By book 6 things had gotten a bit out there, but one of the great things him was he had a pretty solid progression of "If you can do this, then you can probably do this" on down the line. Span that across thousands and thousands of years and you get all kinds of craziness it was cool.
Easilly my favorite books of all time. Brian's prequels were not bad either, they just didn't provoke the imagination quite as much as his father's books did, in my opinion.
Speaking of which, there has been a lot released since I read the last of the Jihad series, I may have to hit up the bookstore soon.
You've got 8 examples out of hundreds of thousands of albums that have been released.
Even if you only stuck with albums that went platinum, you'll find that most people only like one or two songs per album. That's what made iTunes so popular in the first place - because now you didn't have to buy the whole album for one or two songs!
There are a few exceptions but most albums taken on the whole range from mediocre to downright lame. A particularly great example is the albums of any one-hit-wonder. There will be exactly one good song, and the rest suck. There are more examples of albums with exactly one good song than there are of great albums that have four or five good songs that most people (interested in the genre, of course) could agree on.
However, I think there's a real hole in the market right now for games that cater to hardcore gamers.
It's not just the hardcore gamers, I'm a casual gamer that likes a challenge. That usually means I only play for a couple hours a week, and a challenging game can take months or even years to finish, depending on how often I play.
I LIKE having to avoid certain areas, or run like hell because I'm not good enough yet. Seeing some baddie and going "Oh shit! He's gonna eat my lunch!" and having to get out of dodge is fun. What is NOT fun is running into a muskrat that I was able to kill three months earlier with a rusty sword and barely the ability to swing it, and find it nearly as difficult to kill with a high quality sword and armor and a high level of fighting skill. What the hell? When the muskrats are nearly as tough as the dragons, something is wrong. That's the experience of Oblivion.
In fact, some good advice for playing Oblivion is to not get too high level too fast, because the monsters get more skills and abilities that actualy make them harder to kill when you are higher level than they would be at a lower level. I mean, what? That's bullshit, and it doesn't make one bit of sense.
Racing games need the rubberbanding - if it were like real life, one crash and you're toast- hopelessly unable to catch up with those who haven't crashed, where's the fun?
It's a challenge, if it's a short race a small fender bender should take you out of the running completely. A long race you might be able to recover. If it's a devastating straight-into-the-wall crash you should definitely not be able to finish the race.
Re-start the race, it's what the games always did before and they were still fun. Where's the fun in being able to win no matter what? Where's the challenge?
Most modern games have some variation of a tutorial that starts you off on "easy," "simple," and "adaptive," and works up to the "full blown" game. Having direct control over these three variables would allow the player to customize the gameplay to fit their personal preference, and hopefully would broaden the appeal of the game.
I hate to break it to you, but up until 5-10 years ago (depending on the genre) that's how almost ALL video games were created. Especially FPS games, you generally had an easy, normal, and hard play mode, with an insane mode either immediately available or unlockable by beating one of the other modes first.
The trouble with "rubberbanding" is applying it to a multiplayer game is extremely difficult and very prone to abuse. For example, in Halo 3 online it tries to match people up at the same skill level. The thing is, anybody playing on a guest account has a permanent skill level of 0, it doesn't matter if they are god's gift to snipers, they bring the average down and the whole team gets matched up with an easier team, which leads to a slaughter. People also regularly delete their accounts and create new ones (you get annoying messages all the time of "Hey, I'm now soandso"), allowing them to wreak havoc on their way back up the rankings.
There is nothing skill adjustments can do to fix these problems, so perhaps designers should be looking at ways to enourage people to play more difficult areas as they get better instead of arbitrarily making the whole world harder?
It makes you a permanent noob, getting better doesn't actually mean anything because had NOT gotten any better you would be doing just as well.
What's the point of a skill increase if a beginner monster that was challenging but beatable at the very beginning of the game can suddenly kick your ass when you're 3/4 of the way through the story line? That just makes you feel like shit.
It would be a hell of a lot easier to just do away with the skills altogether and turn it into an FPS, since it is about the same anyway.
First off, I was talking about bare minimums. Obviously this is not the most luxurient lifestyle, but I know people who live on literally zero income and are very happy. You think living on $20k per year is rough, try making all of your own shit, growing / killing all your own food, providing for your own means of heat and subsistance. It is certainly possible (though in that case you would need land to do it on, it is not very available these days).
You think there are minimum-wage jobs available everywhere, for anyone? You're delusional.
I never said that, but there are minimum-wage jobs available for everyone somewhere. You may have to pack up and move somewhere else to get by, but that's life. Deal with it instead of whining. My parents today make a little over $50k per year, combined income (that's only a little over the $20k per person I used in my previous post), and they raised four happy, reasonably well-adjusted children on that income. My dad even eventually bought (half built himself) two four-plexes and brings in an aditional $1200 per month or so, excluding money saved for maintenance.
When I say you can save, and even thrive, on a very low income, I speak from experience. It isn't some bullshit academic exercise. People can live on far, far less than they think they can, and would be capable of a lot more if they actually tried reducing what they "need" to spend.
Utilities: $50 (and that's generously low for most climes).
I live in Alaska, and my heat bill runs at -most- $50 a month in the dead of winter with temperatures in the -20 range, and that's with keeping the temperature around 75. I could be comfortable with a lot less, but I have a roommate who likes it warmer. That does not account for my electric bill, which is about $30 per month, but that is with a significant amount of waste (entertainment center is always drawing a current, 24/7, I watch a lot of TV when I'm home, etc). I could probably cut it down to well below $10 per month if I tried.
Air conditioning, while nice, is not necessary. It may not be comfortable without it, but comfort is the basis for all luxuries, and kinda helps define them. Therefore, most climates could get by with a significantly lower Utility bill than mine, if they really wanted to.
A vehicle is a luxury. With the push to get business people to "bike to work", it's funny that someone on a tight budget would claim a "need" for a car. Walk, bike, ride the bus. There are very few places this does not work, and it certainly doesn't cost $100 per month. A bicycle will run you around $100, and in most cities will get you where you want to go only a little slower than a car would. Mine is a little worse than average, but it doesn't take more than 45 minutes to go all the way across town. That would still take about 20 in a car. Bonus that you get to be healthier at the same time. Winter time is no excuse, save up and buy winter tires for your bicycle - I know a number of people who do just that.
