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Alone he rushed into his enemies,
How he saved his homeland,
I've heard legends of that man,
He ran the breadth of the land,
Ruining all he touched to rubble,
I've heard legends of that man,
I've heard legends of that man,
Revered by many, I too, revere him,
Feared by many, I too, fear him,
Now, that man,
Is near to me,
Now, that man,
Stands by me,
Now, friends are with me,
Some, once heroes,
Some, mortal enemies,
We shine ever brighter."
The Super Smash Bros. series, whatever iteration you've played, serves as more than just a fighting game, but as a tribute to all that Nintendo has accomplished thus far. Nintendo is to video games what Disney is to animation. Both excel at crafting revolutionary entertainment for audiences of all ages, with reputations of high quality and satisfaction. The characters brought about by these companies have also entered the public consciousness of storytelling and art. Many, need no introduction.
The lyrics you've just read belong to the theme of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a version of the series for the Nintendo Wii. The song was composed by the ineffable Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy, whose lyricism has graced "Aria di Mezzo Caraterre", "The One-Winged Angel", and "Liberi Fatali." His theme brings a rather mature and exalted mood to the game. The roster of Nintendo characters aren't simply ones who have been made up on the spot, but world-famous icons who's feats have entered the annals of video game history, Mario, Luigi, Kirby, Link, Samus, Pikachu, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Fox McCloud, Bowser, Pit, Peach, Marth, Ganondorf, Mewtwo, and even R.O.B. The Robot. The song is reminding players that they are fighting with and against the characters who've helped to craft video games as we understand them. That is something to be both honored and feared. Manaav Goyal of Always Nintendo, has spoken on the variety of interpretations in these lyrics,
"The story behind the song is one that can be interpreted in many ways. A clear one is that the lyrics are in the point of view of one of the fighters in the game, stating how these are noble heroes, who I am willing to fight with and against. Another interpretation could be that the song is about the fierceness of the fighters in the game. The song is in E major, which as stated by Austrian composer Anoton Bruckner, "is frequently associated with contemplation." This statement mirrors the song well, as the story does follow a man observing his relationship towards the champions, and what they truly are to him."
As far as fighting games go, and I've played my share, the Super Smash Bros. series is something special. For one, there is no bar of HP that determines how many hits one can take. Rather, each hit you take racks up a percentage, the higher your percentage, the more likely you are to be thrown out of the arena. The battle is won by the person who can throw his opponents out of the area x number of times (depending on the number of lives one has). So the game becomes a strategy of knocking the others out of the arena as fast as possible. This can helped or stalled by the various arenas, which include the Mushroom Kingdom, Pokemon Stadium, and Hyrule Castle. Numerous items can also be picked up or thrown, from Pokeballs, to Fire Flowers, to Hammers, to Ray Guns. Pokeballs being my personal favorite, if only for their random variety. Though what truly makes Super Smash Bros. worthwhile, and arguably one of the finest fighting games out there, is the multiplayer option. Games can devolve into a four way battle royal, in which it can be difficult to tell who is hitting what and where. This chaos can allow for a number of things to happen, and at times, the winner won't always be clear cut. I have to admit that I usually button mash when I play, which can be fun at times, but strategy is what will save you in the long stretch.
Super Smash Bros comes from the mind of Masahiro Sakurai, who also directed the Kirby series. Satoru Iwata, the current director of Nintendo, reflected on the creation of the series with Sakurai in an interview. The prototype was initially called Dragon King: The Fighting Game, the idea of using Nintendo characters came in when Sakurai realized that for the 64 console, a degree of character development was needed. Since Nintendo already had a set of popular characters, Sakurai thought it expedient to select from them instead of making new ones from scratch. The usage of Nintendo characters was initially met with resistance by fans, since making these beloved heroes fight one another didn't sound very appealing. History has proven otherwise. Even non-Nintendo characters who have appeared on Nintendo systems were later added to the roster, Sonic, Mega-Man, Solid Snake, and Pac-Man. Sakurai has emphasized how Super Smash Bros is supposed to resemble a once-in-a-lifetime experience, a game that changes every time you play it, as he said, "The appeal of Smash Bros. lies in the fact that it offers ever-changing entertainment born of chance and player improvisation..."
