Re:And What's Single-Player REALLY Going To Be Lik
on
New Doom Details
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· Score: 2
I never understood why people would pay 50 dollars for basically the same game they got a year before.
#1. It looks pretty.
#2. I'd rather play a current game with people than try to get a Doom game together with the two other people in the world who would rather feel righteous than have a good time with normal people.
#2 is reason enough for me, frankly. I loved Quake 3 for how little they changed things; it's a working formula, why mess with it? So what if I'm paying for an updated rendering engine, why do you care?
Just because it wasn't custom designed for you doesn't mean it's worthless. All you have to do is not buy it. Don't come bitching to me about why the games that I like aren't good enough.
Presuming this isn't a troll, I'd wager to say that as super high intelligence is a relatively new thing in human evolution, and not something required to survive, there are still a few bugs left to work out.
Really? You'd better tell them. Last time I checked they were losing money out the yin-yang.;) Is there such a thing as a "for venture capital" company?
I'm sure that if you took a poll of normal English speaking people, they'd identify 'solar system' as the general term for a star and its satellites. It seems quite engrained into the English language and would require some effort to change. If it is to be called the Solar system, then what is the generic term for a star and its satellites?
I myself have been found of the grammatically incorrect 'Sol system;' the solar system around any star would be referred to by the star's name, without transforming it into an adjective. Then again, as people seem fit to refer to our sun as the only Sun, we might as well call it the Sunny system.;)
I don't want to sound like I'm turning this into a flame war, but I still don't get it with this thing.
Kiosk stands have plenty space to house an entire standard size computer, and being in a permanent location, don't require ultra-low battery-style power consumption.
"Industrial applications" is a very vague term, which invokes in me pictures of giant, immobile machinery where the environment is shaped to fit the tool.
All in all, I can't seem to think of a single application that would value size so much as to pay $1500 per unit.
Most of the systems are owned by the district, not the school. We can't even throw them away without asking the people downtown, who, as I said, think they're more valuable than they really are and refuse to dispose of them.
Quite sadly, my school, for all the computers it does have, it doesn't have a single CS AP course. The theory is that not enough students are interested to hire even a part time CS teacher. I'd try to convince them otherwise, but I'll be gone before they will be able to act.
The school gets grants (usually around election time) for the new computers it uses to teach. These grants already pay for new computers and the people required to install them. These systems come configured and customized to fit the school's needs, without bothering with 300 non-standard systems that rarely arrive in working order. The school doesn't get any grants to pull old systems out of storage and try to get them all to work they way we need them to. In the end, it is more expensive for the school to try and implement donated systems than it is to accept government grants for new ones.
Sure, it would be more a efficient use of tax dollars just to take those old ones out, but the school isn't concerned with that. Sure, a 486 could be used for most classroom purposes (and in some cases they are; most of the classrooms without new computers already have old ones), but so can an iMac, so we might as well use the newer option while we have it.
We don't need new computers. We don't need computers at all. But they're here, we've got 'em, and what's wrong with using them? Why should we be forced to use the random 386 you finally decided to dispose of, when the politicians feel like throwing money at kids?
The question is why do we need a full-featured computer in every major appliance, when a customized and simplified system will do just as well. When was the last time you needed to connect a monitor to a refridgerator; why pay for a floppy connector and an IBM microdrive?
You seem to be all over this story with the same message: it's an embedded device; it's ok to be expensive.
Perhaps you could explain just what kind of embedded device would covet this thing? There are other devices out there that are much faster, much cheaper, only slightly larger, and would would require little work to be customized for a specific enviroment. Hell, a sufficiently advanced corporation with its own engineering department could come up with something very similar to this, if slightly larger.
Say a car company wants to include one of these for diagnostic purposes; it only has to make a little more space to shave a grand per car off expenses. I just don't see how this device is practical for any market just yet.
