Well, why should I go through the largish effort of re-installing my Windows setup? It currently works quite well for me as a game box, and I'm certainly not willing to switch to something else just to play a mediocre game.
Hey, even if Halo 2 was really good, I wouldn't want to switch. I've learned the hard way that most games are simply not worth the time, money and effort.
Okay, as we're on Slashdot I must mention that I do a lot of work on Linux (my 1.2 TB RAID-5 is not even visible to Windows), but I like Windows for playing games - simply because there are so many. And, hey, just because a game is a few years old... if you enjoyed playing it back then, you might still enjoy it today. And your PC will handle it great:)
Well, I'm currently sitting in an officer with a cow-orker (which has just left, though), which is nice and quiet. While the door is always open, it does give me the chance to concentrate and get work done. If anybody needs something from me, send an email. I don't have to answer it immediately (contrary to a visit/phone call), and thus get a lot more work done.
I 've refused several jobs where I'd have to sit in a cubicle. Terrible idea, no peace and quiet at all. Sure it's suited for certain occupations, but as a programmer/designer I'm not happy in it.
Weird as it sounds, but you can find exactly these games - in the shareware sector. Have a look at my favourite website in that regard: http://www.gametunnel.com/ (Yes, I swear I have nothing to do with them!:)
I bought quite a few games from there. You can try out demos, the games are of many different types, quality is darn high, and they're quite cheap.
I'm afraid that I don't have (or ever will have) a TV, and thus the consoles are all dead to me. However, PDAs have quite a few cute games (I use PalmOS only, thankyouverymuch).
Oh, I remember Sprint. I used it for a loooong time, seeing it as a kind of LaTeX on steroids. Great program, and my father used it for many many years to write severel books with it. Even today I can recommend it (yes, honestly;)
It's interesting to see Borland finally fall apart. I always expected it to die much earlier: not only did the info from there turn into marketdroid-talking trash, the prices also rose sky-high.
Oh, well. I used Delphi (and TurboPascal) since '86, and our company is still running Delphi 7. Looks like we'll slowly switch to C++, with perhaps a dash of C# in it...
Well, that's the reason why touch screens are only used in special applications (where they *are* rather useful).
But try using your finger instead of your mouse. The hassle of cleaning the glass aside, your arm will feel tired and thick quite quickly - hence the term "Gorilla Arm". Me Old Fart already saw touch-sensitive PCs waybackwhen on the HPs, and they flopped nicely.
Thus, having to hold your mouse like this is not going to help much. Except, maybe, in specialist applications again.
> "solid, easy to get into, quick to play, fun games"
Well, everybody claims that their games is just that. But most aren't.
If you're looking for something short and sweet (perhaps to play during lunch-break, or while listen to some management fool babble on the phone)... that market already exists, it's just that many people don't seem to know about it.
Have a look at http://www.gametunnel.com/ for a nice overview. (No, I have no connection with them). Want to play something like 'Civilization' in four minutes? Try 'Oasis'. Great fun, short and sweet, and cheap. Like many other shareware games. Yes, shareware - looks like that market has grown up...
Put used games in a library? Well, here in Germany we are already doing this. Sure, they're usually not the latest and greatest, but you can get them for free for a week or two. Enough to finish many of them, or decide if you want to buy them. Looking for newer games? Try the video rentals - they have games, too. Get it for a day and decide if you like it enough to buy it. And, of course, buying it from eBay is a nice and cheap way.
Besides, not being allowed to sell second-hand whatevers is a ridiculous concept. Have a look at my living quarters as a student: second-hand bed, desks, chairs, bookshelves. Used clothing, used books, used hardware, used software, used cats...
Interestingly enough, companies are already trying to stop you from selling games second-hand. STEAM in Half Life 2 is a nice example. I liked HL2, but I never touched it again after finishing it - I prefere to play and edit off-line. While STEAM is being ogled by other companies (I ever heard of our old friend Duke Nukem looking at STEAM), I will certainly not touch another STEAM software - not even DNF.
