But there are sites that specialize in trading real-life dollars for in-game currency and vice-versa. I've recently started playing FFXI, and this has become a bit of a sore spot with fans, as gil (money) is in rather short supply in the game, and you need to spend a lot of it to have up-to-date equipment and be a good asset to a team (the game is weighted HEAVILY against solo play after about level 10 for all but one job class).
Some people with the Windows version are using "bots" to mainly do two things: fishing and camping for Notorius Monsters. Fishing is pretty straightforward: you sell the fish. Notorius Monsters are one-of-a-kind monsters that only appear sometimes, and often drop excellent items (Leaping Boots go for at least 250,000 gil at the auction house). Even without bots, players would have to "camp" these monsters for hours for the possibility of getting the item. But now they have even less of a chance, as people grab these items, sell them for gil, and sell the gil for dollars.
I tried to find a student radio station at Ohio University, but all I found was an NPR rebroadcaster. If I'm in error about this, please let me know.
I really hope that the University of Maryland system doesn't consider this. We've got our radio station at UMBC (WMBC), and the (admittedly more significant) one at College Park. Our draw is that you can be exposed to all sorts of new music that's more interesting and less expensive than what you hear on commercial radio, and its made by artists who actually want you to hear their music, so they often give away at least a few tracks on MP3.
As you might imagine, the percentage of students that listen to our stations is a small minority. It's easier for people to listen to big commercial artists (for certain definitions of "easier"). But we hope that people might check us out if they're looking for something beyond their CD collection, they're too poor to buy more music, and/or they're disgusted with the RIAA. If it's easy to get commercial music illegally, this kills a lot of incentive to listen for the people who wouldn't normally seek this kind of music. University-wide Napster is basically the same story; I believe it would definitely make it harder for us to reach people who might otherwise be interested.
I felt much the same about the Microsoft deal our university made (cheap Windows and Office for a yearly fee), because I was a member of the LUG. If people can get Microsoft's software for $10, many of them are not going to bother trying Linux, and then -- just like with Napster -- they get hit with the full bill once they leave. And they haven't bothered to dig deeper into (music|software) while they were in an environment to facilitate that.
The problem is that many students will think that this is a good idea because it lets them not change their current habits and save money. But college is supposed to be about change, discovery, learning, pushing the boundaries. That's why I view deals like this as terrible.
Perhaps that's because hardly anyone wants to be poor, or at least not in the sense that a "war on poverty" would try to correct. Certainly, there are monks who give away all of their earthly posessions, but that's not quite the same as living in a dirty building in a bad section of town and eating Ramen most of the time. We're not going to try to force the monks into a luxury condo, but everyone else would probably prefer a nicer life.
The war on drugs is a war on things that people want to do. I don't personally use anything other than alchohol and occasionally caffeine myself, but I don't see how pot smoking hurts anyone, ever (and if you think it does, is it worse than what alchohol does?) It will eventually fail; I believe it to be a question only of how long we can live in denial. At the very least, we need to be able to grow hemp in this country (US).
Terrorism, also, is different. There's not a specific thing you can target, or at least not one that's feasible. We have enough food for the poor people in this country; there's probably enough for many other countries as well. It's easy to find the poor people; unlike the terrorists, they're probably not going to hide from you when you try to give them food and medical treatment (although to be fair, some are too proud to accept help).
Maybe people that don't feel the need to buy completely new shiny things and throw out the old every few months are considered "legacy". The only reason I bought my second-to-last machine (Duron 800) was because my brother needed a computer, so I gave him mine. The only reason I bought my last machine (AMD something-or-other) was to have a tiny, nice-looking machine in the living room for MythTV. This was worth it, because I can still watch my few programs and I'm not tied to a schedule. Whenever I do sit down to watch TV (or work out while watching TV), it will be something good.
People don't want to understand that, though. There's something new out, and Bob has one, and why don't I have anything left for retirement now that I've worked my whole life away?
Will this finally be too big for home users to swallow, though? For IT department purchasers? I really hope so; maybe Just Saying No will start to sound good.
When I was quite young, my parents had difficulty getting me to sleep. I would fall asleep far more readily when they turned on the vacuum cleaner. I always thought that this was very odd until I heard that the noise from a vacuum cleaner is supposedly similar to the noise heard inside the womb. Thus, it may be comforting to us on some level (though not when we're on the phone).
I have always had trouble falling asleep without some sort of white noise; AC, computer fan, window fan, etc. But lately, I've been wondering whether this is a good thing. I used to sleep less and have more energy. Current attempts to reduce the quantity of sleep (even gradually) have met with dismal results. I know that my metabolism has slowed down a bit (I'm 26), but I wonder if the computer noise isn't a contributing factor? Is it making me want to sleep too much?
