In a growing chorus of anti-Persian comments that I hear in mainstream media and other generous people I meet on a daily basis, I would say that it's a breath of fresh air. Shouldn't every person be proud of their background? Or should everyone be anti-wherever-they-come-from ?
Even if the Persian Empire had been so terribly great and liberal, which it wasn't,
Seeing as how the Cyrus Cylinder is known as one of the original formal declarations on human rights, I would say that they were pretty liberal for their time. Liberating Jews and allowing them to return to their homeland? Unheard of in that era. They weren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but very forward-thinking for their time. They were one of the first civilizations to use women-warriors in their military, which scared other armies shitless when they would see swarms of "Amazonian women" charging at them.
modern Persians are not their inheritors.
Modern Persians haven't really changed much culturally in the thousands of years, at least in terms of hospitality and politeness. If you've ever bothered to visit the country or actually meet a real Persian, you would see that they've retained their culture quite nicely. No, they're not the same. We've been bombarded by invasions over the last thousand years and that has somewhat shaped who we are, but we've retained our core being.
But hey, ignorance is so much easier!
That said, if you think that makes an argument stronger, we should switch to quoting the original Old Persian, oh, and the Spartan and Athenian evidence in Ancient Greek. I'm certainly educated enough to handle both languages. How about you sport? You have an actual fucking clue there?
There's your original Old Persian inscription, and that was just the first twelve lines of the first column, which had roughly 96 lines. (Of course, Slashdot screws up accent marks.) Happy, sport?
Simply put, he was misquoted and people like you continue to perpetuate that myth. There are HEAPS of other quotes that you could pick out to criticize the guy on, but you insist on choosing the one that was already debunked. Just take a look at the link I provided above, I mean this guy doesn't shut up. You seriously shouldn't be at a loss for finding material to bastardize this guy on.
But it's a moot point, as it really doesn't matter what Ahmadinejad says. He has no control over the military. In Iran, the President sets economic policies and nothing else. It's the supreme ayatollah (may his face catch on fire. I hate him too.) that controls the military and can wage war.
Still, Amadinejad is an embarrassment to all of us Persians.
Please mod parent up. This is absolutely correct. The government has zero business in trying to influence our behavior by continuously taxing us on every activity that it deems unfit. We already have enough taxes to pay, there is no reason why we should also face taxes on our behavior.
I don't think that the government should do anything at all, but if they absolutely MUST do something, why not reward those that make healthy choices, as opposed to penalizing those that do not?
Wouldn't this be like having a package wrongly delivered to your house (through no fault of your own: the sender had the wrong address), and since it contained highly confidential information, a judge ordered your house to be burned to the ground? (Okay, that's a bit extreme, but you get my point.)
Well, the judge didn't order the SWAT team to kill the dogs in this case, but they did sign on the no-knock warrant on the wrong house. This story actually fits your analogy. A bunch of delivery guys had a scam going on where they would leave packages of drugs in front of innocent people's homes, and other guys would come over and pick it up. The police somewhat caught on, but didn't realize that the packages were being sent to people who had nothing to do with this. So they set up a sting operation where an officer delivered a 32 pound box of marijuana. The person who opened the door - the mayor's mother-in-law - initially refused to sign for the package, but eventually they took it in.
In this story, it was the Mayor of Berwynn Heights who was the victim, and the police didn't seem to realize this until after the raid. Even with as much political clout that this Mayor had, he still couldn't get the Sheriff's department to change their ways.
I mean, come on, there isn't anywhere in the world the hammer and sickle are outlawed and the commies killed far more than the nazis did so it should be even more fun than Wolfenstein!
Except The Republic of Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania. Well, the exception is that it can be used for educational and artistic reasons, and I'm sure they can get away with it for artistic reasons in this case.:-)
The Swastika didn't kill anyone. A bunch of jackasses did. Why don't you just outlaw people planning to kill other people?
Do you think not having a Swastika will prevent a dictator or demagogue from choosing a different symbol to hide behind?
