It's probably generational. I've played Space Invaders, Pong, and Galaga in their original styles and I found them all terribly boring. Give me a full form FPS or RPG any day. I recognize that a lot of people love those games but for someone whose first real game was Battlefield 1942 those older games are far too simplistic. That ridiculous complexity is one of things I love about games. As long as it's done right it offers you plenty of things to learn how to use which is something I find fun.
I'm sure you'd have a great time playing Tempest again. I wouldn't enjoy that game much at all, I'd much rather play Age of Empire 3 or Battlefield 2142 or Halo 3. To me those are good games (well, Battlefield loses points for it's awful DRM lagging my computer for 10 minutes after I close it...) and the 'classic' games I nostagize about are Battlefield 1942 and Star Trek Armada 2 (which I still play). Simplicity is probably a great thing in a game, if you grew up with simplicity.
As Douglas Adams once said, "Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things." That's really what this article is all about, modern games are against the natural order of gaming for those who grew up with Pong-generation games. To those of us who grew up with modern games they're normal and ordinary and the older games are boring.
Mod parent up, Linux is nice but it's not the easiest thing to get running correct, especially when you have proprietary hardware that's not 100% supported (Dell Duo Core, ATI card etc).
Windows Works. It may break down, but it works. Linux Works, once you get it properly set up. Mac Works, but you can't really do anything beyond what they allow you to do.
So it appears that a Video Gaming convention organized by videogamers for fun not only gets more attendance but is also considered more impressive by the media than a convention put on primarily for money and advertising. I feel like I should be unimpressed, kinda like a 'duh' thing, but then I remember how big E3 was even though it was quite low-quality. I'm quite happy that E for All didn't do so well, their attitude towards PAX and gamers in general was quite arrogant and getting taken down a notch is never bad for big execs. I'm also glad that it appears that the majority of gamers are more concerned with good entertainment and discussions rather than simply addicted to cons.
Precisely. I mean, it's like having a guy in Africa build a 3 stage rocket that he claims can reach orbit, and then having people say it's missing the wings for landing and the NASA manufactured heat plates. Sure, a powerful engine and good QA is nice to have, but it's no more necessary then parachutes are for a rocket, required in the sense that it's not that safe without it but not truly required because you can launch a rocket without a parachute (you'll just get arrested). X-Rays and powerful engines aren't as necessary as rotar blades and an engine:P.
"For simplicity's sake, let's say that if you pay yourself a reasonable amount for your time, the cost comes out even."
Umm...what? Something tells me that no matter how hard this guy worked and 'payed himself for his time' he's not going to be able to incur the same costs as a helicopter which are usually over $50,000 from what I've seen. What kind of helicopter are you suggesting he buy that costs the same as old bike parts and 8 months of work. Let's assume, for the sake of assumption, that he 'pays himself' $10 an hour, which is probably much more than what he actually does but just for the same of argument. Let's also assume that he gets these parts for basically free, perhaps $100 total. That's $14,000 for this helicopter, compared to something like $50,000 for a purchased helicopter...I'd say that if you're calling the costs equal then you're already making a mistake.
So let's use your same math, he's 'spending' $36,000 and getting a.999% higher chance of it failing, a pretty darn good deal if you don't have a high income, especially when you recognize that there's pretty much no way for him to afford a normal helicopter.
NOTE: I'm not 100% sure of my helicopter prices, unfortunately Google refused to tell me and the only site I found listed one as $120,000 so I cut it down by more than half assuming there are cheaper ones out there. I've never in my life heard of a helicopter as cheap as a car, and I doubt one exists or it would be heralded as the flying car.
Geez, you must be an evil DM. I'd rule that a helicopter falling from 7' can't possibly do more damage than a falling block trap, so it would look like
Crashing Home-made Helicopter: CR 5; mechanical; location trigger; no reset; Atk +10 melee (4D6, bludgeoning), hits all targets in 2m radius; Burning Fuel (roll 1d100, if result >=75 treat character as poisoned, 1d6 damage per second until doused with water or otherwise put out); Search DC 30; Disable Device DC 20. Market Price: unknown (unique). Special - Blades (All characters within 5m of trap landing site and standing must make a DC 15 reflex save or take 6D6 of Slashing damage).
