You could find a game which mixes a social environment with whatever you're interested in. There are probably a few out there. There are even a few "environments" which are open-ended enough that pretty much anything is possible, so both of you could be logged in to the same "world" and enjoying whatever interests you.
I have an XP2100 as well. I found out that they were the last of a series of chips before the die size was shrunk, and therefore explains why they run so hot compared to faster Athlon XP chips.
Also, the fan that came with the XP2100 was not adequate. The fan I replaced it with sounds like a jet engine, but at least it keeps it at a reasonable temperature.
I can't close the door to the room my computer is in, or the temperature rises by 3-5 degrees. =P
I enjoyed E&B as well. It had probably the best and most creative background story of any of the MMORPGs. I have not been an active participant in several months, but I still kept an account there so I could check in and see how the story was progressing.
E&B had a lot of missed potential; when EA acquired Westwood, it's obvious now that they had no intention to invest in it, but instead to let it fizzle out and then shut it down.
Between this and what they did to Maxis, I am avoiding EA from now on and encourage all that I can to do the same.
I don't fault E&B's devs. They did all they could with the meager resources EA gave them. I wish them the best, and I wish EA the worst.
I miss the "multiscreen" paradigm. I could very quickly flip between screens at different resolutions on the Amiga. On windows/linux, you can flip, but there's usually much hard drive gnashing and window redrawing, and even then some things don't always refresh right. It's getting better, but it's not there yet.
Arexx. A monkey with not much more programming knowledge than basic could use it to script various core functions of running applications together. A lot of applications were supporting Arexx and it was fun to write batch scripts that affected programs that also had a GUI frontend.
I also liked how the filesystem worked. I could do an "assign MUSIC: dh0:media/sounds/music" and then during the remainder of my boot session, I could just type MUSIC: to instantly shortcut to that directory. There were a lot of nice standard assigns too, like C: for your command line programs, LIBS: for your DLLs, S: for your config files, etc. You could create a device driver which mounted new "drives" on your system. One of my favorites was TCP:, which let me open a connection and read/write data to it like a file (I did this often in arexx).
I also miss the "demos". Sure, we have demos on the PC now, but one of the advantages of having a fairly standard hardware chipset was that people could make some assumptions in their code and take advantage of them to push some impressive effects.
What don't I miss?
I don't miss the flicker =P And 24-bit color is nice. I know there were peripherals to remedy both of these, but they were expensive, and by the time I could afford them, my work required me to move on to the wintel architecture.
I just think Commodore should have hired Eric Schwartz to make Amy the Squirrel the Amiga mascot; maybe that would have increased sales =P
I disagree. I played it in beta and the first 3 months or so after release. It wasn't too bad, but I decided to take a break from it to give it time to finish up some features that were missing.
I recently checked in to see how it's doing and although there's a lot more features, the quality of the player base has taken a big dive. Unless you like playing in an environment full of the mentality behind phrases like "OMG! WTF? LOL", I'd suggest finding another source of entertainment.
I think what I miss the most was the cantinas. They used to be a social atmosphere where at least a good percentage of the people there were having normal conversations. Now it's just a bunch of grinders running scripts autospamming for heal requests.
Then again, I think I'm partly spoiled. I've been playing in an open-ended virtual world for the past few months which has an 18+ age restriction. It's hard to go back to a traditional MMORPG at this point.
Anyways, without getting into a rant about what's wrong with MMOGs, just watch: the first person to make a more skill-based MMOG (be it FPS-style, or more sim-ish) that appeals to casual gamers (i.e. no systems like "levels" that only fragment the player base, or absurd time requirements to advance) will be a very, very wealthy individual.
See Second Life. The name is kinda corny, but it is exactly what you describe. There are no skills other than your actual RL skills at creativity. On top of that, the users create nearly all the content, and have a lot of flexibility, including access to VM-oriented scripting for anything you create.
Best yet, this is the only online "game" I've seen that has a non-recurring (one time) payment option ($10), and only admits people 18+ in age. It's nice to enjoy a mature MMO environment for a change.
I joined back in November when/. ran an article about when they announced you own everything you create, but I wish I had joined sooner instead of wasting my time with SWG. There's nearly a zero probability that I'll go back to another online game where "crafting" is "creating objects which have already been modeled, textured, and scripted for behavior by the game developer". I'd rather do that myself, thank you very much.
Directors have a fiduciary duty to their owners: they must manage the business in their interest. They aren't there to manage "expectations", or to drive their stock price. The job of a company is to make money for its owners, plain and simple.
Yeah, but if the company doesn't pay dividends, then it's forced to grow to give the stock value.
I think that's the very heart of the problem with corporations these days, and why they're forced to endlessly merge together.