Nintendo has come a long way since its humble beginnings in 1889 as a company that sold hanafuda playing cards. With their leap into video games during the 1970's, well, you know: Donkey Kong, NES, Super Mario Bros, Nintendo Power, Duck Hunt, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Punch-Out, SNES, Super Mario Bros. 3, StarFox, Game Boy, Pokemon Red and Blue, Nintendo 64, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, GameCube, Fire Emblem, Game Boy Color, Super Metroid, Pokemon Silver and Gold, Game Boy Advance, Final Fantasy VI, Nintendo DS, Mario Kart, Chrono Trigger, Nintendo Wii, Twilight Princess, et cetera, et cetera.
It is also said that the word "nintendo" means "leave luck to heaven", well, maybe there's something to that.
Bibliography
Goyal, Manaav. "Behind the Notes: Super Smash Bros. Brawl Theme." Always Nintendo, June 21, 2014. Web. http://alwaysnintendo.com/behind-notes-super-smash-bros-brawl-theme/
Sakurai, Masahiro. Interviewed by Satoru Iwata. "Iwata Asks: Dragon King: The Fighting Game." Nintendo. Web. http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/ssbb/6/0
Sakurai, Masahiro. Interviewed by Satoru Iwata. "Iwata Asks: Super Smash Bros Brawl: Once In A Lifetime." Nintendo. Web. http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/ssbb/6/2
"Super Smash Bros. Brawl Main Theme - Lyrics." YouTube, June 29, 2014. Web. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtyQ7HqHlqs
Lords Of The Fallen Free Download
Lords Of The Fallen PC Game 2014 Overview
Features of Lords of the Fallen
- Animations and graphics are amazing
- Action Role Playing game
- Player can take help of magic spells
- Latest technology weapons
System Requirements of Lords Of The Fallen PC Game 2014
- Operating System: Tested On Windows 7 64 Bit
- CPU: Core i 3
- RAM: 6 GB / 8GB
- Hard disk Space: 25 GB
Lords Of The Fallen Free Download
I've clarified it on individual terms, but have so far avoided a secondary (or would that be tertiary?) public statement. And that's probably hurt me in social media because a lot of times people assume the worst. Especially in this day and age when it seems like half the population are abusers, scumbags, terrorists, intolerant religious zealots, sociopaths, hardened criminals, political extremists, and so on and so forth.
For a quick refresher, here is my original blog post, from over a year ago, where I came out as za'akier, a green-skinned, tentacled humanoid... biologically human*, but still extraterrestrial regarding identity. And that's what it all comes down to. How I see myself is different than how others probably view me. And that's ok... expected, even.
I'm an outsider. That's one of the reasons why I gravitate towards the writing of H.P. Lovecraft, and why I find a kinship with him and other writers in the Lovecraft Circle, other creators using the Cthulhu Mythos to push something forward, an agenda that goes beyond time and space.
But that's a blog post for another time, I think.
Right now, I want to reassure those who already know and support me, and those I haven't gotten the chance to meet (lot of angry people on reddit), that I'm not against anyone based on skin color, ethnicity, sexual preferences (unless you're a pedophile), identity, gender, politics, creed, etc.
My opening up to the internet about being za'akier wasn't about tearing anyone down or mocking those who are different, marginalized, etc. On the contrary, I was identifying as an outsider, specifically the kind of alien identification previously mentioned.
To me, the term "trans" means more to me than a penis, vagina, beard, shaved legs, or any of the superficial trappings of biological sex and what we conceptualize as gender. Transformation is rooted in how we see ourselves, and the cognitive dissonance that might evolve between our own self-perspective and that of the world at large.
To those who've hurt me, whether intentional or not, this past year, I forgive you. But let's get over our differences sooner than later, yeah?
It's Christmas today. If I could have one wish for the entire world, it would be for everyone to breathe deeply, try to relax, be themselves (leave the "hivemind" at the door), and get along with as many people as humanly possible.
Merry Christma'as!
VS
* There's some interesting information on "otherkin" which may or may not muddy the waters. I'm not saying that I'm part of that group, and I'm not saying I'm not. It's complicated.
This episode is all about the Irem arcade game Moon Patrol, ported by Atari via GCC. Thanks for your patience regarding the release of this episode. I had a bit of an emotional setback in January and I'm trying to fight my way out of it. M.A.D. by US Games will be the next game I'm covering, so if you have any feedback for the game please send it to me at 2600gamebygame@gmail.com by end of day 23 February. Thank you for listening!
