That reminds me of when Qwest cut all telephone lines to my home town - including 911. It made the local news, and the police chief and fire chief were both pretty pissed about it. They had to increase police patrols since no one could just call in a crime, fire, or medical emergency.
Fortunately nothing serious happened while 911 was out.
Then Qwest did it again, two days later, on the same line...
GPLv3 is not perfect and it has many warts, so bad that I would go Linus' way (pure v2) at this moment, but the DRM clause is one of its stronger upsides.
The GPLv3 isn't finalized. The Slashdot blurbs haven't really made this clear, but the current version is a draft. It's allowed to have warts. If you have issues with it, comment on them! The GPLv3 is still a draft. Changes can happen. Get involved. Be heard. It's an open process.
That said, I'm not sure this is a good idea. What they're saying is that there is absolutely, positively no good use for DRM, and there never will be, in free software.
Actually, this came up at the GPLv3 conference. The example used was Tripwire. The general concept was that you'd sign all the binaries on your system, and then set up the kernel to only run signed binaries. If something tried to change a binary, than the signature would fail, and the program wouldn't run.
It's unclear whether or not that would really be disallowed under the GPLv3, but it was at least brought up.
It's worth mentioning, because Slashdot hasn't really made it clear, that the GPLv3 is not finalized yet. People who have issues with it are strongly encouraged to post comments on it and get involved with the process. The GPLv3 is currently scheduled to be finalized between November 2006 and February 2007 - the current GPLv3 is a draft, and changes can and most likely will be made to it.
The GPL isn't, actually, a "play nice" style license as such - the entire concept is that it "guarentees freedom," trying to balance the freedoms of both the creator and the user. The Free Software Foundation is about the "right to tinker" (Stallman's words at the GPLv3 release), and that includes the right to tinker with a program's data files.
Stallman is, essentially, an idealist. He wants to save the world - and he seems to honestly believe that allowing DRM to exist would destroy free software. So he's taken a hard-line stance against DRM in the GPLv3.
It's sort of explained in the rational behind Section 3, which I'm just going to quote outright since it's so short:
DRM is fundamentally in conflict with the freedoms of users that the GPL is designed to safeguard, but our ability to oppose DRM by means of free software licenses is limited. In section 3 we provide developers with some forms of leverage that they can use against DRM. The first paragraph essentially directs courts to interpret the GPL in light of a policy of discouraging and impeding DRM and other technical restrictions on users' freedoms and illegal invasions of users' privacy. This provides copyright holders and other GPL licensors with means to take action against activities contrary to users' freedom, if governments fail to act.
The second paragraph of section 3 declares that no GPL'd program is part of an effective technological protection measure, regardless of what the program does. Ill-advised legislation in the United States and other countries has prohibited circumvention of such technological measures. If a covered work is distributed as part of a system for generating or accessing certain data, the effect of this paragraph is to prevent someone from claiming that some other GPL'd program that accesses the same data is an illegal circumvention.
Based on the conference where the GPLv3 was announced, it's more concerned with open source (sorry, "free software") on closed hardware than free software in general. So let's say some product, let's call it "TiVe", uses free software to create a device that acts like a PVR. It's on closed hardware and requires a key that's embedded within that hardware to decrypt the DRMed files it creates.
So while you have the entire source code that explains how to decrypt the content, you can't get at the 256-bit key that's burned into the hardware. That clause in the GPLv3 is intended for that kind of situation.
A later clause says you have to give out the key to sign the code to allow it to run, to try and work around the reason you can't get at the key in the hardware: you can't upload a new binary onto the closed hardware and expect it to work, because only signed binaries work and the private key is in some safe in some company somewhere.
That's the theory, as I understand it. Not sure how well this works in practice, but this is still an "alpha release" of the GPLv3 - expect changes.
I actually went to the GPLv3 launch, where they went over the license and what the intention of each of the clauses were. (And almost fell asleep, but...)
In order to make the license more "compatible" with other licenses, they added Section 7. Section 7 is a set of additional restrictions that developers may add to the license to ensure they maintain compatibility with other licenses. Section 7d essentially says that you may, optionally, implement a feature that causes a program to distribute its own source code to the end-user. If you decide to do so, you can add a requirement that the feature not be removed. This is optional - the default GPLv3 doesn't include this.