(2)
You have the right to an attorney. You have the right to remain silent. You have to fight for your right to par-tee. This license may not be revoked, redistributed, photocopied, or discussed without the express written consent of the parents. All models eighteen years of age, proof on file. The manager is not responsible for lost baggage.
Even all technical issues aside, all that they need to do is ensure that they assign incompetent poll volunteers in precincts where they expect high turnout of the oppositing party.
See example mentioned in another comment where they spent hours getting the machines to boot. Surely this turned away voters who did not bother to return later.
I have to give Charlie credit for standing up to viacom.
I agree with this. They could have just jacked up the prices and shrugged at the customers helplessly, but they didn't.
The question is which move is more unpopular, raising rates by 40% or cutting off some channels?
I see Viacom as the bad guy here. There's no reason they need to raise rates, since most (if not all) of their channels are advertising-supported; they only stand to benefit from the additional viewership brought to them by Echostar. Instead, they decided to get greedy.
If you suspect Asperger, read the tips on the online support groups and if they look obvious... you probably dont have it. Some of the tips might even give you an insight if you have just some mild traits.
And I think that is the benefit of categorizing these various conditions. Once they are given a label, then it makes for a way to organize treatment. A consequence of this is that people who show similar signs but do not completely fit the label may also learn something from the recommended treatements.
I still wonder how much heat these generate. I certainly wouldn't want to line my walls with hundreds of watts of electricity being coverted into heat (and light). =)
So long as the warranty states that the car is good to go for 3 years with no wierd service / repair costs for me to pay and I dont have to even TOUCH the engine / oil levels etc... Im happy as larry.
This is exactly what I've done with my saturn, which just passed 3 years old. I just take it to the dealer every 3000-3500 miles, and tell them to do whatever's on the maintenance schedule.
Sure, it costs me a bit more than if I do it myself, but the concept is no different.
Slashdot Mirror
You could find a game which mixes a social environment with whatever you're interested in. There are probably a few out there. There are even a few "environments" which are open-ended enough that pretty much anything is possible, so both of you could be logged in to the same "world" and enjoying whatever interests you.
I have an XP2100 as well. I found out that they were the last of a series of chips before the die size was shrunk, and therefore explains why they run so hot compared to faster Athlon XP chips.
Also, the fan that came with the XP2100 was not adequate. The fan I replaced it with sounds like a jet engine, but at least it keeps it at a reasonable temperature.
I can't close the door to the room my computer is in, or the temperature rises by 3-5 degrees. =P
For some reason this reminds me of autism.
Autistic people seem to have a very poorly developed understanding of language, and consequently a distinctly different pattern of thought.
Chinese food without MSG is like Diet Mountain Dew.
What's the point?
*stocks up on Accent*
I enjoyed E&B as well. It had probably the best and most creative background story of any of the MMORPGs. I have not been an active participant in several months, but I still kept an account there so I could check in and see how the story was progressing.
E&B had a lot of missed potential; when EA acquired Westwood, it's obvious now that they had no intention to invest in it, but instead to let it fizzle out and then shut it down.
Between this and what they did to Maxis, I am avoiding EA from now on and encourage all that I can to do the same.
I don't fault E&B's devs. They did all they could with the meager resources EA gave them. I wish them the best, and I wish EA the worst.
I miss the "multiscreen" paradigm. I could very quickly flip between screens at different resolutions on the Amiga. On windows/linux, you can flip, but there's usually much hard drive gnashing and window redrawing, and even then some things don't always refresh right. It's getting better, but it's not there yet.
Arexx. A monkey with not much more programming knowledge than basic could use it to script various core functions of running applications together. A lot of applications were supporting Arexx and it was fun to write batch scripts that affected programs that also had a GUI frontend.
I also liked how the filesystem worked. I could do an "assign MUSIC: dh0:media/sounds/music" and then during the remainder of my boot session, I could just type MUSIC: to instantly shortcut to that directory. There were a lot of nice standard assigns too, like C: for your command line programs, LIBS: for your DLLs, S: for your config files, etc. You could create a device driver which mounted new "drives" on your system. One of my favorites was TCP:, which let me open a connection and read/write data to it like a file (I did this often in arexx).
I also miss the "demos". Sure, we have demos on the PC now, but one of the advantages of having a fairly standard hardware chipset was that people could make some assumptions in their code and take advantage of them to push some impressive effects.
What don't I miss?
I don't miss the flicker =P And 24-bit color is nice. I know there were peripherals to remedy both of these, but they were expensive, and by the time I could afford them, my work required me to move on to the wintel architecture.
I just think Commodore should have hired Eric Schwartz to make Amy the Squirrel the Amiga mascot; maybe that would have increased sales =P
I disagree. I played it in beta and the first 3 months or so after release. It wasn't too bad, but I decided to take a break from it to give it time to finish up some features that were missing.