$50 per month for transportation is reasonable, even excessive in some cases.
Laundry, clothes, etc: $250 (by your estimate, and let's also assume this includes entertainment).
I did not include entertainment, that is a luxury (there are hundreds of ways to entertain yourself for free anyway), and I don't know where the hell you wash your clothes that it costs you $250 per month to do so. That's insane. I pay about $4 per week and feel like I'm getting raped in the pocket book every time I do, do you dry clean all your t-shirts or something? Even buying a pair of pants and a shirt of some kind every month, that need only add $50 or so, and I can't imagine you need that many clothes. You don't need a new outfit for every occasion, one that fits most will do fine. For new clothes, my Mom woul
things like "When is an offer considered to be accepted or even valid?" and that is just the basics.
Like the fact that an acceptance of an offer need only be sent, not necessarily recieved, to make the contract binding. I.e. as soon as the acceptor mails off the acceptance the contract has been accepted and the offerer is bound by it. It doesn't matter that the offerer does not yet know it has been accepted.
I had a contract management class in college, it was very enlightening.
You can save money no matter how much you make. Saying "I don't make enough to save" is bullshit. People who make under 20k per year. In most areas you can rent for around $500 per month - it may be a shithole but it's a place to live (in some areas $500 gets you a damn fine apartment). That's about $6k per year. You can eat well for about $20-25 per week if you buy the right foods, which ads up to around $1000 per year for food. If you wanted to live on ramen you could cut that down to under $250 per year, but I don't advise it, you'll be malnourished in short order. Give another $3000 per year for things like laundry, clothes (you ARE buying cheap walmart clothes instead of those designer jeans, right?) and other miscelaneous expenses, and you've got $10,000 per year that a person making $20,000 per year can save. Even with minimum wage you can still save $3k per year. Anybody can get a minimum wage job, even in this economy. Most anybody can manage a second, part time job as well.
The problem people have is they think "extras" are necessities. Cell phone? Luxury item. Car? Yeah, it's a luxury too. TV? Cable? Internet? All luxuries. Making more money only makes this problem worse, as people tend to buy more and more luxuries instead of saving the extra, like they should.
Back to the unemployment issue, what is really disturbing, is that the unemployment benefits are all or nothing. The fact that they don't care if your supplimental income doesn't come close to what even unemployment benifits provide is stupid, and isn't exactly a good way of encouraging someone to find a new job. This all or nothing nonsense needs to go. Just adjust the unemployment to take into account the supplimental income - adjusting it up until the supplimental income is greater than the unemployment benefit, at which point the benifit goes away entirely.
The fact is, if she was a high-paid lawyer before she lost her job, chances are she paid more in unemployment insurance while she was working than people making under $20k even made, and she deserves some of that back when she falls on hard times. Cutting her out for $1 per day is utter bullshit and you know it.
This attitude of "You're rich, you should support me" is exactly the attitude that keeps poor people poor (and getting poorer) and rich people rich (and getting richer). How about we take a little responsibility for ourselves, and do away with unemployment insurance altogether, huh?
Unemployment benefits are meant to help people with no income.
Unemployment benefits are for people who are... unemployed.
That she has some income shouldn't prevent benefits, especially when that income is next to nothing. She was averaging $30 a month, that's not exactly making ends-meet. Stripping her benefits for such a low sum would be akin to stripping unemployment benefits because someone bought you lunch.
I would feel differently if she were running a blog as a business, or if that blog brought in more money than unemployment would bring in. If you have already determined that there is a minimum amount of money a person should recieve while looking for another job, any supplimental income should simply reduce the benefits by whatever the supplimental income is, untill the difference is negative - i.e. making more money with the suppliment than full unemployment would give. Then it is simply re-classified as the primary income and you are considered self-employed.
To look at it another way, do they strip your unemployment because you're earning 2% in a savings account? I should hope not. That's what this is closer to. Either way, she was still unemployed, not even self-employed. She paid for the unemployment insurance, she should be able to collect it when she is unemployed.
I hope she puts ad-sense back up before she is slashdotted, that could make up for a lot of the shit NYC is pulling here.
Same here, I got fed up with Vista pretty quickly (it came with a new computer - and blue screened at first boot) and switched to Linux - Ubuntu specifically.
Unfortunately Linux eventually pushed me back to Vista. It took about a year and a half, and by then SP2 was out all the issues I'd had with Vista before had been delt with. It it has all been gravy since then.
I'm telling you, if you aren't fond of the effort Linux takes you might want to give Vista another shot, it has improved a lot.
Ever hear the saying "Tell a lie often enough and it will become true?" That's what TFA is talking about.
It's not that it actually -is- true, it's obviously not. But people believe and act on the lie as if it were true, so it might as well be as far as anybody but those who know the truth is concerned. Retractions are often met with skepticism, making getting the truth out much more difficult.
It's like in the office, if someone starts a rumor that Suzie has been giving the boss a little "extra service" after hours, and neither Suzie nor the boss hear about it until after it has spread around the whole company, it is too late to stop it. There likely isn't any solid proof one way or another, and anyway the truth does not spread like a lie does. You don't get a wildfire of "Did you hear Suzie really hasn't been doing anything with the boss?" spreading around, it just doesn't happen. So at the very least the lie has damaged Suzie's reputation the most in our culture, but if it goes far enough Management could decide to fire one or both of them based on the rumor.
Sensationalist journalism is simply the office rumor magnified a thousand times, with the potential for destructin a thousand times greater.
It would be really great if people just regarded everything they heard with a nice big dose of skepticism. "Yahoo released 200,000 people's identity info? Says who?" That would be a great start, because when it turns out it's some guy with a blog, who got his info from some kid with a blog in another country, the credibility starts to drop and people stop believing it.