(There are also studies showing a possible link between high CRT use and depression, so that's another thing to investigate.)
The other thing is that if you constantly hear a noise, you can develop a notch in your hearing response at that frequency. It sounds like a joke, but a music teacher of mine had his hearing tested and found a drop in frequency response in one spot: the frequency of his wife's voice. Apparently, this is common.
Additionally, I've just been noticing computer fan noise more of late. I'm not sure what the reason is; possibly because I've been seeing/. articles about it:) But I'm finally taking out some of the noisiest bits of my computer: that old 2GB hard disk (I never booted into Windows anyway) and the horrible 30mm northbridge fan (giant heatsink).
As a final note, sometimes there's just nothing you can do about noise. I built a relatively quiet MythTV machine for the living room; even the DVD writer is quiet (Lite-on, newegg.com, cheap and shorter than most). Samsung drive with fluid dynamic bearings, etc. But now that I have FFXI for the PS2, the PS2 (with hard drive) is louder than the machine. Even before that, the central air was WAY louder, and if you sit on the sofa there's a 125 gallon aquarium right behind your head with fans and bubbling pipes (so hard to get the last bit of air out of those).
The worst is when people express a date like 01/04/03. Great; how the hell am I supposed to know which is which? I have to figure out whether you were from the U.S. and meant January 4, 2003, or from somewhere else and meant April 1st, 2003.
(If you don't think that this is a problem, consider that many restaurant kitchens employ large numbers of people from Spanish-speaking countries. Consider that food has expiration dates.)
I see many people still writing dates like this, too. I guess they saw "Y2k" as just some buzzword that the Morlocks were supposed to fix for them, and it didn't have anything to do with what they did personally.
Really, if you want a short date, you could at least use the 3-letter abbreviation for the month so that it was less confusing. Asking everyone to write ISO dates is probably too much, but dd/dd/dd is just evil. YY/mmm isn't all that much better, although if you're looking at it as a directory structure, it should be obvious that the directories would have to be in descending order. I mean, who would group things by the first day of the month, then the month?
You're posting on Slashdot, remember? Slashdot is part of OSDN, and the parent company of OSDN is...well, VA Software. But if you think back a few years, they used to be VA Linux. They thoroughly tested hardware to make sure it was reliable under Linux, then sold machines with Linux pre-installed.
Now, I don't know if VA sold workstations, but I know that Penguin did (and does), because I've used them. Penguin has some nice-looking Opteron servers as well.
You might argue that these two companies are targeted more at businesses than the home user, and you'd be right. But it's not as if this is some new mind-blowing concept. Lindows is basically trying to do the same thing; while they will sell you the software separately, most people are going to pick it up via those cheap computers which (gasp!) have hardware selected for Lindows.
Sorry, but I must disagree with your disagreements:)
Perhaps a halberd is not such a great weapon if used in the style of an English knight or whatever. But for an experienced staff fighter who treats a halberd as a staff that happens to have a blade on one end, it can be effective against a variety of weapons.
There are 2 basic types of ways to stop something from splitting your head open: meet and follow. Obviously, if someone is swinging a heavy mace at you, attempting to meet it with equal force is foolish. You keep their weapon going in the same general direction, redirecting it slightly, and change the position of your body slightly.
Staves are great because you can parry or knock away your opponent's weapon with one end and hit them with the other end as part of the same motion. You can certainly block a thrusting weapon if you know how to use a staff.
I do not have much experience with chain-based weapons, so I concede that you may have a point with that one. What would you suggest for defense? I don't see how a sword would do any better, for example.
One way that games could enforce weapon usefulness is by character effectiveness. A certain type of fighter is going to be better at using a certain type of weapon because of their build, fighting style, etc. As you pointed out, a halberd would not be a good choice for a Renaissance-ish warrior. IIRC, FF XI does this to some degree.
No, the author specifically addressed this sort of thing in the article as an exception.
"This is not meant to represent a character's literal speech. A tutorial section is intended to be somewhere between an online version of the instruction manual and the shorthand for the character explaining the controls. Even though he's referring to buttons on the Dual Shock, you know in the game's reality he's talking about the buttons on the plane's console, or whatever."
One thing that I enjoyed along these lines was that in one of the Zelda games (perhaps for the Gameboy?), an NPC tells you the key combination for forcing the save screen to appear, and then says something like "But don't ask me what that means...I'm just a kid!"