If this draft is accepted, it looks like I'll be using GPLv2 (and v2 only) from now on.
The GPLv3 is still a draft - if you have issues with the license, comment on it! Join the process! The GPLv3 is an open source process (free process?) in and of itself. This is just the first draft, if you have problems with it, get involved and try to get them worked out.
Re:Blu Ray & HD-DVD, two solutions to a non pr
on
CNN On The $500 PS3
·
· Score: 1
And 640K ought to be enough for anyone, right? (Don't care who said it, same concept.)
This is a game console - games are alreadying running up towards the 8.4GB limit that dual-layer DVDs have. The PS3 is supposed to run for about four years at least before being replaced by the PS4. The space will be needed before the PS4 comes out. Consoles always use bleeding edge technology on release, because in two years, it'll be standard, and in four, it'll be obsolete.
Bet you would have laughed at the CD drives for consoles when those came out too. "Who'd ever want to use a CD? You have to load to use those, cartridges are so much better!" New generation of game console, new media format.
And on the subject of silly conspiracy theories...
I just uses Flashblock
Anyone else think that the Preview window has a built-in quality checker that corrects silly grammar and spelling mistakes, just so that you'll accidently post them and only notice when the post goes final? I'd swear the preview pane intelligently fixes silly mistakes.:)
As a side note, I'm really going to try to write more articles addressing Slashdot matters on to Slashdot.
Thank you. Please do try and address current Slashdot issues. As soon as you started asking for subscriptions, this moved beyond being just your personal weblog of stuff you found interesting. I'm not willing to pay money for CmdrTaco and friend's blog. I need to think there's value in the subscription, and right now, I just don't see it. If you're willing to address problems that people see with the site, then maybe, eventually, I will.
(On the other hand, I'm one of the apparently few Slashdotters who doesn't block ads. I just uses Flashblock, which strips the annoying ones, and see anything else. So far the only ads that have actually been interesting are ThinkGeek ones, but, hey. So I'm not a complete leech.:))
So, thank you for taking the time to address Slashdot. At the very least, I appreciate it.
Based on this, it would seem that Jon S. von Tetzchner does indeed have a sense of humor, so I'd guess that this was a strange attempt at some form of a joke. I think he's suggesting that they read Slashdot, so if any were actually interested, they could post here, and that's the joke?
But I could be wrong. I dunno. I really just wanted to post that link.
Done.:) I've linked to the current source from the FireTorrent page. You should be able to load.torrent files and view info about their contents but that's it right now. (Actually the code for hitting the tracker works right now, but it currently commented out.)
Actually, it doesn't sound like a BitTorrent client at all. It sounds kinda like AIMster if you remember that thing. You add buddies from some network to the sidebar and you can trade files with each other through that sidebar.
It says "the power of BitTorrent" it says nothing about actually implementing the BitTorrent protocol. It sort of sounds like a "friends only" file trading network. However, since it doesn't actually exist yet, and the screenshots look faked (specifically this screenshot, the UI in the window is the Windows XP "Silver" color scheme, while the rest is using the default "Blue" color scheme), I'm not really all that impressed yet.
Although my personal favorite claim on that site is "Share your videos without uploading" - um, right...
My bet is that this is just Yet Another Proprietary File Sharing App - "free" as in "free beer" like you expect, but not as in free software.
If anyone wants an actual BitTorrent extension for Firefox, I'm in the middle of writing one. It's not complete yet (that pesky "downloading" bit is incomplete) but it'll be GPLed. (It looks like I should actually be able to implement the entire thing in JavaScript, meaning it'll be crossplatform without requiring native binaries. Although perhaps a bit slower than if native - but the magic of XPCOM mean that theoretically I can do both.)
Re:Yes but...
on
Why Use GTK+?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Nope. Firefox is built using a custom toolkit designed explicitly for Mozilla.
Firefox has the ability to import theme data from both Windows XP and GTK+, so it should look (sort of) like a native app under both platforms. It comes real close under Windows, but it still messes some things up. I've never tried it under GNOME since they added GTK+ themeing support, so I have no idea if it works under that.