And, hey, I found a new, very interesting source of games: shareware. That market has grown up, and you find many good games around these days. Plus you can test them to your hearts content before buying them. Not to mention that they're quite a bit cheaper, and usually more fun (better content). Thus, just last week I bought "Oasis", "Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space" and "BreakQuest". I'm fiddling with "Maxican Motor Mafia", bought "Darwinia" some months ago, and currently trying out "Outpost Kaloki". Have a look at http://www.gametunnel.com/ (no, I have nothing to do with them).
Seems that the software people are trying to put more and more pressure on us from strange directions - helplessly, of course. This will simply put more and more of them out of business as people turn away from them.
Careful with saying things like "This planned spacecraft could cost only $x!".
I show myself to be an Old Fart when I admit that I remember NASA claiming spectacularly low costs for the space shuttle, once it gets off the ground. Turns out that they were a bit, well, over-optimistic.
Sadly, I believe that the ID movement merely *started* as a PR campaign. Currently, it is believed in by a large horde of morons. Well, okay. Let's say "a large horde of morons who do not see this as a PR campaign".
It can be made uninhabitable by humans and most animals over a certain size (which does kinda remind me of the last asteroid impact). But you can't really erase life itself.
Sure, humans will die out. But life will go on. Don't tell me that nature cares.
Well, I personally cannot stand advertisements. There are more and more of them around, all of them trying to get your attention.
To most people I know, this is irritating but not particularly terrible. One gets used to it and filters them out. Well, I don't have a TV. Don't want one. Thus perhaps I'm not so used to adverts. And can't filter them out so easily.
The idea of letting me pay for a game (typically 45 Euro: ca $55) and then putting adverts into it? Ugh. They tried that in "Driver 3", and it immediately jaded me enough to drop the game (which was pretty poor on the PC anyway).
Thus my statement: I have plenty of games which I rather like, no matter how old they are. I have MAME. I do a lot of programming (highly enjoyable). And I will not buy any game at all which irritates me - either by overblown copyprotection (HL2) or advertisements (even small ones).
Not? No. Simply because I'll download a patch/update to my browser which will - given the query for the ID - return either any code I entered (for example the id of some damned politician, hehehe) or a new one every hour.
And these morons will waste a huge amount of time. And, as usual, all they'll catch are other morons.
Every now and then, I hear the term "too smart for their own good". Comes from the USA, I believe, and frankly, it's one of the more stupid sayings.
All it shows is envy towards intelligent people. The kind of envy you see from big, strong, dumb kids at school. (Yes, I know. And now I teach artificial brains how to think, and the big, now fat but still dumb people dig streets).
Ok, come on and admit it, chaps: Peter Francis-Macrae is a fool. He was caught after earning about 1.5 million pounds ($2.57 million or 2.2 million Euro).
I mean, heck, I'd have cleared out after a million bucks. At age 23! And don't tell me you're not jealous;)
Yet another article along the lines of "Our youth is degenerating!"
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."...according to Plato.
"Every time code is checked into CVS, it is formatted by Jalopy."
Aaargh! A terrible idea I've seen happen myself. See, code formatting does not mean slavishly sticking exactly to very detailed specifications (as a utility would do it), but also making sure that the code is very easy to read.
While most code should be formatted according to certain rules (and preferably the same rules by everybody), some code pieces may be a *lot* more readable when formatted just slightly differently. Certain parts of a long SQL command neatly aligned under each other. Difficult case statements written and commented in a different way. Peculiar if then else else commands aligned differently, according to the functions called, with their parameters aligned (to show how only the third parameter differs). Things like that.
And a tool like Jalopy screws this up and irritates everybody - I'd advise against it.
And? What do I need a color photo printer for? Sure sounds ghastly coming from a computer freak like me, but, heck, chaps: I got myself an age-old Hp Laserprinter, complete with lots of RAM and PostScripting, 600 dpi, flat paper storage, for about $200. Works like a charm, hooks up simply to my parallel port (but can hook into my network). It's all I ever need for printing.
