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User: Yosho

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Comments · 1,310

  1. Re:So what? on Simpler "Hello World" Demonstrated In C · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I bet every executable on the hard drive has an extra 11k that somebody thought was insignificant.

    So if you have, say, 1000 open processes, that means your computer is wasting 11 MB of RAM. Such inefficiency!

    Actually, the reason you need 4 GB of RAM is because the programs you're using are far more complex than the ones that people were using when 256 MB was top-of-the-line. You may say, "But all I need is to read e-mail and browse the web!" -- except that nowadays those tasks involve rendering GUIs with Javascript, streaming and playing HD video in realtime, and doing constant full-text indexing in the background so that you can quickly search anything for any phrase. On top of that, in the background your operating system is trying to predict what you'll do next and prefetching blocks from your hard drive into RAM so that they'll already be cached when you actually need them.

    Some of that RAM is honestly being taken up by insignificant chunks of data, but most of it really is being used.

  2. Re:Can't quite pinpoint... on Bethesda Unveils New Co-op Dungeon Crawler · · Score: 1

    Please don't tell me that you're seriously comparing something like a useful, lifelong skill like playing the guitar is the same as playing a PS3 game that nobody will care about in a few years.

    The entire point of a video game is to be fun. If you have to spend several hours working on a game before it becomes any fun, what's the point in even playing it? Just ditch it and go play something that's fun from the beginning.

  3. Re:We'd be happy to help on A Sad Day For the New Zealand Internet · · Score: 1

    NZers will gladly exchange their internet access for yours. Try 50$ with 10G cap

    While that sucks and all, with a 56k dialup connection, assuming you were even capable of hitting the max transfer rate, you'd only be able to get a little about 17 GB in one month if your connection was going full-blast 24 hours a day. Assuming that the connection will generally be idle for over half the day and at less than the max on average for the rest of it, it's unlikely that even a fairly active dial-up user would hit a 10 GB cap.

  4. Re:Multiple faults on Accidental Wii Suicide · · Score: 1

    5th, who makes a gun shaped controller for a Wii?! It's a platform mainly aimed at KIDS!!!

    You were doing pretty good until you got to this point, but the majority of Wii gamers are over 18:
    http://kotaku.com/5010227/nintendo-wii-gamers-are-hardcore-gamers

    I would imagine that lots of accessory manufacturers make gun-shaped controllers for use with shooting games, although they typically use white & blue plastic with unrealistic shapes.

  5. Re:Sounds like resistance is easy. on Aurora Attack — Resistance Is Futile, Pretty Much · · Score: 1

    the easiest way to get your linux box rooted is to use a weak ssh password

    Why is why, of course, you put in a delay between login attempts. If you cannot attempt to log in to an account more than once every five seconds, then even if your password is only six alphabet letters and you never change it (very weak, by any standard), then it could take almost 50 years to brute-force it.

  6. Re:Enough of the faith bashing on Brain Surgery Linked To Sensation of Spirituality · · Score: 1

    Just because people believe in God(sorry, but he does exist and only a fool would attempt to "prove" otherwise)

    Well, of course it's foolish to try to prove that "God" doesn't exist. That makes as much sense as you trying to prove that I don't have an invisible unicorn in my back yard.

    On the other hand, if you want to be taken seriously, you should prove that he does exist, just like how I'll have to present some solid evidence to convince anybody that I have a unicorn.

  7. Re:You gotta be kidding. on Game Difficulty As a Virtue · · Score: 1

    1. Super Mario Bros. 2 (J) 2. Kaizo Mario World 3. Super Mario Forever

    To be fair, SMB2J is one of the hardest games ever, and the last two are fangames that were intentionally designed to be sadistic. Just because NSMBW is easier than them does not, by any means, mean that is is an easy game.

  8. Re:Great game on Review: Mass Effect 2 · · Score: 1

    If you actually take the time to talk to them, and do their missions, yeah, they get a lot of development.

    And I don't know why you thought the characters didn't have much effect on the plot. The two other humans, sure, they were just soldiers along for the ride, but most of the others had good personal reasons to be on your mission.