I do computer work for my local public school, and I can tell you that at least here, we have way too many 386s and 486s. Some company decides it'll be a nice tax write off and our school becomes a giant storage bin for computers no one wants. Occaisionally, we ship as many as we can off to "less fortunate" schools, but frankly the things are too slow and too old to be worth the time and effort required to implement them in a classroom setting. Why bother explaining to the students and teachers how to use an antiquated system that will be gone as soon as the school gets more money?
We got a rather large "Digital Highschool" grant a while back, specifically devoted to buying new computers. With it, the school bought enough computers to fill at least two new computer labs that I can recollect (one group of 300mhz PCs for a computer-literacy/typing class and one set of iMacs for the library), and when I last left they were planning more new purchases. The science department specifically got some sort of grant that paid for two roaming sets of iBooks to share amongst several classes.
All this money and all these new computers, and about 200-300 486 or older PCs sitting around in various storage rooms waiting to be shuffled off to some place else while they just get older. The school can't sell them because no one wants them and it can't throw them away because someone thinks they're more valuable than they really are.
So, when you donate that old clunky 486 and think it's going to be used, think again. The school doesn't have the time or the money to homogenize and install 300 old computers that were sitting in someone's closet. If you really want to help the school out, sell the computer at a garage sale and donate the money.
Here I go dating myself.. look at the little kiddie! I'm 17 and a senior in HS. There. I've admitted it. Trolls, begin!
At my local public school, we have no CS class, but we do have a computer club and a really cool sysadmin. We don't get into any real programming, as we don't have enough time or resources.
As part of our major project last year, however, each student was given a donated computer sans OS (from a Pentium 75 to several K6-2 300s we got from a prison). Everyone ended up installing Win98 (it took us several weeks to get a hold of a Linux CD and by that time we all had Windows installed already). It was old hat to the more advanced of us, but it was a fun exercise in hardware troubleshooting, albeit Windows-based.
After that, we got all the computers on a small LAN and even got them connected to the school's network and the Internet. Don't tell anyone, but we even played Quake (one) at school. It was good practice for what turned out to be a summer full of LAN parties (away from school).
The "tiger team" idea would not work well at all for our club. First off, several of our members had legitimate access anyway, and secondly, the school would NOT like that one bit. It's an NT-based system anyway; the most interesting stuff requires physical access and anything else wouldn't take much skill.
Most new motherboards aren't cool enough to completely drop the ISA slots. If you're cool enough not to need the ISA slots and cool enough to have a motherboard that doesn't have ISA slots, chances are you're cool enough not to need a dial-up modem. My theory is that if you're going to seriously use and rely on your modem, you'd damn well better get a good one. If you need a modem, don't want to spend money on an external modem, and don't have any free ISA slots, at least get a real PCI modem. It's, what, $20 more than a WinModem? It's worth it, man.
As for modems being a waste of a serial port: my motherboard has two of them, and I've never needed more than two at any one time. They're there so you might as well make use of them. I have, however, run out of both PCI and ISA slots on several motherboards several times; I'd rather save them for something more important than a modem.
Modems are a waste of an expansion slot, especially a PCI slot. PCI slots are something like 135Mbps, right? The order goes external modems, ISA internals, PCI real modems, then that's it. PCI WinModems have no place.
This declaration, made by Michael I. Shamos, contains detailed instructions not only on how to rip a DVD using, but on how to obtain pirated copies of DVDs (#divx on EFNet) and links to a still functional DVD piracy group's website (FreeMpeg4; they run #divx). This is in the public record already! I find it very hard to believe that the MPAA can't find the DVD piracy 'scene,' just because it's 'underground.'
Yeah, but if they admit it's all really about control, then their case looks a lot weaker. We know and they know that the case is about control, but they'll never openly admit it because it hurts their case. If they are conciously ignoring other DVD rippers, then they are admitting in an indirect way that it's not about piracy. They don't have to be honest, but they do have to be consistant.