I print lots of photos. Either over the net, or by simply walking to a small Photo-Shop. They will print me any digital image at any size, in excellent quality, on paper, cups, shirts... and quite a bit cheaper (and better!) than I could manage with my own printer.
Not only are there different ways to produce electricity eventually, but this car is not only a lot more quiet (makes a real difference for people living at busy streets), it also pumps no poisons into the atmosphere. Walk past a busy crossing. Inhale deeply. Regret it.
I really, really prefere quiet, non-polluting vehicles (and yes, I had a 68' Mustang for 2 years and loved it).
No, of course you won't do this out of your own free will. But once you get arrested for something you've never heard of (probably whistling a copyrighted tune), the cops will put this thing on your head and place you in a cell. See, knowing that torture is now legal in the USA, they're well aware that you'd *seriously* try to get away - and using this thing, you'll docily do exactly as you're told.
Have fun living in the USA, home of the free. I won't.
So, ladies and gentlemen, be honest: how many times has it happened to you that you drag yourself out of bed, look at the thing in the mirror and say: "I don't know who you are, but I'll wash you anyway"?
Come on, after a weeks hard work even friends have asked me in the first moment who I am...;)
I have a lovely 600 dpi PS-Laser from Hp. Couple of years old, perfectly sufficient for anything I do. Found it in a second-hand store, paid in cash. Untracable.
Yes, okay, it's not a color-printer, but in a few years you'll find these color-lasers for equally cheap prices in second-hand shops...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, why should I go through the largish effort of re-installing my Windows setup?
:)
It currently works quite well for me as a game box, and I'm certainly not willing to switch to something else just to play a mediocre game.
Hey, even if Halo 2 was really good, I wouldn't want to switch. I've learned the hard way that most games are simply not worth the time, money and effort.
Okay, as we're on Slashdot I must mention that I do a lot of work on Linux (my 1.2 TB RAID-5 is not even visible to Windows), but I like Windows for playing games - simply because there are so many.
And, hey, just because a game is a few years old... if you enjoyed playing it back then, you might still enjoy it today. And your PC will handle it great
Well, I'm currently sitting in an officer with a cow-orker (which has just left, though), which is nice and quiet. While the door is always open, it does give me the chance to concentrate and get work done.
;)
If anybody needs something from me, send an email. I don't have to answer it immediately (contrary to a visit/phone call), and thus get a lot more work done.
I 've refused several jobs where I'd have to sit in a cubicle. Terrible idea, no peace and quiet at all. Sure it's suited for certain occupations, but as a programmer/designer I'm not happy in it.
Besides, I tend to swear at my code
Weird as it sounds, but you can find exactly these games - in the shareware sector. :)
Have a look at my favourite website in that regard: http://www.gametunnel.com/
(Yes, I swear I have nothing to do with them!
I bought quite a few games from there. You can try out demos, the games are of many different types, quality is darn high, and they're quite cheap.
I'm afraid that I don't have (or ever will have) a TV, and thus the consoles are all dead to me. However, PDAs have quite a few cute games (I use PalmOS only, thankyouverymuch).
Sprint!
;)
Oh, I remember Sprint. I used it for a loooong time, seeing it as a kind of LaTeX on steroids. Great program, and my father used it for many many years to write severel books with it.
Even today I can recommend it (yes, honestly
It's interesting to see Borland finally fall apart. I always expected it to die much earlier: not only did the info from there turn into marketdroid-talking trash, the prices also rose sky-high.
Oh, well. I used Delphi (and TurboPascal) since '86, and our company is still running Delphi 7. Looks like we'll slowly switch to C++, with perhaps a dash of C# in it...
Well, that's the reason why touch screens are only used in special applications (where they *are* rather useful).
