JB0

Probably not a signifigant diffrence. It'll really kick in in the next year or 2, as HD adoption becomes more common. I hate that everyone is knocking that PoS off. Used to be that no matter WHAT you wanted a controller to do, someone made it. Now all anyone makes is DualShocks and DualShocks with 6 face buttons. LIES! Seriously, it's got a lousy d-pad, and it's just uncomfortable to hold. If the d-pad is irrelevant, they need to get rid of it or at least swap it with the analog stick, since that's where it's most comfortable to put a thumb. If the d-pad IS relevant, they need to fix it. Ergonomics is pretty important in a gamepad. If it's uncomfortable to use, it's a bad design. It probably did succeed to some degree. It looked funny, sure. But once you thought about things, it was suspiciously similar to the GameCube pad, which is a far more comfortable device. No kidding. Large portions of current controller design can be traced directly to the NES. And the NES pad was a half-assed attempt at best. There was NO consideration for ergonomics or usability, just an attempt to make a game controller that looked like a Game&Watch. Select and start weren't even intended to be USED outside of the title screen. In fact, the FamiCom completely lacks those buttons on the 2nd-player controller(which is why only the first player can pause Super Mario Brothers, if you were wondering). The rest... is from the SNES, which while better planned than the NES controller was STILL just an attempt to upgrade a fundamentally flawed device. But Sony's just gluing bits onto the SNES pad. And MS is just emulating Sony this round because people were too busy whining about how the XBox1 pad wasn't a DualShock to play the games. The N64 controller is actually mildly confusing. It's not really obvious when you look at it. 'S another one of those bad design decisions.

The neon green wasn't needed, I'm pretty sure. I think that's just how the current Hasbro thinks Megatron should BE. *looks it up* It seems the current California laws require toy guns to be either ENTIRELY orange or green, or transparent. So I'm not sure if they can sell Megatron in California anyways. I'd have to find the full text of the law and try to work it out from there. It might be that ANY transparency covers things, in which case the green is probably redundant. The lack of a barrel could be due in part to New York law, which requires non-removable orange stripes down the length of a toy gun's barrel. Depending on how they define non-removable, that could mean they'd have to cast orange plastic strips into the barrel. The toy industry, understandably, wants the states to get together and standardize so they don't have to navigate the existing minefield of varying state laws, all of which stack on top of existing federal law.

*shudders*

And Atari and Sega. People generally laugh when I point it out because "Dude, you can't beat the Playstation!", but lately Sony's been doing EXACTLY what those who came before did right before their fall. Amen. They still don't believe it. Find a Resident Evil 4 PS2 review. Listen to them talk about the identical(maybe even improved) graphics. Then find some side-by-side screenshots and shudder at the massively reduced visual quality on the PS. It'll be signifigant. The Wii isn't nearly as beefy as the PS3 and XBox360. Of course, the advantage the PS3 and 360 have at standard definition is limited, and the Wii is SD only. It's once you move to higher resolutions that the Wii is really going to look bad next to the competition. Yah. I guarantee there's a lot of people that do or will have 360s and PS3s hooked to an old TV that only has composite inputs that'll be bragging about how much better they are than Wii owners because they have "HDTV graphics!111"

Support political incorrectness and protect future generations of children from dirty pacifist hippies! Buy toy guns!

Yah. That was why they moved to x86. PowerPC has been pretty crappy lately. IBM's failed to deliver higher speed parts and failed to lower the power consumption on their slower parts. So their desktop machines aren't where they were planning to be because the faster parts aren't out, and the laptops are even worse because the cooler parts aren't showing up. Whereas Intel's Core is faster AND cooler, so they can hae a laptop that stomps their current desktops. The PowerMacIntels are probably waiting for the next revision of the Core. There's supposed to be some major jumps in that one, and it's not very far off. ... Or they could just be waiting for more of the high-end apps to be x86-native. That's been a major gripe I've had with the way Linux is handled, and I AM computer-savvy. There's been way too little effort expended on user-friendliness for it to be the Windows killer it's supporters keep claiming it is/should be/will become.

Bumblebee and Megatron here.