My post is from my own personal experience. I have been using Windows since win 3.11 (which I usually dropped out of into DOS), and I have been playing with Linux off and on since then. I switched to Linux on my laptop when I had issues with Vista at launch that, frankly, pissed me off. I used that for about a year - year and a half and recently switched back to Vista about six months ago.
So my post comes from recent experience with Linux and Vista both, it's not an assumption that Windows requires a lot less maintenance for me, it's personal experience that tells me that. There is the caveat of Windows launches, which are still as horrible as they have ever been. We'll see with Win7.
Or are you factoring in the "I will get this to work no matter how long it takes" geek stubbornness which sometimes hits me when I don't succeed in doing something easily, like printing from Linux to a printer shared from Windows?
That's not quite the time sink I am talking about. I fought issues with various programs wrecking my sound in Linux, a problem I have never even heard of with Windows. Compatibility with various vendors though is a compatibility problem, and you can see those in other examples in Windows just the same. You won't see a printer problem, but it will be something else. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about when things go wrong they tend to require much tweaking and editing and messing with some such program but not before you do X in this other program, etc. It's a pain in the ass. In Windows, most problems can be fixed with a reboot (yeah, it's annoying, but it's easy). Application problems you just run the repair. And if you really broke things bad (almost all Windows problems these days are user caused) you just roll the whole system back to before you installed that piece of crapware or whatever.
It doesn't really require much technical knowledge until things are really bad. Linux, on the other hand, if things are not quite the way you want them, half the time you'll need to manually edit a config file instead of having an option to adjust it in the program itself. It sucks.
But some people enjoy that, and more power to them. It's just for me it is a complete waste of time, and most of the world seems to agree with me.
Also recognize this ONLY applies to desktops - Windows Server is awesome but not an option for a low budget operation (and not the best choice in a number of cases), and particularly with Samba v4 whenever it comes out there will be pretty much nothing a Windows Server can do that a Linux server can't do. The Windows Server will be easier to set up though;).
Your 7 year plan is a little odd, and you used far, far too many words to describe it, but ok. Your sentiment of caution at least is rational.
However, I have a few beefs with a few of your assumptions.
First off, that your total cost of ownership is lower. That is certainly true if your time is worth nothing to you. However, my time is worth a lot more than nothing to me, so the $50 Microsoft tax for a windows box is blown away in just the setup time for Linux. Setting aside the shenanigans and problems at launch (I honestly don't know why anybody buys a brand new MS operating system at launch, seriously), Vista requires less maintenance than XP did, and XP required less maintenance than any desktop Linux distro I've ever used. Now, you may enjoy messing with config files and tweaking your system and so don't see that as part of your TCO, but I certainly don't enjoy it, and every hour I spend tweaking something is an hour I'm wasting, and my time is worth something to me. Most people see things from my point of view instead of yours (though I think your average Linux geek would agree with you).
Second, unless they have split again Beryl has been Compiz for a few years now. It is also still not a stable program, and is a massive resource hog after years of development. While it has a lot more features, most of them are nothing more than little toys and don't actually do anything, while the dressing in Vista/Win7 is designed to help you out. The only thing I miss really in Vista is the desktop cube, I loved that thing. Anyway it's hardly a good comparison to the stable window manager in Vista/Win7, half the time Compiz doesn't load correctly, and you need to turn it off any time you want to use the majority of your system's resources. Not cool.
As for hardware vendors, frankly, the Linux community is still too small to matter. They'll write drivers for Windows and Mac because that gets them 99% of the market. The effort to get that last 1% would likely cost them more than they'd gain. They certainly aren't going to give you their firmware source code, regardless of how much you think they should. If you could find a way to utilize Mac drivers (they aught to be a lot closer than Windows drivers) you'd be golden, as Macs are gaining market share fast.
Anyway, more power to ya man, but I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.
Wow, how the hell did that get modded "Informative"? The mods are clueless, that should be +5 Funny.
That was a joke people, get it? Lower bounds of loathing? 32 bit signed integers are orders of magnitude smaller than 64 bit signed integers, so the lower bounds of a signed integer are much much higher for a 64 bit operating system than with a 32 bit, which means the move to a 64 bit operating system was in order to increase the amount of bullshit we'll tolerate. Get it now?
If you're complaining about the messenger app and the helper app, get another program for your email, seriously.
Messenger is the core communications component of the Live apps, the others don't work without it. It would be like saying all you want is MS Word, you don't want to bother with Windows. It doesn't work like that.
I can see why you may not like that they chose to build off of the messenger app, but if all you really want is the mail client, and the messenger client pisses you off, then get a different client.
And I still don't understand what hoops you are jumping through, it is literally click get-live application, choose components (once the main app is downloaded), and click install. If you're having problems with that, computers aren't for you.
What you say is definitely true, but people somehow stop parsing words once they are used often enough.
"Web Browser? It means something that lets you browse websites on a big web of computers? Seriously?". I mean, come on, parse the words and you should be able to come close. But people don't. "Internet Explorer" is obviously not "The Internet", it says right in the name that it just "explores" the internet, it should be obvious that "The Internet" is a separate entity to be explored, even if you don't particularly understand what that is. And yet people actually think IE is the internet. It boggles the mind.
There are lots of things about people that boggle the mind, so this is just another in a long list. Still, sometimes it is simply a matter of understanding the two words they are speaking, and people fail.
I've got a post detailing how to sound like you know what you're talking about even though you don't know shit.
Apparently he has read it. Unfortunately the technique I described falls apart when someone who actually has a clue comes along, but I warned about that so he has no excuse!
Seriously, though, the shit's there. Some people just don't know what the hell they are talking about. God I'd hate to see whatever program he's "designing" in action, probably the slowest, most redundant piece of crap ever written.
They seem to have taken IE, tied it into everything and they decided that they better make it into a library for convenience sake, rather than build a library and use it.
You've actually got it backwards, they did build a library and IE was built to use it, exactly the way you think it wasn't done.
It is a private library, and there are standard API calls to access its functions. The original IE application was something like 89kb, it was simply a gui for the OS's HTML functionality. Most all applications for Windows that need http and html functionality use those same libraries to access the web.