However, the Mozilla toolkit is actually much closer to properly mimicing the Windows environment than GTK+'s WIMP is. WIMP needs a ton of work to properly fit in with Windows.
Generally speaking the "third party programs" aren't bots - they're programs to cheat. Examples include "radar" programs that monitor resources spawning and various "hack" programs to allow teleporting in-game or various other abilities.
The accounts are generally manned by a human at all times - because there's another form of "captcha" already in the game, other players and GMs. Since the farmers have to be able to interact with those at a moment's notice, the accounts are already monitored by an actual live person.
It makes it money not be creating a product, but by aggregating content in such a way that they can attract eyeballs and sell advertisement.
Actually, they do sell several products, such as the Google search engine and Google Earth. And, no, I don't mean the "free" versions that everyone knows about.
Where I work, they index the internal network using the Google search engine, hosted on the internal network. You can use the internal Google search to search through all documents available internally. This search is not accessible to the world at large and not available through google.com - it's an internal web application powered by Google's software.
Likewise, there are some people who are working with Google Earth Pro, although I can't say exactly how they're using it. (Because I don't actually know, although it's also a trade secret.:))
So, yes, Google does sell actual products - it's just in fairly specialized areas, and not necessarily in areas that people generally know about. But Google is not 100% ad supported. They do sell actual products. (At one point, they were making more off the Google search appliance than AdSense, I don't know if that's still true.)
It's worth noting that Apple has also extended RSS using exactly the method listed in that link. They added several new iTunes-specific elements for use with podcasts that are used through iTunes.
Because they followed that extension mechanism, the RSS feeds that take advantage of those extra fields are also standard RSS feeds, so any other reader can read them with no problem.
From what I can tell, the Microsoft extensions are essentially the same. The RSS feed remains a standard RSS feed, it just has extra extended information contained within it - although I could be wrong.
Some people who are willing to spend $1000 or more on the XBox360 and an HDTV + surround sound system, just to have the latest and greatest. PCs will usually beat out the consoles for "newest technology" shortly after they're released, making a great purchase for people who want the latest epeen.
Others just want the option. So instead of $500 PC + $150 console, they'll get a $1000 PC and play games on it. (Because, after all, you can't budget until you have the PC and can run spreadsheets.)
Over all, though, computers are seen as an investment, while consoles are seen as a toy. And sometimes, people actually need the extra "gaming power" for completely non-gaming related tasks. I know that reason worked on purchasing where I work, because the lab randomly has quite a few Alienware and Dell XPS machines in it...
Yangus gains that skill at Rank 1 Humanity. If you don't bother ranking up Humanity, he'll never get it.
That being said, most of the battles in that game are EXTREMELY annoying. Dhoulmagus is either cake or impossible, depending on how he plays. The first time I went against him, he started by knocking all my characters off their feet and then using an AOE that did about 50 damage to all. Round 2, he put them to sleep instead. I never got to fight back since the characters never woke up. Really gives you a chance to use tactics, that.
The time I won against him, he just spammed a physical attack that did about the 50 damage to a single target. This made the battle ridiculously easy, since all you had to do was just heal up the injured character and continue to whittle him away with physical attacks. (Only buff used was Accelerate since he ALSO can - randomly - remove all buffs. Double-Accelerate guarenteed your characters went first, preventing him from hitting a char enough times before you could heal them - unless, of course, he randomly debuffed you.)
As for grinding, there are a LOT of times when you wind up grinding in the game, for money, or for levels. "Whistle" makes this very easy, but the battles remain insanely boring, since either you'll breeze through them since the mobs randomly decide to use useless attacks, or you'll be almost annihilated as they actually make an effective attack. Having your party be wiped out because a group of monsters randomly decided to use their "knock everyone out" attack followed by enough AOE spells to kill everyone is really, really annoying. It's hard to use "tactics" against that when you never even get a chance to play! Of course, that same group can be cake when they randomly decide to use ineffective physical attacks against Yangus.
The combat system used in DQ8 is, quite honestly, crap. It's not fun, especially because you can't speed up the battle messages to get things to resolve in a reasonable amount of time. I've actually read Slashdot while playing DQ8 because the battle rounds take so long to finish animating. I don't NEED to watch everyone do their little attack. It's boring.