A random sampling, perhaps. But I happen to be a big fan of the Battle Athletes TV series (say what you will). A lot of people apparently have trouble getting into the first 4 episodes (DVD 1), but then enjoy the series once they're coerced to keep following it. Personally, I enjoy the first DVD as well, but there you go.
(As another example, large parts of season 1 of B5 were rocky, but I really enjoy that series as a whole.)
2. On "indie" labels, the artist gets a much higher percentage of that CD cost. Additionally, I haven't heard of indie labels putting the same time pressure/creative control on bands that the majors do, and IMHO, this results in better music.
3. These labels often have at least 1 track freely available online in an unrestricted (well, MP3) format. Check out Archenemy, Touch and Go, Southern (mmm...El Guapo), etc.
Perhaps this has changed (it was 12+ years ago), but when my mom worked at an art store in a mall, the store manager wouldn't carry anything without a profit margin of at least 40%. And I know that currently, in both fish/reptile stores where my brother works, everything (livestock and supplies) is marked up at least 50%.
When I worked in a computer parts store, though, the markup was a lot lower.
The college station in my sig (WMBC for those who have these things turned off) gets in mostly non-major-label music. I'm not currently very involved with them because of the current management (which will change in a month or so), but I still listen to what people play on their shows. I've found a great many excellent bands through this station.
It's true that we don't often play the whole CD. Some tracks will be profane, and some will not be as good as others, so we have people review the CD and pick out recommended tracks. But DJs are only restricted by the profane songs. It's even better if you can become a DJ or volunteer at a station, because you can probably review music for them and/or come in and listen to the CDs.
I've also found good bands by going to shows. You can often go to a show, pay $5-10 for 2-4 bands, and find one you really like that you'd never heard of before.
Of course, the latter depends on the music scene in your town, but the former only requires Internet access (and WMBC, at least, has a 24k option for those on dial-up).
There is a difference between "command line" and "non-mouse-driven and/or console mode GUI". w3m is still a GUI (and you can use a mouse if you want, but it's designed so that you don't have to). Telnetting to port 80 is command line. I don't think that anyone could argue that MythTV is not a GUI, but it has no mouse support whatsoever. "make menuconfig" is a GUI too.
I use Mutt for email. It's arguably much more efficient than a mouse-driven interface such as Outlook or Mozilla Mail, though only after you've learned your way around it. But it's still a GUI, even though it runs on the console and doesn't use the mouse. I think that Vim is a GUI too, especially when you start using features like split screens.
If you Google for "linux laptop", the first link that comes up is the Linux on Laptops page (http://www.linux-laptop.net/), which has been around for years. I would find a new or used laptop that fit my price range and hardware needs, and then check that page for info. I've used it many, many times when helping someone put Linux on a laptop.
I just got back to Baltimore from Tucson, AZ, which advertises itself as a "bike-friendly city." They mean it. Any vaguely major street has a bike lane, and there are spots to properly secure your bike everywhere. Buses have racks on them so that you can stow your bike and take the bus a long distance. I saw more bike-specific signs in the 5 days I was there than I've ever seen before.
You really can't tell if you'll like the music by listening to the free previews that pretty much everyone gives you? eMusic does 30 seconds, and I think iTunes does too. I'm not sure about the others, but I think Magnatune even lets you listen to the whole song, or listen to a big streaming audio feed of everything they have.
You could also listen to radio stations which play those sorts of music. Blatant plug: WMBC radio, in my sig, plays a good deal of it. We also have shows that suck, of course, but you're not going to like everything our DJs do, and vice-versa. See, indie artists have radio stations and review sites too; you just have to look a bit harder. That goes along with it being less expensive and restricted.
Indie CDs are generally less than those by major label artists, and the indie musicians get to keep more of the money. But $2 is pretty ridiculous; it's not as though these artists don't work as hard on their songs as major-label ones, or as though the songs aren't as good. Many of these artists will let you download a song or two from each album in unrestricted MP3 format; The Archenemy Record Company is pretty generous with this.
I was amused that when I got my Firefly DVD set, it had a little ad brochure for "Fox DVDs". Almost every show advertised had been canceled or screwed over by Fox (or by wherever it ended up after Fox). Hello? Did you think we didn't know? I love how it describes Firefly as "brilliant." Not brilliant enough for a whole season, apparently.
Shows like Stargate SG-1 get around the "problem" of multi-show storylines somewhat via "Previously on Stargate SG-1...", but even then you might feel a bit lost if you don't know any of the back story. I mean, it's difficult to get any sort of character or real plot development into just one hour. To have a good show, you're going to need some back story, but the show also has to be interesting enough to hook you into going to one of the online fan sites and/or buying some DVDs to catch up if you jump in at the middle.
