----spoilers----
The council wants to take the empresses' gold dragon staff, so she's going to get another one and make everyone happy. Wasn't the point that they wanted to take her power from her so if she just got another dragon controlling staff they wouldn't exactly have let that slide would they? They'd still go to battle. Maybe they weren't suppose to find out about the other staff or something...I don't know. Other than that the thiefs were complete clutzes, the mage didn't seem to do anything at all to help except once(note to self: bring the things you need to cast spells when you're going on an adventure). Also, she didn't even believe that commoners were equal until the end....would you risk your life for an idea that you didn't even believe?? If I was a good actor and read the script that's what would scare me away. Things just didn't add up.
Hagelin does take many of the same views that I do which is no doubt in part his strong education in the sciences. However, the nature law party takes a couple views that make you scratch your head and ask "What are they thinking." As luck may have it I was checking out their web site the other day and I came across this. Anyone thinking that by blocking the south entrances of government buildings we would somehow decrease corruption in government isn't on that same page with me. In fact, it scares me a lot. I did a good deal of searching on Harry Browne too. I disagree with his stance on abortion and the environment but everything else is really close. Still, until we reform how votes are tallied and move away from our plurality voting structure I have no choice but to vote for someone who can win. I don't see it changing with-out an outcry from the people because pluarility re-enforces a two-party political structure and why would you vote away a system that helps you get elected?
I'm looking for a canidate who answers these questions anywhere close to mine....let me know if you hear of one.
1) War on Drugs
We're wasting tons of money locking up drug users, and for what(locking up serious dealers is all you need)? Keep a steady flow of money to help inform kids at a young age of the dangers in some degree. Remember though, sometimes the Government can't teach your kids all the values they should have no matter how much money we burn.(The Government does have finite abilities)
2) Minority Religions
As long as someone's Religious practices aren't infringing on someone else's personal rights everything is fine. There's no rule in life saying that you have to believe things other people believe.
3) Why give a tax cut?
Listen, lord knows I can't pass everything that I want to, I'd be a President not a king. However, I concentrate on helping to reform wasteful Government programs, promoting useful ones, reducing our debt and we'll see where that leaves us for a refund(or for more taxes).
4) electoral reform
Anyone who's read about how our voting process works knows it needs some serious revamping and fast. You shouldn't have to vote for someone because otherwise you'll hurt the guy that has a better chance of winning who you don't like as much. Some kind of system to the effect of listing your choices in order and if your 1st choice isn't going to win your vote moves to your 2nd choice and so on....something like that would do nicely.
5)How Do You Feel About Intellectual Property?
Again, it's major overhaul time. Move patent lengths back down to 22 years for starters. Secondly, move as least a shred of power back into the hands of the consumer. Get rid of shrink wrap licenses, fire the current director of the patent office. That's just for starters.
6) Encryption....
No restrictions on encryption, period. No, you shouldn't have to put in back doors into your software either so that Government employees can have access into whatever they want.
7) Rising Political Protests
No big point here(not my area) but we shouldn't trade with countries who are responsibile for crimes against humanity.(child labor, meger pay...)
8) Asteroid Defenses
This isn't some cheesy blockbuster-space movie, everyone knows if an astroid is going to come to Earth in the next couple years we're SOL. Make sure you buy a good lawn chair in case the big day comes.
9) The Future of the Country, and of Humanity
The way I see it, humanity is in a period of rapid growth and we haven't figured out how to deal with it yet. We've gain so many new technologies that we don't know what to do next it seems. We need to continue to develop what we know to ensure a better quality of life for everyone, not just rich people. The way to do this is simple. Keep pumping money into education like there's no tomorrow. Require higher standards for both students and teachers. A renewed commitment to the hard sciences and literature. Education should always be a priority, not just something you talk about when you make that visit to a campus to get student votes.
it's the interation. 2D/3D, it doesn't matter when it comes to how much fun a game generally is. Immersion comes from a positive interaction between the game and the player. Where does this position interaction come from then? I think it comes from
1. making the interface as simple as possible.
2. allow simple commands to be combined to form more complex manuevers.
3. Making the opponents act as real as possible (or have real people).
People want games to be simple otherwise it starts to look suspecisly like work to them. With a low learning curve things seem a lot more fun and when you can experiment with those simple commands to form neat, complex behaviors in your character the fun is amplified.