And your point is? People are still born out of wedlock, perhaps even at a higher rate than before. Does that mean that the epitaph has no meaning and shouldn't be used for that reason (I sometimes wish people thought this, but that's another issue).
There is such a thing as a non-literal meaning for a literal term. Grammar Nazi's typically don't have many Nazist beliefs, Nazi's still exist though so should we stop using that term? What about some of the other hundred words that are used to mean something different than their literal meaning, even though that literal meaning is still valid? Should we completely reformat the English language because of the travisty that people are being called pirates without wearing eyepatches and getting Scurvy?
I always ask myself when I see these questions where in the world the people asking them are. Over here in the SW I could right now leave my house and drive down to one of my local gamestops (there are 3) and buy a Wii, all three have them in stock (or at least had at the time Halo 3 came out when I last visited them). Best Buy has had them on the shelves since around April, Circuit City had them last time I went there (over the summer). There's no shortage of Wii's where I am, so I'm always curious that there's apparently still a shortage elsewhere...
"If some guy next to you is annoying, just ask him nicely to not be."
If we lived in a society where people tried to be nice to one another then you'd be right, the rants would be dumb.
We don't live in such a society.
It's pretty clear from the way people act with cell phones on the ground that this is going to be an annoying change on airplanes. Who here hasn't seen/interacted with someone who talked excessively loud over their cell? I see (more hear) those people every day, are they magically going to vanish on airplanes? Same goes for people who talk forever.
We already have passenger's irritating other passengers without care on airplanes. My last flight we had someone who couldn't get a particular movie to play on the (obviously cheap) entertainment system. It was an old movie and (in my opinion) not very good but they kept complaining until the pilot decided to reset the system just to shut the guy up. After the reset he was fine, his movie played. Everyone else started getting random movies and the sound system didn't work but he was quite happy with himself. Add that to the multiple people swinging their luggage about without care while we were on the ground, the guy who went and got something out of his luggage when we were on the final runway, and the person who complained about the food and the trip was a quite unpleasant 9+ hours. Now add on someone talking on a cell phone for the entire trip, they don't even have to be that loud but they, or someone else, is always talking. Tell me, do you want to fly on that airplane?
Probably. They also understand that the RIAA claims a similar thing, that you're not allowed to listen to (or view) the music (HTML) outside of what their approved software lets you hear (see on the browser without viewing the source).
If one group can claim it then so can another right? I mean, if we're not allowed to get past the encryption used by the RIAA then couldn't they just claim that it's very, very weak encryption in that it's hidden from view by default and that by hitting "View page source" (ff) you're decrypting it without their permission and so violating DCMA.
Sure it's ridiculous, but in a very specific way that other groups are legally allowed to claim makes sense. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
Unfortunately that's pretty close to the facts...Google is starting to get closer and closer to that satirical picture where someone googles "Where are my Car Keys" and Google actually knows. For some this may be a boon, but it also has negative impacts as well.
Countries aren't supposed to treat businesses like criminals either, if they did this to an individual people would be up in arms, why should it be right just because they did it to a corporation? I mean, it's not like Cisco's going to run away, if they got the bill they'd pretty much have to pay up.
That's just flat out wrong, it's 2x 640p resolution, or 1280p equivalent scaled down to 1080i.
The most unstable/shitty framerates of any fps on any console...Wait...are we playing the same game?
Horrendous IQ - AA? what's that?...Huh? Are we speaking the same language?
Jarringly bad art direction - day glow? WTF?
What is Day glow and why is it so bad?
No dedicated servers like every other modern fps
No need for dedicated servers like every other modern FPS (you can make any benefit sound like a disadvantage, and visa versa)
A pathetic 16 player cap per online game - the rest of the fps world is 32,40,64
Okay...you should know I can't play on more than 16 player servers for BF 2142 with my 3x the price of the 360 laptop. Your point is lost once price is factored in.
But hey, what would I know, I'm just a PC gamer who owns a Wii and occasionally plays Halo 3 at a friend's house, I'm obviously too much of a Fanboi to comment realistically. Now please excuse me while I go play some Wii Play, wait for the new Guitar Hero, and get depressed about SSB:B being pushed back to February.