Especially since it's a historically sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Mithraism. Actually, reading about the Swastika here and how popular of a symbol it was before the rise and all of the Nazi Party, I'm shocked that you don't see it more often in Western nations.
Third, no worries. A small, controlled population with a ratio of 1 male to 10 females properly sheltered will be able to keep society going. Naturally, the females will need to be chosen for their attractiveness and the males for the knowledge and skills they know (I'm thinking lots of engineers will be needed so sign me up).
They probably need lots of Penetration Specialists too;)
Second, (as Dr Strangelove pointed out) a doomsday machine only makes sense as a deterent if both sides know about it. Why wasn't the machine made public earlier when the Soviets thought that the US was about to launch an attack?
It wasn't for the U.S. to know, it was for their own military and civilians leaders. MAD was already in place because both sides knew of each others stockpile of nuclear weapons. Had they told the U.S. about this system, however, the U.S. would have tried to plan around it. Think of this as an ace up their sleeve.
No, this system wasn't for the U.S. to know, it was for their own people. This was to prevent the Soviets from being too eager to launch an accidental nuclear counterstrike during a false alarm or an unconfirmed attack. Remember Stanislav Petrov and the situation he was faced with? There was a system malfunction in 1983 that showed IBMs were heading toward the Soviet Union, and he determined that it was a false alarm. Cooler heads prevailed and we're all here today to read about it.
This device, however, would detect a positive missile strike, launch missiles, and those missiles would send down coded orders for any other weapons systems that were still active. It guaranteed revenge, and that knowledge kept overeager people on the Soviet side from being too trigger happy.
Oh and the automatic quote that the/. page generates at the bottom is: "Boy, am I glad it's only 1971...":-)
Hey, we should use devices like this to get children used to the idea of being watched constantly. ..
Then, when they are adults, they won't mind Big Brother watching every little thing they do. It's for their safety, after all!
~AA
I agree and wish I had mod points. Once we get an entire generation of children used to the idea that electronic monitoring "is good for us", then the same principle will be forced onto the adults. The best way to make something acceptable in society is to have the children grow up with it. I'd rather not go down that route.
People who preach unquestioning submission would *never* tolerate becoming prisoners. Riiight...
Just look at the events in Iran this entire year! So many young students have died protesting. People as young as 12 and 13 have been killed by the government-backed militia. It's sickening that anyone that young has to die for their rights, but much like any country that wants a democracy, there needs to be dissent, revolution, and bloodshed. You can't have freedom handed to you on a silver platter.
No matter how you get there, there will be lives lost. This theocracy has been going on in Iran for only 30 years, and it has quickly reached a boiling point with the people. Yes, this theocracy is a relatively new thing in Iran. Here was Iran in the 1970s, before the Islamic takeover. The last picture shows you what Iran looks like today in contrast to the previous pictures, which were all taken before the 1979 Islamic revolution.
In any other nation where people simply preach submission, they would have rolled over and played dead the minute Ahmadinejad was announced as the winner. The people of Iran have stood up for their rights and have been protesting non-stop since the elections. We need to give them at least that much credit.
Keep in mind, all forms of weapons are banned in Iran, thus the people have no way of fighting back. They are simply too scared. The Government-backed militia has weapons and numbers on their side and they're pretty ruthless when it comes to killing people. This isn't some stereotypical Hollywood-made Middle Eastern nation where every house comes equipped with an AK-47 to shoot at infidels. Simply owning a weapon can get you into hot water over there, let alone actually using it against the Government.
U.S. government works are automatically public domain. Shouldn't state government materials be the same way?
I agree - anything I produce while on the clock at work enters a murky domain where the people paying me can claim that they are the new owners. Any work done on taxpayer funds should belong to the public. At any rate, Oregon is not gaining anything by copyrighting their "Guide to Oregon Public Record Laws".
But lets face it. If they force GPS on us, well, that's great news for GPS makers.
You're not too far off. From the article:
Blumenauer is a long-time advocate of bicycling and mass transit in Congress. Many of his largest campaign donors stand to benefit from his newly introduced legislation. Honeywell International, for example, is a major manufacturer RFID equipment. The company also happens to be the second biggest contributor in the current cycle to Blumenauerâ(TM)s Political Action Committee (PAC), the Committee for a Livable Future. Another top-ten donor, Accenture, is a specialist in the video tolling field.
