World of Warcraft. One game is the focus of most of the updates to graphics drivers. Shocking, eh? Makes you wonder, who wanted the patches more? Blizzard, the user base, or Apples lab full of level 40 somethin' developers?
But don't forget the tremendously...okay...hardly a blip on the radar PS2 game Magic Pengel!
You draw doodles that are then animated into 3d characters... and fight them! Think Pokemon without stupid cards and yelling things. It's amazingly addictive, and Pengel 2 is out in Japan. I highly recommend a copy, $10 for the original if you can find it.
Re:Example of the problem with American politics.
on
TXANG Debate Re-Igniting?
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· Score: 2, Informative
First off, you must've missed a few key points about the military.
Commanding officer doesn't remember signing a medal award? Wow, guess the 10,000 others must've confused him. The figure you're thinking of was at the theater level, not John Kerry's personal CO.
If you look at the stories of Kerry and whatziz name who was on the third boat, they match. Mine explodes, gunfire, ambush, shoot out, people getting pulled from water, etc.
The story that's divergent is Thurlow's and the SBVT's. Thurlow was IN THE RIVER for the entire engagement. He was fished out near the end.(note, that's like, 10 minutes of treading water max, but mustn't have been fun...)
Also, they jab at Kerry over this ONE shoot out. Not, you know, all the other times he risked his life. Just one that was a mad house on water and an SBVT was actually at, unlike the rest of the SBVTs who, as Jon Stewart pointed out, "served" with Kerry just as Bob Dole "served" with Generals Patton or Montgomery. Sure they were in the same war, but they weren't exactly next to each other.(Though didn't Dole get wounded in Sicily?)
The SBVTs are a tool of the Bush admin ala Willy Horton and "Rock us!" Dukakis. Maybe not in the same office, but definitely trading resources. That's so far from kosher it's comparable to a pork and crab po'boy.
Now, the issue with the records is just silly. You really want his KP reports and an inventory of how many socks he was issued? Who cares? The commendations are out for everyone at the event in question. They all line up pretty well. They were never questioned until the SBVTs decided that they were no good soldiers who lied and acted cowardly, but ya know, with John Kerry, 'cause he was like, totally there...in Vietnam...on the other side of the country...
... is now just regular dust! Skills, NASA, really.
I mean, come on, they KNOW they have trouble with the whole "probes hit planet faster than we usually plan" thing, look at the Mars missions. Now, before you say, "But this is hard!" think which plan is more failure prone - leave probe in orbit, catch it with the shuttle or a soyuz or hell, have it cruise past the ISS, or just let it sit for a few years, nice and safe in orbit or "Let's have it drop through the sky like a bullet then deploy a chute and CATCH IT MID AIR! It'll be awesome!"
Simple is usually better, and in this case, simple won. Big time. Can't wait for crater pictures!
What you're proposing is a good ol' fashioned consensus government. I can tell you, many countries have tried these and well...
They've all worked beautifully! Germany, England, Ireland, Spain, Israel, France, Sweden, South Africa, Canada, Australia, and dozes of other democracies actually have people vote for a set of ideas along with, or in place of, individual candidates. Only a few of these nations have absolute majority governments, most have a ruling coalition.
Now, why can't the US have one? Well, that's easy! As the first major democracy we're also the most stubborn. People like the mano a mano Dem vs. Rethuglican debate much more than the actual governance. They'd rather have ads and slurs than progress. Go figure.
Ask anyone you know what "Checks and balances" means in this country and you won't hear "The three branches have distinct powers and interactions so as to moderate the application of authority." What you will hear will probably make you cry. Try it.
I think excluding any book is pretty damn stupid, but it has it's minor upside...
Case in point: The Bridge to Terabethia Dear god what a steamin' pile o' pulp that was when I was forced to read it in 4th grade. Oh man.
You have to wonder, although the majority of these challenges are due to "Moral" objections, could some front group of authors and literary critics, teachers, etc. be submitting challenges to save American school children from the torrent of crap taught in public schools?