Actually, it makes sense for me. Thanks to a suggestion from someone here on Slashdot, I got a free subdomain from Bizland.com (spamcheck.bizland.com). As part of it, any email sent to any address at my subdomain (*@spamcheck.bizland.com), gets forwarded to my real email address. So whenever a website asks for my email, I put it as sitename@spamcheck.bizland.com. If I start getting spam sent to sitename@spamcheck.bizland.com, I know exactly where they got it, and I can easily filter out all spam with that address in the 'To:' field.
It's a really novel idea, and I wish I knew about it sooner (my main email already gets other unfilterable spam).
It might affect the breakup, but the trial, as I understand it, was about monopolistic tactics Microsoft used in the past, not whether or not Microsoft has cleaned up its act with Win2k.
Often cited here by MacOS advocates is the fact that hot keys are consistant across Macs applications, unlike Windows, where developers pick and choose which hot keys to use.
So if it's an inherant flaw in Windows that some apps don't use standard hot keys, why isn't in an inherant flaw in the MacOS that some apps don't use standard file services? It seems a double standard, one that degrades the argument for MacOS' "superior" UI.
And, please, don't tell me that "most" apps use the standard file services. "Most" apps in Windows use the same set of hot keys; I haven't seen an app yet misinterpret Alt-F4 or Ctrl-C/X/V.
2. Uh, if you hold down the control key while clicking you get the contextual menu in the macOS. It's there as a total sop to winders users, but it's there.
Do Mac users not understand why this is worse than having a second mouse button? If a second button is confusing, why isn't the two-handed-you-have-to-be-a-MacOS-guru-master-to-k now-about-it key-click confusing? If Apple wishes to maintain the illusion of a one button design and the purported superiority of their UI, they need to remove the key-click altogether.
By the way, it's not a total sop to Windows users, it's a total sop to Windows developers, who won't be bothered to design a "proper" UI when porting apps from Windows.
I can move it very fast, and it doesn't "stick" in place like some have claimed about the MS opticals.
Apple's mouse, Logitech's mice and MS' mice all use the same optical mechanism, licensed from Agilent. Logitech's mice have the same propensity to stick as MS' mice; most complaints are due to defective mice. I, and most people, have very few problems with them.
As well, the dimmed LED while immobile is present in the MS mice. The "optical" part of all current optical mice is completely identical. Personally, the ergonomics of the Explorer and the extra thumb buttons keep it in the lead despite the new Logitechs. Though, if you're looking for an ambidextrous optical mouse, I'd suggest Logitech's offering rather than the MS Intellimouse Optical, which is down there with Apple's hockey puck when it comes to easy handling.
I have a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer (which has a wheel), though I never use it in Quake. I keep my forefinger and middlefinger directly over the left and right buttons, and usually scroll by moving my index finger left. Add to that the high sensitivity of the scroll wheel (it's easy to "scroll" twice instead of once), and using the scroll wheel becomes death. I can't fire, and I can't choose my weapon quickly. I've pondered setting the thumb buttons to switch weapons, but the Intellimouse software requires I set the buttons to something other than back/forward to use them in Quake.
In the end, I never use any of the extra buttons of my mouse in Quake, for various reasons. I suppose I could place my middle finger over the scroll wheel, my ring finger over the right button and permanently remap the thumb buttons just for Quake, but it's not going to happen. I use my thumb to switch weapons with the keyboard, without disrupting any of my other fingers, and it's just fine for me.
I've actually played Quake with the hockey puck mouse, which were horrible not because of the lack of buttons, but the awkward gripping and movement. With the right keyboard layout, you have access to all the standard functions quickly and conviently; the mouse is useful as a directional device, not a replacement for the keyboard.
In Windows land, this is already possible with many different implentations. Basic theory is that you do some special click (like both left and right buttons, a middle button, or some sort of key-click), and the entire mouse turns into a scroller. Move the mouse up, and the window view scrolls up. Or the mouse is used to "drag" the open document, like in BeOS' NetPositive, and the document moves in the opposite direction.
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I never understood why people would pay 50 dollars for basically the same game they got a year before.
#1. It looks pretty.