Re:Stupid Question That Google Could Probably Answ
on
Linus on Linux in 1994
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Linux gained popularity first because at the time, the free version of BSD was mired in a copyright dispute with AT&T.
I thought you said you didn't want to understand how your car worked. You should just be able to drive it forever without thinking about anything. Why do you have to fill it up with gas? What is gas and why do you need it? You shouldn't have to learn that cars need oil changes. You just want to get to work. Those warning lights on the dash are annoying too; ignore them. Strange noises? They probably all do that eventually.
For that matter, why all that time spent learning how to be a good driver and having to pass a test before you're allowed on public roads? The car should be able to do all of that for you.
Knowing that you need more space is understanding how your computer works. You understand the difference between disk space and RAM. You understand that more space can be added. You're not the woman on rinkworks.com claiming that she'd run out of pages in Word if she didn't send some through the recycle bin periodically.
(By the way, most modern general-purpose operating systems have very good support for USB/firewire drives. Plug it in and use it.)
Here's the crazy part: people have tried to make computers that are _really_ easy to use. They have a few buttons to do what you want, a MythTV-like interface for email/Web/word processing. But they haven't sold, even though they're cheaper than Dells, and even though people complain endlessly about Windows and viruses and popups and difficulties. You can give someone a computer at work that's a cinch to use, that Just Works simply and effectively, and they will probably still inflict themselves with a Windows machine at home (and then complain about it, and probably ask for help). I don't know why.
You are opening up multiple windows...to paste from multiple messages in a reply? To reply to multiple messages? I guess this is necessary once in a while, but I can always fire up another copy of Mutt. Unlike PINE, it can have multiple copies open on the same mail spool without making all but the most recent read-only.
Oh hey, I just found this:
"My favorite use of this is to reply to multiple messages at once. This is great when someone has sent me several messages, and I want to send one reply to all the messages, quoting some text from each. I just tag some messages, use the 'apply' function, and the "reply" function."
Well, they don't go back to the drawing board each year. However, my brother has a ('95? '97?) Escort station wagon, which according to what I've heard is the year that Ford finally built that model correctly, at which point they threw out that design and started with a crappy one all over again.
People have actually tried to buy it from him, because if you want a Ford station wagon, that's apparently your best option.
For years, my father owned nothing but American (company, anyway) cars because that was what he knew how to fix. But he just bought a new car for the first time in years (the last few were used), and it was a Honda. Since he subscribes to a large network of mechanics (as part of his job), he can find out what breaks on which cars when, and he doesn't make uninformed decisions.
I haven't noticed it either, but I put the tie near the base of my skull, whereas I see some people with it closer to the middle of the head. I think that women tend to prefer the latter more than men, but it varies. Having the tie-off point near the center of your head would definitely be uncomfortable if your head was rested against the headrest.
Addressing the reply to your post, I don't think I've ever rested my head against the headrest unless I was leaning back (tired), so either all of the cars I've been in were poorly designed, or I have terrible posture (which I don't).
If you edit a lot of files, it's worth it to learn how to use vi or emacs. Likewise, if you get a lot of email, it's worth it to learn how to use a powerful and effective email client. There's no reason a program should be viewed as limited just because it doesn't require a mouse.
Text-based MUAs such as Mutt are still (IMO) more effective at dealing with large numbers of messages. They do have a learning curve, but you can cut through the masses much more efficiently. External programs are called for HTML, images, encryption, etc. in the Unix tradition (and even Microsoft uses an external HTML viewer). For those of you who edit a lot of text too, Mutt even calls an external editor for composing messages.
No, they're not for everyone, or perhaps even most people. However, my father is an auto mechanic working as a shop supervisor for UMBC. He doesn't like PCs very much, but he asked me to "set up PINE" (meaning an SSH client) on a new machine that the campus IT staff had set up for him with Netscape 7's email client. He's on some high-volume lists, and it's just too slow to use a GUI client.
For the record, I do prefer Mozilla to w3m, because I find it to be faster for most tasks (even for freshmeat work, where I have to edit a lot of text in Mozilla's editor versus the ability to use Vim in w3m). I also use GAIM, and used Pan back when I downloaded large quantities of fansubs. But email is basically dealing with a lot of text which sometimes has other stuff, and for that, I find text-based to be the way to go.
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But there are sites that specialize in trading real-life dollars for in-game currency and vice-versa. I've recently started playing FFXI, and this has become a bit of a sore spot with fans, as gil (money) is in rather short supply in the game, and you need to spend a lot of it to have up-to-date equipment and be a good asset to a team (the game is weighted HEAVILY against solo play after about level 10 for all but one job class).