I really, really don't like the sound of this. Even if there is no evil conspiracy to track us all, the government should never have such a tool at their disposal to begin with. Yes, they can already do this with credit card records at pumps, but at least you have the option of paying in cash. I never thought I would see the day when the government would propose a mandate on every motorist having GPS installed in their car and not see everyone panic.
This is/., where even the most mundane topic brings screams of 1984 from slashdotters, but an article about government mandated GPS is posted and judging by some of the other posters here, most people are liking it? I guess all I can do is continue to vote for small government.
one of the nice things about 911 is the 9 and the 1s are on different sides of the keypad, so if you call 911, you really mean to call it
Where there's a will, there's a way!:-)
In my office, we've had the police come by several times to the point where building management had to send an e-mail blast saying that we were going to get fined for accidentally dialing 9-1-1 and then hanging up. To dial out of our phone system, we have to hit 9. A lot of us have to get on conference calls which requires a 1-888 or 1-866 number. Well, some of my office mates would hit 9 to connect out, but for whatever reason they don't hear the dial tone, so they hit 9 again. (even though it registered the first time...)
Then for whatever reason, they would hit 1 twice (probably for the same reason why they hit 9 twice), connecting them to emergency dispatcher. They would immediately hang up, but by then it's too late. The dispatcher will automatically assume an emergency if you hang up, and a patrol car is sent to our office. We were told that if we accidentally do this again, to just stay on the line and to tell the dispatcher that it was an accident so that they don't automatically send police over.
I don't think we've had the problem since the warning, but I think it's interesting that despite the keys being all the way across the keypad, people still manage to dial 9-1-1.
Playing Wolf3D without SoundBlaster and Adlib support was just disappointing.
Point well taken - I remember the days of SoundBlaster and getting it to work on my PC to hear those very voices that you describe in Wolf3D. My little write-up did no justice to that game.
Oh and regarding the phrases spoken by the German soldiers, I did a search and found a site that lists them all:
My thoughts are really disjointed tonight, so forgive me.
I do agree with the author, sometimes a first-person perspective may not be the only way to immerse a gamer. Video games, especially first person shooters, used to rely solely on vision. The original Wolfenstein 3D on the PC did not have a rumble feature or 5.1 surround sound, but was still considered groundbreaking because of the perspective it put the gamer in.
The best games, however, do more with existing technologies, such as using a vibration in the controller to indicate either a pulse or that danger is nearby. The use of dark ambient music, creaking noises in floorboards while walking around, or the sudden screeching noise when something pops out also helps. While we cannot do anything with our sense of taste of smell in video games yet, (thank GOODNESS...) we can at least emphasize certain sounds and touch a little more than just pretty graphics.
Going along with the article, the first person perspective brings the dilemma of the "silent hero", because that hero is supposed to be you. However, you rarely get to interact with anything beyond acknowledging an NPC's request to retrieve something for them. You don't get to forge a bond with any of the characters based on your personality traits. I think this is key -- I was way more into Final Fantasy VII because of the level of interaction with the characters. You get to know them and you get to like them. Rockstar Games tried to get characters more involved with NPCs in GTA IV by having the players go out and spend time with them, but you really never get to know them. You go out with them, but only hear side-conversation going on. You're not really allowed to say anything in that game beyond clicking on the NPC to get the next quest.
There are still limitations. There are only a finite number of dialog choices and while you can allow the gamer to make their own dialog (as with the original Police Quest series), NPCs won't understand most of it and will only give canned responses. MMORPG's will allow gamers to say whatever they want to other gamers, but are still bound to the NPC's world. Most games don't have that story-telling feature to allow the gamers to create their own quests.
So yes, it's not all about the first-person perspective. Sound and touch also play a role, but the biggest factor of all is the depth of interaction with other characters and the unique, likable personalities that let you identify with them.
Wireless VPN is not where it needs to be. If you have something THAT secure, just don't communicate wirelessly. Set up a wired VPN connection.