Now don't get me wrong, DQ8 is still a good game, but I'd give it a 7/10 and not a 9/10. It's overrated. The voice acting is good, but it's not great. The music is OK, but it's very repetative and - quite frankly - boring. The combat system really could use quite a few tweaks to make it so that strategy actually matters. It's a good game - but it's not as great as everyone seems to be saying it is.
First off, all the characters in the game look like - well, Toriyama characters. That is to say, if you've seen Dragonball Z, you'll notice that the characters would be right at home with Goku. I've never really liked that style, but that's not the point of this post.
Zonk didn't mention the "Psyche Up" system, a system by which your characters can increase their "tension" and use more powerful attacks. Doing this makes them do almost exactly the same "tense and grunt" move that Dragonball Z is so famous for.
Bring a character to "maximum tension" and they'll start glowing purple, and take on the stock "serious look" that Toriyama likes to use. Bring the unnamed main character to "maximum tension" and he'll lose the bandana and his hair will turn purply and spikey.
Replace the purple glow with yellow, and they'd be indistinguisable from Super Saiyans. Minus the fact that they exit that state immediately after making an attack.
The character art design isn't really all that bad, but they get reused like crazy. You'll be running into the same character models all over the place. (Fortune teller dude - Kalyasha? - looks almost exactly like weird monster arena guy, both of who bear a striking resemblence to DBZ's Hercule... Some random NPC model looks quite a lot like adult Trunks...)
It's kind of hard to take the game seriously if you've seen DBZ and couldn't take it seriously either.
If IE needs an RSS icon, that means that they're implementing some form of RSS feature. Possibly as a sidebar or maybe just Live Bookmarks, Firefox style. (The article isn't very clear on where they're using it.)
So, in a sense, this means Microsoft is implementing a web standard: RSS.
Which, arguably, is a feature that matters. The current version of IE has absolutely no RSS support.
I'll bet Britannica doesn't even have an "anal eroticism" section!
(I've yet to work up the courage to actually click on that link though, for fear of how many articles on anal eroticism the Wikipedia actually contains.)
The increasing collaborative efforts between the browser vendors in the last few weeks is an honest attempt to create a standard Web interface for everyone, no matter what browser is used.
So, does this mean IE7 will support XUL? Because that'd be really cool. Being able to create rich web apps using XUL would be nice.
Oh, wait, but if they supported XUL, then no one would need their XAML. So I suppose that's still just a dream...
You can do a lot more with Firefox than just override the fonts. Using userContent.css, you can totally redo websites. For example, my Slashdot looks like this.
(And, ironically enough, looking at those screenshots, I blanked out my username, and am now posting them under my username. I honestly can't remember why I did that.)
Slashdot Mirror
Dig Safe works for all New England states except Connecticut. Freaking Yankees-lovers.
That reminds me of when Qwest cut all telephone lines to my home town - including 911. It made the local news, and the police chief and fire chief were both pretty pissed about it. They had to increase police patrols since no one could just call in a crime, fire, or medical emergency.
Fortunately nothing serious happened while 911 was out.
Then Qwest did it again, two days later, on the same line...
Ah, telecom monopolies.
Something similar was asked at the GPLv3 conference. RMS's answer was that he has no plans to revisit the GFDL at this time.
The GPLv3 isn't finalized. The Slashdot blurbs haven't really made this clear, but the current version is a draft. It's allowed to have warts. If you have issues with it, comment on them! The GPLv3 is still a draft. Changes can happen. Get involved. Be heard. It's an open process.
Actually, this came up at the GPLv3 conference. The example used was Tripwire. The general concept was that you'd sign all the binaries on your system, and then set up the kernel to only run signed binaries. If something tried to change a binary, than the signature would fail, and the program wouldn't run.
It's unclear whether or not that would really be disallowed under the GPLv3, but it was at least brought up.
It's worth mentioning, because Slashdot hasn't really made it clear, that the GPLv3 is not finalized yet. People who have issues with it are strongly encouraged to post comments on it and get involved with the process. The GPLv3 is currently scheduled to be finalized between November 2006 and February 2007 - the current GPLv3 is a draft, and changes can and most likely will be made to it.