#2. I'd rather play a current game with people than try to get a Doom game together with the two other people in the world who would rather feel righteous than have a good time with normal people.
#2 is reason enough for me, frankly. I loved Quake 3 for how little they changed things; it's a working formula, why mess with it? So what if I'm paying for an updated rendering engine, why do you care?
Just because it wasn't custom designed for you doesn't mean it's worthless. All you have to do is not buy it. Don't come bitching to me about why the games that I like aren't good enough.
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Presuming this isn't a troll, I'd wager to say that as super high intelligence is a relatively new thing in human evolution, and not something required to survive, there are still a few bugs left to work out.
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Napster is a for profit company.
;) Is there such a thing as a "for venture capital" company?
Really? You'd better tell them. Last time I checked they were losing money out the yin-yang.
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I forget where I got this (probably Ars Technica), but they said that developers could still produce optimized machine-dependant code.
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I'm sure that if you took a poll of normal English speaking people, they'd identify 'solar system' as the general term for a star and its satellites. It seems quite engrained into the English language and would require some effort to change. If it is to be called the Solar system, then what is the generic term for a star and its satellites?
;)
I myself have been found of the grammatically incorrect 'Sol system;' the solar system around any star would be referred to by the star's name, without transforming it into an adjective. Then again, as people seem fit to refer to our sun as the only Sun, we might as well call it the Sunny system.
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Fresno Unified School District.
Good luck.
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I don't want to sound like I'm turning this into a flame war, but I still don't get it with this thing.
Kiosk stands have plenty space to house an entire standard size computer, and being in a permanent location, don't require ultra-low battery-style power consumption.
"Industrial applications" is a very vague term, which invokes in me pictures of giant, immobile machinery where the environment is shaped to fit the tool.
All in all, I can't seem to think of a single application that would value size so much as to pay $1500 per unit.
--
Most of the systems are owned by the district, not the school. We can't even throw them away without asking the people downtown, who, as I said, think they're more valuable than they really are and refuse to dispose of them.
--
Quite sadly, my school, for all the computers it does have, it doesn't have a single CS AP course. The theory is that not enough students are interested to hire even a part time CS teacher. I'd try to convince them otherwise, but I'll be gone before they will be able to act.
The school gets grants (usually around election time) for the new computers it uses to teach. These grants already pay for new computers and the people required to install them. These systems come configured and customized to fit the school's needs, without bothering with 300 non-standard systems that rarely arrive in working order. The school doesn't get any grants to pull old systems out of storage and try to get them all to work they way we need them to. In the end, it is more expensive for the school to try and implement donated systems than it is to accept government grants for new ones.
Sure, it would be more a efficient use of tax dollars just to take those old ones out, but the school isn't concerned with that. Sure, a 486 could be used for most classroom purposes (and in some cases they are; most of the classrooms without new computers already have old ones), but so can an iMac, so we might as well use the newer option while we have it.
We don't need new computers. We don't need computers at all. But they're here, we've got 'em, and what's wrong with using them? Why should we be forced to use the random 386 you finally decided to dispose of, when the politicians feel like throwing money at kids?
--
The question is why do we need a full-featured computer in every major appliance, when a customized and simplified system will do just as well. When was the last time you needed to connect a monitor to a refridgerator; why pay for a floppy connector and an IBM microdrive?
--
You seem to be all over this story with the same message: it's an embedded device; it's ok to be expensive.
Perhaps you could explain just what kind of embedded device would covet this thing? There are other devices out there that are much faster, much cheaper, only slightly larger, and would would require little work to be customized for a specific enviroment. Hell, a sufficiently advanced corporation with its own engineering department could come up with something very similar to this, if slightly larger.
Say a car company wants to include one of these for diagnostic purposes; it only has to make a little more space to shave a grand per car off expenses. I just don't see how this device is practical for any market just yet.