Moon Patrol on Random Terrain
Moon Patrol on KLOV
Moon Patrol on Atari Protos
The Zorfon Mystery by Rob Wanenchak
Mark Ackerman's web site
Atari Age Moon Patrol title screen glitch
Get Matt's Repro Freeway patch on eBay
For this Tech Book Face Off, I felt like expanding my horizons a bit. Instead of reading about programming languages or software development or computer science and engineering, I thought I would take a look at some computer history from the business perspective. There are plenty of reading options out there in this space, but I settled on a couple of books about Microsoft. The first, Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft by David Bank, is about Bill Gate's hardball business tactics that won him a monopoly in the PC desktop market, but then nearly destroyed the company in that fateful confrontation with the US Justice Department and caused him to miss the Internet and, later, the mobile revolution. The second, Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft by G. Pascal Zachary, has an even longer subtitle that neatly describes the book on its own. Both of these books were written quite a while ago, so let's see how their stories hold up today.
VS. |
Breaking Windows
The narrative starts out with the backstory of how Gates came into his PC desktop monopoly by realizing that software—specifically the computer's operating system—would be an important and valuable part of the PC ecosystem. As PC hardware got cheaper and more prevalent, the software volumes would grow with the spread of the hardware, and at essentially zero marginal cost to Microsoft. All they needed to do was become the defacto standard OS. That's what Gates set out to do, and he succeeded with Windows 3.1 and then Windows 95. The bulk of the story takes place after Microsoft had achieved its monopoly and was deciding on strategies to defend it.
One of the main strategies was to identify competitors that were creating software that was somewhat tangential to Windows or could be added as a compelling feature, and whose software was becoming popular enough to potentially pose a threat to Windows by becoming a new platform. Microsoft would then create their own version of that software and integrate it into Windows or otherwise absorb the other company's software, nullifying the threat to their monopoly.
The most prominent example of this absorption strategy came with Internet Explorer and the browser wars between Microsoft and Netscape. Netscape Navigator started out with nearly the entire market of the World Wide Web before Microsoft got into the browser business. By the time Microsoft had revved up to IE 3.0, they had claimed a significant amount of market share from Netscape, and because of bundling IE with Windows and offering it for free to older versions of Windows, Netscape was doomed to lose in the long (or not-so-long) run.
Everything was not all peaches and cream within Microsoft, though. There were two warring camps fighting for the soul of Microsoft. On one side was the Windows team led by Jim Allchin that was developing the next big thing: Windows NT. On the other side was the Internet Platform and Tools Division led by Brad Silverberg that wanted to leave Windows behind and try to capture as much of this new Internet frontier as possible, using IE as the platform. Gates would end up siding with Allchin and IE became a part of the Windows platform instead of growing into one of its own.
It's almost comical seeing some of these disagreements today. One of the most important features of the IE platform that was integrated into Windows as an option was Active Desktop, but this feature seems so inconsequential today. Making the desktop background a web page was fraught with problems, and all that has survived is a way to enable single-click icons instead of the usual double-click to run a program. I don't think hardly anyone used it, especially after dealing with multiple desktop crashes. I remember it being a novelty for a while, but I soon stopped enabling it because it was so annoying and a double-click is so ingrained in my desktop usage.
Of course, the disagreement with the Justice Department over Microsoft's monopoly was not so insignificant. Part of the reason their tactics got them into trouble was because IE was offered as a free upgrade for older versions of Windows that didn't have it or had older versions of IE. If Microsoft had truly made IE an integrated part of Windows and only released new versions of it with new versions of Windows, Microsoft's competitors wouldn't have had as strong of a case. Microsoft wouldn't have had as strong of a monopoly, either, because IE was getting new versions much faster than Windows was and people that didn't upgrade Windows were still getting free upgrades of IE.
Even so, the government's eventual breakup proposal was preposterous. They wanted to force Microsoft to set prices for Windows versions with and without IE based on how many bytes each version was, like it was produce or meat or something. The government obviously had no understanding of what software really was, no idea how ridiculous that sounded, or what a good solution to the real problems of Microsoft's monopoly would actually look like. In the end that proposal was dropped, and the entire court case seemed to have done nothing more than give Microsoft a ton of bad press.