If there is some shadowy cabal of righteous defenders of good lit, could somebody compile a list of "100 books that should've been pulled 'cause they suck ass" to compare? I bet you'd see 2 or 3 crossover hits, or misses, so to speak, and dozens upon dozens of titles like "God Hates idolaters: A childrens guide to hating foreign devils" and "WWJD? A/s/l wazzup lol!!1one"
No doubt, The Sims is the best selling game idea ever....
Really? What about, oh, the First Person Shooter? Or, oh, RPGs? The Sims isn't the most popular concept for a game in history. The reason the Sims is such a big seller is it is one of about oh... 5 games like it in the history of gaming. B/c the Sims type game is so rarely made and only done well once (The Sims) is it such a smash hit for the genre, which is now named after The Sims. Go figure.
I remember an ol' 286 game with a virtual dude who'd well...hmm...walk around his 2d house... and uh... either my memory is failing or that was all he really did, I think the latter. More recently, we've seen Singles...oh my...what an abomination that was. Check out Something Awful's review for the in depth coverage.
Sigh, I miss them too... wait... I am an hourly worker... hold on... What's the deal?
In today's job market and post-Net Bubble (sorry, cliche, I know) world of IT, whether direct support, coding, sysadmining, or in my case media production, to KEEP your underpaid hourly position you have to posture like you're on salary. I work weekends, I do rush jobs, I work nights, I work on unfunded projects, and I don't even get to bill every hour. Why? B/c if I don't, I'll be unemployed and they'll find someone who will.
I've made myself indispensable, like many tech workers, without the benefits or guarantees of a salaried position. Try explaining to your boss, whose salary is triple yours, and they get health care/vacation/free swag, that you can't come in on Saturday even though you were "able" to work the last 3 weekends in a row, and watch the look on their face. It will NOT be a smile, and you won't get paid more for it.
Sigh, this is why we have unions, right? Oh wait, hold on, most of us wear a white collar, wage, salary, or envelope under the table.
IT means getting abused as an employee, not so much through malevolence, but b/c of geekish beneficience and the general ignorance of management.
I sent a DVD off to replication a few weeks ago. I was worried it'd gotten lost in the mail, so I burnt another. Gee, no biggy. Didn't need it, it was just a mail delay.
There's no source on the master! It's the same as the frickin' disk you buy in stores! Where's the benefit of stealing it? You could just warez it or shoplift it. Heck, the master probably isn't even in a readily usable format, probably a disk image file used by the industrial replicators so you'd need mastering software to get the image back into good ol' NTFS or whatever. This story is a load.
- Best tech support in the business. They treat you WELL!
Yeah, they do. Except you goddamn fanboys have caused a shortage of parts that means the Dual 2ghz G5 my office bought last month then sent back in 24 hrs. for repair (Google Post 1076 error) won't be fixed in 10 days...oh no.... 20 June! A month! A frickin' month! A month I have to share my machine w/ a student, a month I don't have dual G5 goodness.. Oh please god...let it end...
"Sent back to the creator" means data is dumped into an IRC channel, newsgroup, or possibly some zombied machine. There's little way to track the person behind the bot, so to speak.
Of course, a little way is all it takes to pinch some angsty German teenager...
The "Beat the crap out of your crap" approach works wonders. I live in LA, which is very safe (no, I've never been caught in a drive by, those mostly happen about 15 blocks over.) except for rampant minor crimes like strong arm robbery and petty thievery. My neighborhood has dozens of car break ins and at least a few strong arm robberies each week!
Do I worry? Nope. Why not? Two reasons: My backpack w/ PowerBook, $200 CD player, and occasional pro audio gear has a hole the size of your fist in it and has seen it's fair share of hell; and b/c the last time somebody tried to strong arm me (as in, "Give me your money or else" w/ no weapon) I simply told them to go fuck themselves. They looked pissed, got in my face, then trundled off. I didn't mention the $100 in my wallet or the $500 in gear in my backpack. The time before that? (3 years earlier) I was with a friend who pulled out his wallet. I told him to put it away and told the guy I really wasn't interested in any charity work at the moment. He didn't laugh, got a touch insistant, then marched off. My friend had $200, ready to hand it over. Attitude is everything.