But hey, that's all irrelevant because the quality of a game is less important than it's hype. Personally I thought Goldeneye was a horrible game, I could never get used to it's control and it's graphics were a little pathetic compared to some of the other games of it's time. What I thought about the game, however, is far less important than what the tons of people who enjoyed the game thought, because they were the majority. Halo 3 haters are the minority, by far, and so it's really irrelevant even if you're right. Games get talked about years later because they were well known about, not necessarily because they were good or bad.
So it looks like their plan is to infiltrate the sites used by these people, and discredit them? The only way to be able to discredit them is to get in contact with them somehow or visit a site they visit regularly. If we can find such a site...why don't we just find out whose using it and arrest them? Is this some new take on crime, that instead of arresting criminals we should discredit them? What's the plan?
I'll take that, if for no other reason than that Halo is the great game of the new generation. Like it or not (think it's uncreative or not) it is by far the largest game in the world today, far beyond the new Link or Mario. In 5-10 years it's going to be the game being talked about, perhaps alongside Mario Galaxy, but most certainly there.
Umm...no offense, but this isn't exactly a problem the average user is going to encounter. Sure, it's dumb. Sure, there's no good reason for this to be happening. But tell me, when was the last time you copied 16,400 files using XP's built in copier? I think I may have copied 200 files once, and I copied about 15 gigs of data once, but I've never even come close to this limit.
No reason to get all rabid about it, it's a problem that few people are ever going to even come close to seeing.
As for XP pre-installed take a look at Dell, they're offering a lot of laptops (very good ones too) with XP instead of Vista.
How about subtly shifting each pixel one pixel in a random direction (ensuring that they all end up heading in the same direction for any particular frame) and then making each pixel a slightly different color shade, you'd have to accept a good number of false positives to be able to catch videos in a different location with different colors than the original.
Slashdot Mirror
It's probably generational. I've played Space Invaders, Pong, and Galaga in their original styles and I found them all terribly boring. Give me a full form FPS or RPG any day. I recognize that a lot of people love those games but for someone whose first real game was Battlefield 1942 those older games are far too simplistic. That ridiculous complexity is one of things I love about games. As long as it's done right it offers you plenty of things to learn how to use which is something I find fun.
I'm sure you'd have a great time playing Tempest again. I wouldn't enjoy that game much at all, I'd much rather play Age of Empire 3 or Battlefield 2142 or Halo 3. To me those are good games (well, Battlefield loses points for it's awful DRM lagging my computer for 10 minutes after I close it...) and the 'classic' games I nostagize about are Battlefield 1942 and Star Trek Armada 2 (which I still play). Simplicity is probably a great thing in a game, if you grew up with simplicity.
As Douglas Adams once said, "Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things." That's really what this article is all about, modern games are against the natural order of gaming for those who grew up with Pong-generation games. To those of us who grew up with modern games they're normal and ordinary and the older games are boring.
Mod parent up, Linux is nice but it's not the easiest thing to get running correct, especially when you have proprietary hardware that's not 100% supported (Dell Duo Core, ATI card etc).
Windows Works. It may break down, but it works. Linux Works, once you get it properly set up. Mac Works, but you can't really do anything beyond what they allow you to do.
So it appears that a Video Gaming convention organized by videogamers for fun not only gets more attendance but is also considered more impressive by the media than a convention put on primarily for money and advertising. I feel like I should be unimpressed, kinda like a 'duh' thing, but then I remember how big E3 was even though it was quite low-quality. I'm quite happy that E for All didn't do so well, their attitude towards PAX and gamers in general was quite arrogant and getting taken down a notch is never bad for big execs. I'm also glad that it appears that the majority of gamers are more concerned with good entertainment and discussions rather than simply addicted to cons.
All in all I'd say this is good news.
Precisely. I mean, it's like having a guy in Africa build a 3 stage rocket that he claims can reach orbit, and then having people say it's missing the wings for landing and the NASA manufactured heat plates. Sure, a powerful engine and good QA is nice to have, but it's no more necessary then parachutes are for a rocket, required in the sense that it's not that safe without it but not truly required because you can launch a rocket without a parachute (you'll just get arrested). X-Rays and powerful engines aren't as necessary as rotar blades and an engine :P.
Naw, they just hired NASA to do the conversions...
"For simplicity's sake, let's say that if you pay yourself a reasonable amount for your time, the cost comes out even."
