You mean like breeding them, raising them in pens and coops for the sole purpose of killing them, devouring their corpses, flesh and organs, and walking about in their skin and fur?
I can't believe you would dare compare cruelty against cute, smart, fuzzy, fluffy, straight from heaven creatures like Kittens to those gross, dumb animals like cows. There isn't any comparison! What kind of sick perverted freak are you? Kitten are cute, and nice, and warm, and fuzzy, and cute, and cute, and nice. Cows are stupid, ignorant creatures, who are ugly and deserve what they get. If me and my Animal Activist friends ever catch you on the street, we'll be sure to have words with you, right after we get done eating our dolphin safe tuna.;)
Heh, looks like the moderators on that board are in full troll-hunt mode, so I have to get my "Hypocritical Animal Rights Activists" rant off my chest here, sorry for the indulgence.
In France for example, someone other than the director approving the final cut is unheard of.
Good for the French, but that's not likely to happen around here anytime soon. Hollywood's got too much control over the industry in America. If a director doesn't want studio execs messing with his pic, he's got to go find an independent studio, or release it himself. Either way, it's not going to get near the exposure, or make near the money, as it would being released by a Hollywood studio. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part that's the way it is.
Besides, how are we supposed to know if a film is what the director intended or not, until he tells us? It's not like most directors go around telling people why their movie sucks before it's released.
What's worse is when you don't have a choice to live elsewhere (like where I went to school).
Good point. Many schools require first, or even second, year students to live in the dorms. They most times claim it's "for the good of the student", to help "better acclimate them to college life", but in reality it's just another way to leech some more money out of students.
If you want to get out of living in the dorms, the excuses that work pretty much come down to "I'm married", "My parents spent $90k for a house", or "I'm a football/basketball player".
Friends of the student whose room was raided said the police might have been concerned about a Web site where several Kent State students set up a "war-like" game.
Isn't calling StarCraft a "war-like" game kinda like calling Jurassic Park a "science-like" movie?
Damn Rainman, you do realize casino's run 5-6 deck games, right? You have about as much chance at successfully counting cards in a blackjack game as you do....well...hitting the jackpot on a slot machine I suppose.
You know, as in, extremely boring, extemely pointless, extemely mind-numbing, and extreme insult of our intelligence...and last but not least, an extreme over-use of a buzz-word.
Gee, I'm glad this has been brought up, because I'm quite concerned about this new invention, paper. People are able to write things down, so they don't have to remember important information! Also, we should take a closer look at telephones. I haven't ever met my insurance agent in real life: this must be because of the telephone!
My god, this "study" is so full of holes it's laughable. A 28 year old salesman who suddenly couldn't remember where he was going, when his appointments were, or what he was even selling? And it's a computer's fault? Jeez, aren't people responsible for any of their own stupidity any more?
...but this seems rather silly. Isn't is just a little odd to try and propose a solution to a problem that won't manifest itself for billions of years? A billion years is enough time for human civilization to rise and fall many times: chances are that by the time this becomes a problem, our technology will make this solution obsolete, or we'll have regressed to a point where it's no longer feasable.
And even if humanity in a billion years is at a point where this knowledge would be useful, would we even recognize it for what it is? What will language, thought processes, ideas and such be like for humans in a billion years? Very different I would guess. Even if future man understood the problem/our proposed solution, would he trust the knowledge?
Consider: if someone today found millions-year-old writings on the cave walls of Africa or France warning about our immenent demise and suggesting a solution, would we trust this knowledge? Or would we dismiss it a legend or fairy tale of ancient man?
Formidable, but their mincemeat up against a stack of fortified slingers or longbowman. That's another thing I loved about the game: no one killer strategy. Would have made some kick-ass multiplayer.
Probably not many are still reading this thread, but I'll post it anyway. Gamefaqs.com has a MOM message board that a few of us have been haunting in recent weeks. The posting has dropped to a minimum as of late, but if anyone out there's still listening and interested, stop on by, and do your part to revitalize the board!