Some people with the Windows version are using "bots" to mainly do two things: fishing and camping for Notorius Monsters. Fishing is pretty straightforward: you sell the fish. Notorius Monsters are one-of-a-kind monsters that only appear sometimes, and often drop excellent items (Leaping Boots go for at least 250,000 gil at the auction house). Even without bots, players would have to "camp" these monsters for hours for the possibility of getting the item. But now they have even less of a chance, as people grab these items, sell them for gil, and sell the gil for dollars.
I tried to find a student radio station at Ohio University, but all I found was an NPR rebroadcaster. If I'm in error about this, please let me know.
I really hope that the University of Maryland system doesn't consider this. We've got our radio station at UMBC (WMBC), and the (admittedly more significant) one at College Park. Our draw is that you can be exposed to all sorts of new music that's more interesting and less expensive than what you hear on commercial radio, and its made by artists who actually want you to hear their music, so they often give away at least a few tracks on MP3.
As you might imagine, the percentage of students that listen to our stations is a small minority. It's easier for people to listen to big commercial artists (for certain definitions of "easier"). But we hope that people might check us out if they're looking for something beyond their CD collection, they're too poor to buy more music, and/or they're disgusted with the RIAA. If it's easy to get commercial music illegally, this kills a lot of incentive to listen for the people who wouldn't normally seek this kind of music. University-wide Napster is basically the same story; I believe it would definitely make it harder for us to reach people who might otherwise be interested.
I felt much the same about the Microsoft deal our university made (cheap Windows and Office for a yearly fee), because I was a member of the LUG. If people can get Microsoft's software for $10, many of them are not going to bother trying Linux, and then -- just like with Napster -- they get hit with the full bill once they leave. And they haven't bothered to dig deeper into (music|software) while they were in an environment to facilitate that.
The problem is that many students will think that this is a good idea because it lets them not change their current habits and save money. But college is supposed to be about change, discovery, learning, pushing the boundaries. That's why I view deals like this as terrible.
Perhaps that's because hardly anyone wants to be poor, or at least not in the sense that a "war on poverty" would try to correct. Certainly, there are monks who give away all of their earthly posessions, but that's not quite the same as living in a dirty building in a bad section of town and eating Ramen most of the time. We're not going to try to force the monks into a luxury condo, but everyone else would probably prefer a nicer life.
The war on drugs is a war on things that people want to do. I don't personally use anything other than alchohol and occasionally caffeine myself, but I don't see how pot smoking hurts anyone, ever (and if you think it does, is it worse than what alchohol does?) It will eventually fail; I believe it to be a question only of how long we can live in denial. At the very least, we need to be able to grow hemp in this country (US).
Terrorism, also, is different. There's not a specific thing you can target, or at least not one that's feasible. We have enough food for the poor people in this country; there's probably enough for many other countries as well. It's easy to find the poor people; unlike the terrorists, they're probably not going to hide from you when you try to give them food and medical treatment (although to be fair, some are too proud to accept help).
Maybe people that don't feel the need to buy completely new shiny things and throw out the old every few months are considered "legacy". The only reason I bought my second-to-last machine (Duron 800) was because my brother needed a computer, so I gave him mine. The only reason I bought my last machine (AMD something-or-other) was to have a tiny, nice-looking machine in the living room for MythTV. This was worth it, because I can still watch my few programs and I'm not tied to a schedule. Whenever I do sit down to watch TV (or work out while watching TV), it will be something good.
People don't want to understand that, though. There's something new out, and Bob has one, and why don't I have anything left for retirement now that I've worked my whole life away?
Will this finally be too big for home users to swallow, though? For IT department purchasers? I really hope so; maybe Just Saying No will start to sound good.
When I was quite young, my parents had difficulty getting me to sleep. I would fall asleep far more readily when they turned on the vacuum cleaner. I always thought that this was very odd until I heard that the noise from a vacuum cleaner is supposedly similar to the noise heard inside the womb. Thus, it may be comforting to us on some level (though not when we're on the phone).
/. articles about it :) But I'm finally taking out some of the noisiest bits of my computer: that old 2GB hard disk (I never booted into Windows anyway) and the horrible 30mm northbridge fan (giant heatsink).
I have always had trouble falling asleep without some sort of white noise; AC, computer fan, window fan, etc. But lately, I've been wondering whether this is a good thing. I used to sleep less and have more energy. Current attempts to reduce the quantity of sleep (even gradually) have met with dismal results. I know that my metabolism has slowed down a bit (I'm 26), but I wonder if the computer noise isn't a contributing factor? Is it making me want to sleep too much?