Hell, the approach I love is the panhandle/strong arm routine to which I reply "Dude, if I had a fucking dollar, I'd give it to you, but do I look like I've got any money?" and stroll off whistling.
So having a game set in Vietnam was, ya know, a touch questionable, ya know, due to all those, oh, millions upon millions of dead people and the uncertain morality of the conflict...
BUT FIGHTIN' FRICKIN' CHINA IS OKAY!?! I mean, come on, I know it's a game, and I like games, I love nukin' the dang Russkies in games, but this kind of "What if?" meets "You're a bunch of paranoid Americans" is going a bit too far. It'll be fun, but pitting real countries in modern settings against each other is a tad confrontational.
Oh well, I'll probably love it and scream "Die you chopstick using ancient culture!" after not too long. I just think this could get sticky.
I would like to say this is the dumbest thing ever described but... I was digging through some old stuff and found these odd clear plastic discs in some of my grandfather's stuff.
They were navigation data and his service records from the air force...on floppy translucent plastic discs. Took me about 20 minutes to stop laughing, but they held up! Not going to plop them onto my turntable though. Just proves that when you give people a popular medium, they'll try and stick anything they can on it. CDs used to be for music, remember?
DRM, and other things just pisses everyone off. I just bought a DVD player, and they had a damn advertisement logo on it, when I removed it, it left the sticky tape on the DVD player
Did you just compare DRM to a sticker on your DVD player? That's...well...the BSD is dead trolls are generally more on topic.
Of course, if you are comparing Steam to a useless sticker attached to the games that serves no purpose to the user, but makes the producer feel good, well now, that's appropriate!
Theater Wide Missile Defense, has a fancier name. Basically a mobile (naval at the moment) ballistic missile defense system that can protect an entire theater of war.
Example: Park a couple of cruisers in the Persian Gulf, no more Scud threat. Problem is, well, it "works" if, as someone else mentioned, the target has a "big neon sign on it saying 'Hit Me'"
The Patriot does work...it shoots down allied planes very, very well. Enemy missiles..well...sometimes. I mean, hitting 50% of missiles incoming, now that's HUGE. But shooting down allied planes before the operator can go, "NO WAIT STOP! ESC! ESC! Crtl-Alt-Del!" that's not so good.
The Comanche worked, 10 years and $8,000,000,000 in. The Osprey works, assuming you take care of the things, which they didn't, and what "working" for an Osprey means is a little fuzzy. Works as in "Takes off and lands" or works as in "Replaces Blackhawks and Chinooks as a troop transport." The DoD and DARPA have a few major screw ups that cost billions of dollars, look at Star Wars, a lot of the new luggage screening tools, and some of their more novel toys as an example. DARPA of course, has an excuse, since they do research and not everything is even supposed to work, just prove a concept, test an idea, or do something new, even if not useful.
DoD on the other hand? They have no excuse. They build things that don't work all the time, but they aren't doing research. They're in the business of doing damage, and not to their own employees and soldiers.
Slashdot Mirror
World of Warcraft. One game is the focus of most of the updates to graphics drivers. Shocking, eh? Makes you wonder, who wanted the patches more? Blizzard, the user base, or Apples lab full of level 40 somethin' developers?
But don't forget the tremendously...okay...hardly a blip on the radar PS2 game Magic Pengel!
You draw doodles that are then animated into 3d characters... and fight them! Think Pokemon without stupid cards and yelling things. It's amazingly addictive, and Pengel 2 is out in Japan. I highly recommend a copy, $10 for the original if you can find it.
If you're uninformed or just love long lists of candidates and political parties across the nation, as well as the best commentary around, read...
Politics1
...and if you're a liberal...which you are, RIGHT?
Check out...
DailyKos
First off, you must've missed a few key points about the military.
.(note, that's like, 10 minutes of treading water max, but mustn't have been fun...)
Commanding officer doesn't remember signing a medal award? Wow, guess the 10,000 others must've confused him. The figure you're thinking of was at the theater level, not John Kerry's personal CO.