    They had reasons to come along with you, sure, but they didn't have much effect on the plot after they joined. Liara got the scene with her mother; Wrex got the scene where you had to convince him not to be stupid; you got to sacrifice either Ashley or Kaidan; and that's pretty much it. Did Garrus or Tali actually ever do anything? I can't remember any scenes that involved them as important characters.

    'Highly political' doesn't even begin to describe that game. In fact, ME2 is a bit of a relief in that you don't have to deal with those asshats anymore. (You instead have to deal with your morally ambiguous and lying boss, but at least he's not trying to score political points.)

    There are politics in the game, but they don't really have much of a bearing on the story. Heck, the entire point of your character concept is that you can do whatever you feel like and just forget about what the government thinks. There was no political intrigue, manipulation, backstabbing, or intricate schemes. The council were a bunch of jackasses, sure, but their goals were always completely obvious.

    Erm, you found the plot of Mass Effect 'predictable'? Really?

    Absolutely. Maybe it's a result of having read too much sci-fi. To be fair, I had the whole "evil machine race is coming to kill us all" thing spoiled by one of the official trailers. It was pretty obvious from the beginning that Saren was being controlled by them. Given that BioWare always structures the plots of their games in the same way, that made it pretty obvious that you were going to accomplish the next four objectives in any order and then have a showdown with Saren. And, guess what, the evil machine race is still coming to kill everything. I will give it that I didn't expect the "conduit" to just be a teleporter back to home base... but I thought that was a pretty awful deus ex machina, honestly.

    However, there were plenty of actual choices that really did matter. ... I'm not quite sure what you're complaining about there.

    My complaint is that if you're going to give the player the ability to make choices, they should both be hard to make and have significant impacts on the story. Choices that are obviously good or evil are bad because you're really just choosing whether you want to be nice or to be an ass; also, knowing that the game will give you rewards either way lessens the impact of picking one over the other.

    The Witcher, for example, did a much better job of providing morally ambiguous choices that had significant impacts on the plot. For example, early in the game, a merchant asks you to defend some crates of medicine he has from monsters that are going to attack it at night. You show up and defend the stuff, and then a group of Scoia'tael (elves with a very anti-human bent) show up and ask you if you'll give the supplies to them, saying they desperately need the medicine. Do you refuse to hand the stuff over, or accept payment for it and let them take it?

    If you agree to give the supplies to them, later in the game it turns out that the crates actually contained arrows designed to kill unarmored targets (like peasants), and the Scoia'tael take a village hostage. Oops!

    That's what I didn't like about Mass Effect -- all of the choices are very obvious about which one is "nice" and which one is "mean," and the outcome is almost always exactly what you'd expect.

  9. Re:Microsoft getting free ride on Using Windows 7 RC? Pay Up Or Auto Shutdown Warned · · Score: 1

    This was not a beta version but probably a shakedown version.

    Well... duh? The "RC" in the name is for "Release Candidate". The entire point of the release is so that the geeks could check it out before the final release so that they could get impressions of it, tell their friends and family about it, and catch any final, show-stopping bugs. Microsoft never said it was a "free trial" version. Anybody who ever used the RC version for an important system is a moron. You seem to have just discovered something that Microsoft was very up-front and honest about.

    Also, the Windows 7 beta versions already expired long ago.

  10. Re:Great game on Review: Mass Effect 2 · · Score: 1

    If you've ever played a game in the Suikoden series, you have to play Mass Effect 2.

    I'll be honest, I had pretty much completely written off ME2 because the first one left me unimpressed, but now I'm interested. This is definitely the first time I've heard anybody compare to ME2 to one of the Suikoden games. Why is it that you'd recommend it to Suikoden fans?

    Just for reference, things I like about the Suikodens:
    - Large casts of colorful characters, with a core set of characters that receives a lot of development
    - Old-fashioned, turn-based combat that has a few twists due to the weapon, formation, and spell mechanics, plus the army and duel-style battles for a bit of variety
    - Intricate plots that are highly political in nature with magical influences; very rarely do the games concern themselves with the common "save the world from the ultimate evil" trope
    - A very original, intriguing history of the world

    Suikoden 5 had two scenes that managed to make me cry, which is something that no other game I've played has done.