The GPL isn't, actually, a "play nice" style license as such - the entire concept is that it "guarentees freedom," trying to balance the freedoms of both the creator and the user. The Free Software Foundation is about the "right to tinker" (Stallman's words at the GPLv3 release), and that includes the right to tinker with a program's data files.
Stallman is, essentially, an idealist. He wants to save the world - and he seems to honestly believe that allowing DRM to exist would destroy free software. So he's taken a hard-line stance against DRM in the GPLv3.
It's sort of explained in the rational behind Section 3, which I'm just going to quote outright since it's so short:
Based on the conference where the GPLv3 was announced, it's more concerned with open source (sorry, "free software") on closed hardware than free software in general. So let's say some product, let's call it "TiVe", uses free software to create a device that acts like a PVR. It's on closed hardware and requires a key that's embedded within that hardware to decrypt the DRMed files it creates.
So while you have the entire source code that explains how to decrypt the content, you can't get at the 256-bit key that's burned into the hardware. That clause in the GPLv3 is intended for that kind of situation.
A later clause says you have to give out the key to sign the code to allow it to run, to try and work around the reason you can't get at the key in the hardware: you can't upload a new binary onto the closed hardware and expect it to work, because only signed binaries work and the private key is in some safe in some company somewhere.
That's the theory, as I understand it. Not sure how well this works in practice, but this is still an "alpha release" of the GPLv3 - expect changes.
I actually went to the GPLv3 launch, where they went over the license and what the intention of each of the clauses were. (And almost fell asleep, but...)
In order to make the license more "compatible" with other licenses, they added Section 7. Section 7 is a set of additional restrictions that developers may add to the license to ensure they maintain compatibility with other licenses. Section 7d essentially says that you may, optionally, implement a feature that causes a program to distribute its own source code to the end-user. If you decide to do so, you can add a requirement that the feature not be removed. This is optional - the default GPLv3 doesn't include this.
The GPLv3 is still a draft - if you have issues with the license, comment on it! Join the process! The GPLv3 is an open source process (free process?) in and of itself. This is just the first draft, if you have problems with it, get involved and try to get them worked out.
And 640K ought to be enough for anyone, right? (Don't care who said it, same concept.)
This is a game console - games are alreadying running up towards the 8.4GB limit that dual-layer DVDs have. The PS3 is supposed to run for about four years at least before being replaced by the PS4. The space will be needed before the PS4 comes out. Consoles always use bleeding edge technology on release, because in two years, it'll be standard, and in four, it'll be obsolete.
Bet you would have laughed at the CD drives for consoles when those came out too. "Who'd ever want to use a CD? You have to load to use those, cartridges are so much better!" New generation of game console, new media format.
And on the subject of silly conspiracy theories...
Anyone else think that the Preview window has a built-in quality checker that corrects silly grammar and spelling mistakes, just so that you'll accidently post them and only notice when the post goes final? I'd swear the preview pane intelligently fixes silly mistakes. :)
Thank you. Please do try and address current Slashdot issues. As soon as you started asking for subscriptions, this moved beyond being just your personal weblog of stuff you found interesting. I'm not willing to pay money for CmdrTaco and friend's blog. I need to think there's value in the subscription, and right now, I just don't see it. If you're willing to address problems that people see with the site, then maybe, eventually, I will.
(On the other hand, I'm one of the apparently few Slashdotters who doesn't block ads. I just uses Flashblock, which strips the annoying ones, and see anything else. So far the only ads that have actually been interesting are ThinkGeek ones, but, hey. So I'm not a complete leech. :))
So, thank you for taking the time to address Slashdot. At the very least, I appreciate it.
Based on this, it would seem that Jon S. von Tetzchner does indeed have a sense of humor, so I'd guess that this was a strange attempt at some form of a joke. I think he's suggesting that they read Slashdot, so if any were actually interested, they could post here, and that's the joke?
But I could be wrong. I dunno. I really just wanted to post that link.
Done. :) I've linked to the current source from the FireTorrent page. You should be able to load .torrent files and view info about their contents but that's it right now. (Actually the code for hitting the tracker works right now, but it currently commented out.)
