DragonRealms (DR) was a hell of alot of fun to play. I dropped it when it went pay, then I started again a bit ago. I quit soon after, the reason, they sold out. The poster had the mindset correct, when it was free. As it went pay to play, Simu made two versions of the service, 1 basic, one Premium. the premium was 30 dollars and gave the players an advance chance to try new weapons, features, and they got a free cool item evey week or so, plus other bennies. The basic got shafted for 10 dollars a month. didn't get squat extra stuff. the Premies were braggarts, and generally assholes, oh, and they got priority in the GM intervention queue, in which you entered if you needed assistance. the game had changed so much in teh year I was gone. I decided to drop it, but not before seeing DR Platinum. Plat was supposed to be a reset back to the origional engine which I thought was cool. problem: 80 dollars a month...thats BS. Then they began starting quests, another cool thing, but it cost like 15 dollars for the quest...WTF is with that.
the best part of the game, IMHO, is the skill/experience system. It required you to work on doin stuff instead of just killing for exp, which was brilliant. I'd love to create a mud with a similar system.
for the record, I have played many muds ran off of the ROM and the Circle engine, and the hack and slash nature is no fun compared to actually having skills you are good at and all.
to sum it up, great game, but they sold out, and I hope they go out of business, cause I want their engine...or at leist a chance to look at their code
I think that the biggest problem everyone is missing is now the teachers have to be re-educated. Now some might say that is their job. I know for one ( I took APCS last year ) that some teachers really don't even know C++ and making them learn java is kinda a joke. My teacher barely knew the language, just the concepts, and even now I go in a debug programs because I know the language better than him. I took pascal as my intro to comp sci class, same deal there. My teacher was part of the math department. He is the only calculus teacher in the school because our other one left. No way he could learn java and be able to teach it. The programming teacher (teachs dataprocessing C, VB) could learn the java but would have trouble teaching the sorting concepts and such non such. Though I'd have liked to have him (I am his student aid) he does not use paper, all assignemnts are in docs online and all. You might say it is time to get a new CS teacher. Fine. You teach it. We are struggling to get teachers as it is. No one wants to teach HS anyway cause salaries are low and with the lucritive contracts that geeks and programmers can get, it is a big surprise that we don't have any of you teaching us.
the APCS will have to learn the new langauge, but I don't think switching languages will be the right thing anyway. Oh, and BTW, they have to learn to use the editors too. My teacher had enough trouble with Turbo C, only the people smart enought to use the MS vis c++ editor we are given use it. Turbo is quirky. The teacher doesn't even know how to use Vis C++, the college board expects him to teach idiots how to use the editor AND the language (the idiots I am talking about ahve trouble understanding that function prototypes have to be the same as the declaration. No matter how many tiems yous how and tell them.) Anyway back to my point. The Vis J++ editor is dumb, and if you think the high schools run unix in any way shape or form, for teaching at leist, you are wrong. The people in my networking class knew more Unix than our head Bald Computer Guy.
In my high school, there are over 3200 people, 800 some seniors. We of the geeky underworld are watched by three cameras during the mornings (strategically placed right where the social outcasts socialize with each other). We all got together and voted the exact same ballot for senior superlatives. That was out mark on the school. 6 of us managed to win one of like 14 categories. Jokes on everyone else now, all the populars/perfect people/etc were too damned apathetic/disorganized to make sure they won. Kudos to this kid. Unfortunatly our ballot stuffing for Homecomming King/Queen wasn't as successful.
everyone should get armored core 2. it is from the greatest named company I have EVER seen. I once played AC1 for 10 hors straright at my friends house. we had to restart everytime we changed our country themed mechs (mid-east bomb dropper terrorist, nazi, USSR, US, japanese, french (flying tank)) and I must have seen...From Software like 100 times, reaidng From Software in that deep movie trailer guy voice never seemed to get old that night...
All I know is I want one when I go to college. With it I want Bubble Bobble (I wasted too much of my life on that game and was dissapointed to not eve see it get mentioned on the gamers.com article) excite bike, FFI, MMII and say like zelda and a bunch more. I bet I'd get a lot of people in my dorm and we could play team nintendo, just like the old days...you know...
Player: *jumps* I keep missing that jump! You said there was a 1up up there?
Observer1: no, no no, you are doing it wrong, you have to jump *points* there to get up
P: OH!, I get it
O2: You missed again, thats thre ups you lost, my turn
P:Na ah...we get four lives, not three, and anyways see, I just got up
O1 and O2 pout and slouch back waiting for the next chance to try to get the controller
Anyway, what about games like Contra and all, for hardest game, you can't get past the 4th level in contra.