This reminds me of the Verizon FIOS guy who came over to install FIOS for our house. He noticed that I was using WPA2 encryption and a MAC Address filter, and said something like "If you're this paranoid about security, you shouldn't even be on the Internet".
Given that it's "only" 325 light years away from Earth, it would certainly be spectacular, as you say. I wonder if such a collision would have any effect on our planet. Of course this isn't due for another million years, but you're right, high-powered telescopes and popcorn are in order.:)
I could be wrong, but I think it has Wi-Fi. Looking at the link provided by the summary:
For the first time get high-speed broadband that's as fast as an internet connection at home. Enjoy rich interactive content across the web and view pages the way they should be seen with stunning full-screen browsing.
* 3.5G and WLAN connectivity
* Quadband GSM with GPRS and EDGE
* Data transfers over a cellular network 10/2Mbps * Data transfers over Wi-Fi 54Mbps
* Flash 9.4 support
* Full-screen browsing
Yeah, at such a high price range, it better have Wi-Fi!:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but this is more pro-Persian propaganda.
In a growing chorus of anti-Persian comments that I hear in mainstream media and other generous people I meet on a daily basis, I would say that it's a breath of fresh air. Shouldn't every person be proud of their background? Or should everyone be anti-wherever-they-come-from ?
Even if the Persian Empire had been so terribly great and liberal, which it wasn't,
Seeing as how the Cyrus Cylinder is known as one of the original formal declarations on human rights, I would say that they were pretty liberal for their time. Liberating Jews and allowing them to return to their homeland? Unheard of in that era. They weren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but very forward-thinking for their time. They were one of the first civilizations to use women-warriors in their military, which scared other armies shitless when they would see swarms of "Amazonian women" charging at them.
modern Persians are not their inheritors.
Modern Persians haven't really changed much culturally in the thousands of years, at least in terms of hospitality and politeness. If you've ever bothered to visit the country or actually meet a real Persian, you would see that they've retained their culture quite nicely. No, they're not the same. We've been bombarded by invasions over the last thousand years and that has somewhat shaped who we are, but we've retained our core being.
But hey, ignorance is so much easier!
That said, if you think that makes an argument stronger, we should switch to quoting the original Old Persian, oh, and the Spartan and Athenian evidence in Ancient Greek. I'm certainly educated enough to handle both languages. How about you sport? You have an actual fucking clue there?
1. \ adam \ DÃrayavauÅ \ xÅÃyathiya \ vazraka \ xÅÃyatha \ xÅÃyathiy
2. ÃnÃm \ xÅÃyathiya \ PÃrsaiy \ xÅÃyathiya \ dahyÃnÃm \ ViÅt
3. Ãspahyà \ puÃa \ ArÅÃmahyà napà \ HaxÃmaniÅiya \ thÃtiy \
4. DÃrayavauÅ \ xÅÃyathiya \ manà \ pità \ ViÅtÃspa \ ViÅtÃspahyà \ pità \ ArÅ
5. Ãma \ ArÅÃmahyà \ pità \ AriyÃramna \ AriyÃramnahyà \ pitÃ\ CiÅpiÅ \ CiÅp
6. ÃiÅ \ pità \ HaxÃmaniÅ \ thÃtiy \ DÃrayavauÅ \ xÅÃthiya \ avahyarÃ
7. diy \ vayam \ HaxÃmaniÅiyà \ thahyÃmahy \ hacà \ paruviyata \ ÃmÃtà \ ama
8. hy hacà \ paruviyata \hyà \amÃxam \ taumà \ xÅÃyathiyà \ Ãha \ th
9. Ãtiy \ DÃrayavauÅ \ xÅÃyathiya \ VIII \ manà \ taumÃyà \ tyaiy \ paruvam
10. xÅÃyathiyà \ Ãha \ adam navama \ IX \ duvitÃparanam \ vavam \ xÅÃyathi
11. yà \ amahy \ thÃtiy \ DÃrayavauÅ \ xÅÃyathiya \ vaÅnà \ Auramazd
12. Ãha \ adam \ xÅÃyathiya \ amiy \ Auzamazdà \ xÅaÃam \ manà \ frÃbara \ th
There's your original Old Persian inscription, and that was just the first twelve lines of the first column, which had roughly 96 lines. (Of course, Slashdot screws up accent marks.) Happy, sport?