I recently checked in to see how it's doing and although there's a lot more features, the quality of the player base has taken a big dive. Unless you like playing in an environment full of the mentality behind phrases like "OMG! WTF? LOL", I'd suggest finding another source of entertainment.
I think what I miss the most was the cantinas. They used to be a social atmosphere where at least a good percentage of the people there were having normal conversations. Now it's just a bunch of grinders running scripts autospamming for heal requests.
Then again, I think I'm partly spoiled. I've been playing in an open-ended virtual world for the past few months which has an 18+ age restriction. It's hard to go back to a traditional MMORPG at this point.
Heh do you have a link that's in English? =)
Now I know how non-geeks feel when I try to explain something about their computer. =P
Anyways, without getting into a rant about what's wrong with MMOGs, just watch: the first person to make a more skill-based MMOG (be it FPS-style, or more sim-ish) that appeals to casual gamers (i.e. no systems like "levels" that only fragment the player base, or absurd time requirements to advance) will be a very, very wealthy individual.
/. ran an article about when they announced you own everything you create, but I wish I had joined sooner instead of wasting my time with SWG. There's nearly a zero probability that I'll go back to another online game where "crafting" is "creating objects which have already been modeled, textured, and scripted for behavior by the game developer". I'd rather do that myself, thank you very much.
See Second Life. The name is kinda corny, but it is exactly what you describe. There are no skills other than your actual RL skills at creativity. On top of that, the users create nearly all the content, and have a lot of flexibility, including access to VM-oriented scripting for anything you create.
Best yet, this is the only online "game" I've seen that has a non-recurring (one time) payment option ($10), and only admits people 18+ in age. It's nice to enjoy a mature MMO environment for a change.
I joined back in November when
Second Life has a mac version (Linux coming soon), and we get a lot of "TSO Refugees". =)
Directors have a fiduciary duty to their owners: they must manage the business in their interest. They aren't there to manage "expectations", or to drive their stock price. The job of a company is to make money for its owners, plain and simple.
Yeah, but if the company doesn't pay dividends, then it's forced to grow to give the stock value.
I think that's the very heart of the problem with corporations these days, and why they're forced to endlessly merge together.
the light-transmitting concrete that is set to hit the market this year
Nice. Very subtle.
Wow. Any clue what program was used to create this diagram? I have yet to find anything which automatically optimizes the connection lines so cleanly.
DSL modems, by the way, shout real loud.
Just for those reading, DSL isn't just louder shouting, it's shouting at a much higher frequency so there's a lot more waves to float your data on. =)
Best software license ever... =)
Agreed.
Even all technical issues aside, all that they need to do is ensure that they assign incompetent poll volunteers in precincts where they expect high turnout of the oppositing party.
See example mentioned in another comment where they spent hours getting the machines to boot. Surely this turned away voters who did not bother to return later.
and since I'm a DirecTV subscriber, I can sit back and enjoy the fireworks without being personally affected. :-)
At least until DirecTV's contract negotiation comes up...
I have to give Charlie credit for standing up to viacom.
I agree with this. They could have just jacked up the prices and shrugged at the customers helplessly, but they didn't.
The question is which move is more unpopular, raising rates by 40% or cutting off some channels?
I see Viacom as the bad guy here. There's no reason they need to raise rates, since most (if not all) of their channels are advertising-supported; they only stand to benefit from the additional viewership brought to them by Echostar. Instead, they decided to get greedy.
Maybe it's time to ask congress to pass a law saying every channel needs to be sold independently, until everyone learns to play nice.
Heh. I remember 2-3 years ago, I bought a 24-pack of Kraft Singles at the grocery store, and it came with a CD-ROM encyclopedia.
Cheese and an entire encyclopedia of knowledge for one low price.
I saved the package just because of the absurdity of it.
If you suspect Asperger, read the tips on the online support groups and if they look obvious ... you probably dont have it. Some of the tips might even give you an insight if you have just some mild traits.
And I think that is the benefit of categorizing these various conditions. Once they are given a label, then it makes for a way to organize treatment. A consequence of this is that people who show similar signs but do not completely fit the label may also learn something from the recommended treatements.
I still wonder how much heat these generate. I certainly wouldn't want to line my walls with hundreds of watts of electricity being coverted into heat (and light). =)
Where do I declare my citizenship to Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong?
Get some Rat Things after those punks and they won't be coming back any time soon...
They're a lot more useful than those useless MetaCops...
So long as the warranty states that the car is good to go for 3 years with no wierd service / repair costs for me to pay and I dont have to even TOUCH the engine / oil levels etc... Im happy as larry.
This is exactly what I've done with my saturn, which just passed 3 years old. I just take it to the dealer every 3000-3500 miles, and tell them to do whatever's on the maintenance schedule.
Sure, it costs me a bit more than if I do it myself, but the concept is no different.
This is nice, but it'll be about the sixth time they've announced they've found proof of water on Mars...