But try using your finger instead of your mouse. The hassle of cleaning the glass aside, your arm will feel tired and thick quite quickly - hence the term "Gorilla Arm". Me Old Fart already saw touch-sensitive PCs waybackwhen on the HPs, and they flopped nicely.
Thus, having to hold your mouse like this is not going to help much. Except, maybe, in specialist applications again.
> "solid, easy to get into, quick to play, fun games"
Well, everybody claims that their games is just that. But most aren't.
If you're looking for something short and sweet (perhaps to play during lunch-break, or while listen to some management fool babble on the phone)... that market already exists, it's just that many people don't seem to know about it.
Have a look at http://www.gametunnel.com/ for a nice overview. (No, I have no connection with them).
Want to play something like 'Civilization' in four minutes? Try 'Oasis'. Great fun, short and sweet, and cheap.
Like many other shareware games. Yes, shareware - looks like that market has grown up...
Put used games in a library?
Well, here in Germany we are already doing this. Sure, they're usually not the latest and greatest, but you can get them for free for a week or two. Enough to finish many of them, or decide if you want to buy them.
Looking for newer games? Try the video rentals - they have games, too. Get it for a day and decide if you like it enough to buy it. And, of course, buying it from eBay is a nice and cheap way.
Besides, not being allowed to sell second-hand whatevers is a ridiculous concept. Have a look at my living quarters as a student: second-hand bed, desks, chairs, bookshelves. Used clothing, used books, used hardware, used software, used cats...
Interestingly enough, companies are already trying to stop you from selling games second-hand. STEAM in Half Life 2 is a nice example. I liked HL2, but I never touched it again after finishing it - I prefere to play and edit off-line. While STEAM is being ogled by other companies (I ever heard of our old friend Duke Nukem looking at STEAM), I will certainly not touch another STEAM software - not even DNF.
And, hey, I found a new, very interesting source of games: shareware. That market has grown up, and you find many good games around these days. Plus you can test them to your hearts content before buying them. Not to mention that they're quite a bit cheaper, and usually more fun (better content).
Thus, just last week I bought "Oasis", "Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space" and "BreakQuest".
I'm fiddling with "Maxican Motor Mafia", bought "Darwinia" some months ago, and currently trying out "Outpost Kaloki".
Have a look at http://www.gametunnel.com/ (no, I have nothing to do with them).
Seems that the software people are trying to put more and more pressure on us from strange directions - helplessly, of course. This will simply put more and more of them out of business as people turn away from them.
Careful with saying things like "This planned spacecraft could cost only $x!".
I show myself to be an Old Fart when I admit that I remember NASA claiming spectacularly low costs for the space shuttle, once it gets off the ground. Turns out that they were a bit, well, over-optimistic.
> the ID movement is 99.9% a PR campaign.
Wouldn't that be nice.
Sadly, I believe that the ID movement merely *started* as a PR campaign. Currently, it is believed in by a large horde of morons.
Well, okay. Let's say "a large horde of morons who do not see this as a PR campaign".
You both don't get it, right? ;)
It can be made uninhabitable by humans and most animals over a certain size (which does kinda remind me of the last asteroid impact).
But you can't really erase life itself.
Sure, humans will die out. But life will go on. Don't tell me that nature cares.
Well, I personally cannot stand advertisements.
There are more and more of them around, all of them trying to get your attention.
To most people I know, this is irritating but not particularly terrible. One gets used to it and filters them out.
Well, I don't have a TV. Don't want one. Thus perhaps I'm not so used to adverts. And can't filter them out so easily.
The idea of letting me pay for a game (typically 45 Euro: ca $55) and then putting adverts into it? Ugh. They tried that in "Driver 3", and it immediately jaded me enough to drop the game (which was pretty poor on the PC anyway).
Thus my statement: I have plenty of games which I rather like, no matter how old they are. I have MAME. I do a lot of programming (highly enjoyable). And I will not buy any game at all which irritates me - either by overblown copyprotection (HL2) or advertisements (even small ones).