Now, IE has certainly grown since its inception, and it now comes with a lot of renderers (javascript and fonts and whatnot) and other functionality, but it is still essentially just a GUI accessing the HTML and HTTP functionality of windows libraries. In fact I would be very surprised if Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari did NOT use these libraries in their web browsers, it would be like writing your own window form code (creates the structure of the window, title bar, and things like close buttons and menu bar) instead of using the Windows controls. There is generally no reason not to use these libraries and controls, Microsoft has already done the work and you aren't likely to do it better on their own OS.
You should also be able to figure out why they would not allow you to uninstall the web browser. Simply put, if you uninstall that little GUI app and don't have a web browser, there was no other part of the Windows OS that had the capability of browsing the web. If you knew an FTP site with a browser you could get a new one that one, or if you had a newsgroup reader and subscription you could find out how to get one that way, but what if you had neither? You're screwed unless you re-install IE.
So of course at first they simple did not allow IE to be uninstalled. Later it was gaining lock-in value, and the reasons for not making it removeable were more anti-competitive in nature - they could have easily by then built basic HTML parsing functionality into a command line program without the need to have a version of IE installed. You would get something extremely low-feature like Lynx, and the anti-trust issues would have been pretty much solved. Instead they wanted to keep a stranglehold on the market and are now stuck doing weird stuff like this.
To be honest I can understand giving OEMs and easy option to replace IE completely on new computers, but I cannot understand why they have to offer competitor's products on their retail copies. It would be like forcing Toyota to explain to a customer why they might prefer Ford. I mean, huh?
I reckon at least 50% of people don't even know what Windows is, or that Internet Explorer is a web browser and there are alternatives. All they see is a computer and an icon called Internet Explorer which is "the internet".
I watched one of those "man on the street" style interviews asking people what a "web browser" was. It was incredible how little people know about what the internet is, or how you get it. For heaven's sake, it's a web that you browse with software. Do you know what a web is? Well what would the "web" be on the interent? At the very least you should be able to get that it's a network of websites, even if you don't understand that it is a network of computers running those websites. Obviously, given that simple deduction, you should realize that a "web browser" allows you to browse, or choose among, the various web sites out there.
I think maybe one in six managed to say it was some kind of software for looking at websites on the internet, it was pathetic.
Do people just make things up so they're complaints sound solid? I must be new here.
You must be, that's a hallmark of Slashdot argument. I'll show you how to make yourself sound like an expert on a subject in less than 5 minutes:
First, read the post you disagree with and look for any "fact" (facts are flexible here) that looks less than solid.
Fire up Google and search for a negation of that fact (such and such is not yadda yadda). Even if this yields nothing, you should now know enough about the jargon to start making shit up.
All you really need to do is make sure it is relatively logical, and then state it with absolute certainty. Don't use sissy terms like may, or might, or "scientists think", or any other such pansy talk. State it as if you did the hard research yourself and everyone else in the whole world is a moron.
A great way to fend off rebuttals for something you know is not well documented is to force a conditions for any potential rebuttal. Something along the lines of "Show me where X happened" when you know damn well nobody has been able to gather proof of such a thing. This lends credibility to your own position, regardless of whether or not there is any actual proof for your side either. The fact that your bullshit first and any rebuttals now must prove their side right means you win.
Statistics are fantastic, everybody knows they are unreliable when taken out of context, yet they will still believe an obvious bullshit statistic over just stating an opinion. For example, some statistics on the Healthcare debate (these aren't exact, as I don't feel like looking them up, but they are ballpark): 60% of Americans want a public option, but 65% of Americans don't trust the government to manage healthcare. WTF? It doesn't make much sense, but it is true (roughly). Without any context, you can make those two statistics fit just about any argument you want for any side of the issue. And of course, since you don't know what they actually mean yourself, it's all bullshit anyway.
Don't bother attacking the poster, people just scream "Ad Hominem, Ad Hominem!" and your BS gets overlooked. You need to be more subtle. One of the most effective forms of argument is to re-state the oposing position and adress all of their concerns. The same is true for BS arguments - the better your straw man (incorrectly restating the oposing position and then addressing THOSE concerns), the better your bullshit. An easy to spot straw man just gets you modded down, but a well crafted one can leave oponents furious complaining about what appear to be cosmetic differences between what you stated and their actual position. This technique takes practice.
If you've BS'd well, the only people who will be able to refute you are people who worked harder at their bullshit, or real live experts on the subject.
I have personally started to move away from these tactics, because after a while a decent human being starts to feel dirty, but I imagine if you looked through my posts you'd be hard pressed to tell which ones I actually knew what I was talking about and which ones are utter bullshit in a subject I know nothing about.
First off, you don't need IE to get Windows Live (from whence you get Live Mail). Windows comes with a handy dandy little app that will go get it for you instead. It uses the same api's IE uses, but who the hell cares? Those are windows networking api's for the most part.
If for some reason you can't get it through the app (AV security restrictions, for one) then you can go to the windows live website - which is just a website that can be accessed from any browser.
Wow, look at all that lock-in required to get Live - oh wait, there isn't any.
As for the cruft, I hate that too. The only thing I like is the Windows Live client (best client I've ever used, though I can't say I've used them all), for the rest of the stuff I perform the incredible difficult task of... unchecking the boxes. Holy cow, that's difficult, I almost didn't manage!
Seriously man, quite whining. It looks bad. If you are really installing Live Messenger that often that downloading it is a nuisance, you can easilly get the full download off the Live website and put it on a thumb drive and keep it with you.
Outlook Express is a security nightmare, which is why Microsoft phased it out. Either use Microsoft's other free client (Live Mail), or use a different free client, or pay for a client. Seriously man, someone gives you something for free and all you can do is complain about it.
That's in response to those asshat toolbars like "WebSearch" which fool less than computer literate people into installing them. They switch all your search preferences to their own spyware option automagically.
The Bing option you mention would require you to manually change it, so it can't get hijacked.
Slashdot Mirror
By book 6 things had gotten a bit out there, but one of the great things him was he had a pretty solid progression of "If you can do this, then you can probably do this" on down the line. Span that across thousands and thousands of years and you get all kinds of craziness it was cool.