If you look at the stories of Kerry and whatziz name who was on the third boat, they match. Mine explodes, gunfire, ambush, shoot out, people getting pulled from water, etc.
The story that's divergent is Thurlow's and the SBVT's. Thurlow was IN THE RIVER for the entire engagement. He was fished out near the end
Also, they jab at Kerry over this ONE shoot out. Not, you know, all the other times he risked his life. Just one that was a mad house on water and an SBVT was actually at, unlike the rest of the SBVTs who, as Jon Stewart pointed out, "served" with Kerry just as Bob Dole "served" with Generals Patton or Montgomery. Sure they were in the same war, but they weren't exactly next to each other.(Though didn't Dole get wounded in Sicily?)
The SBVTs are a tool of the Bush admin ala Willy Horton and "Rock us!" Dukakis. Maybe not in the same office, but definitely trading resources. That's so far from kosher it's comparable to a pork and crab po'boy.
Now, the issue with the records is just silly. You really want his KP reports and an inventory of how many socks he was issued? Who cares? The commendations are out for everyone at the event in question. They all line up pretty well. They were never questioned until the SBVTs decided that they were no good soldiers who lied and acted cowardly, but ya know, with John Kerry, 'cause he was like, totally there...in Vietnam...on the other side of the country...
... is now just regular dust! Skills, NASA, really.
I mean, come on, they KNOW they have trouble with the whole "probes hit planet faster than we usually plan" thing, look at the Mars missions. Now, before you say, "But this is hard!" think which plan is more failure prone - leave probe in orbit, catch it with the shuttle or a soyuz or hell, have it cruise past the ISS, or just let it sit for a few years, nice and safe in orbit or "Let's have it drop through the sky like a bullet then deploy a chute and CATCH IT MID AIR! It'll be awesome!"
Simple is usually better, and in this case, simple won. Big time. Can't wait for crater pictures!
What you're proposing is a good ol' fashioned consensus government. I can tell you, many countries have tried these and well...
They've all worked beautifully!
Germany, England, Ireland, Spain, Israel, France, Sweden, South Africa, Canada, Australia, and dozes of other democracies actually have people vote for a set of ideas along with, or in place of, individual candidates. Only a few of these nations have absolute majority governments, most have a ruling coalition.
Now, why can't the US have one? Well, that's easy! As the first major democracy we're also the most stubborn. People like the mano a mano Dem vs. Rethuglican debate much more than the actual governance. They'd rather have ads and slurs than progress. Go figure.
Ask anyone you know what "Checks and balances" means in this country and you won't hear "The three branches have distinct powers and interactions so as to moderate the application of authority." What you will hear will probably make you cry. Try it.
...
We must've gone to same school.
Did I mention it was snowing?
Also, watch your CDs and DVDs. They'll walk away and you won't even notice.
But...
I think excluding any book is pretty damn stupid, but it has it's minor upside...
Case in point: The Bridge to Terabethia
Dear god what a steamin' pile o' pulp that was when I was forced to read it in 4th grade. Oh man.
You have to wonder, although the majority of these challenges are due to "Moral" objections, could some front group of authors and literary critics, teachers, etc. be submitting challenges to save American school children from the torrent of crap taught in public schools?
If there is some shadowy cabal of righteous defenders of good lit, could somebody compile a list of "100 books that should've been pulled 'cause they suck ass" to compare? I bet you'd see 2 or 3 crossover hits, or misses, so to speak, and dozens upon dozens of titles like "God Hates idolaters: A childrens guide to hating foreign devils" and "WWJD? A/s/l wazzup lol!!1one"
No doubt, The Sims is the best selling game idea ever. ...
Really? What about, oh, the First Person Shooter? Or, oh, RPGs? The Sims isn't the most popular concept for a game in history. The reason the Sims is such a big seller is it is one of about oh... 5 games like it in the history of gaming. B/c the Sims type game is so rarely made and only done well once (The Sims) is it such a smash hit for the genre, which is now named after The Sims. Go figure.
I remember an ol' 286 game with a virtual dude who'd well...hmm...walk around his 2d house... and uh... either my memory is failing or that was all he really did, I think the latter. More recently, we've seen Singles...oh my...what an abomination that was. Check out Something Awful's review for the in depth coverage.