Not? No. Simply because I'll download a patch/update to my browser which will - given the query for the ID - return either any code I entered (for example the id of some damned politician, hehehe) or a new one every hour.
And these morons will waste a huge amount of time. And, as usual, all they'll catch are other morons.
...in which case, it should also be impossible to store data on a camera via USB.
...wow
And you're saying that anybody, anybody at all is willing to work there?
Every now and then, I hear the term "too smart for their own good".
Comes from the USA, I believe, and frankly, it's one of the more stupid sayings.
All it shows is envy towards intelligent people. The kind of envy you see from big, strong, dumb kids at school. (Yes, I know. And now I teach artificial brains how to think, and the big, now fat but still dumb people dig streets).
Simple solution: don't use a windowed interface with such monitors. Life is still coming along very well on the command line ;)
Ok, come on and admit it, chaps: Peter Francis-Macrae is a fool.
;)
He was caught after earning about 1.5 million pounds ($2.57 million or 2.2 million Euro).
I mean, heck, I'd have cleared out after a million bucks. At age 23!
And don't tell me you're not jealous
Yet another article along the lines of "Our youth is degenerating!"
...according to Plato.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
"Every time code is checked into CVS, it is formatted by Jalopy."
Aaargh!
A terrible idea I've seen happen myself. See, code formatting does not mean slavishly sticking exactly to very detailed specifications (as a utility would do it), but also making sure that the code is very easy to read.
While most code should be formatted according to certain rules (and preferably the same rules by everybody), some code pieces may be a *lot* more readable when formatted just slightly differently.
Certain parts of a long SQL command neatly aligned under each other. Difficult case statements written and commented in a different way. Peculiar if then else else commands aligned differently, according to the functions called, with their parameters aligned (to show how only the third parameter differs). Things like that.
And a tool like Jalopy screws this up and irritates everybody - I'd advise against it.
And? What do I need a color photo printer for?
Sure sounds ghastly coming from a computer freak like me, but, heck, chaps: I got myself an age-old Hp Laserprinter, complete with lots of RAM and PostScripting, 600 dpi, flat paper storage, for about $200. Works like a charm, hooks up simply to my parallel port (but can hook into my network).
It's all I ever need for printing.
I print lots of photos. Either over the net, or by simply walking to a small Photo-Shop. They will print me any digital image at any size, in excellent quality, on paper, cups, shirts... and quite a bit cheaper (and better!) than I could manage with my own printer.
Why would I want a color printer?
But I didn't read the EULA. I simply moved the mouse about, and my cat clicked the left button. Probably by accident.
So, prove that the EULA applies to me - I'd never have signed it.
Not only are there different ways to produce electricity eventually, but this car is not only a lot more quiet (makes a real difference for people living at busy streets), it also pumps no poisons into the atmosphere.
Walk past a busy crossing. Inhale deeply. Regret it.
I really, really prefere quiet, non-polluting vehicles (and yes, I had a 68' Mustang for 2 years and loved it).
No, of course you won't do this out of your own free will.
But once you get arrested for something you've never heard of (probably whistling a copyrighted tune), the cops will put this thing on your head and place you in a cell.
See, knowing that torture is now legal in the USA, they're well aware that you'd *seriously* try to get away - and using this thing, you'll docily do exactly as you're told.
Have fun living in the USA, home of the free. I won't.
So, ladies and gentlemen, be honest: how many times has it happened to you that you drag yourself out of bed, look at the thing in the mirror and say: "I don't know who you are, but I'll wash you anyway"?
;)
Come on, after a weeks hard work even friends have asked me in the first moment who I am...
I have a lovely 600 dpi PS-Laser from Hp. Couple of years old, perfectly sufficient for anything I do. Found it in a second-hand store, paid in cash. Untracable.
Yes, okay, it's not a color-printer, but in a few years you'll find these color-lasers for equally cheap prices in second-hand shops...