(There are also studies showing a possible link between high CRT use and depression, so that's another thing to investigate.)
The other thing is that if you constantly hear a noise, you can develop a notch in your hearing response at that frequency. It sounds like a joke, but a music teacher of mine had his hearing tested and found a drop in frequency response in one spot: the frequency of his wife's voice. Apparently, this is common.
Additionally, I've just been noticing computer fan noise more of late. I'm not sure what the reason is; possibly because I've been seeing
As a final note, sometimes there's just nothing you can do about noise. I built a relatively quiet MythTV machine for the living room; even the DVD writer is quiet (Lite-on, newegg.com, cheap and shorter than most). Samsung drive with fluid dynamic bearings, etc. But now that I have FFXI for the PS2, the PS2 (with hard drive) is louder than the machine. Even before that, the central air was WAY louder, and if you sit on the sofa there's a 125 gallon aquarium right behind your head with fans and bubbling pipes (so hard to get the last bit of air out of those).
Actually, the 13th disciple was Judas, and you probably remember what happened with him.
2-digit years? STILL? Gah.
The worst is when people express a date like 01/04/03. Great; how the hell am I supposed to know which is which? I have to figure out whether you were from the U.S. and meant January 4, 2003, or from somewhere else and meant April 1st, 2003.
(If you don't think that this is a problem, consider that many restaurant kitchens employ large numbers of people from Spanish-speaking countries. Consider that food has expiration dates.)
I see many people still writing dates like this, too. I guess they saw "Y2k" as just some buzzword that the Morlocks were supposed to fix for them, and it didn't have anything to do with what they did personally.
Really, if you want a short date, you could at least use the 3-letter abbreviation for the month so that it was less confusing. Asking everyone to write ISO dates is probably too much, but dd/dd/dd is just evil. YY/mmm isn't all that much better, although if you're looking at it as a directory structure, it should be obvious that the directories would have to be in descending order. I mean, who would group things by the first day of the month, then the month?
You're posting on Slashdot, remember? Slashdot is part of OSDN, and the parent company of OSDN is...well, VA Software. But if you think back a few years, they used to be VA Linux. They thoroughly tested hardware to make sure it was reliable under Linux, then sold machines with Linux pre-installed.
Now, I don't know if VA sold workstations, but I know that Penguin did (and does), because I've used them. Penguin has some nice-looking Opteron servers as well.
You might argue that these two companies are targeted more at businesses than the home user, and you'd be right. But it's not as if this is some new mind-blowing concept. Lindows is basically trying to do the same thing; while they will sell you the software separately, most people are going to pick it up via those cheap computers which (gasp!) have hardware selected for Lindows.
Sorry, but I must disagree with your disagreements :)
Perhaps a halberd is not such a great weapon if used in the style of an English knight or whatever. But for an experienced staff fighter who treats a halberd as a staff that happens to have a blade on one end, it can be effective against a variety of weapons.
There are 2 basic types of ways to stop something from splitting your head open: meet and follow. Obviously, if someone is swinging a heavy mace at you, attempting to meet it with equal force is foolish. You keep their weapon going in the same general direction, redirecting it slightly, and change the position of your body slightly.
Staves are great because you can parry or knock away your opponent's weapon with one end and hit them with the other end as part of the same motion. You can certainly block a thrusting weapon if you know how to use a staff.
I do not have much experience with chain-based weapons, so I concede that you may have a point with that one. What would you suggest for defense? I don't see how a sword would do any better, for example.
One way that games could enforce weapon usefulness is by character effectiveness. A certain type of fighter is going to be better at using a certain type of weapon because of their build, fighting style, etc. As you pointed out, a halberd would not be a good choice for a Renaissance-ish warrior. IIRC, FF XI does this to some degree.
No, the author specifically addressed this sort of thing in the article as an exception.
"This is not meant to represent a character's literal speech. A tutorial section is intended to be somewhere between an online version of the instruction manual and the shorthand for the character explaining the controls. Even though he's referring to buttons on the Dual Shock, you know in the game's reality he's talking about the buttons on the plane's console, or whatever."
One thing that I enjoyed along these lines was that in one of the Zelda games (perhaps for the Gameboy?), an NPC tells you the key combination for forcing the save screen to appear, and then says something like "But don't ask me what that means...I'm just a kid!"
A random sampling, perhaps. But I happen to be a big fan of the Battle Athletes TV series (say what you will). A lot of people apparently have trouble getting into the first 4 episodes (DVD 1), but then enjoy the series once they're coerced to keep following it. Personally, I enjoy the first DVD as well, but there you go.