Easilly my favorite books of all time. Brian's prequels were not bad either, they just didn't provoke the imagination quite as much as his father's books did, in my opinion.
Speaking of which, there has been a lot released since I read the last of the Jihad series, I may have to hit up the bookstore soon.
You've got 8 examples out of hundreds of thousands of albums that have been released.
Even if you only stuck with albums that went platinum, you'll find that most people only like one or two songs per album. That's what made iTunes so popular in the first place - because now you didn't have to buy the whole album for one or two songs!
There are a few exceptions but most albums taken on the whole range from mediocre to downright lame. A particularly great example is the albums of any one-hit-wonder. There will be exactly one good song, and the rest suck. There are more examples of albums with exactly one good song than there are of great albums that have four or five good songs that most people (interested in the genre, of course) could agree on.
However, I think there's a real hole in the market right now for games that cater to hardcore gamers.
It's not just the hardcore gamers, I'm a casual gamer that likes a challenge. That usually means I only play for a couple hours a week, and a challenging game can take months or even years to finish, depending on how often I play.
I LIKE having to avoid certain areas, or run like hell because I'm not good enough yet. Seeing some baddie and going "Oh shit! He's gonna eat my lunch!" and having to get out of dodge is fun. What is NOT fun is running into a muskrat that I was able to kill three months earlier with a rusty sword and barely the ability to swing it, and find it nearly as difficult to kill with a high quality sword and armor and a high level of fighting skill. What the hell? When the muskrats are nearly as tough as the dragons, something is wrong. That's the experience of Oblivion.
In fact, some good advice for playing Oblivion is to not get too high level too fast, because the monsters get more skills and abilities that actualy make them harder to kill when you are higher level than they would be at a lower level. I mean, what? That's bullshit, and it doesn't make one bit of sense.
Racing games need the rubberbanding - if it were like real life, one crash and you're toast- hopelessly unable to catch up with those who haven't crashed, where's the fun?
It's a challenge, if it's a short race a small fender bender should take you out of the running completely. A long race you might be able to recover. If it's a devastating straight-into-the-wall crash you should definitely not be able to finish the race.
Re-start the race, it's what the games always did before and they were still fun. Where's the fun in being able to win no matter what? Where's the challenge?
Most modern games have some variation of a tutorial that starts you off on "easy," "simple," and "adaptive," and works up to the "full blown" game. Having direct control over these three variables would allow the player to customize the gameplay to fit their personal preference, and hopefully would broaden the appeal of the game.
I hate to break it to you, but up until 5-10 years ago (depending on the genre) that's how almost ALL video games were created. Especially FPS games, you generally had an easy, normal, and hard play mode, with an insane mode either immediately available or unlockable by beating one of the other modes first.
The trouble with "rubberbanding" is applying it to a multiplayer game is extremely difficult and very prone to abuse. For example, in Halo 3 online it tries to match people up at the same skill level. The thing is, anybody playing on a guest account has a permanent skill level of 0, it doesn't matter if they are god's gift to snipers, they bring the average down and the whole team gets matched up with an easier team, which leads to a slaughter. People also regularly delete their accounts and create new ones (you get annoying messages all the time of "Hey, I'm now soandso"), allowing them to wreak havoc on their way back up the rankings.
There is nothing skill adjustments can do to fix these problems, so perhaps designers should be looking at ways to enourage people to play more difficult areas as they get better instead of arbitrarily making the whole world harder?
It makes you a permanent noob, getting better doesn't actually mean anything because had NOT gotten any better you would be doing just as well.
What's the point of a skill increase if a beginner monster that was challenging but beatable at the very beginning of the game can suddenly kick your ass when you're 3/4 of the way through the story line? That just makes you feel like shit.
It would be a hell of a lot easier to just do away with the skills altogether and turn it into an FPS, since it is about the same anyway.
First off, I was talking about bare minimums. Obviously this is not the most luxurient lifestyle, but I know people who live on literally zero income and are very happy. You think living on $20k per year is rough, try making all of your own shit, growing / killing all your own food, providing for your own means of heat and subsistance. It is certainly possible (though in that case you would need land to do it on, it is not very available these days).
You think there are minimum-wage jobs available everywhere, for anyone? You're delusional.
I never said that, but there are minimum-wage jobs available for everyone somewhere. You may have to pack up and move somewhere else to get by, but that's life. Deal with it instead of whining. My parents today make a little over $50k per year, combined income (that's only a little over the $20k per person I used in my previous post), and they raised four happy, reasonably well-adjusted children on that income. My dad even eventually bought (half built himself) two four-plexes and brings in an aditional $1200 per month or so, excluding money saved for maintenance.
When I say you can save, and even thrive, on a very low income, I speak from experience. It isn't some bullshit academic exercise. People can live on far, far less than they think they can, and would be capable of a lot more if they actually tried reducing what they "need" to spend.
Utilities: $50 (and that's generously low for most climes).
I live in Alaska, and my heat bill runs at -most- $50 a month in the dead of winter with temperatures in the -20 range, and that's with keeping the temperature around 75. I could be comfortable with a lot less, but I have a roommate who likes it warmer. That does not account for my electric bill, which is about $30 per month, but that is with a significant amount of waste (entertainment center is always drawing a current, 24/7, I watch a lot of TV when I'm home, etc). I could probably cut it down to well below $10 per month if I tried.
Air conditioning, while nice, is not necessary. It may not be comfortable without it, but comfort is the basis for all luxuries, and kinda helps define them. Therefore, most climates could get by with a significantly lower Utility bill than mine, if they really wanted to.
Transportation costs (car, mass transit, etc): $100-200 (again, generously low estimate).
A vehicle is a luxury. With the push to get business people to "bike to work", it's funny that someone on a tight budget would claim a "need" for a car. Walk, bike, ride the bus. There are very few places this does not work, and it certainly doesn't cost $100 per month. A bicycle will run you around $100, and in most cities will get you where you want to go only a little slower than a car would. Mine is a little worse than average, but it doesn't take more than 45 minutes to go all the way across town. That would still take about 20 in a car. Bonus that you get to be healthier at the same time. Winter time is no excuse, save up and buy winter tires for your bicycle - I know a number of people who do just that.