.999% higher chance of it failing, a pretty darn good deal if you don't have a high income, especially when you recognize that there's pretty much no way for him to afford a normal helicopter.
Umm...what? Something tells me that no matter how hard this guy worked and 'payed himself for his time' he's not going to be able to incur the same costs as a helicopter which are usually over $50,000 from what I've seen. What kind of helicopter are you suggesting he buy that costs the same as old bike parts and 8 months of work. Let's assume, for the sake of assumption, that he 'pays himself' $10 an hour, which is probably much more than what he actually does but just for the same of argument. Let's also assume that he gets these parts for basically free, perhaps $100 total. That's $14,000 for this helicopter, compared to something like $50,000 for a purchased helicopter...I'd say that if you're calling the costs equal then you're already making a mistake.
So let's use your same math, he's 'spending' $36,000 and getting a
NOTE: I'm not 100% sure of my helicopter prices, unfortunately Google refused to tell me and the only site I found listed one as $120,000 so I cut it down by more than half assuming there are cheaper ones out there. I've never in my life heard of a helicopter as cheap as a car, and I doubt one exists or it would be heralded as the flying car.
Geez, you must be an evil DM. I'd rule that a helicopter falling from 7' can't possibly do more damage than a falling block trap, so it would look like
Crashing Home-made Helicopter: CR 5; mechanical; location trigger; no reset; Atk +10 melee (4D6, bludgeoning), hits all targets in 2m radius; Burning Fuel (roll 1d100, if result >=75 treat character as poisoned, 1d6 damage per second until doused with water or otherwise put out); Search DC 30; Disable Device DC 20. Market Price: unknown (unique). Special - Blades (All characters within 5m of trap landing site and standing must make a DC 15 reflex save or take 6D6 of Slashing damage).
Unless you're using them to launch a Sputnik replica...
And your point is? People are still born out of wedlock, perhaps even at a higher rate than before. Does that mean that the epitaph has no meaning and shouldn't be used for that reason (I sometimes wish people thought this, but that's another issue).
There is such a thing as a non-literal meaning for a literal term. Grammar Nazi's typically don't have many Nazist beliefs, Nazi's still exist though so should we stop using that term? What about some of the other hundred words that are used to mean something different than their literal meaning, even though that literal meaning is still valid? Should we completely reformat the English language because of the travisty that people are being called pirates without wearing eyepatches and getting Scurvy?
I always ask myself when I see these questions where in the world the people asking them are. Over here in the SW I could right now leave my house and drive down to one of my local gamestops (there are 3) and buy a Wii, all three have them in stock (or at least had at the time Halo 3 came out when I last visited them). Best Buy has had them on the shelves since around April, Circuit City had them last time I went there (over the summer). There's no shortage of Wii's where I am, so I'm always curious that there's apparently still a shortage elsewhere...
"If some guy next to you is annoying, just ask him nicely to not be."
If we lived in a society where people tried to be nice to one another then you'd be right, the rants would be dumb.
We don't live in such a society.
It's pretty clear from the way people act with cell phones on the ground that this is going to be an annoying change on airplanes. Who here hasn't seen/interacted with someone who talked excessively loud over their cell? I see (more hear) those people every day, are they magically going to vanish on airplanes? Same goes for people who talk forever.
We already have passenger's irritating other passengers without care on airplanes. My last flight we had someone who couldn't get a particular movie to play on the (obviously cheap) entertainment system. It was an old movie and (in my opinion) not very good but they kept complaining until the pilot decided to reset the system just to shut the guy up. After the reset he was fine, his movie played. Everyone else started getting random movies and the sound system didn't work but he was quite happy with himself. Add that to the multiple people swinging their luggage about without care while we were on the ground, the guy who went and got something out of his luggage when we were on the final runway, and the person who complained about the food and the trip was a quite unpleasant 9+ hours. Now add on someone talking on a cell phone for the entire trip, they don't even have to be that loud but they, or someone else, is always talking. Tell me, do you want to fly on that airplane?
Probably. They also understand that the RIAA claims a similar thing, that you're not allowed to listen to (or view) the music (HTML) outside of what their approved software lets you hear (see on the browser without viewing the source).