My example is the online game subspace(before all the new servers went on-line). You could get going in subspace in about 10 seconds. move left/right, fire bullets/bombs ect. What made things fun was that you could combine your simple moves to do new things. For instance you could create an area full of mines and use your 'repel' power to push people into them(instead of it's typical use of repelling shots going towards you). There were dozens of tricks you could learn all using simple manauers that you learned back in your first minute of play. Another bonus was that you could play against 60 people and nothing says fun like dodging 20 people at a time. Subspace wasn't 3D, it was a simple 2D sparse tile engine with a simple particle engine that could handle about 130 people in a game. It's changed a lot since I used to play a lot..more fast paced with faster firing (which elimates a lot of the really hard to master strategies) but still a lot of fun.
Much like the proton and anti-proton,competent technical support and friendly technical support can not exist in the same universe without massive explosions and lots of dying.
In the event that we do need to colonize space I fear the consequences. I fear the unavoidable explotation of everything possible, including our selves. For a check of what we tend to do -all- the time read more in depth of our 17th-18th centry colonization of the New World. Now enter today 400-500+ years later and we're starting a colony on Mars on the New Planet. Does human nature really change enough that we could even do something like that? That is, without repeating history for the n-th time.
My money's on us not making through the next major Earth disaster but, hey, call me an optimist.(we might not make it to the next natural disaster);)
So that we can still talk about trials without refering to decades I propose that the minute be extended to 1432.34 seconds. The new length of the minute will ensure my proposal and will have the added bonus of creating more software engineering jobs since we'd need to redo all the banking software. It's win-win.
I know I'm jealous. Not enough that I'm going to actually sit down and train to perfect some movement or anything-I play games for FUN. Still, when some guy is whooping ass and has 20+ kills over everyone in the game syou can't help but thinking "DAMN!" Do what I do, pretend that person sucks at something you do well. For example, if you happen to beat me online in some game it becomes obvious to me that you're that good because you suck at programming. Somehow that makes me feel better:)
Both the deluxe and cheap versions of the Handspring Visor come with a microphone built into the case. I still have yet to see ONE application that can use it, whether through software or Springboard hardware. Not even a bundled app makes trivial use of it.
Neither have I but that's probably because microphone does not connect to the visor in any way, it goes directly to the springboard module.
Assuming that I'm thinking as your typical consumer, I can't imagine why I would be paying more money for a mp3 player that requires me to already own a visor(which I do). It can't sync by itself, it has no LCD and yet I pay more(despite my $180-$260 inital visor purchase). Oh and it I want to run it without my visor it costs my an extra $40!!? It doesn't any sense? Anyway, there is another mp3 player for the visor coming out but it looks like it's going to cost roughly the same amount.
My parents get a deal at a gas station because they have been buying gas there for 15 years...is that a crime? I hope not. If I get a deal on a car from a car lot because I know the owner, is that a crime? If these are crimes they sit right next to J-walking in the public eye.
Everyday people at real stores charge different prices based on the status of consumers. It's no different on the internet except that a computer does it now. Everytime a company uses information about you to try and sell you more product on the internet people are up in arms but the day you're at Best Buy and they ask you for your area code it's no big deal.
At any rate, my guess is that the laws you were thinking about deal with bait&switch. If I advertise a product for $1.99 that is good for 1 week, when you come into the store to buy that product(in that week) I can't sell it to you for $10.57. There is a law agaist doing that. However, as long as Amazon doesn't advertise a special price for something to lure you to their site and then compute a -higher- price for you based on your customer status, they haven't broken that law. Again, I don't think amazon will make it a policy of rising prices. Even if they do, my faith is in the fact that a consumer will always be able too compare price A from Store 1 with price B and store 2 and decide what price is lower...maybe it's just me.
You're right on. Amazon can charge whatever they want for their merchandise. It seems that most of the posters so far seem to think that everyone is a super-impulse buyer; that somehow typing in www.bn.com and checking out what they happen to be charging is really that hard to do. For every purchase that I make online I check as many sites as I can for better prices in no time flat. If amazon wants to charge me more then I'll go elsewhere--and fast! I'm in the situation where I'm just starting the DragonLance series. If amazon sees me purchase the first two books in the series do people honostly think they'll charge me MORE? I truly doubt that amazon's consumer model is built around alientating their customer base. You give good, fair prices to your new customers and drop your profit margin to your loyal ones because you'll make it up in volume. It doesn't take a economist to know that.