Actually, it doesn't sound like a BitTorrent client at all. It sounds kinda like AIMster if you remember that thing. You add buddies from some network to the sidebar and you can trade files with each other through that sidebar.
It says "the power of BitTorrent" it says nothing about actually implementing the BitTorrent protocol. It sort of sounds like a "friends only" file trading network. However, since it doesn't actually exist yet, and the screenshots look faked (specifically this screenshot, the UI in the window is the Windows XP "Silver" color scheme, while the rest is using the default "Blue" color scheme), I'm not really all that impressed yet.
Although my personal favorite claim on that site is "Share your videos without uploading" - um, right...
My bet is that this is just Yet Another Proprietary File Sharing App - "free" as in "free beer" like you expect, but not as in free software.
If anyone wants an actual BitTorrent extension for Firefox, I'm in the middle of writing one. It's not complete yet (that pesky "downloading" bit is incomplete) but it'll be GPLed. (It looks like I should actually be able to implement the entire thing in JavaScript, meaning it'll be crossplatform without requiring native binaries. Although perhaps a bit slower than if native - but the magic of XPCOM mean that theoretically I can do both.)
Nope. Firefox is built using a custom toolkit designed explicitly for Mozilla.
Firefox has the ability to import theme data from both Windows XP and GTK+, so it should look (sort of) like a native app under both platforms. It comes real close under Windows, but it still messes some things up. I've never tried it under GNOME since they added GTK+ themeing support, so I have no idea if it works under that.
However, the Mozilla toolkit is actually much closer to properly mimicing the Windows environment than GTK+'s WIMP is. WIMP needs a ton of work to properly fit in with Windows.
Generally speaking the "third party programs" aren't bots - they're programs to cheat. Examples include "radar" programs that monitor resources spawning and various "hack" programs to allow teleporting in-game or various other abilities.
The accounts are generally manned by a human at all times - because there's another form of "captcha" already in the game, other players and GMs. Since the farmers have to be able to interact with those at a moment's notice, the accounts are already monitored by an actual live person.
Actually, they do sell several products, such as the Google search engine and Google Earth. And, no, I don't mean the "free" versions that everyone knows about.
Where I work, they index the internal network using the Google search engine, hosted on the internal network. You can use the internal Google search to search through all documents available internally. This search is not accessible to the world at large and not available through google.com - it's an internal web application powered by Google's software.
Likewise, there are some people who are working with Google Earth Pro, although I can't say exactly how they're using it. (Because I don't actually know, although it's also a trade secret. :))
So, yes, Google does sell actual products - it's just in fairly specialized areas, and not necessarily in areas that people generally know about. But Google is not 100% ad supported. They do sell actual products. (At one point, they were making more off the Google search appliance than AdSense, I don't know if that's still true.)
It's worth noting that Apple has also extended RSS using exactly the method listed in that link. They added several new iTunes-specific elements for use with podcasts that are used through iTunes.
Because they followed that extension mechanism, the RSS feeds that take advantage of those extra fields are also standard RSS feeds, so any other reader can read them with no problem.
From what I can tell, the Microsoft extensions are essentially the same. The RSS feed remains a standard RSS feed, it just has extra extended information contained within it - although I could be wrong.
Some people who are willing to spend $1000 or more on the XBox360 and an HDTV + surround sound system, just to have the latest and greatest. PCs will usually beat out the consoles for "newest technology" shortly after they're released, making a great purchase for people who want the latest epeen.
Others just want the option. So instead of $500 PC + $150 console, they'll get a $1000 PC and play games on it. (Because, after all, you can't budget until you have the PC and can run spreadsheets.)
Over all, though, computers are seen as an investment, while consoles are seen as a toy. And sometimes, people actually need the extra "gaming power" for completely non-gaming related tasks. I know that reason worked on purchasing where I work, because the lab randomly has quite a few Alienware and Dell XPS machines in it...
Yangus gains that skill at Rank 1 Humanity. If you don't bother ranking up Humanity, he'll never get it.