In the mean time Gates had done plenty of other damage to Microsoft and Windows because of deciding to pursue these retrenchment strategies with the browser and other things related to the Internet. Bank makes the case that Gates should have pursued the Internet platform strategy in order to disrupt his own business and grab the larger market that was just coming to light, but I'm not so sure that would have worked, either. If he had done that, would he have been able to beat Google before they rose to the top, or would he have been able to foresee the coming of mobile and the smartphone before Apple took over with the iPhone? It's hard to imagine Microsoft getting all of that right and still being top dog today. (Although they're now doing quite well now under Satya Nadella.)
There was so much more in this book, like the section on how XML came to be. (Of course bloated, complicated XML was created at Microsoft. In the book it was portrayed as a genius innovation by Adam Bosworth that would help Microsoft take over Internet data flows in spite of Gate's decisions. I'm so glad JSON has stopped that nonsense.) I could keep going, but it's all in the book. It was a wonderful trip down memory lane, covering plenty of things I had forgotten about that were a big deal at the time (remember the AOL shortcut bundled on the Windows Desktop). The book is decently written, if a bit confusing at times. Bank jumps around a lot, and there's no overarching timeline to the narrative. Regardless, it gives great insights into what was happening at Microsoft through all of the turmoil in its history and is well worth the quick read.
Showstopper!
As the subtitle describes, Showstopper! is the story of how the first version of Windows NT was conceived and built. It makes for quite an engaging story, as the NT team was arranged within Microsoft in a unique way for the company. Instead of being a department that reported to and was directly overseen by Bill Gates, the team was more of a startup company within Microsoft that operated fairly independently and was left more or less to its own devices. Gates did check in and imposed some of his own requirements from time to time, but not anything like other departments within Microsoft.
One of the main reasons for this independence was the force of nature that was Dave Cutler, the chief architect and director of Windows NT. Cutler was aggressive and expected incredible things from his team, and he did not get along well with Gates, either. Gates had hired him when Cutler had left Digital Equipment Corp. and respected and trusted him enough to let Cutler run things as he saw fit, so Gates pretty much left him alone.
Cutler had brought along a number of programmers from his team at Digital to be the core of the NT team, and as he took on more Microsoft employees to build out the team, a rivalry emerged between the two groups:
The Digital defectors also were more methodical about their jobs, hewing to textbook engineering practices in contrast to the Microsofties, who often approached a problem helter-skelter. Cutler's people took work seriously, while Microsofties sometimes tossed nerf balls in the hallways or strummed guitars in their offices. The differences in style were apparent to Cutler's people, who derisively referred to Microsoft as "Microslop." By the same token, Microsofties were put off by the clannishness of Cutler's gang.Regardless of these divisions, work got done and NT progressed through big scope changes and constant feature creep. Throughout the project Cutler never really trusted or approved of the graphics team. He had always been a terminal kind of guy and didn't see the need for a GUI, and he did not agree with the graphics team's much more laid back approach to software development. The graphics team was dealing with their own internal issues as well, having chosen a new, immature programming language to write the GUI: C++. While it was a new language at the time and the supporting tools were rough and unstable, G. Pascal Zachary's assessment of the language seems a little off:
While it was portable, however, C was difficult to master and gave a programmer a great deal of latitude, which increased the likelihood of coding errors. A more inspired choice—a gambler's choice—was C++, a newer language that was all the rage among software theorists. By preventing code writers from making mistakes, C++ promised faster results and greater consistency, which would benefit programs that were the work of many people.C++ is hardly easier to master than C! With C++ being a superset of C, C is most certainly the simpler language. While it may be true that C++ can support larger projects, it is also quite easy to make C++ programs much more complicated than C. These kinds of off-the-cuff assessments were fairly common in the book, and they made it seem like Zachary was either over-simplifying things or he didn't fully appreciate the technical aspects of these topics. This tendency to over-simplify was especially apparent whenever he was discussing features of NT. The discussions nearly always dealt in generalities, and it was difficult to figure out which features, exactly, he was talking about. He would mention that features were missing from NT or that programmers were adding features on their own whims without specifying what those features actually were. Not knowing what he was referring to became quite frustrating at times.