Do you get the impression that the MPAA just hates democracy? I mean lawsuit after lawsuit they have to slowly pull consumer's rights away with expensive lawyers(what a pain in the ass, Am I right?). If only we'd just give up and instate a supreme ruler over the world; They could use those expensive lawyer salaries to bribe the ruler, instate a couple pages of law about how they invented and own all information including the letter 'E' and the number '1' and just get it over with. At least then they wouldn't have to slowly screw us over with new laws, they could do it once and get it over with!
Much to my astonishment it seems that Ms. Packman was actually created FIRST. According to the design doc I just read, the marketing department felt that people really liked the idea of a chomping circle moving around and eating other, smaller circles, but just couldn't relate to the fast, in-your-face action that Ms. Packman's bow would present to gamers. Because of this, Packman was born. Later, after people began to except Packman's greedy circle eating attitude and began wondering what Packman's family life was like, Ms. Packman was released to the public.
Maybe it's just me, but is there any form of life less intimidating than a beetle? If you were robbing a bank and some 6 inch tall beetle comes crawling up to you repeating "Beettle Bot says STOP!" over and over again on it's 1/8 Watt Radio Shack telephone speaker...Would you stop?
I feel sorry for the guy who has to supervise these things; You just -know- your going to get some call at 4 in the morning from a bettle bot requesting permission to open fire on a fallen lamp shade.
[:]Welcome to the Ronco Intruder Alert System. The time is 4/5/80 2:30pm.
[:] Please clearly dictate your name for entry:
---Ummmm, Dr. Mike Ronco [:]Docter Nik Monco not on File.
[:]Please State Name:
---Dooocter Miiiiike Roooonnnnncooo [:]Please State Name:
---Docter......Mike......Ronco
[:]Please State Name: Mike Ronco
[:]Please State Name:
---Work Damn it!!!
[:] "Work Damn it" not on file.
[:] Hostile agressions detected.
---I barely touched you!
[:] Arming Weapon.
[:] Weapon Armed in 43 mS
[:] Scanning for targets....Found.
[:] Firing.
[:] Firing.
[:] Firing.
[:] Firing.
[:]Welcome to the Ronco Intruder Alert System. Please clearly dictate your name for entry:
I am a very picky software user and before I download any software that reader adobe acrobat reader.pdf files, the software has to pass a rigerous check list of my design.
----Check list----
[ ] Does the software have lots of tabby moving
boxes that I can use to customize for an optimal
We were lost. None of us knew where we were. And then Harry began feelin' around on all the trees. And then he says, I got it: we on Pluto. And we said, Harry how can you tell? He said, From the bark you dummies. From the bark.
(love that part) Water my ass. Bring this guy some PemptoBismal.
Slashdot Mirror
God I hope so, that thing needs to take a look in a mirror for a reality check.
----spoilers---- The council wants to take the empresses' gold dragon staff, so she's going to get another one and make everyone happy. Wasn't the point that they wanted to take her power from her so if she just got another dragon controlling staff they wouldn't exactly have let that slide would they? They'd still go to battle. Maybe they weren't suppose to find out about the other staff or something...I don't know. Other than that the thiefs were complete clutzes, the mage didn't seem to do anything at all to help except once(note to self: bring the things you need to cast spells when you're going on an adventure). Also, she didn't even believe that commoners were equal until the end....would you risk your life for an idea that you didn't even believe?? If I was a good actor and read the script that's what would scare me away.
Things just didn't add up.
Hagelin does take many of the same views that I do which is no doubt in part his strong education in the sciences. However, the nature law party takes a couple views that make you scratch your head and ask "What are they thinking." As luck may have it I was checking out their web site the other day and I came across this. Anyone thinking that by blocking the south entrances of government buildings we would somehow decrease corruption in government isn't on that same page with me. In fact, it scares me a lot. I did a good deal of searching on Harry Browne too. I disagree with his stance on abortion and the environment but everything else is really close. Still, until we reform how votes are tallied and move away from our plurality voting structure I have no choice but to vote for someone who can win. I don't see it changing with-out an outcry from the people because pluarility re-enforces a two-party political structure and why would you vote away a system that helps you get elected?
I'm looking for a canidate who answers these questions anywhere close to mine....let me know if you hear of one.
1) War on DrugsWe're wasting tons of money locking up drug users, and for what(locking up serious dealers is all you need)? Keep a steady flow of money to help inform kids at a young age of the dangers in some degree. Remember though, sometimes the Government can't teach your kids all the values they should have no matter how much money we burn.(The Government does have finite abilities)
2) Minority Religions
As long as someone's Religious practices aren't infringing on someone else's personal rights everything is fine. There's no rule in life saying that you have to believe things other people believe.