That clicker hasn't changed since then, they still use the same design on the gameboy today, I wish all games had clickers like that...
I believe it meant crimes that you commeteed WITH the email have a statue of limitations of 6 months (racial hate email, etc) conspiracy email would just be part of the conspiracy, plus, if they had enough evidence that you did email something to someone illegal or something like that, they could probably nail you for destroying evidence of a crime for writting 0's to your HD
oh yeah, standard disclaimer, IANAL, IANACow, but...eehhhhhhh too lazy to finish it
ok fer you lawyers, not lawyers, and postem out there....I went into radioshack one day and I asked for one of the new catalogues, to check on prices through them for something (knowing they were probably most expensive and didn't carry blue LEDs, and never mentioning the cat, got handed one with the catalogue. Free gift. Do I fall under the people who were sent it or the people who asked for it
IIRC the/. collective gave a pretty big neat when the entire concept of the free barcode reader was posted here not too long ago. We supported them becuase we thought what they did was neat, now all of a sudden they turn around, start changing things on us (meaning EVERYONE who has a cuecat, not just/.ers). We gave them props for their idea and thought it was good, then they made modifications to the idea and we didn't like the changes, no one ever said we had to.
It surprises me that this project gets as littly publicity as it does. Personally I believe that Jem Finer is a genious. He was a computer science major before he was recruited to play with the Pogues, a great irish band (check them out, if buyin CDs Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, If I should Fall From Grace With God, and Red Roses For Me are the best three albums.), and when the band broke up, he came up with this...I can't wait till it gets streamed
Here's an idea, instead of whining that people reverse engineered the hardware and that product of the reverse engineering (the linux drivers)could be used to make neato software that does stuff like a record keeping type software for the likes of DVDs, CDs, books, etc. Why don't they just take that market too and write the software that does neato stuff. That way the ideas we all thought of right away when we heard "free barcode scanner" are implemented by them and we think, hey, they listen...but no...they whine about it instead. For all we know this is just kind of a stall so they can get software like this out.
I installed their software, the little screen thingie said they wanted to make it as popular os the mouse. In order for this to happen, they have to make more than one use for it. Think of it in terms of if that guy who invented the mouse bitched when other people made them, I dunno but I dun wanna play quake on a touchpad....
I dunno about anyone here, but I dun get my news from anywhere but the Onion. I think it is really important to read about land mark Supreme Court decisions that no one else cares to report about...did the NYT bother to mention that they rules 8-1 that Americans are unfit to govern...it seems not....
Ok, now that that is out, Katz seems to have written a good one this time. I find it for the most part true. I used to watch the news all the time when I was 10-14. I did it for the crave of information. Now that is what the Net is for, I get so much information each day I am happy. People wonder how I know all that I know. Also, to agree with a post way above, dun remember what it is, I watch the History Channel ALL the time. That stuff is so interesting and it is usually in a very easy to follow format, that you can pick up on 30 minutes into a show.
Number 8 is a very very odd problem. I can't begin to understand why Dr. Hawking believes that it would dissapear even if there are other copies of it in the world.
Lets say for example...we take something that is rather constant...1 X 1. If I take one apple and create one times as many apples as I have, I made one apple. According to Hawking, if I wrote down 1 X 1 = 1 on a peice of paper it would dissapear and for all we know 1 X 1 could now equal 7 or 70 or 10^700. Or if we do 1 + 1, where does the fibonacci sequence start? since 1 + 1 can no longer equal 2.
Or even to take it one step further, if 1 X 1 = 1 is tossed into a black hole, is 1 * 1 = 1 still valid, is it the physical form of the idea, the way it is written that is no longer there, or the logical idea behind the information that dissapears.
I am not a mathematician, a physicist or the like, just a 17 year old who doesn't understand the numbers and physics behind these things, just thinks the lgoic through about them.
Question: What does this extra cost of video clips and music videos and advertisements and such non-such get us?
Answer: A raise in the price.
Problem: CD's cost too much
Solution: Could it be to stop the money wasting uselessness of a music video...
of course we know that this would never happen...think about it, most bands today (I am including everything from rap to boy bands to jail bait to alot of the rock trash on the airwaves today) would not sell if it wasn't for looks, because basically, their music is horrible. the reason I don't buy much music recorded recently is there is only one or two good tracks on the album, and that one track, is over played on the radio and I get really really tired of it, to the point that I stop listenening to that radio station for a while in order to not hear that song.