I think the point the author was trying to make is not that we don't need OS's, we just need them to be more transparent in certain situations.
Certainly I, nor a large portion of the general computing public, would ever accept such a PC. My computer can be anything from a game console to a web server: I want and need and OS I can work with as an application. But what I want and need isn't necessarily what my uncle or grandmother wants and needs. Yes, anyone can be taught how to operate a computer to make it useable (how to install apps, how to run a program, etc), but why should navigating an OS be a requirement for using a computer, be it Windows, Linux, Be, or whatever?
The idea of being able to walk up to a machine and just start typing a document, or drawing a picture seems interesting to me. Of course, it would take a very powerful OS to give this level of functionality while still remaining transparent, without degrading itself to little more than a toy. At the very least, it's an idea worth exploring at the research level.
I, the Great Jayhawk88, chock-full of awesome psychic powers, will now hearby predict 5 of the lame "I'm going to patent X" posts that are soon to appear in this article:
1. Air
2. The Wheel
3. HTML
4. The word "the"
5. The Internet
Thank you, thank you! Yes, my powers are truely mystical and beyond compare! Be sure to catch my next showings at 3:10, 4:15, 5:45 and 7:00! Don't forget to tip your waitresses!
Nintendo used ROM carts for the N64 because they got caught behind in technology, not because ROM carts have any significant advantages over CD-based systems. Go look on the bottom of an first-run SNES sometime, you'll find and odd-looking expansion slot. That was originally designed to accomodate an external CD-Rom player that was being designed by Sony. The idea was to get a product out that would compete with the Sega CD, and be the basis for Nintendo's next gen console.
Problem is, Nintendo was being difficult with licensing issues and what not, so Sony finally gave up and basically said "Screw Nintendo, we'll make our own console", which eventually morphed into the Playstation. All of the sudden, Nintendo's got to put out a next-gen console, but thanks to Sony's departure, doesn't have any kind of clue how to make said console CD-based. So, they fell back to what they knew best, ROM carts.
While ROM carts do access faster, they're extremely limited in storage space. With 600+ meg of CD space to play with, developers can put on all kinds of goodies, like richer music scores and FMV cut-scenes (see Final Fantasy series). In actuallity, Nintendo and their deveopers have done wonderous things with N64 games, considering the limited nature of the hardware. But the N64 is definitely running on outdated technology, and has been almost since Day 1.
Re:Well, there goes my college education...
on
Master of Orion III
·
· Score: 4
Take it from one with experience, you can get a college degree and still get in all the gaming that you require. Use the following as a guideline:
- Forget your dreams of Stanford or Northwestern, and enroll at a university where they don't get all upset about missing class once or twice a week. Focus your search on mid-sized universities with either an excellent basketball or football program: chances are they have many classes that grade "on the curve".
- Limit your course load to around 15 hours a semester, or better yet, the minimum of 12. Sure, it will add another year to your stay, but that can only be a good thing. A lot of advisors will try to sneak you into Physics and Calculus class in the same semester with promises of "similar course material": resist the temptation.
- Never take more than 2 classes that count for more than 3 credit hours in one semester. Also, for every class that has a number starting with 5 or higher (501, 637, etc), you must have two classes that are 250 or lower.
- Be sure to get a job as a computer lab procter, preferrably in the education, english, or buisness departments. You can pretty much do anything you want on a computer in those places.
- Focus your energies! Sure, that lab paper was due two days ago, but is it really worth losing valuable Achilles Targeting Unit research time?
A couple of other people have mentioned it, but I just want to plug my all-time favorite game, Master of Magic, or MOM.
To say MOM was inspired by MOO is of course accurate, but it's also not doing MOM justice. Not exactly a "sequel", and more than just a knock-off, MOM had a level of strategy and depth of gameplay all it's own. As you might expect by the title, it's a fantasy-based game, which borrows heavily from the Magic:The Gathering style of magic system (Chaos, Life, Death, Nature, and Sorcery magics). The gameplay was also similar to MOO, in that you started with a home city (planet), and from there could build or capture other cities while battling enemy wizards. A unique twist in MOM was the addition of "nodes"; mana-generating squares that you had to capture, guard, and channel for more magical energy.