    And things I didn't like about Mass Effect:
    - FPS-style combat that was repetitive and bland compared to "pure" FPSes; you fought the same enemies over and over again, just on a differently-colored planet
    - Boring, frustrating Mako exploration sequences
    - Predictable plot with few twists; from almost the beginning until the end it's all about saving the universe from eradication, and you don't really even manage to do that
    - Most of the "choices" you make in the game aren't between good and evil; they're not even between different shades of gray, they're just between being nice and being a jackass.

    I will say I liked Mass Effect's characters (well, most of them), but I was disappointed that they had almost zero involvement in the game's actual story. Pretty much all of their development was through talking to them on your ship and discovering their backstory.

  11. Re:I noticed this problem almost half a decade ago on Students Failing Because of Poor Grammar · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Kid Rock is the symptom, but Republicans are the disease.

    You're very close, but that's not quite the root of the problem. Nobody likes to talk about the root of the problem, though, because nobody in a position of power wants to look bad for directly taking them on. The issue is that we have a village idiot in this country, and it's called Fundamentalist Christianity.

  12. Re:But unfortunately... on Looking Back At Dungeons & Dragons · · Score: 1

    Being an atheist in a typical D&D world would be very silly, since there's physical evidence that gods exist; I mean, their champions (angels, archons, demons, etc) are always wandering around, you can cast spells to get advice from them, heck, you can even plane shift into their homes and talk to them face to face. You'd have to be crazy to believe that the gods don't exist.

    On the other hand, you don't have to worship a god, and clerics have always been able to worship and receive powers from a concept or a cause rather than a deity. The only catch is that if they worship a deity, that deity has to be within one step of their alignment.

    What's REALLY great, though, is that while paladins ARE required to worship a god, that god is not required to be within one step of their alignment (lawful good). So you could legally roll up a lawful good paladin who worships Vecna (the super-evil god of necromancy). You'd have a heck of a time explaining that to the DM, though...

  13. Re:Failblog win on Avatar — the Metacontextual Edition · · Score: 1

    Wow, thanks for pointing that out. Nobody has ever said that before. Not even the second line in the article!

  14. Re:Netflix subscription question. on Netflix Will Delay Renting New WB Releases · · Score: 1

    Nope. That's their entire business model, really -- for a flat fee per month, you get as many movies as you can watch.

  15. Re:Intel gave him a kick back to use there shit gm on Jobs Finally "Happy" With Unannounced Apple Tablet · · Score: 1

    Intel gave him a kick back to use there shit gma video in this and to tie the new next mini and all laptops under $2000 with there carp on board in the i3 cpu.

    That sucks, carp are so boney. :-/

  16. Re:Small Arms Ammunition allowed? on TSA's Sloppy Redacting Reveals All · · Score: 1

    Wow, that's great. I think I'll have to go get a flare gun as an early Christmas present for myself...

  17. Re:Small Arms Ammunition allowed? on TSA's Sloppy Redacting Reveals All · · Score: 1

    You are required by federal law to use locks that the TSA can't open

    Wait, are you serious? That's the best arguement for gun ownership I've ever heard. I don't even own a handgun, but now I'm going to have to go see what I have to go through to get one so that I can keep the TSA from rifling through my luggage...

  18. Re:The poor corporate victim on The Struggle For Private Game Servers · · Score: 4, Informative

    Those poor, poor mega-billion dollar corporations. So victimized.

    Just because a company has lots of money doesn't mean they don't have rights.

    If a company makes a game, they own it. If you want to play it, you have to agree to their terms. If you don't like their terms, ok, go away and play a different game. Sorry, you don't get to play the game and ignore the rules. Is that really so hard to accept?

  19. Re:WTF? on Emulating New Super Mario Bros. Wii At 1080p · · Score: 1

    Not all of us want to buy a Wii for the couple games on it that are actually worthwhile.