--
I do computer work for my local public school, and I can tell you that at least here, we have way too many 386s and 486s. Some company decides it'll be a nice tax write off and our school becomes a giant storage bin for computers no one wants. Occaisionally, we ship as many as we can off to "less fortunate" schools, but frankly the things are too slow and too old to be worth the time and effort required to implement them in a classroom setting. Why bother explaining to the students and teachers how to use an antiquated system that will be gone as soon as the school gets more money?
We got a rather large "Digital Highschool" grant a while back, specifically devoted to buying new computers. With it, the school bought enough computers to fill at least two new computer labs that I can recollect (one group of 300mhz PCs for a computer-literacy/typing class and one set of iMacs for the library), and when I last left they were planning more new purchases. The science department specifically got some sort of grant that paid for two roaming sets of iBooks to share amongst several classes.
All this money and all these new computers, and about 200-300 486 or older PCs sitting around in various storage rooms waiting to be shuffled off to some place else while they just get older. The school can't sell them because no one wants them and it can't throw them away because someone thinks they're more valuable than they really are.
So, when you donate that old clunky 486 and think it's going to be used, think again. The school doesn't have the time or the money to homogenize and install 300 old computers that were sitting in someone's closet. If you really want to help the school out, sell the computer at a garage sale and donate the money.
--
Here I go dating myself.. look at the little kiddie! I'm 17 and a senior in HS. There. I've admitted it. Trolls, begin!
At my local public school, we have no CS class, but we do have a computer club and a really cool sysadmin. We don't get into any real programming, as we don't have enough time or resources.
As part of our major project last year, however, each student was given a donated computer sans OS (from a Pentium 75 to several K6-2 300s we got from a prison). Everyone ended up installing Win98 (it took us several weeks to get a hold of a Linux CD and by that time we all had Windows installed already). It was old hat to the more advanced of us, but it was a fun exercise in hardware troubleshooting, albeit Windows-based.
After that, we got all the computers on a small LAN and even got them connected to the school's network and the Internet. Don't tell anyone, but we even played Quake (one) at school. It was good practice for what turned out to be a summer full of LAN parties (away from school).
The "tiger team" idea would not work well at all for our club. First off, several of our members had legitimate access anyway, and secondly, the school would NOT like that one bit. It's an NT-based system anyway; the most interesting stuff requires physical access and anything else wouldn't take much skill.
--
Most new motherboards aren't cool enough to completely drop the ISA slots. If you're cool enough not to need the ISA slots and cool enough to have a motherboard that doesn't have ISA slots, chances are you're cool enough not to need a dial-up modem. My theory is that if you're going to seriously use and rely on your modem, you'd damn well better get a good one. If you need a modem, don't want to spend money on an external modem, and don't have any free ISA slots, at least get a real PCI modem. It's, what, $20 more than a WinModem? It's worth it, man.
As for modems being a waste of a serial port: my motherboard has two of them, and I've never needed more than two at any one time. They're there so you might as well make use of them. I have, however, run out of both PCI and ISA slots on several motherboards several times; I'd rather save them for something more important than a modem.
--
Modems are a waste of an expansion slot, especially a PCI slot. PCI slots are something like 135Mbps, right? The order goes external modems, ISA internals, PCI real modems, then that's it. PCI WinModems have no place.
--
This declaration, made by Michael I. Shamos, contains detailed instructions not only on how to rip a DVD using, but on how to obtain pirated copies of DVDs (#divx on EFNet) and links to a still functional DVD piracy group's website (FreeMpeg4; they run #divx). This is in the public record already! I find it very hard to believe that the MPAA can't find the DVD piracy 'scene,' just because it's 'underground.'
--
Yeah, but if they admit it's all really about control, then their case looks a lot weaker. We know and they know that the case is about control, but they'll never openly admit it because it hurts their case. If they are conciously ignoring other DVD rippers, then they are admitting in an indirect way that it's not about piracy. They don't have to be honest, but they do have to be consistant.