$50 per month for transportation is reasonable, even excessive in some cases.
Laundry, clothes, etc: $250 (by your estimate, and let's also assume this includes entertainment).
I did not include entertainment, that is a luxury (there are hundreds of ways to entertain yourself for free anyway), and I don't know where the hell you wash your clothes that it costs you $250 per month to do so. That's insane. I pay about $4 per week and feel like I'm getting raped in the pocket book every time I do, do you dry clean all your t-shirts or something? Even buying a pair of pants and a shirt of some kind every month, that need only add $50 or so, and I can't imagine you need that many clothes. You don't need a new outfit for every occasion, one that fits most will do fine. For new clothes, my Mom woul
things like "When is an offer considered to be accepted or even valid?" and that is just the basics.
Like the fact that an acceptance of an offer need only be sent, not necessarily recieved, to make the contract binding. I.e. as soon as the acceptor mails off the acceptance the contract has been accepted and the offerer is bound by it. It doesn't matter that the offerer does not yet know it has been accepted.
I had a contract management class in college, it was very enlightening.
You can save money no matter how much you make. Saying "I don't make enough to save" is bullshit. People who make under 20k per year. In most areas you can rent for around $500 per month - it may be a shithole but it's a place to live (in some areas $500 gets you a damn fine apartment). That's about $6k per year. You can eat well for about $20-25 per week if you buy the right foods, which ads up to around $1000 per year for food. If you wanted to live on ramen you could cut that down to under $250 per year, but I don't advise it, you'll be malnourished in short order. Give another $3000 per year for things like laundry, clothes (you ARE buying cheap walmart clothes instead of those designer jeans, right?) and other miscelaneous expenses, and you've got $10,000 per year that a person making $20,000 per year can save. Even with minimum wage you can still save $3k per year. Anybody can get a minimum wage job, even in this economy. Most anybody can manage a second, part time job as well.
The problem people have is they think "extras" are necessities. Cell phone? Luxury item. Car? Yeah, it's a luxury too. TV? Cable? Internet? All luxuries. Making more money only makes this problem worse, as people tend to buy more and more luxuries instead of saving the extra, like they should.
Back to the unemployment issue, what is really disturbing, is that the unemployment benefits are all or nothing. The fact that they don't care if your supplimental income doesn't come close to what even unemployment benifits provide is stupid, and isn't exactly a good way of encouraging someone to find a new job. This all or nothing nonsense needs to go. Just adjust the unemployment to take into account the supplimental income - adjusting it up until the supplimental income is greater than the unemployment benefit, at which point the benifit goes away entirely.
The fact is, if she was a high-paid lawyer before she lost her job, chances are she paid more in unemployment insurance while she was working than people making under $20k even made, and she deserves some of that back when she falls on hard times. Cutting her out for $1 per day is utter bullshit and you know it.
This attitude of "You're rich, you should support me" is exactly the attitude that keeps poor people poor (and getting poorer) and rich people rich (and getting richer). How about we take a little responsibility for ourselves, and do away with unemployment insurance altogether, huh?
Unemployment benefits are meant to help people with no income.
Unemployment benefits are for people who are... unemployed.
That she has some income shouldn't prevent benefits, especially when that income is next to nothing. She was averaging $30 a month, that's not exactly making ends-meet. Stripping her benefits for such a low sum would be akin to stripping unemployment benefits because someone bought you lunch.
I would feel differently if she were running a blog as a business, or if that blog brought in more money than unemployment would bring in. If you have already determined that there is a minimum amount of money a person should recieve while looking for another job, any supplimental income should simply reduce the benefits by whatever the supplimental income is, untill the difference is negative - i.e. making more money with the suppliment than full unemployment would give. Then it is simply re-classified as the primary income and you are considered self-employed.
To look at it another way, do they strip your unemployment because you're earning 2% in a savings account? I should hope not. That's what this is closer to. Either way, she was still unemployed, not even self-employed. She paid for the unemployment insurance, she should be able to collect it when she is unemployed.
I hope she puts ad-sense back up before she is slashdotted, that could make up for a lot of the shit NYC is pulling here.
Same here, I got fed up with Vista pretty quickly (it came with a new computer - and blue screened at first boot) and switched to Linux - Ubuntu specifically.
Unfortunately Linux eventually pushed me back to Vista. It took about a year and a half, and by then SP2 was out all the issues I'd had with Vista before had been delt with. It it has all been gravy since then.
I'm telling you, if you aren't fond of the effort Linux takes you might want to give Vista another shot, it has improved a lot.
Ever hear the saying "Tell a lie often enough and it will become true?" That's what TFA is talking about.
It's not that it actually -is- true, it's obviously not. But people believe and act on the lie as if it were true, so it might as well be as far as anybody but those who know the truth is concerned. Retractions are often met with skepticism, making getting the truth out much more difficult.
It's like in the office, if someone starts a rumor that Suzie has been giving the boss a little "extra service" after hours, and neither Suzie nor the boss hear about it until after it has spread around the whole company, it is too late to stop it. There likely isn't any solid proof one way or another, and anyway the truth does not spread like a lie does. You don't get a wildfire of "Did you hear Suzie really hasn't been doing anything with the boss?" spreading around, it just doesn't happen. So at the very least the lie has damaged Suzie's reputation the most in our culture, but if it goes far enough Management could decide to fire one or both of them based on the rumor.
Sensationalist journalism is simply the office rumor magnified a thousand times, with the potential for destructin a thousand times greater.
It would be really great if people just regarded everything they heard with a nice big dose of skepticism. "Yahoo released 200,000 people's identity info? Says who?" That would be a great start, because when it turns out it's some guy with a blog, who got his info from some kid with a blog in another country, the credibility starts to drop and people stop believing it.
My post is from my own personal experience. I have been using Windows since win 3.11 (which I usually dropped out of into DOS), and I have been playing with Linux off and on since then. I switched to Linux on my laptop when I had issues with Vista at launch that, frankly, pissed me off. I used that for about a year - year and a half and recently switched back to Vista about six months ago.