In the 70's (I am 17, I didn't live then) alot of bands who played really really good music wouldn't be popular today. Thin about it, the WHO, Yes, Loggins and Messina, Simon and Garfunkel, America, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and the list goes on and on...by today's standards for pop music, these people and groups didn't have the looks to survive even though their music is really good. Now on the other hand..n'sync, the BBBoys, britany spears...evidently they are what popular people are supposed to look like, and will sell based on looks not on musical ability.
Which I guess brings me to my long awaited point. If we could possibly get mainsream america to understand what music has musical value and what doesn't, prices would go down, video clips videos and ads would become less effective...but then that would be impossible because corporate america has most youths not thinking for themselves, they have a horde of zombies at their command.
maybe the wisdom of/. could come up with a more feasable solution to the problem of perfect people
I have one thing to say to defend this, it may come up as many things but we'll learn to live with that. A friend of mine DLed 2 MP3's of an Irish band named The Pogues. He played them for another friend of mine who liked it and promptly went out and bought the album that one of them was on. He liked it so much he bought another. Another friend and I liked it too, we go and buy a copy each of the first one bought (thats 4 now.) Then, my friend who has 2 albums, goes and buys 3 more of them(7), I like one, buy it and another one(9), the otherone who bought at same time I did bought another one(10), a 5th friend buys a copy of the first one bought and then me and a friend buy him a copy of another one for christmas(12). Finally the first friend buys a 6th album, if he gets one mroe he has everyone they've made. 13 albums so far bought because of 2 mp3's, actually 14 if you count the one a friends mom bought my friends sister cause she heard the one we were listening to... thats 14 albums that wouldn't have been sold if no mp3's becuase we never would have discovered them, frankly, they are one of my favorite bands...check them out... SMEG!
Slashdot Mirror
I think it is time for to again post the link to the sad but true article on The Onion.
obligitory simpsons quote: "I was working on this flat tax proposal and I accidentally proved that there was no God..."
DragonRealms (DR) was a hell of alot of fun to play. I dropped it when it went pay, then I started again a bit ago. I quit soon after, the reason, they sold out. The poster had the mindset correct, when it was free. As it went pay to play, Simu made two versions of the service, 1 basic, one Premium. the premium was 30 dollars and gave the players an advance chance to try new weapons, features, and they got a free cool item evey week or so, plus other bennies. The basic got shafted for 10 dollars a month. didn't get squat extra stuff. the Premies were braggarts, and generally assholes, oh, and they got priority in the GM intervention queue, in which you entered if you needed assistance. the game had changed so much in teh year I was gone. I decided to drop it, but not before seeing DR Platinum. Plat was supposed to be a reset back to the origional engine which I thought was cool. problem: 80 dollars a month...thats BS. Then they began starting quests, another cool thing, but it cost like 15 dollars for the quest...WTF is with that.
the best part of the game, IMHO, is the skill/experience system. It required you to work on doin stuff instead of just killing for exp, which was brilliant. I'd love to create a mud with a similar system.
for the record, I have played many muds ran off of the ROM and the Circle engine, and the hack and slash nature is no fun compared to actually having skills you are good at and all.
to sum it up, great game, but they sold out, and I hope they go out of business, cause I want their engine...or at leist a chance to look at their code
I think that the biggest problem everyone is missing is now the teachers have to be re-educated. Now some might say that is their job. I know for one ( I took APCS last year ) that some teachers really don't even know C++ and making them learn java is kinda a joke. My teacher barely knew the language, just the concepts, and even now I go in a debug programs because I know the language better than him.
I took pascal as my intro to comp sci class, same deal there. My teacher was part of the math department. He is the only calculus teacher in the school because our other one left. No way he could learn java and be able to teach it.
The programming teacher (teachs dataprocessing C, VB) could learn the java but would have trouble teaching the sorting concepts and such non such. Though I'd have liked to have him (I am his student aid) he does not use paper, all assignemnts are in docs online and all.