:)
(As another example, large parts of season 1 of B5 were rocky, but I really enjoy that series as a whole.)
The DBZ slight was a bit much, however
Yes, but:
1. It's still less than major label music.
2. On "indie" labels, the artist gets a much higher percentage of that CD cost. Additionally, I haven't heard of indie labels putting the same time pressure/creative control on bands that the majors do, and IMHO, this results in better music.
3. These labels often have at least 1 track freely available online in an unrestricted (well, MP3) format. Check out Archenemy, Touch and Go, Southern (mmm...El Guapo), etc.
Perhaps this has changed (it was 12+ years ago), but when my mom worked at an art store in a mall, the store manager wouldn't carry anything without a profit margin of at least 40%. And I know that currently, in both fish/reptile stores where my brother works, everything (livestock and supplies) is marked up at least 50%.
When I worked in a computer parts store, though, the markup was a lot lower.
The college station in my sig (WMBC for those who have these things turned off) gets in mostly non-major-label music. I'm not currently very involved with them because of the current management (which will change in a month or so), but I still listen to what people play on their shows. I've found a great many excellent bands through this station.
It's true that we don't often play the whole CD. Some tracks will be profane, and some will not be as good as others, so we have people review the CD and pick out recommended tracks. But DJs are only restricted by the profane songs. It's even better if you can become a DJ or volunteer at a station, because you can probably review music for them and/or come in and listen to the CDs.
I've also found good bands by going to shows. You can often go to a show, pay $5-10 for 2-4 bands, and find one you really like that you'd never heard of before.
Of course, the latter depends on the music scene in your town, but the former only requires Internet access (and WMBC, at least, has a 24k option for those on dial-up).
There is a difference between "command line" and "non-mouse-driven and/or console mode GUI". w3m is still a GUI (and you can use a mouse if you want, but it's designed so that you don't have to). Telnetting to port 80 is command line. I don't think that anyone could argue that MythTV is not a GUI, but it has no mouse support whatsoever. "make menuconfig" is a GUI too.
I use Mutt for email. It's arguably much more efficient than a mouse-driven interface such as Outlook or Mozilla Mail, though only after you've learned your way around it. But it's still a GUI, even though it runs on the console and doesn't use the mouse. I think that Vim is a GUI too, especially when you start using features like split screens.
If you Google for "linux laptop", the first link that comes up is the Linux on Laptops page (http://www.linux-laptop.net/), which has been around for years. I would find a new or used laptop that fit my price range and hardware needs, and then check that page for info. I've used it many, many times when helping someone put Linux on a laptop.
I just got back to Baltimore from Tucson, AZ, which advertises itself as a "bike-friendly city." They mean it. Any vaguely major street has a bike lane, and there are spots to properly secure your bike everywhere. Buses have racks on them so that you can stow your bike and take the bus a long distance. I saw more bike-specific signs in the 5 days I was there than I've ever seen before.
You really can't tell if you'll like the music by listening to the free previews that pretty much everyone gives you? eMusic does 30 seconds, and I think iTunes does too. I'm not sure about the others, but I think Magnatune even lets you listen to the whole song, or listen to a big streaming audio feed of everything they have.
o m/o rds.com/d byramen.com/
You could also listen to radio stations which play those sorts of music. Blatant plug: WMBC radio, in my sig, plays a good deal of it. We also have shows that suck, of course, but you're not going to like everything our DJs do, and vice-versa. See, indie artists have radio stations and review sites too; you just have to look a bit harder. That goes along with it being less expensive and restricted.
Indie CDs are generally less than those by major label artists, and the indie musicians get to keep more of the money. But $2 is pretty ridiculous; it's not as though these artists don't work as hard on their songs as major-label ones, or as though the songs aren't as good. Many of these artists will let you download a song or two from each album in unrestricted MP3 format; The Archenemy Record Company is pretty generous with this.
Some URLs to get started:
http://wmbc.umbc.edu/ (shameless plug)
http://www.cmj.com/
http://www.allmusic.c
http://www.archenemy.com/
http://www.warprec
http://www.tgrec.com/
http://www.fuele
http://www.luakabop.com/
I was amused that when I got my Firefly DVD set, it had a little ad brochure for "Fox DVDs". Almost every show advertised had been canceled or screwed over by Fox (or by wherever it ended up after Fox). Hello? Did you think we didn't know? I love how it describes Firefly as "brilliant." Not brilliant enough for a whole season, apparently.