Internet? internet? Bah!
It's the intarweb, and always will be!
In fact, the question is, on it's face, completely idiotic.
I went from the Film Industry to the IT Industry. from production to sound for games.
DO NOT GO INTO THE FILM INDUSTRY!
YOU ARE AN IDIOT!
Keep a good job! Please! Don't repeat the mistakes so many have made...
Sigh, I miss them too... wait... I am an hourly worker... hold on... What's the deal?
In today's job market and post-Net Bubble (sorry, cliche, I know) world of IT, whether direct support, coding, sysadmining, or in my case media production, to KEEP your underpaid hourly position you have to posture like you're on salary. I work weekends, I do rush jobs, I work nights, I work on unfunded projects, and I don't even get to bill every hour. Why? B/c if I don't, I'll be unemployed and they'll find someone who will.
I've made myself indispensable, like many tech workers, without the benefits or guarantees of a salaried position. Try explaining to your boss, whose salary is triple yours, and they get health care/vacation/free swag, that you can't come in on Saturday even though you were "able" to work the last 3 weekends in a row, and watch the look on their face. It will NOT be a smile, and you won't get paid more for it.
Sigh, this is why we have unions, right? Oh wait, hold on, most of us wear a white collar, wage, salary, or envelope under the table.
IT means getting abused as an employee, not so much through malevolence, but b/c of geekish beneficience and the general ignorance of management.
Actually, we've only included "Jerk!" so far, but I'll mention "Loser" at the next meeting.
Yes, I work on this project, and yes, I get paid to make and play video games.
Worship me.
Don't think DDR is so safe!
I myself went blind and deaf just from watching people play it!
Sha-zing!
...encrypted the ISO...right...delayed...wait....
THE GOLD MASTER IS THE LAST GODDAMN STEP.
I sent a DVD off to replication a few weeks ago. I was worried it'd gotten lost in the mail, so I burnt another. Gee, no biggy. Didn't need it, it was just a mail delay.
There's no source on the master! It's the same as the frickin' disk you buy in stores! Where's the benefit of stealing it? You could just warez it or shoplift it. Heck, the master probably isn't even in a readily usable format, probably a disk image file used by the industrial replicators so you'd need mastering software to get the image back into good ol' NTFS or whatever. This story is a load.
- Best tech support in the business. They treat you WELL!
Yeah, they do. Except you goddamn fanboys have caused a shortage of parts that means the Dual 2ghz G5 my office bought last month then sent back in 24 hrs. for repair (Google Post 1076 error) won't be fixed in 10 days...oh no.... 20 June! A month! A frickin' month! A month I have to share my machine w/ a student, a month I don't have dual G5 goodness.. Oh please god...let it end...
...you're new here, aren't you?
"Sent back to the creator" means data is dumped into an IRC channel, newsgroup, or possibly some zombied machine. There's little way to track the person behind the bot, so to speak.
Of course, a little way is all it takes to pinch some angsty German teenager...
...and fade into the wasteland. Bet they're wishing they'd found that waterchip, eh?
Seriously, sad to see Interplay go, but they've made some dumb decisions. Losing Feagus and his team was probably close to the final blow.
The "Beat the crap out of your crap" approach works wonders. I live in LA, which is very safe (no, I've never been caught in a drive by, those mostly happen about 15 blocks over.) except for rampant minor crimes like strong arm robbery and petty thievery. My neighborhood has dozens of car break ins and at least a few strong arm robberies each week!
Do I worry? Nope. Why not? Two reasons: My backpack w/ PowerBook, $200 CD player, and occasional pro audio gear has a hole the size of your fist in it and has seen it's fair share of hell; and b/c the last time somebody tried to strong arm me (as in, "Give me your money or else" w/ no weapon) I simply told them to go fuck themselves. They looked pissed, got in my face, then trundled off. I didn't mention the $100 in my wallet or the $500 in gear in my backpack. The time before that? (3 years earlier) I was with a friend who pulled out his wallet. I told him to put it away and told the guy I really wasn't interested in any charity work at the moment. He didn't laugh, got a touch insistant, then marched off. My friend had $200, ready to hand it over. Attitude is everything.