You might say it is time to get a new CS teacher. Fine. You teach it. We are struggling to get teachers as it is. No one wants to teach HS anyway cause salaries are low and with the lucritive contracts that geeks and programmers can get, it is a big surprise that we don't have any of you teaching us.
the APCS will have to learn the new langauge, but I don't think switching languages will be the right thing anyway. Oh, and BTW, they have to learn to use the editors too. My teacher had enough trouble with Turbo C, only the people smart enought to use the MS vis c++ editor we are given use it. Turbo is quirky. The teacher doesn't even know how to use Vis C++, the college board expects him to teach idiots how to use the editor AND the language (the idiots I am talking about ahve trouble understanding that function prototypes have to be the same as the declaration. No matter how many tiems yous how and tell them.) Anyway back to my point. The Vis J++ editor is dumb, and if you think the high schools run unix in any way shape or form, for teaching at leist, you are wrong. The people in my networking class knew more Unix than our head Bald Computer Guy.
In my high school, there are over 3200 people, 800 some seniors. We of the geeky underworld are watched by three cameras during the mornings (strategically placed right where the social outcasts socialize with each other). We all got together and voted the exact same ballot for senior superlatives. That was out mark on the school. 6 of us managed to win one of like 14 categories. Jokes on everyone else now, all the populars/perfect people/etc were too damned apathetic/disorganized to make sure they won. Kudos to this kid. Unfortunatly our ballot stuffing for Homecomming King/Queen wasn't as successful.
everyone should get armored core 2. it is from the greatest named company I have EVER seen. I once played AC1 for 10 hors straright at my friends house. we had to restart everytime we changed our country themed mechs (mid-east bomb dropper terrorist, nazi, USSR, US, japanese, french (flying tank)) and I must have seen...From Software like 100 times, reaidng From Software in that deep movie trailer guy voice never seemed to get old that night...
All I know is I want one when I go to college. With it I want Bubble Bobble (I wasted too much of my life on that game and was dissapointed to not eve see it get mentioned on the gamers.com article) excite bike, FFI, MMII and say like zelda and a bunch more. I bet I'd get a lot of people in my dorm and we could play team nintendo, just like the old days...you know...
Player: *jumps* I keep missing that jump! You said there was a 1up up there?
Observer1: no, no no, you are doing it wrong, you have to jump *points* there to get up
P: OH!, I get it
O2: You missed again, thats thre ups you lost, my turn
P:Na ah...we get four lives, not three, and anyways see, I just got up
O1 and O2 pout and slouch back waiting for the next chance to try to get the controller
Anyway, what about games like Contra and all, for hardest game, you can't get past the 4th level in contra.
That clicker hasn't changed since then, they still use the same design on the gameboy today, I wish all games had clickers like that...
Here is a link to the post article. no login reguired
I believe it meant crimes that you commeteed WITH the email have a statue of limitations of 6 months (racial hate email, etc) conspiracy email would just be part of the conspiracy, plus, if they had enough evidence that you did email something to someone illegal or something like that, they could probably nail you for destroying evidence of a crime for writting 0's to your HD
oh yeah, standard disclaimer, IANAL, IANACow, but...eehhhhhhh too lazy to finish it
ok fer you lawyers, not lawyers, and postem out there....I went into radioshack one day and I asked for one of the new catalogues, to check on prices through them for something (knowing they were probably most expensive and didn't carry blue LEDs, and never mentioning the cat, got handed one with the catalogue. Free gift. Do I fall under the people who were sent it or the people who asked for it
IIRC the /. collective gave a pretty big neat when the entire concept of the free barcode reader was posted here not too long ago. We supported them becuase we thought what they did was neat, now all of a sudden they turn around, start changing things on us (meaning EVERYONE who has a cuecat, not just /.ers). We gave them props for their idea and thought it was good, then they made modifications to the idea and we didn't like the changes, no one ever said we had to.
Here is a link to Jem's project.
It surprises me that this project gets as littly publicity as it does. Personally I believe that Jem Finer is a genious. He was a computer science major before he was recruited to play with the Pogues, a great irish band (check them out, if buyin CDs Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, If I should Fall From Grace With God, and Red Roses For Me are the best three albums.), and when the band broke up, he came up with this...I can't wait till it gets streamed
no one is living on Ramen in this biz folks.
Except by choice.....damn that stuff is good, cooked or raw...
Here's an idea, instead of whining that people reverse engineered the hardware and that product of the reverse engineering (the linux drivers)could be used to make neato software that does stuff like a record keeping type software for the likes of DVDs, CDs, books, etc. Why don't they just take that market too and write the software that does neato stuff. That way the ideas we all thought of right away when we heard "free barcode scanner" are implemented by them and we think, hey, they listen...but no...they whine about it instead. For all we know this is just kind of a stall so they can get software like this out.