Shows like Stargate SG-1 get around the "problem" of multi-show storylines somewhat via "Previously on Stargate SG-1...", but even then you might feel a bit lost if you don't know any of the back story. I mean, it's difficult to get any sort of character or real plot development into just one hour. To have a good show, you're going to need some back story, but the show also has to be interesting enough to hook you into going to one of the online fan sites and/or buying some DVDs to catch up if you jump in at the middle.
Linux gained popularity first because at the time, the free version of BSD was mired in a copyright dispute with AT&T.
I thought you said you didn't want to understand how your car worked. You should just be able to drive it forever without thinking about anything. Why do you have to fill it up with gas? What is gas and why do you need it? You shouldn't have to learn that cars need oil changes. You just want to get to work. Those warning lights on the dash are annoying too; ignore them. Strange noises? They probably all do that eventually.
For that matter, why all that time spent learning how to be a good driver and having to pass a test before you're allowed on public roads? The car should be able to do all of that for you.
Knowing that you need more space is understanding how your computer works. You understand the difference between disk space and RAM. You understand that more space can be added. You're not the woman on rinkworks.com claiming that she'd run out of pages in Word if she didn't send some through the recycle bin periodically.
(By the way, most modern general-purpose operating systems have very good support for USB/firewire drives. Plug it in and use it.)
Here's the crazy part: people have tried to make computers that are _really_ easy to use. They have a few buttons to do what you want, a MythTV-like interface for email/Web/word processing. But they haven't sold, even though they're cheaper than Dells, and even though people complain endlessly about Windows and viruses and popups and difficulties. You can give someone a computer at work that's a cinch to use, that Just Works simply and effectively, and they will probably still inflict themselves with a Windows machine at home (and then complain about it, and probably ask for help). I don't know why.
You are opening up multiple windows...to paste from multiple messages in a reply? To reply to multiple messages? I guess this is necessary once in a while, but I can always fire up another copy of Mutt. Unlike PINE, it can have multiple copies open on the same mail spool without making all but the most recent read-only.
:)
Oh hey, I just found this:
"My favorite use of this is to reply to multiple messages at once. This is great when someone has sent me several messages, and I want to send one reply to all the messages, quoting some text from each. I just tag some messages, use the 'apply' function, and the "reply" function."
http://mark.stosberg.com/Tech/mutt.html
I'm going to have to try that next time
Well, they don't go back to the drawing board each year. However, my brother has a ('95? '97?) Escort station wagon, which according to what I've heard is the year that Ford finally built that model correctly, at which point they threw out that design and started with a crappy one all over again.
People have actually tried to buy it from him, because if you want a Ford station wagon, that's apparently your best option.
For years, my father owned nothing but American (company, anyway) cars because that was what he knew how to fix. But he just bought a new car for the first time in years (the last few were used), and it was a Honda. Since he subscribes to a large network of mechanics (as part of his job), he can find out what breaks on which cars when, and he doesn't make uninformed decisions.
I haven't noticed it either, but I put the tie near the base of my skull, whereas I see some people with it closer to the middle of the head. I think that women tend to prefer the latter more than men, but it varies. Having the tie-off point near the center of your head would definitely be uncomfortable if your head was rested against the headrest.
Addressing the reply to your post, I don't think I've ever rested my head against the headrest unless I was leaning back (tired), so either all of the cars I've been in were poorly designed, or I have terrible posture (which I don't).
If you edit a lot of files, it's worth it to learn how to use vi or emacs. Likewise, if you get a lot of email, it's worth it to learn how to use a powerful and effective email client. There's no reason a program should be viewed as limited just because it doesn't require a mouse.
Text-based MUAs such as Mutt are still (IMO) more effective at dealing with large numbers of messages. They do have a learning curve, but you can cut through the masses much more efficiently. External programs are called for HTML, images, encryption, etc. in the Unix tradition (and even Microsoft uses an external HTML viewer). For those of you who edit a lot of text too, Mutt even calls an external editor for composing messages.
No, they're not for everyone, or perhaps even most people. However, my father is an auto mechanic working as a shop supervisor for UMBC. He doesn't like PCs very much, but he asked me to "set up PINE" (meaning an SSH client) on a new machine that the campus IT staff had set up for him with Netscape 7's email client. He's on some high-volume lists, and it's just too slow to use a GUI client.
For the record, I do prefer Mozilla to w3m, because I find it to be faster for most tasks (even for freshmeat work, where I have to edit a lot of text in Mozilla's editor versus the ability to use Vim in w3m). I also use GAIM, and used Pan back when I downloaded large quantities of fansubs. But email is basically dealing with a lot of text which sometimes has other stuff, and for that, I find text-based to be the way to go.