Definitely. It was originally an act of desperation, and I was never sure why they kept it up. I can understand the usage on Earth, since they didn't want to accidentally fry some of their fighters or any nearby civilians with the cannon(of course, they screwed it up and DID shoot down at least one fighter), but other than that... Well, most targets aren't large enough for that style of ram. So you're back to a Daedalus attack, just pushing through instead of stopping and shooting. ... Best argument for using the destroids is that they wanted to get clear of the enemy ship before it exploded. If you follow all the way through, you're at ground zero when it goes. If you unload some ammo and pull back, you're... still too close for comfort, but not right inside the explosion. Of course, the zentradi version of ship-to-ship tactics seemed to be "point straight at 'em and charge." So they were already on the right line disturbingly often, and only had to rotate to face them, which the Macross was very capable of. If the missing fold generators and then barrier system hadn't interfered, they could've unloaded a cannon shot through almost every flying pickle they fought.

16-bit? Try 8-bit. They weren't anywhere NEAR as ruthless on the SNES as the NES. Admittedly it was largely because Sega got their footing in the US before the SNES was ready, but still...

Dunno. MAME's state save functionality is so flakey I've never made much real use of it. Didn't MAME32 come with documentation? The help file will probably answer the question faster than we can.

Britai's ship was firing multiple beam cannons from the front of the ship. When you see them in the shot where the camera is looking directly at the front of the ship you can clearly see that it's many beams being fired. When the camera angle switches to show a 3/4 view of Britai's ship firing its weapons, the multiple beams sort of look like one large beam weapon. It's just the viewing angle and the way it's animated that makes it seem like Britai's ship has a large-scale beam weapon. 405717[/snapback] Ah. Thanks. The spies were rewarded with promotions, though. And they were pretty hyped about it. Of course, Kamjin just liked blowing crap up, and Millia was seeking challenges to her skill. So clearly diffrent zentradi have diffrent motivations. I thought they mentioned using it against the supervision army remnants, but I could be wrong again. Bodol did mention that they learned what they could about miclones before exterminating them. ... Or was that in DYRL? That was a special case, though. If he didn't WANT to get hit by a Daedalus Attack, he wouldn't have come in range of one. That episode also implies that Britai's ship can't withstand a Daedalus under "normal" circumstances(is ANY use of the Daedalus Attack really normal circumstances?), since he issues orders to reinforce the bow beforehand AND has the regults and glaugs blast all the destroids before they can unload the main salvo. Of course, it's after the botched DA on Earth, so Britai has a good idea what a Daedalus Attack entails. Before that it would've been a rather bad idea, since there were no survivors or camera recordings, so it would've been a lot of guesswork to figure out how they did it(maybe the PPB disks explode inside the ship. Or Kaifun runs out and uses his magic powers to slay the giants inside!).

But mass-market acceptance of the PS1 and PS2 wasn't hindered by a high price tag. Sony or not, the 600$ suggested retail WILL hurt them. Or do I need to remind everyone of the Saturn? Contrary to popular belief, Sega was near their peak when the Saturn launched, not in an uncontrolled freefall from failed Genesis expansions(though the 32x was certainly an uncomfortably recent bruise, it was no nastier than Nintendo's Virtual Boy, and Nintendo recovered. SegaCD was a LOT better recieved than people give it credit for now). Playstation beat the Saturn by being cheaper to make, cheaper on store shelves, and developer-friendly(it was easy to code for, easy to utilize a good deal of the hardware's capability, and Sony had very generous developer licensing at the time). So Sony had a 300$ system on store shelves with more games than Sega's 400$ system, AND more new games coming. The PS took off, the price wars began, Sega started bleeding red ink on every sale of a Saturn that just wasn't ready for launch, and it was all downhill from there. Fast forward a decade and the PS3 is the most expensive system on the market, Sony has earned a reputation as being very hostile to developers, and the PS3 is a batty and a half to program for from what I've heard. In short, PS3 = Sega Saturn. That's the rumor. If it's true, it'll have to be a hybrid solution(like the PS1 compatibility on the PS2 is). If nothing else, controller and memory card access HAS to be emulated, because the PS3 doesn't have PS2 controller or memory card connectors. (Byebye, GunCon. We'll miss you.).

Quite likely. As we can see when they DO capture some humans, they approach everything from entirely the wrong angle to grasp it. They seemed to think repairs were a magical ability we had(which is admittedly a lot less laughable than it seems, given some of the PC's later projects), or a more advanced version of their self-sealing hulls. But if he HAD figured it out and brought it back... I guess it's better to say I wonder what he expected to happen. There's all sorts of possibilities, partially because we know so little about the zentradi society.

Whoops.