So my post comes from recent experience with Linux and Vista both, it's not an assumption that Windows requires a lot less maintenance for me, it's personal experience that tells me that. There is the caveat of Windows launches, which are still as horrible as they have ever been. We'll see with Win7.
Or are you factoring in the "I will get this to work no matter how long it takes" geek stubbornness which sometimes hits me when I don't succeed in doing something easily, like printing from Linux to a printer shared from Windows?
That's not quite the time sink I am talking about. I fought issues with various programs wrecking my sound in Linux, a problem I have never even heard of with Windows. Compatibility with various vendors though is a compatibility problem, and you can see those in other examples in Windows just the same. You won't see a printer problem, but it will be something else. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about when things go wrong they tend to require much tweaking and editing and messing with some such program but not before you do X in this other program, etc. It's a pain in the ass. In Windows, most problems can be fixed with a reboot (yeah, it's annoying, but it's easy). Application problems you just run the repair. And if you really broke things bad (almost all Windows problems these days are user caused) you just roll the whole system back to before you installed that piece of crapware or whatever.
It doesn't really require much technical knowledge until things are really bad. Linux, on the other hand, if things are not quite the way you want them, half the time you'll need to manually edit a config file instead of having an option to adjust it in the program itself. It sucks.
But some people enjoy that, and more power to them. It's just for me it is a complete waste of time, and most of the world seems to agree with me.
Also recognize this ONLY applies to desktops - Windows Server is awesome but not an option for a low budget operation (and not the best choice in a number of cases), and particularly with Samba v4 whenever it comes out there will be pretty much nothing a Windows Server can do that a Linux server can't do. The Windows Server will be easier to set up though ;).
Your 7 year plan is a little odd, and you used far, far too many words to describe it, but ok. Your sentiment of caution at least is rational.
However, I have a few beefs with a few of your assumptions.
First off, that your total cost of ownership is lower. That is certainly true if your time is worth nothing to you. However, my time is worth a lot more than nothing to me, so the $50 Microsoft tax for a windows box is blown away in just the setup time for Linux. Setting aside the shenanigans and problems at launch (I honestly don't know why anybody buys a brand new MS operating system at launch, seriously), Vista requires less maintenance than XP did, and XP required less maintenance than any desktop Linux distro I've ever used. Now, you may enjoy messing with config files and tweaking your system and so don't see that as part of your TCO, but I certainly don't enjoy it, and every hour I spend tweaking something is an hour I'm wasting, and my time is worth something to me. Most people see things from my point of view instead of yours (though I think your average Linux geek would agree with you).
Second, unless they have split again Beryl has been Compiz for a few years now. It is also still not a stable program, and is a massive resource hog after years of development. While it has a lot more features, most of them are nothing more than little toys and don't actually do anything, while the dressing in Vista/Win7 is designed to help you out. The only thing I miss really in Vista is the desktop cube, I loved that thing. Anyway it's hardly a good comparison to the stable window manager in Vista/Win7, half the time Compiz doesn't load correctly, and you need to turn it off any time you want to use the majority of your system's resources. Not cool.
As for hardware vendors, frankly, the Linux community is still too small to matter. They'll write drivers for Windows and Mac because that gets them 99% of the market. The effort to get that last 1% would likely cost them more than they'd gain. They certainly aren't going to give you their firmware source code, regardless of how much you think they should. If you could find a way to utilize Mac drivers (they aught to be a lot closer than Windows drivers) you'd be golden, as Macs are gaining market share fast.
Anyway, more power to ya man, but I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.
Well hey, at least now someone can actually tell us what hell is like!
Wow, how the hell did that get modded "Informative"? The mods are clueless, that should be +5 Funny.
That was a joke people, get it? Lower bounds of loathing? 32 bit signed integers are orders of magnitude smaller than 64 bit signed integers, so the lower bounds of a signed integer are much much higher for a 64 bit operating system than with a 32 bit, which means the move to a 64 bit operating system was in order to increase the amount of bullshit we'll tolerate. Get it now?
Oh well, I tried.
That was good man.
If you're complaining about the messenger app and the helper app, get another program for your email, seriously.
Messenger is the core communications component of the Live apps, the others don't work without it. It would be like saying all you want is MS Word, you don't want to bother with Windows. It doesn't work like that.
I can see why you may not like that they chose to build off of the messenger app, but if all you really want is the mail client, and the messenger client pisses you off, then get a different client.
And I still don't understand what hoops you are jumping through, it is literally click get-live application, choose components (once the main app is downloaded), and click install. If you're having problems with that, computers aren't for you.
What you say is definitely true, but people somehow stop parsing words once they are used often enough.
"Web Browser? It means something that lets you browse websites on a big web of computers? Seriously?". I mean, come on, parse the words and you should be able to come close. But people don't. "Internet Explorer" is obviously not "The Internet", it says right in the name that it just "explores" the internet, it should be obvious that "The Internet" is a separate entity to be explored, even if you don't particularly understand what that is. And yet people actually think IE is the internet. It boggles the mind.
There are lots of things about people that boggle the mind, so this is just another in a long list. Still, sometimes it is simply a matter of understanding the two words they are speaking, and people fail.
I've got a post detailing how to sound like you know what you're talking about even though you don't know shit.
Apparently he has read it. Unfortunately the technique I described falls apart when someone who actually has a clue comes along, but I warned about that so he has no excuse!
Seriously, though, the shit's there. Some people just don't know what the hell they are talking about. God I'd hate to see whatever program he's "designing" in action, probably the slowest, most redundant piece of crap ever written.
They seem to have taken IE, tied it into everything and they decided that they better make it into a library for convenience sake, rather than build a library and use it.
You've actually got it backwards, they did build a library and IE was built to use it, exactly the way you think it wasn't done.
It is a private library, and there are standard API calls to access its functions. The original IE application was something like 89kb, it was simply a gui for the OS's HTML functionality. Most all applications for Windows that need http and html functionality use those same libraries to access the web.