3) Why give a tax cut?
Listen, lord knows I can't pass everything that I want to, I'd be a President not a king. However, I concentrate on helping to reform wasteful Government programs, promoting useful ones, reducing our debt and we'll see where that leaves us for a refund(or for more taxes).
4) electoral reform
Anyone who's read about how our voting process works knows it needs some serious revamping and fast. You shouldn't have to vote for someone because otherwise you'll hurt the guy that has a better chance of winning who you don't like as much. Some kind of system to the effect of listing your choices in order and if your 1st choice isn't going to win your vote moves to your 2nd choice and so on....something like that would do nicely.
5)How Do You Feel About Intellectual Property?
Again, it's major overhaul time. Move patent lengths back down to 22 years for starters. Secondly, move as least a shred of power back into the hands of the consumer. Get rid of shrink wrap licenses, fire the current director of the patent office. That's just for starters.
6) Encryption....
No restrictions on encryption, period. No, you shouldn't have to put in back doors into your software either so that Government employees can have access into whatever they want.
7) Rising Political Protests
No big point here(not my area) but we shouldn't trade with countries who are responsibile for crimes against humanity.(child labor, meger pay...)
8) Asteroid Defenses
This isn't some cheesy blockbuster-space movie, everyone knows if an astroid is going to come to Earth in the next couple years we're SOL. Make sure you buy a good lawn chair in case the big day comes.
9) The Future of the Country, and of Humanity
The way I see it, humanity is in a period of rapid growth and we haven't figured out how to deal with it yet. We've gain so many new technologies that we don't know what to do next it seems. We need to continue to develop what we know to ensure a better quality of life for everyone, not just rich people. The way to do this is simple. Keep pumping money into education like there's no tomorrow. Require higher standards for both students and teachers. A renewed commitment to the hard sciences and literature. Education should always be a priority, not just something you talk about when you make that visit to a campus to get student votes.
It is strange. For a second there I thought the world was ending and no one thought of telling me.
Stop before it's too late!
1. making the interface as simple as possible.
2. allow simple commands to be combined to form more complex manuevers.
3. Making the opponents act as real as possible (or have real people).
People want games to be simple otherwise it starts to look suspecisly like work to them. With a low learning curve things seem a lot more fun and when you can experiment with those simple commands to form neat, complex behaviors in your character the fun is amplified.
My example is the online game subspace(before all the new servers went on-line). You could get going in subspace in about 10 seconds. move left/right, fire bullets/bombs ect. What made things fun was that you could combine your simple moves to do new things. For instance you could create an area full of mines and use your 'repel' power to push people into them(instead of it's typical use of repelling shots going towards you). There were dozens of tricks you could learn all using simple manauers that you learned back in your first minute of play. Another bonus was that you could play against 60 people and nothing says fun like dodging 20 people at a time. Subspace wasn't 3D, it was a simple 2D sparse tile engine with a simple particle engine that could handle about 130 people in a game. It's changed a lot since I used to play a lot..more fast paced with faster firing (which elimates a lot of the really hard to master strategies) but still a lot of fun.
a whole PLANET devoted towards the production of Canadian Dry ginger ale.
Much like the proton and anti-proton,competent technical support and friendly technical support can not exist in the same universe without massive explosions and lots of dying.
In the event that we do need to colonize space I fear the consequences. I fear the unavoidable explotation of everything possible, including our selves. For a check of what we tend to do -all- the time read more in depth of our 17th-18th centry colonization of the New World. Now enter today 400-500+ years later and we're starting a colony on Mars on the New Planet. Does human nature really change enough that we could even do something like that? That is, without repeating history for the n-th time. My money's on us not making through the next major Earth disaster but, hey, call me an optimist.(we might not make it to the next natural disaster) ;)
So that we can still talk about trials without refering to decades I propose that the minute be extended to 1432.34 seconds. The new length of the minute will ensure my proposal and will have the added bonus of creating more software engineering jobs since we'd need to redo all the banking software. It's win-win.
okay, it doesn't -ALWAYS- work. ;)
l33t skillz 0f gamez *sigh*
Neither have I but that's probably because microphone does not connect to the visor in any way, it goes directly to the springboard module.