Just to muddy the waters of this debate: wasn't Breetai operating under orders NOT to destroy the SDF-1 and capture it instead? There are many episodes in the series where the Zentraedi could have easily vaporized the SDF-1, but chose not to, with devestating loses. I don't think it was originally an order, but they WERE trying to capture the Macross. As I remember things, it was originally Britai's call. We had reaction missiles. Being legendary weapons to the zentradi, he wanted to know how we got them, and made it a major priority. That and we could repair our ships(heck, we could repair an alien ship we knew nothing about). Between the 2 we were a VERY interesting race, and our knowledge could make the zentradi an even more formidable foe to any that dared cross them. Or make Bodol's fleet more formidable if the zentradi started blasting each other because they couldn't find any other worthy foes. ... Or just give Britai leverage for a major promotion. Destroying a lone supervision army gunboat isn't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, especially an abandoned one manned by a bunch of backwards ignorant miclones on the ass-end of the galaxy that haven't even left their home solar system yet. Britai was a high-ranking commander already, so it would take something far more signifigant to get him an advancement. And recovering the lost secrets of ship maintainence and reaction weaponry would certainly qualify. I've always sort of wondered what would've happened on the zentradi side of things if he HAD successfully recovered that information.

The fold generator presumably ran on electricity, which was used to A. alter spacetime around the vessel, or B. punch through to another dimension(AKA hyperspace). The fold effects would seem to imply the latter. There's nothing to imply any sort of exotic energy is needed to operate the fold generators. In-continuity, I'm not sure why it was dubbed the Super Dimension Fortress. Maybe because it COULD fold, or maybe just because it was really huge(large dimensions). Of course, out of continuity, it was intended to be Super Space Fortress, and was engrish'ed. 405660[/snapback] http://macross.anime.net//story/encycloped...fold/index.html I believe the intent is simply that the fortress can go to and travel via super dimension space, and not that there is anything super or extra-dimensional about the fortress (beyond that it can go someplace special.) 405667[/snapback] Ah, so fold behavior IS defined. Thank you!

You forgot the Dreamcast beat the PS2 to market and IT was superior as well. The PS2 had a major advantage in that it was price-competitive, though. I think the price on the PS3 is because Sony can't afford to take a loss on them right now. The PS2 sold at a loss when it was launched to keep it at a competitive price point. The XBox has sold at a loss since the launch of the original system, and it continues to this day on the 360. The PS3 is what happens when you build without considering affordability and then aren't in good enough shape to sell the finished product at a loss. Sony's thrown systems on the market with issues before. I don't see a reason to expect anything diffrent here. In fact, the PS2 had severe memory bandwidth issues, which is the alleged PS3 problem.

Yeah, that IS worded pretty badly. Sorry. The barrier systems used electrical power from the Macross' "heat-pile" generator to manipulate the energy left over from where the fold generators used to be to create the barrier. The fold generator presumably ran on electricity, which was used to A. alter spacetime around the vessel, or B. punch through to another dimension(AKA hyperspace). The fold effects would seem to imply the latter. There's nothing to imply any sort of exotic energy is needed to operate the fold generators. In-continuity, I'm not sure why it was dubbed the Super Dimension Fortress. Maybe because it COULD fold, or maybe just because it was really huge(large dimensions). Of course, out of continuity, it was intended to be Super Space Fortress, and was engrish'ed. That would imply that projectiles went through the shield unimpeded. Not at all. It absorbed directed energy weapons and clearly deflected kinetic or projectile weaponry. I don't recall any deflected projectile weapons. What makes a chemical explosion diffrent than a nuclear explosion or a directed energy attack, aside from scale? It should absorb the same portion of any given energy impact. Or did you mean it would absorb the same portion of energy from a chemical blast, but since the yield is so much smaller it wouldn't be as signifigant? That would make a lot of sense, actually. The PPB punch was in the Macross Plus OVA, though. That is what the SD organs were for as well as what powers the fold system. Powered everything. The fold system was one of many things under "energy requirements." Like I said, they were interesting mainly as a massive boost in power over the existing "heat-pile" generators, as far as the protoculture were concerned. From a human point of view, they're interesting as a feat of bioengineering that looks more like magic than science. Yup. Was a strong implication there, IMO. The parallels were just too striking.

I guess I have to rewatch things again.

Wait, so Sony's system is fundamentally crippled and outperformed by a competing system that's out now? Where have I seen this before?