I installed their software, the little screen thingie said they wanted to make it as popular os the mouse. In order for this to happen, they have to make more than one use for it. Think of it in terms of if that guy who invented the mouse bitched when other people made them, I dunno but I dun wanna play quake on a touchpad....
I dunno about anyone here, but I dun get my news from anywhere but the Onion. I think it is really important to read about land mark Supreme Court decisions that no one else cares to report about...did the NYT bother to mention that they rules 8-1 that Americans are unfit to govern...it seems not....
Ok, now that that is out, Katz seems to have written a good one this time. I find it for the most part true. I used to watch the news all the time when I was 10-14. I did it for the crave of information. Now that is what the Net is for, I get so much information each day I am happy. People wonder how I know all that I know. Also, to agree with a post way above, dun remember what it is, I watch the History Channel ALL the time. That stuff is so interesting and it is usually in a very easy to follow format, that you can pick up on 30 minutes into a show.
Number 8 is a very very odd problem. I can't begin to understand why Dr. Hawking believes that it would dissapear even if there are other copies of it in the world.
Lets say for example...we take something that is rather constant...1 X 1. If I take one apple and create one times as many apples as I have, I made one apple. According to Hawking, if I wrote down 1 X 1 = 1 on a peice of paper it would dissapear and for all we know 1 X 1 could now equal 7 or 70 or 10^700. Or if we do 1 + 1, where does the fibonacci sequence start? since 1 + 1 can no longer equal 2.
Or even to take it one step further, if 1 X 1 = 1 is tossed into a black hole, is 1 * 1 = 1 still valid, is it the physical form of the idea, the way it is written that is no longer there, or the logical idea behind the information that dissapears.
I am not a mathematician, a physicist or the like, just a 17 year old who doesn't understand the numbers and physics behind these things, just thinks the lgoic through about them.
Question: What does this extra cost of video clips and music videos and advertisements and such non-such get us?
Answer: A raise in the price.
Problem: CD's cost too much
Solution: Could it be to stop the money wasting uselessness of a music video...
of course we know that this would never happen...think about it, most bands today (I am including everything from rap to boy bands to jail bait to alot of the rock trash on the airwaves today) would not sell if it wasn't for looks, because basically, their music is horrible. the reason I don't buy much music recorded recently is there is only one or two good tracks on the album, and that one track, is over played on the radio and I get really really tired of it, to the point that I stop listenening to that radio station for a while in order to not hear that song.
In the 70's (I am 17, I didn't live then) alot of bands who played really really good music wouldn't be popular today. Thin about it, the WHO, Yes, Loggins and Messina, Simon and Garfunkel, America, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and the list goes on and on...by today's standards for pop music, these people and groups didn't have the looks to survive even though their music is really good. Now on the other hand..n'sync, the BBBoys, britany spears...evidently they are what popular people are supposed to look like, and will sell based on looks not on musical ability.
Which I guess brings me to my long awaited point. If we could possibly get mainsream america to understand what music has musical value and what doesn't, prices would go down, video clips videos and ads would become less effective...but then that would be impossible because corporate america has most youths not thinking for themselves, they have a horde of zombies at their command.
maybe the wisdom of /. could come up with a more feasable solution to the problem of perfect people
I got tired of getting mails from staff@hotmail.com on my hotmail account so I blocked that address along with their mailer daemon, it is really funny
I have one thing to say to defend this, it may come up as many things but we'll learn to live with that. A friend of mine DLed 2 MP3's of an Irish band named The Pogues. He played them for another friend of mine who liked it and promptly went out and bought the album that one of them was on. He liked it so much he bought another. Another friend and I liked it too, we go and buy a copy each of the first one bought (thats 4 now.) Then, my friend who has 2 albums, goes and buys 3 more of them(7), I like one, buy it and another one(9), the otherone who bought at same time I did bought another one(10), a 5th friend buys a copy of the first one bought and then me and a friend buy him a copy of another one for christmas(12). Finally the first friend buys a 6th album, if he gets one mroe he has everyone they've made. 13 albums so far bought because of 2 mp3's, actually 14 if you count the one a friends mom bought my friends sister cause she heard the one we were listening to... thats 14 albums that wouldn't have been sold if no mp3's becuase we never would have discovered them, frankly, they are one of my favorite bands...check them out... SMEG!
my biggest question is how exactly could he be a security consultant, I mean, the guys been away from computers for over 4 years, alot has changed...