Assuming that I'm thinking as your typical consumer, I can't imagine why I would be paying more money for a mp3 player that requires me to already own a visor(which I do). It can't sync by itself, it has no LCD and yet I pay more(despite my $180-$260 inital visor purchase). Oh and it I want to run it without my visor it costs my an extra $40!!? It doesn't any sense? Anyway, there is another mp3 player for the visor coming out but it looks like it's going to cost roughly the same amount.
Everyday people at real stores charge different prices based on the status of consumers. It's no different on the internet except that a computer does it now. Everytime a company uses information about you to try and sell you more product on the internet people are up in arms but the day you're at Best Buy and they ask you for your area code it's no big deal.
At any rate, my guess is that the laws you were thinking about deal with bait&switch. If I advertise a product for $1.99 that is good for 1 week, when you come into the store to buy that product(in that week) I can't sell it to you for $10.57. There is a law agaist doing that. However, as long as Amazon doesn't advertise a special price for something to lure you to their site and then compute a -higher- price for you based on your customer status, they haven't broken that law. Again, I don't think amazon will make it a policy of rising prices. Even if they do, my faith is in the fact that a consumer will always be able too compare price A from Store 1 with price B and store 2 and decide what price is lower...maybe it's just me.
You're right on. Amazon can charge whatever they want for their merchandise. It seems that most of the posters so far seem to think that everyone is a super-impulse buyer; that somehow typing in www.bn.com and checking out what they happen to be charging is really that hard to do. For every purchase that I make online I check as many sites as I can for better prices in no time flat. If amazon wants to charge me more then I'll go elsewhere--and fast! I'm in the situation where I'm just starting the DragonLance series. If amazon sees me purchase the first two books in the series do people honostly think they'll charge me MORE? I truly doubt that amazon's consumer model is built around alientating their customer base. You give good, fair prices to your new customers and drop your profit margin to your loyal ones because you'll make it up in volume. It doesn't take a economist to know that.
Do you get the impression that the MPAA just hates democracy? I mean lawsuit after lawsuit they have to slowly pull consumer's rights away with expensive lawyers(what a pain in the ass, Am I right?). If only we'd just give up and instate a supreme ruler over the world; They could use those expensive lawyer salaries to bribe the ruler, instate a couple pages of law about how they invented and own all information including the letter 'E' and the number '1' and just get it over with. At least then they wouldn't have to slowly screw us over with new laws, they could do it once and get it over with!
Much to my astonishment it seems that Ms. Packman was actually created FIRST. According to the design doc I just read, the marketing department felt that people really liked the idea of a chomping circle moving around and eating other, smaller circles, but just couldn't relate to the fast, in-your-face action that Ms. Packman's bow would present to gamers. Because of this, Packman was born. Later, after people began to except Packman's greedy circle eating attitude and began wondering what Packman's family life was like, Ms. Packman was released to the public.
I feel sorry for the guy who has to supervise these things; You just -know- your going to get some call at 4 in the morning from a bettle bot requesting permission to open fire on a fallen lamp shade.
[:]Welcome to the Ronco Intruder Alert System. The time is 4/5/80 2:30pm .
[:] Please clearly dictate your name for entry:
---Ummmm, Dr. Mike Ronco
[:]Docter Nik Monco not on File.
[:]Please State Name:
---Dooocter Miiiiike Roooonnnnncooo
[:]Please State Name:
---Docter......Mike......Ronco
[:]Please State Name:
Mike Ronco
[:]Please State Name:
---Work Damn it!!!
[:] "Work Damn it" not on file.
[:] Hostile agressions detected.
---I barely touched you!
[:] Arming Weapon.
[:] Weapon Armed in 43 mS
[:] Scanning for targets....Found.
[:] Firing.
[:] Firing.
[:] Firing.
[:] Firing.
[:]Welcome to the Ronco Intruder Alert System.
Please clearly dictate your name for entry:
ahhhh damn! Yet again the mouseimp program has screwed me over. Oh well. :)
I am a very picky software user and before I download any software that reader adobe acrobat reader .pdf files, the software has to pass a rigerous check list of my design.
----Check list----
[ ] Does the software have lots of tabby moving
boxes that I can use to customize for an optimal
It might have something to do with the fact that a lot of us might have to learn this language.
None of us knew where we were.
And then Harry began feelin' around on all the trees. And then he says, I got it: we on Pluto.
And we said, Harry how can you tell?
He said, From the bark you dummies. From the bark.
(love that part)
Water my ass. Bring this guy some PemptoBismal.