Yeah. MSIE has been pretty much static since they took over, and MS fell behind feature-wise. Losing a huge share is VERY relative. If you're curious, tabbed browsing originated in 1994, on some browser no one cares about. It was thrust out of complete obscurity by Opera, then added to Mozilla through the Multizilla extension, then the basic tabbed browsing features were integrated into Mozilla, and then Firefox carried it when they forked off. The dedicated search bar was a Firefox idea. No one else did it because it's a stupid waste of space. Everyone else integrated searches into the URL bar before Firefox ever came into existence. Mozilla added it to the sidebar, along with the dropdown search engine selector, again before Firefox existed. MS doesn't really care if it's a retarded feature, or duplication of an existing feature. They're just filling out a bullet list so any time someone points to a Firefox feature they can say "Yeah, we've got that." I don't really care. MSIE is still the dominant browser, and that's not likely to change. If they fix their security holes and start adopting standards so they can compete for the tenth of the market Firefox has, it actually benefits everyone, because the majority of the world will be using a secure browser that properly supports modern standards. They may not be as dominant as they once were, but they ARE dominant, and that won't change. People use what's in front of them. Firefox's advertising machine, which includes print ads, internet ads, viral marketing campaigns, and a massive public relations force, has made it the undisputed king of non-MSIE browsers, but it still holds only a tenth of the market. MSIE has roughly 85% of the market, and is holding steady there. It has NO print ads, NO internet ads, NO viral marketing, NO PR force. ALL it has to do is exist and over 4/5s of the market will use it, just because it came with their computer.

Actually, we NEVER see the SDF-1's main gun being used while the PPB is active. We DO see continued use of the otherwise strategically unsound Daedalus attack, though.

Diff'rent strokes (hah, see what I did there?). OS X doesn't have much in the way of keyboard shortcuts, so I just don't use my keyboard much for that stuff. I've been told it actually DOES, they're just SEKRIT. 'Sides, browser shortcuts are implemented at the browser, not the OS. I'm very much a fixed-purpose kinda guy. DS = game machine.

I was under the impression that the energy discharges WEREN'T coming from the dangling wires that used to hook to the fold generators, but were a byproduct of the fold generator's failure. Something like a tear in space. The animation, of course, didn't show the energy sparking from anything, just swirling around in midair. The barrier systems used the ship-generated to manipulate THAT energy. The Macross didn't HAVE an SD reactor, so presumably not. It had a "heat-pile system cluster", which can be extrapolated to be some variant of fusion technology since the Mars Base fusion plant was based on the Macross' power plant. As for why the barrier interfered with the main cannon... that's a good question. The fact that the crew of the Macross didn't anticipate the cannon's failure indicates it WASN'T just a matter of power. Especially since the barrier was in operation for some time before they popped up to fire, so they knew very well how much power it was drawing from the ship's systems, and what systems it was drawing from. Something about the barrier technology interfered with the operation of the main cannon, and it wasn't an obvious thing. Beyond that, it's a big question mark. That would imply that projectiles went through the shield unimpeded. If the shield stops projectiles, it has to deal with their kinetic energy. If it stops projectiles, it stops missiles. And if a missile detonates against it, it has to deal with the explosion's energies. To deal with energy, it has to absorb it or deflect it. The shield does BOTH to "energy" weapons. I believe they may've mentioned what percentage was being absorbed at one point in the episode, but I don't recall. Presumably it affects missiles as well, since A. it was viewed as a full defensive system and the zentradi used missiles, and B. it's described as an expansion of the PPB instead of a new technology, and missiles impact against the PPB and detonate. A missile detonation should count as an energy weapon, albeit a poorly-focused one. The zentradi didn't use bullets as far as I can tell, but missiles detonating against the shield implies that other projectiles can't pass through either. So it bounces off and retains it's full momenteum, or part of the energy is absorbed by the shield. Pin-point barrier punch. The disks were movable, they were just USUALLY positioned on the shields for simplicity. Easier for the pilot to track big metal shields on his mech's arms than a bunch of green disks that could be anywhere at any time. Particularly since even the YF-21* seems to lack a 360-degree field of view for many of it's sensors. *Chosen as a sample point because it's the only VF where a pilot could reasonably be expected to keep track of all the available sensor information, as well as the only one where rapid and precise PPB disk relocation would be possible in combat. Not because I have an unhealthy love of the vehicle. The EVIL series pulled energy from a parallel universe to supply their energy requirements. That was how the protodeviln got there in the first place. I don't really see the connection. The evil aliens from another dimension came THROUGH the energy organs, because those organs drew energy from their dimension. And remember, the SD organs were signifigant because they were a massive boost over prior energy generation technologies. The zentradi ships appear well-worn, but built. There's an awful lot of rivets and metal plates for an organic construction process.

Forrest couldn't help that he was retarded. Hikaru could.