Right, because when someone invades your country you want to be able to nuke them on your own soil?
Well, those invading troops have to come from somewhere, right? (And I hope it never comes to that...)
As much as I hate Ahmadinejad, and as much as it pains me to defend the guy, I hate continuous ignorance from an AC just as much.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel#.22Wiped_off_the_map.22_or_.22Vanish_from_the_pages_of_time.22_translation
Simply put, he was misquoted and people like you continue to perpetuate that myth. There are HEAPS of other quotes that you could pick out to criticize the guy on, but you insist on choosing the one that was already debunked. Just take a look at the link I provided above, I mean this guy doesn't shut up. You seriously shouldn't be at a loss for finding material to bastardize this guy on.
But it's a moot point, as it really doesn't matter what Ahmadinejad says. He has no control over the military. In Iran, the President sets economic policies and nothing else. It's the supreme ayatollah (may his face catch on fire. I hate him too.) that controls the military and can wage war.
Still, Amadinejad is an embarrassment to all of us Persians.
Please mod parent up. This is absolutely correct. The government has zero business in trying to influence our behavior by continuously taxing us on every activity that it deems unfit. We already have enough taxes to pay, there is no reason why we should also face taxes on our behavior.
I don't think that the government should do anything at all, but if they absolutely MUST do something, why not reward those that make healthy choices, as opposed to penalizing those that do not?
Bah, mod me redundant. Several other people posted this story before me.
Wouldn't this be like having a package wrongly delivered to your house (through no fault of your own: the sender had the wrong address), and since it contained highly confidential information, a judge ordered your house to be burned to the ground? (Okay, that's a bit extreme, but you get my point.)
No, they shoot your dogs instead.
Well, the judge didn't order the SWAT team to kill the dogs in this case, but they did sign on the no-knock warrant on the wrong house. This story actually fits your analogy. A bunch of delivery guys had a scam going on where they would leave packages of drugs in front of innocent people's homes, and other guys would come over and pick it up. The police somewhat caught on, but didn't realize that the packages were being sent to people who had nothing to do with this. So they set up a sting operation where an officer delivered a 32 pound box of marijuana. The person who opened the door - the mayor's mother-in-law - initially refused to sign for the package, but eventually they took it in.
In this story, it was the Mayor of Berwynn Heights who was the victim, and the police didn't seem to realize this until after the raid. Even with as much political clout that this Mayor had, he still couldn't get the Sheriff's department to change their ways.
It's just an ugly story all around.
I mean, come on, there isn't anywhere in the world the hammer and sickle are outlawed and the commies killed far more than the nazis did so it should be even more fun than Wolfenstein!
Except The Republic of Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania. Well, the exception is that it can be used for educational and artistic reasons, and I'm sure they can get away with it for artistic reasons in this case. :-)
The Swastika didn't kill anyone.
A bunch of jackasses did. Why don't you just outlaw people planning to kill other people?
Do you think not having a Swastika will prevent a dictator or demagogue from choosing a different symbol to hide behind?
Especially since it's a historically sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Mithraism. Actually, reading about the Swastika here and how popular of a symbol it was before the rise and all of the Nazi Party, I'm shocked that you don't see it more often in Western nations.
D'oh, just saw that! :)
"Comrade, the IBMs are coming, and they bring Lotus Notes with them!"
Third, no worries. A small, controlled population with a ratio of 1 male to 10 females properly sheltered will be able to keep society going. Naturally, the females will need to be chosen for their attractiveness and the males for the knowledge and skills they know (I'm thinking lots of engineers will be needed so sign me up).
They probably need lots of Penetration Specialists too ;)
And their assistants, the Bunker Busters. :D
Second, (as Dr Strangelove pointed out) a doomsday machine only makes sense as a deterent if both sides know about it. Why wasn't the machine made public earlier when the Soviets thought that the US was about to launch an attack?