Hell, the approach I love is the panhandle/strong arm routine to which I reply "Dude, if I had a fucking dollar, I'd give it to you, but do I look like I've got any money?" and stroll off whistling.
Workstation - $2,200
Cable Modem - $45/month
Mountain Dew - $16/case
Radeon 9800 to actually run stolen HL2 build -$450
PhatBot Damages - Approx. $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 worldwide
Fame as a 1337 H/\>0R on IRC - Worthless, but cool
Getting nabbed for Grand Larceny, Wire Fraud, various other computer crimes - $400/hr for a good attorney
Extradition to the US - Free
Spending the next 2-5 years in Federal Pound-in-the-Ass prison - Priceless
Having Gabe Newell and Doug Lombardi pound on you with baseball bats - Also, Priceless
Have fun in jail, Ago. You think the Iraqi prisons were bad? Have fun in Marion, Illinois
So having a game set in Vietnam was, ya know, a touch questionable, ya know, due to all those, oh, millions upon millions of dead people and the uncertain morality of the conflict...
BUT FIGHTIN' FRICKIN' CHINA IS OKAY!?! I mean, come on, I know it's a game, and I like games, I love nukin' the dang Russkies in games, but this kind of "What if?" meets "You're a bunch of paranoid Americans" is going a bit too far. It'll be fun, but pitting real countries in modern settings against each other is a tad confrontational.
Oh well, I'll probably love it and scream "Die you chopstick using ancient culture!" after not too long. I just think this could get sticky.
Don't make fun of my PXL-2000!
Just kidding. It's a format that actually holds up for, oh MILLENIA as opposed to a few years, like cassette or any kind of tape, CDs, etc.
The PXL-2000 is a video camera that uses cassettes, btw. It's so neat for 80's junk. I love it.
I would like to say this is the dumbest thing ever described but... I was digging through some old stuff and found these odd clear plastic discs in some of my grandfather's stuff.
They were navigation data and his service records from the air force...on floppy translucent plastic discs. Took me about 20 minutes to stop laughing, but they held up! Not going to plop them onto my turntable though. Just proves that when you give people a popular medium, they'll try and stick anything they can on it. CDs used to be for music, remember?
DRM, and other things just pisses everyone off. I just bought a DVD player, and they had a damn advertisement logo on it, when I removed it, it left the sticky tape on the DVD player
Did you just compare DRM to a sticker on your DVD player? That's...well...the BSD is dead trolls are generally more on topic.
Of course, if you are comparing Steam to a useless sticker attached to the games that serves no purpose to the user, but makes the producer feel good, well now, that's appropriate!
Theater Wide Missile Defense, has a fancier name. Basically a mobile (naval at the moment) ballistic missile defense system that can protect an entire theater of war.
Example: Park a couple of cruisers in the Persian Gulf, no more Scud threat. Problem is, well, it "works" if, as someone else mentioned, the target has a "big neon sign on it saying 'Hit Me'"
The Patriot does work...it shoots down allied planes very, very well. Enemy missiles..well...sometimes. I mean, hitting 50% of missiles incoming, now that's HUGE. But shooting down allied planes before the operator can go, "NO WAIT STOP! ESC! ESC! Crtl-Alt-Del!" that's not so good.
The Comanche worked, 10 years and $8,000,000,000 in. The Osprey works, assuming you take care of the things, which they didn't, and what "working" for an Osprey means is a little fuzzy. Works as in "Takes off and lands" or works as in "Replaces Blackhawks and Chinooks as a troop transport." The DoD and DARPA have a few major screw ups that cost billions of dollars, look at Star Wars, a lot of the new luggage screening tools, and some of their more novel toys as an example. DARPA of course, has an excuse, since they do research and not everything is even supposed to work, just prove a concept, test an idea, or do something new, even if not useful.
DoD on the other hand? They have no excuse. They build things that don't work all the time, but they aren't doing research. They're in the business of doing damage, and not to their own employees and soldiers.