Even with the occasional vagueness, other discussions were satisfyingly to the point, like whenever the client-server architecture of NT came up:
Time and again, Cutler had hoped to dispel doubts about client-server. In his design, the kernel code treated the entire graphical portion of the operating system, including the Windows personality, as an application. It was a classic design choice. Client-server ensured reliability but degraded performance. It was probably Cutler's most momentous decision.The performance hit incurred with the client-server model was a constant issue during the development of NT, and it wasn't until near the end of the project, and after a year delay, that the performance was brought under control and near parity with Windows 3.1. The story of how Cutler's team achieved the necessary performance while fixing the innumerable bugs as NT came closer and closer to release was one of the best threads of the book.
The book is also riddled with pieces of advice on software development, most often in the form of little narratives about different aspects of the project and a vast array of the programmers and testers that worked on it. Things like adding programmers to a late project makes it later, working longer hours is counterproductive, first make it right then make it fast, the number of bugs in a system is unknowable, and automated testing and stress tests improve code quality all appeared at various points in the story. It was enjoyable to see all of these hard-won nuggets of wisdom come up and be acknowledged during the course of such a high-profile project.
Sometimes the words of wisdom were quite humorous, too. At one point Cutler had written an email that included this gem: "If you don't put [bugs] in, you don't have to find them and take them out!" Well, yes, that's great. If only it were that easy! Of course he was trying to encourage his programmers to be more diligent and rigorous, but what a way to say it.
Throughout the book, new people were continuously introduced, each with their own mini-narratives told within the larger context of the NT project. It was nice to learn about so many different people that had a hand in the project, and there were dozens of stories related of the approximately 250 people that helped NT over the finish line, but it became exhausting to keep track of everyone as the names kept piling on. The number of people became pretty overwhelming even though only a small fraction of them made it into the book.
The scope and accomplishment that is Windows NT is quite astounding. Nothing like it had ever been done before, and the scale of the project was beyond anything achieved in software development up to that point. The scale of development wouldn't be surpassed until Windows 2000, seven years later. Even with the rough edges and occasional frustrations, the story of how NT was built was a fascinating and entertaining read. I would definitely recommend giving it a read if you're at all interested in how Microsoft managed to revolutionize its Windows operating system.
Out of all the privacy-focused products and apps available on the market, Brave has been voted the best. Other winners of Product Hunt's Golden Kitty awards showed that there was a huge interest in privacy-enhancing products and apps such as chats, maps, and other collaboration tools.
An extremely productive year for Brave
Last year has been a pivotal one for the crypto industry, but few companies managed to see the kind of success Brave did. Almost every day of the year has been packed witch action, as the company managed to officially launch its browser, get its Basic Attention Token out, and onboard hundreds of thousands of verified publishers on its rewards platform.
Luckily, the effort Brave has been putting into its product hasn't gone unnoticed.
The company's revolutionary browser has been voted the best privacy-focused product of 2019, for which it received a Golden Kitty award. The awards, hosted by Product Hunt, were given to the most popular products across 23 different product categories.
Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt said:
"Our annual Golden Kitty awards celebrate all the great products that makers have launched throughout the year"
Brave's win is important for the company—with this year seeing the most user votes ever, it's a clear indicator of the browser's rapidly rising popularity.
Privacy and blockchain are the strongest forces in tech right now
If reaching 10 million monthly active users in December was Brave's crown achievement, then the Product Hunt award was the cherry on top.
The recognition Brave got from Product Hunt users shows that a market for privacy-focused apps is thriving. All of the apps and products that got a Golden Kitty award from Product Hunt users focused heavily on data protection. Everything from automatic investment apps and remote collaboration tools to smart home products emphasized their privacy.
AI and machine learning rose as another note-worthy trend, but blockchain seemed to be the most dominating force in app development. Blockchain-based messaging apps and maps were hugely popular with Product Hunt users, who seem to value innovation and security.
For those users, Brave is a perfect platform. The company's research and development team has recently debuted its privacy-preserving distributed VPN, which could potentially bring even more security to the user than its already existing Tor extension.
Brave's effort to revolutionize the advertising industry has also been recognized by some of the biggest names in publishing—major publications such as The Washington Post, The Guardian, NDTV, NPR, and Qz have all joined the platform. Some of the highest-ranking websites in the world, including Wikipedia, WikiHow, Vimeo, Internet Archive, and DuckDuckGo, are also among Brave's 390,000 verified publishers.
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