If one group can claim it then so can another right? I mean, if we're not allowed to get past the encryption used by the RIAA then couldn't they just claim that it's very, very weak encryption in that it's hidden from view by default and that by hitting "View page source" (ff) you're decrypting it without their permission and so violating DCMA.
Sure it's ridiculous, but in a very specific way that other groups are legally allowed to claim makes sense. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
Unfortunately that's pretty close to the facts...Google is starting to get closer and closer to that satirical picture where someone googles "Where are my Car Keys" and Google actually knows. For some this may be a boon, but it also has negative impacts as well.
Yeah, but in this case it's not /. doing the PS3 bashing, it's the actual article from Wired instead, just look at the first sentence
/. isn't the only PS3 hating news source out there eh :P
"Suffering from its exorbitant price point and a dearth of titles, Sony's PlayStation 3 isn't exactly the most popular gaming platform on the block."
Looks like
Countries aren't supposed to treat businesses like criminals either, if they did this to an individual people would be up in arms, why should it be right just because they did it to a corporation? I mean, it's not like Cisco's going to run away, if they got the bill they'd pretty much have to pay up.
Wait...you can pirate off Usenet? Well...I'll have to, investigate this, now where's that new album...
Sunspots cool the suns surface though, so no.
Sub HD graphics - 640p resolution
...Wait...are we playing the same game?
...Huh? Are we speaking the same language?
That's just flat out wrong, it's 2x 640p resolution, or 1280p equivalent scaled down to 1080i.
The most unstable/shitty framerates of any fps on any console
Horrendous IQ - AA? what's that?
Jarringly bad art direction - day glow? WTF?
What is Day glow and why is it so bad?
No dedicated servers like every other modern fps
No need for dedicated servers like every other modern FPS (you can make any benefit sound like a disadvantage, and visa versa)
A pathetic 16 player cap per online game - the rest of the fps world is 32,40,64
Okay...you should know I can't play on more than 16 player servers for BF 2142 with my 3x the price of the 360 laptop. Your point is lost once price is factored in.
But hey, what would I know, I'm just a PC gamer who owns a Wii and occasionally plays Halo 3 at a friend's house, I'm obviously too much of a Fanboi to comment realistically. Now please excuse me while I go play some Wii Play, wait for the new Guitar Hero, and get depressed about SSB:B being pushed back to February.
But hey, that's all irrelevant because the quality of a game is less important than it's hype. Personally I thought Goldeneye was a horrible game, I could never get used to it's control and it's graphics were a little pathetic compared to some of the other games of it's time. What I thought about the game, however, is far less important than what the tons of people who enjoyed the game thought, because they were the majority. Halo 3 haters are the minority, by far, and so it's really irrelevant even if you're right. Games get talked about years later because they were well known about, not necessarily because they were good or bad.
So it looks like their plan is to infiltrate the sites used by these people, and discredit them? The only way to be able to discredit them is to get in contact with them somehow or visit a site they visit regularly. If we can find such a site...why don't we just find out whose using it and arrest them? Is this some new take on crime, that instead of arresting criminals we should discredit them? What's the plan?
I'll take that, if for no other reason than that Halo is the great game of the new generation. Like it or not (think it's uncreative or not) it is by far the largest game in the world today, far beyond the new Link or Mario. In 5-10 years it's going to be the game being talked about, perhaps alongside Mario Galaxy, but most certainly there.
Umm...no offense, but this isn't exactly a problem the average user is going to encounter. Sure, it's dumb. Sure, there's no good reason for this to be happening. But tell me, when was the last time you copied 16,400 files using XP's built in copier? I think I may have copied 200 files once, and I copied about 15 gigs of data once, but I've never even come close to this limit.
No reason to get all rabid about it, it's a problem that few people are ever going to even come close to seeing.
As for XP pre-installed take a look at Dell, they're offering a lot of laptops (very good ones too) with XP instead of Vista.
So you're saying that Yahoo is striving to have a good Google Pagerank...wait...it all makes sense now!
*Facepalm*
Anyone else find it amusing that they'll give information on everyone else to the government, but not themselves? That game me a little, sad, chuckle
How about subtly shifting each pixel one pixel in a random direction (ensuring that they all end up heading in the same direction for any particular frame) and then making each pixel a slightly different color shade, you'd have to accept a good number of false positives to be able to catch videos in a different location with different colors than the original.