Kit's Blog

Java 3 looks like either a) A challenge or b) An impossibility

     Well after taking a look through the first chapter of my programming 3 book I'm wondering whether I can do this. Sure, I catch on fast, but 12 weeks is a lot to miss. It's a lot of applet coding from the looks of it. Something which I've only dabbled in. But more importantly, it's a lot of "inheritance" and "abstract classes." It's not important that you understand these concepts (I know what they are), but that they rely heavily on them for eveything, and that they are complicated and odd and hard to use. But you know what? I feel like another angry rant today (man, I must be angry this week... this is my third one!).
     There's a guy next to my in Japanese who owns an Xbox. Now, personally, I don't hold very much against Xbox (hey, it's not a bad system as far as the Xbox originals are concerned), but when someone advocates for them above PS2 and computer, all hell breaks loose. Now, this person sitting next to me happens to be one of the elusive few who says: "Xbox is the best affordable video gaming system on the market today!" Now here's my two cents. Xbox is a badly, hastily built, and bulky system that was thrown out onto the market in an attempt to spread microsoft's rein over the market today. But this isn't goint to be a rant about microsoft. It's going to be a rant about Xbox. Xbox, in all it's monstrosity, is something that was made by some hack who "was flying back from visiting [my girlfriend] and I had just got a new laptop and I was trying it out on the plane and I was thinking about graphics cards and I realized that we could make a machine that had much higher performance than anything else in the industry." To quote Maddox: "Yeah, it's called PC dumbass. Real revolutionary idea. Take existing hardware, throw it together in a big clunky box and call it a console... Blackley thought he had the formula for a great system because all the components were there for a great system (and they are): a powerful graphics chip, a beefy hard drive, a fast processor and DVD capabilities. What he failed to realize was that just because you have all the raw material to make a great system doesn't mean it's going to be great. Saying the Xbox is a good system because it's powerful is like saying you made a great painting because you used the best set of paints." This is pretty much the whole argument I have as far as Xbox's design, but one of the major points that my "friend" here brought up was that you actually have people on when you log on to any of the online games, whereas on PS2 there's never anyone on. Here's my question to you: Would you rather pay a one time charge of $50? Or pay a one time charge of $50 for the first year and a headset, followed by a $10 a month charge for the rest of your life; that will more than likely include a practically impossible to cancel contract and huge strings attached (such as any cancelations before a perscribed date will cost you $50 dollars extra)?
     Well certainly! You say, you want the first one! Why would you enter such a stupid aggreement for number 2? Well the answer is, is that people are apparently "never on" PS2's massive networks. Well the truth of the matter is that there are tons more people on PS2's networks than on Xbox live's. It's just that on Xbox live's networks, since there's only probably 10 good games, everyone is conjested onto those servers, so it creates the illusion that there are more people there. When, in actuality, the people are spread thinner because there are tons more, better, online games on PS2. So while you spend 15 minutes looking for one good open game that lasts several hours (depending on what game you play), you could instead go out and buy a different system with worse games and a smaller selection and make yourself sure that there is always someone on to play your shitty game with you! Anyway, I just think the Xbox is an overpriced badly designed system thrown out on the market without any forethought. All of the games are either badly made or bad ports of games from other systems. Like Halo. While I do concede that halo is an excellently made game with fantastic graphics and gameplay, it was a computer port. It was originally going to be a computer game, when microsoft purchased the product. And I must say that Halo 2, while also being an excellent game, reminds me far to much of pokemon's re-release of the exact same game with more features over and over again. Certainly I'll play it and enjoy it, but I won't endorse the system, I think it's a piece of shit.