It wasn't for the U.S. to know, it was for their own military and civilians leaders. MAD was already in place because both sides knew of each others stockpile of nuclear weapons. Had they told the U.S. about this system, however, the U.S. would have tried to plan around it. Think of this as an ace up their sleeve.
No, this system wasn't for the U.S. to know, it was for their own people. This was to prevent the Soviets from being too eager to launch an accidental nuclear counterstrike during a false alarm or an unconfirmed attack. Remember Stanislav Petrov and the situation he was faced with? There was a system malfunction in 1983 that showed IBMs were heading toward the Soviet Union, and he determined that it was a false alarm. Cooler heads prevailed and we're all here today to read about it.
This device, however, would detect a positive missile strike, launch missiles, and those missiles would send down coded orders for any other weapons systems that were still active. It guaranteed revenge, and that knowledge kept overeager people on the Soviet side from being too trigger happy.
Oh and the automatic quote that the /. page generates at the bottom is: "Boy, am I glad it's only 1971..." :-)
Hey, we should use devices like this to get children used to the idea of being watched constantly. . .
Then, when they are adults, they won't mind Big Brother watching every little thing they do. It's for their safety, after all!
~AA
I agree and wish I had mod points. Once we get an entire generation of children used to the idea that electronic monitoring "is good for us", then the same principle will be forced onto the adults. The best way to make something acceptable in society is to have the children grow up with it. I'd rather not go down that route.
People who preach unquestioning submission would *never* tolerate becoming prisoners. Riiight...
Just look at the events in Iran this entire year! So many young students have died protesting. People as young as 12 and 13 have been killed by the government-backed militia. It's sickening that anyone that young has to die for their rights, but much like any country that wants a democracy, there needs to be dissent, revolution, and bloodshed. You can't have freedom handed to you on a silver platter.
No matter how you get there, there will be lives lost. This theocracy has been going on in Iran for only 30 years, and it has quickly reached a boiling point with the people. Yes, this theocracy is a relatively new thing in Iran. Here was Iran in the 1970s, before the Islamic takeover. The last picture shows you what Iran looks like today in contrast to the previous pictures, which were all taken before the 1979 Islamic revolution.
In any other nation where people simply preach submission, they would have rolled over and played dead the minute Ahmadinejad was announced as the winner. The people of Iran have stood up for their rights and have been protesting non-stop since the elections. We need to give them at least that much credit.
Keep in mind, all forms of weapons are banned in Iran, thus the people have no way of fighting back. They are simply too scared. The Government-backed militia has weapons and numbers on their side and they're pretty ruthless when it comes to killing people. This isn't some stereotypical Hollywood-made Middle Eastern nation where every house comes equipped with an AK-47 to shoot at infidels. Simply owning a weapon can get you into hot water over there, let alone actually using it against the Government.
U.S. government works are automatically public domain. Shouldn't state government materials be the same way?
I agree - anything I produce while on the clock at work enters a murky domain where the people paying me can claim that they are the new owners. Any work done on taxpayer funds should belong to the public. At any rate, Oregon is not gaining anything by copyrighting their "Guide to Oregon Public Record Laws".
But lets face it. If they force GPS on us, well, that's great news for GPS makers.
You're not too far off. From the article:
I really, really don't like the sound of this. Even if there is no evil conspiracy to track us all, the government should never have such a tool at their disposal to begin with. Yes, they can already do this with credit card records at pumps, but at least you have the option of paying in cash. I never thought I would see the day when the government would propose a mandate on every motorist having GPS installed in their car and not see everyone panic.
This is /., where even the most mundane topic brings screams of 1984 from slashdotters, but an article about government mandated GPS is posted and judging by some of the other posters here, most people are liking it? I guess all I can do is continue to vote for small government.