--
Actually, it makes sense for me. Thanks to a suggestion from someone here on Slashdot, I got a free subdomain from Bizland.com (spamcheck.bizland.com). As part of it, any email sent to any address at my subdomain (*@spamcheck.bizland.com), gets forwarded to my real email address. So whenever a website asks for my email, I put it as sitename@spamcheck.bizland.com. If I start getting spam sent to sitename@spamcheck.bizland.com, I know exactly where they got it, and I can easily filter out all spam with that address in the 'To:' field.
It's a really novel idea, and I wish I knew about it sooner (my main email already gets other unfilterable spam).
--
It might affect the breakup, but the trial, as I understand it, was about monopolistic tactics Microsoft used in the past, not whether or not Microsoft has cleaned up its act with Win2k.
--
Often cited here by MacOS advocates is the fact that hot keys are consistant across Macs applications, unlike Windows, where developers pick and choose which hot keys to use.
So if it's an inherant flaw in Windows that some apps don't use standard hot keys, why isn't in an inherant flaw in the MacOS that some apps don't use standard file services? It seems a double standard, one that degrades the argument for MacOS' "superior" UI.
And, please, don't tell me that "most" apps use the standard file services. "Most" apps in Windows use the same set of hot keys; I haven't seen an app yet misinterpret Alt-F4 or Ctrl-C/X/V.
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2. Uh, if you hold down the control key while clicking you get the contextual menu in the macOS. It's there as a total sop to winders users, but it's there.
k now-about-it key-click confusing? If Apple wishes to maintain the illusion of a one button design and the purported superiority of their UI, they need to remove the key-click altogether.
Do Mac users not understand why this is worse than having a second mouse button? If a second button is confusing, why isn't the two-handed-you-have-to-be-a-MacOS-guru-master-to-
By the way, it's not a total sop to Windows users, it's a total sop to Windows developers, who won't be bothered to design a "proper" UI when porting apps from Windows.
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I can move it very fast, and it doesn't "stick" in place like some have claimed about the MS opticals.
Apple's mouse, Logitech's mice and MS' mice all use the same optical mechanism, licensed from Agilent. Logitech's mice have the same propensity to stick as MS' mice; most complaints are due to defective mice. I, and most people, have very few problems with them.
As well, the dimmed LED while immobile is present in the MS mice. The "optical" part of all current optical mice is completely identical. Personally, the ergonomics of the Explorer and the extra thumb buttons keep it in the lead despite the new Logitechs. Though, if you're looking for an ambidextrous optical mouse, I'd suggest Logitech's offering rather than the MS Intellimouse Optical, which is down there with Apple's hockey puck when it comes to easy handling.
--
I have a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer (which has a wheel), though I never use it in Quake. I keep my forefinger and middlefinger directly over the left and right buttons, and usually scroll by moving my index finger left. Add to that the high sensitivity of the scroll wheel (it's easy to "scroll" twice instead of once), and using the scroll wheel becomes death. I can't fire, and I can't choose my weapon quickly. I've pondered setting the thumb buttons to switch weapons, but the Intellimouse software requires I set the buttons to something other than back/forward to use them in Quake.
In the end, I never use any of the extra buttons of my mouse in Quake, for various reasons. I suppose I could place my middle finger over the scroll wheel, my ring finger over the right button and permanently remap the thumb buttons just for Quake, but it's not going to happen. I use my thumb to switch weapons with the keyboard, without disrupting any of my other fingers, and it's just fine for me.
I've actually played Quake with the hockey puck mouse, which were horrible not because of the lack of buttons, but the awkward gripping and movement. With the right keyboard layout, you have access to all the standard functions quickly and conviently; the mouse is useful as a directional device, not a replacement for the keyboard.
--
In Windows land, this is already possible with many different implentations. Basic theory is that you do some special click (like both left and right buttons, a middle button, or some sort of key-click), and the entire mouse turns into a scroller. Move the mouse up, and the window view scrolls up. Or the mouse is used to "drag" the open document, like in BeOS' NetPositive, and the document moves in the opposite direction.
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Is there some reason why I want it to be ugly?
Because its several times cheaper to buy an ugly-as-sin PC than a pretty G4 cube.
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