your home. I would say I only regularly visit and get visits from maybe 3 of my friends, the really close ones. Meanwhile I play my DS lots of places in public where there's a queue to be made and the "ooh, that's neat!" factor from friends I'm less familiar with means more exposure.
B) Multiplayer on home consoles just needs one system and a few controllers. Handhelds require a system purchase to link up and play with each other. I remember picking up a GBA to enjoy Four Swords with my buds. Now that I think about it, could the big push for online multiplayer on home consoles be a stab to get more sales of hardware bigger than just a controller?
Which is part of the problem of why I'm not thrilled about the next Metal Gear game. I want to play a game, not watch a bunch of movies and listen to a radio show. All they need is a "Sponsored by Ovaltine" somewhere on the box. ;)
"Really?"
Neo-Geo arcade boards certainly had legs. They've been in service for quite a long time now. It's been, what, over fifteen years now? It's at least 3 years older than that other very popular (read by arcade operators: money making) Capcom CPS-2 platform.
I still find Neo-Geo based games in arcades. And thankfully MAME does a good job emulating the platform so people can play and enjoy what might not have been very popular. I personally enjoyed Shock Troopers, Magical Drop, Blazing Star, Sengoku, Panic Bomber, to name a few.
"These aren't lone voices either, there seems to be a general consensus that the PS3 is difficult to develop for."
I remember that being said about the PS2 architecture. Given enough time, developers would have pretty much solved all of the major hurdles and have a pretty good archive of code snippets they can reuse.
Unlike the PS2 downright dominating sales, though, the PS3 is last in a race of three. The question becomes whether the developers will have enough incentive to stick around on the PS3 and get comfortable with it.
Perhaps Microsoft thinks that people who would buy the Premium model now wouldn't if they knew a "Super Premium" model is coming out soon. If they assume rightly, then sales of 360 would dip. If their caution is warranted, the dip in sales would be a large enough number to make the 360 look less strong from a userbase perspective.
So if they were going to release this, they wouldn't announce it until very close to when available. If they weren't going to, they wouldn't say they're releasing it either.
We're not making it, and, if we were, we wouldn't tell you early.
This is one feature I really like. I remember using NVTools to make all my windows in XP 75% transparent so I could "multitask" my screen real estate. Some applications which bypass the regular Windows GDI API tended to not be transparent and it usually was all for the best (games, mostly).
While I hardly ever have to perform screenshots, I guess now you just need to set up your desktop for a snapshot just like you might have to set up to get a halfway decent picture of anything in real life.
(I don't have Vista, but surely there's a way to turn off Aero if it's that big a deal?)
"Come on, people, that's a big part of why so many Americans have abandoned Detroit for Japanese quality."
Don't Honda and Toyota and Nissan build cars for North America IN North America?
My father told me stories about the first job he had, welding for GM on an assembly line. He laughed at how horrible some of his work was when the supervisor let it all slide and told him not to worry about it. After about 1980, my parents never owned an American built car. I've never owned an American built car in my life.
At the risk of sounding inflamitory, considering how vocal the PA guys are about games that suck, this had better be one of the best adventure games of all time.
After all, you can't have such vocal critics of bad games actually be RESPONSIBLE for a bad game, right?
I don't hold loyalties to any developer or publisher... but I have a feeling finding an unbiased review, positive or negative, of this one when it comes out is going to be next to impossible.
"There are still DOS, Win3.1/95/98/ME/NT and 2K systems out in great numbers. Many of the newer integrated chipsets do not have drivers for the older OSes. BUT, thanks to the ubiquity of the SoundBlaster card, those older OSes can still have audio. I don't see this as a huge and growing market. No, it is a dying market, but the need still exists."
Provided they find old cards. Sound Blaster Live and above have no legacy support. Does Creative still even produce any Sound Blaster 16 cards, or has the stock in all stores just been sitting there all this time?