    It's ok, you don't have to diss the Wii to be cool any more. Or do you not even know what games are available? Every single one of the games in that top 10 list is fantastic and worth owning. To be fair, if you have Metroid Prime Trilogy then you don't need MP3, but there are more games than just those that are good, and many of them aren't available on any other platform. And if good games aren't enough, you should also buy the Wii for its homebrew scene, which is much better than what's available for the PS3 and 360. Playing the original Quake with the wiimote is awesome.

  20. Re:Just saw something interesting with Borderlands on Modded Xbox Bans Prompt EFF Warning About Terms of Service · · Score: 1

    But the upgrade to put a legit copy on a new system. But apparently ... this upgrade is only properly licensed if I put it on the computer that had the OEM version of XP on it.

    Well, your first mistake was buying the "upgrade" version and thinking that was the appropriate version to do a fresh install on a new system. What did you think the purpose of the non-upgrade version was?

    Even at that, though, Microsoft's upgrade terms are incredibly lenient. The only requirement you have to meet when installing the upgrade version of Windows 7 is that the computer you're on must have a partition on some hard disk in it that has a previous version of Windows on it. So if you plugged your old XP drive into the new computer, Windows 7 would install just fine on the new drive, even if the old drive isn't even bootable.

  21. For Linux, MythTV backend and XBMC frontend. on Best PC DVR Software, For Any Platform? · · Score: 4, Informative

    The MythTV backend for recording TV is great, but the frontend is very rough around the edges, even after years of development. As a general media center, XBMC is fantastic; its support for playing DVDs, video files, and music is the best I've found on Linux. There's also a plugin for XBMC that gives it functionality as a MythTV frontend, and while it doesn't have quite the same range of capabilities as the official MythTV frontend, it nonetheless works well.

    Unfortunately, there's no way you're going to be streaming Netflix movies in Linux, due to Netflix's DRM. The only way to do it is with a Windows box or using an embedded solution. I use an Xbox 360 for that.

  22. Re:Anime on Ubuntu? Seriously?? on Ubuntu Reaching Out To 16,000 Anime Lovers · · Score: 1

    an non Microsoft maintained collection of codecs with no verification that I've never heard of

    ... what? Quite frankly, if you've never heard of CCCP, it's obvious that you do not watch anime fansubs. It's the de facto codec collection used in the anime community, especially if you're watching anything in an MKV container that uses SSA or ASS soft-subs.

    Oh, and SSA/ASS support on Linux has been horrible for years. To be fair, it's gotten better recently, and I can play almost anything with XBMC, but it's still not as good as Windows; playing a video that uses advanced stuff like scrolling subtitles or karaoke effects has noticeable artifacts and will make my CPU stutter, even though it would play perfectly under Windows.

  23. Re:not true. on Review: Dragon Age: Origins · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Uh... I don't know what to tell you except that you're completely wrong.

    The patch is out right here: http://social.bioware.com/game_patches.php

    Also, you don't have to be online to play the base game. However, if you have any DLC, you must be connected to the internet and logged into your BioWare account through Dragon Age to access it -- and if your saved games have any of that content in them, that means you can't load those saved games unless you're connected to the internet.

  24. Re:I'm going to get a lot of flak for this, but. . on Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad. · · Score: 1

    The reason you don't do it is because if it turns out that you are wrong, then you get charged with all sorts of things from false imprisonment to something akin to kidnapping.

    That's because when you perform a citizen's arrest, it's easy to track you down in the event that you were wrong.

    If I go through a Korean proxy, set up a free e-mail account somewhere, and send an official-looking notice that cites legal documents from that address, are you sure your ISP is going to verify that that e-mail address is traceable to a real person before they shut down your account? I can even put some fake address at the bottom of the e-mail to make it look like I have a real office somewhere.

  25. Re:I'm going to get a lot of flak for this, but. . on Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad. · · Score: 1

    There's nothing wrong with the intention of protecting copyright -- the problem is the means by which they're doing so.

    For example, I could e-mail your ISP and tell them that you've illegaly copied a song I created. Now they're required to suspend your account. It doesn't matter whether you've actually done anything; you're going to have to go to court and prove you didn't in order to get your internet access back. Even if I'm lying and using a fake identity to make that report to your ISP, how many days do you think it will take to get your access back?

    And then after you get your access back, if I really want to mess with you, I'll just do it again...