That being said, most of the battles in that game are EXTREMELY annoying. Dhoulmagus is either cake or impossible, depending on how he plays. The first time I went against him, he started by knocking all my characters off their feet and then using an AOE that did about 50 damage to all. Round 2, he put them to sleep instead. I never got to fight back since the characters never woke up. Really gives you a chance to use tactics, that.
The time I won against him, he just spammed a physical attack that did about the 50 damage to a single target. This made the battle ridiculously easy, since all you had to do was just heal up the injured character and continue to whittle him away with physical attacks. (Only buff used was Accelerate since he ALSO can - randomly - remove all buffs. Double-Accelerate guarenteed your characters went first, preventing him from hitting a char enough times before you could heal them - unless, of course, he randomly debuffed you.)
As for grinding, there are a LOT of times when you wind up grinding in the game, for money, or for levels. "Whistle" makes this very easy, but the battles remain insanely boring, since either you'll breeze through them since the mobs randomly decide to use useless attacks, or you'll be almost annihilated as they actually make an effective attack. Having your party be wiped out because a group of monsters randomly decided to use their "knock everyone out" attack followed by enough AOE spells to kill everyone is really, really annoying. It's hard to use "tactics" against that when you never even get a chance to play! Of course, that same group can be cake when they randomly decide to use ineffective physical attacks against Yangus.
The combat system used in DQ8 is, quite honestly, crap. It's not fun, especially because you can't speed up the battle messages to get things to resolve in a reasonable amount of time. I've actually read Slashdot while playing DQ8 because the battle rounds take so long to finish animating. I don't NEED to watch everyone do their little attack. It's boring.
Now don't get me wrong, DQ8 is still a good game, but I'd give it a 7/10 and not a 9/10. It's overrated. The voice acting is good, but it's not great. The music is OK, but it's very repetative and - quite frankly - boring. The combat system really could use quite a few tweaks to make it so that strategy actually matters. It's a good game - but it's not as great as everyone seems to be saying it is.
Speaking of Dragonball Z...
First off, all the characters in the game look like - well, Toriyama characters. That is to say, if you've seen Dragonball Z, you'll notice that the characters would be right at home with Goku. I've never really liked that style, but that's not the point of this post.
Zonk didn't mention the "Psyche Up" system, a system by which your characters can increase their "tension" and use more powerful attacks. Doing this makes them do almost exactly the same "tense and grunt" move that Dragonball Z is so famous for.
Bring a character to "maximum tension" and they'll start glowing purple, and take on the stock "serious look" that Toriyama likes to use. Bring the unnamed main character to "maximum tension" and he'll lose the bandana and his hair will turn purply and spikey.
Replace the purple glow with yellow, and they'd be indistinguisable from Super Saiyans. Minus the fact that they exit that state immediately after making an attack.
The character art design isn't really all that bad, but they get reused like crazy. You'll be running into the same character models all over the place. (Fortune teller dude - Kalyasha? - looks almost exactly like weird monster arena guy, both of who bear a striking resemblence to DBZ's Hercule... Some random NPC model looks quite a lot like adult Trunks...)
It's kind of hard to take the game seriously if you've seen DBZ and couldn't take it seriously either.
If IE needs an RSS icon, that means that they're implementing some form of RSS feature. Possibly as a sidebar or maybe just Live Bookmarks, Firefox style. (The article isn't very clear on where they're using it.)
So, in a sense, this means Microsoft is implementing a web standard: RSS.
Which, arguably, is a feature that matters. The current version of IE has absolutely no RSS support.
From that page:
I'll bet Britannica doesn't even have an "anal eroticism" section!
(I've yet to work up the courage to actually click on that link though, for fear of how many articles on anal eroticism the Wikipedia actually contains.)
So, does this mean IE7 will support XUL? Because that'd be really cool. Being able to create rich web apps using XUL would be nice.
Oh, wait, but if they supported XUL, then no one would need their XAML. So I suppose that's still just a dream...
You can do a lot more with Firefox than just override the fonts. Using userContent.css , you can totally redo websites. For example, my Slashdot looks like this.
The CSS for that is on my blog.
(And, ironically enough, looking at those screenshots, I blanked out my username, and am now posting them under my username. I honestly can't remember why I did that.)