Now, IE has certainly grown since its inception, and it now comes with a lot of renderers (javascript and fonts and whatnot) and other functionality, but it is still essentially just a GUI accessing the HTML and HTTP functionality of windows libraries. In fact I would be very surprised if Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari did NOT use these libraries in their web browsers, it would be like writing your own window form code (creates the structure of the window, title bar, and things like close buttons and menu bar) instead of using the Windows controls. There is generally no reason not to use these libraries and controls, Microsoft has already done the work and you aren't likely to do it better on their own OS.
You should also be able to figure out why they would not allow you to uninstall the web browser. Simply put, if you uninstall that little GUI app and don't have a web browser, there was no other part of the Windows OS that had the capability of browsing the web. If you knew an FTP site with a browser you could get a new one that one, or if you had a newsgroup reader and subscription you could find out how to get one that way, but what if you had neither? You're screwed unless you re-install IE.
So of course at first they simple did not allow IE to be uninstalled. Later it was gaining lock-in value, and the reasons for not making it removeable were more anti-competitive in nature - they could have easily by then built basic HTML parsing functionality into a command line program without the need to have a version of IE installed. You would get something extremely low-feature like Lynx, and the anti-trust issues would have been pretty much solved. Instead they wanted to keep a stranglehold on the market and are now stuck doing weird stuff like this.
To be honest I can understand giving OEMs and easy option to replace IE completely on new computers, but I cannot understand why they have to offer competitor's products on their retail copies. It would be like forcing Toyota to explain to a customer why they might prefer Ford. I mean, huh?
I reckon at least 50% of people don't even know what Windows is, or that Internet Explorer is a web browser and there are alternatives. All they see is a computer and an icon called Internet Explorer which is "the internet".
I watched one of those "man on the street" style interviews asking people what a "web browser" was. It was incredible how little people know about what the internet is, or how you get it. For heaven's sake, it's a web that you browse with software. Do you know what a web is? Well what would the "web" be on the interent? At the very least you should be able to get that it's a network of websites, even if you don't understand that it is a network of computers running those websites. Obviously, given that simple deduction, you should realize that a "web browser" allows you to browse, or choose among, the various web sites out there.
I think maybe one in six managed to say it was some kind of software for looking at websites on the internet, it was pathetic.
Because, automagic is magical!
Plus I probably would not have gotten a reply if I had just said "automatic". ;)
Do people just make things up so they're complaints sound solid? I must be new here.
You must be, that's a hallmark of Slashdot argument. I'll show you how to make yourself sound like an expert on a subject in less than 5 minutes:
First, read the post you disagree with and look for any "fact" (facts are flexible here) that looks less than solid.
Fire up Google and search for a negation of that fact (such and such is not yadda yadda). Even if this yields nothing, you should now know enough about the jargon to start making shit up.
All you really need to do is make sure it is relatively logical, and then state it with absolute certainty. Don't use sissy terms like may, or might, or "scientists think", or any other such pansy talk. State it as if you did the hard research yourself and everyone else in the whole world is a moron.
A great way to fend off rebuttals for something you know is not well documented is to force a conditions for any potential rebuttal. Something along the lines of "Show me where X happened" when you know damn well nobody has been able to gather proof of such a thing. This lends credibility to your own position, regardless of whether or not there is any actual proof for your side either. The fact that your bullshit first and any rebuttals now must prove their side right means you win.
Statistics are fantastic, everybody knows they are unreliable when taken out of context, yet they will still believe an obvious bullshit statistic over just stating an opinion. For example, some statistics on the Healthcare debate (these aren't exact, as I don't feel like looking them up, but they are ballpark): 60% of Americans want a public option, but 65% of Americans don't trust the government to manage healthcare. WTF? It doesn't make much sense, but it is true (roughly). Without any context, you can make those two statistics fit just about any argument you want for any side of the issue. And of course, since you don't know what they actually mean yourself, it's all bullshit anyway.
Don't bother attacking the poster, people just scream "Ad Hominem, Ad Hominem!" and your BS gets overlooked. You need to be more subtle. One of the most effective forms of argument is to re-state the oposing position and adress all of their concerns. The same is true for BS arguments - the better your straw man (incorrectly restating the oposing position and then addressing THOSE concerns), the better your bullshit. An easy to spot straw man just gets you modded down, but a well crafted one can leave oponents furious complaining about what appear to be cosmetic differences between what you stated and their actual position. This technique takes practice.
If you've BS'd well, the only people who will be able to refute you are people who worked harder at their bullshit, or real live experts on the subject.
I have personally started to move away from these tactics, because after a while a decent human being starts to feel dirty, but I imagine if you looked through my posts you'd be hard pressed to tell which ones I actually knew what I was talking about and which ones are utter bullshit in a subject I know nothing about.
Cheers!
First off, you don't need IE to get Windows Live (from whence you get Live Mail). Windows comes with a handy dandy little app that will go get it for you instead. It uses the same api's IE uses, but who the hell cares? Those are windows networking api's for the most part.
If for some reason you can't get it through the app (AV security restrictions, for one) then you can go to the windows live website - which is just a website that can be accessed from any browser.
Wow, look at all that lock-in required to get Live - oh wait, there isn't any.
As for the cruft, I hate that too. The only thing I like is the Windows Live client (best client I've ever used, though I can't say I've used them all), for the rest of the stuff I perform the incredible difficult task of... unchecking the boxes. Holy cow, that's difficult, I almost didn't manage!
Seriously man, quite whining. It looks bad. If you are really installing Live Messenger that often that downloading it is a nuisance, you can easilly get the full download off the Live website and put it on a thumb drive and keep it with you.
Outlook Express is a security nightmare, which is why Microsoft phased it out. Either use Microsoft's other free client (Live Mail), or use a different free client, or pay for a client. Seriously man, someone gives you something for free and all you can do is complain about it.
Jeeze.
That's in response to those asshat toolbars like "WebSearch" which fool less than computer literate people into installing them. They switch all your search preferences to their own spyware option automagically.
The Bing option you mention would require you to manually change it, so it can't get hijacked.
In other words, it's not a bad thing.
...
Lappy!
*runs*