Darwin Award would be mandatory if they had posted on 4chan.
one of the nice things about 911 is the 9 and the 1s are on different sides of the keypad, so if you call 911, you really mean to call it
Where there's a will, there's a way! :-)
In my office, we've had the police come by several times to the point where building management had to send an e-mail blast saying that we were going to get fined for accidentally dialing 9-1-1 and then hanging up. To dial out of our phone system, we have to hit 9. A lot of us have to get on conference calls which requires a 1-888 or 1-866 number. Well, some of my office mates would hit 9 to connect out, but for whatever reason they don't hear the dial tone, so they hit 9 again. (even though it registered the first time...)
Then for whatever reason, they would hit 1 twice (probably for the same reason why they hit 9 twice), connecting them to emergency dispatcher. They would immediately hang up, but by then it's too late. The dispatcher will automatically assume an emergency if you hang up, and a patrol car is sent to our office. We were told that if we accidentally do this again, to just stay on the line and to tell the dispatcher that it was an accident so that they don't automatically send police over.
I don't think we've had the problem since the warning, but I think it's interesting that despite the keys being all the way across the keypad, people still manage to dial 9-1-1.
Playing Wolf3D without SoundBlaster and Adlib support was just disappointing.
Point well taken - I remember the days of SoundBlaster and getting it to work on my PC to hear those very voices that you describe in Wolf3D. My little write-up did no justice to that game.
Oh and regarding the phrases spoken by the German soldiers, I did a search and found a site that lists them all:
http://www.mac-archive.com/wolfenstein/talk.html
You're right, it was Mein Leben!
My thoughts are really disjointed tonight, so forgive me.
I do agree with the author, sometimes a first-person perspective may not be the only way to immerse a gamer. Video games, especially first person shooters, used to rely solely on vision. The original Wolfenstein 3D on the PC did not have a rumble feature or 5.1 surround sound, but was still considered groundbreaking because of the perspective it put the gamer in.
The best games, however, do more with existing technologies, such as using a vibration in the controller to indicate either a pulse or that danger is nearby. The use of dark ambient music, creaking noises in floorboards while walking around, or the sudden screeching noise when something pops out also helps. While we cannot do anything with our sense of taste of smell in video games yet, (thank GOODNESS...) we can at least emphasize certain sounds and touch a little more than just pretty graphics.
Going along with the article, the first person perspective brings the dilemma of the "silent hero", because that hero is supposed to be you. However, you rarely get to interact with anything beyond acknowledging an NPC's request to retrieve something for them. You don't get to forge a bond with any of the characters based on your personality traits. I think this is key -- I was way more into Final Fantasy VII because of the level of interaction with the characters. You get to know them and you get to like them. Rockstar Games tried to get characters more involved with NPCs in GTA IV by having the players go out and spend time with them, but you really never get to know them. You go out with them, but only hear side-conversation going on. You're not really allowed to say anything in that game beyond clicking on the NPC to get the next quest.
There are still limitations. There are only a finite number of dialog choices and while you can allow the gamer to make their own dialog (as with the original Police Quest series), NPCs won't understand most of it and will only give canned responses. MMORPG's will allow gamers to say whatever they want to other gamers, but are still bound to the NPC's world. Most games don't have that story-telling feature to allow the gamers to create their own quests.
So yes, it's not all about the first-person perspective. Sound and touch also play a role, but the biggest factor of all is the depth of interaction with other characters and the unique, likable personalities that let you identify with them.
Here's how.
That was you??
http://www.bash.org/?79862
This is just as apt. :-)
I'll second this.
Wireless VPN is not where it needs to be. If you have something THAT secure, just don't communicate wirelessly. Set up a wired VPN connection.
This reminds me of the Verizon FIOS guy who came over to install FIOS for our house. He noticed that I was using WPA2 encryption and a MAC Address filter, and said something like "If you're this paranoid about security, you shouldn't even be on the Internet".
Given that it's "only" 325 light years away from Earth, it would certainly be spectacular, as you say. I wonder if such a collision would have any effect on our planet. Of course this isn't due for another million years, but you're right, high-powered telescopes and popcorn are in order. :)
I could be wrong, but I think it has Wi-Fi. Looking at the link provided by the summary:
Yeah, at such a high price range, it better have Wi-Fi! :-)