Unlike MOO, where exploration and combat was relegated mostly to ships, you had a variety of forces at your command in MOM. Normal units like pikeman, archers, and magicians could be trained. You could also summon up to 6 hero's, who not only had thier own unique skills and abilities (plus the ability to cast magic for some), but could wield powerful artifacts to increase thier strenght. In addition, you could summon monsters to do your bidding, things like drakes, fire giants, and the ever-popular wraiths.
Thanks to the sheer number of possibilities of starting pick combinations, combined with different strategies available for waging war, MOM had some incredible replay value. I still occasionally play MOM even today, and I still get a kick out of trying some new strategy or pick-combination once in a while.
Microprose made me their bitch for most of the 90's with MOM, along with titles like MOO, MOO2, Civ, Civ2, Colonization, and XCom 1&2. It's a damn shame that they never got around to making MOM2, and there are those of us still hopeful, though the possibility seems less likely every day. I mean damn: if they can churn out 3 MOO's, 3 Civ's, and 4 XCom titles, surely there's room in the world for MOM2?
Baloney. If Nintendo had kept hold of their "almost monopoly" they had on the console market back in the SNES days (there were others there, but they weren't much of a threat), we'd still be playing games squeezed on ROM chip carts. As it is, Nintendo tried to get away with that aging technology with the N64, and they got butchered by the PS1. If not for the incredible character lineup (Pokemon, Mario, etc), the N64 might have been the death of Nintendo.
On the contrary, console competition is a good thing, just like it is in practically every other business. Sony kinda fscked up with the PS2 release, by limiting (intentionally or not) the number of units, and not having a good selection of games at release. The result? A bunch of pissed off gamers who can't get a PS2, and another bunch who got them, but are wondering why they bothered for 3-4 decent games.
Think maybe MS and Nintendo will take a cue from that? One can only imagine the marketing opportunities. "XBox: Go ahead and sleep in, we made plenty". "GameCube: Cause one game isn't enough".
I don't remember the name of it, and I can't seem to find the related story in the Slashdot archives, but there was a law(?) passed a while back about collecting information from children on websites. The result was disclaimers on kid-related web sites, pop-ups asking you if you were at least 13, etc.
It might be a reach, but I for one would think that if it's illegal for Disney.com to know my address if I'm under 13, what this company is doing should be illegal as well.
Please don't take this as a personal assualt, but I don't think your giving enough credit to the skill many forms of manual labor take. Sure, you could quickly learn to weld, work a metal lathe, assemble sheet metal on an aircraft: but that doesn't mean your doing the job as good as those who have been working the job for years.
If any one skill set becomes less in demand, an IT worker can quickly jump to another
Really? So if you spent the first 10 years of your professional life as a programmer of various languages, you could jump right into a network admin job should the situation require it? Or perhaps a chip designer position?
I'll grant you that IT professionals are on a whole more adaptable than most other professions, but that's no guarentee of employment down the road. The IT job pool is only going to get more diluted in future years, as more and more children start migrating to the field. Chances are they'll be trained and educated very similar to you and I, and will have many of the same marketable and adaptable skills.
Gee, management of a company doesn't think they need a union? Gosh, that's suprising!
*End Sarcasm Mode*
It seems a lot of the posts have been critical of unions, but please remember that they have been absolutely critical in the development of many nations. There may yet come a day when the number of programmers/admins/technicians in the job market outweighs the number of available jobs. If that day ever comes, unions are going to start looking a lot more attractive to a lot of us.
What's that? Your highly trained, and have a unique skill set? That's what IronWorker Dan thought at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Then one day he looked around, and all his friends were trained as iron workers as well. Now, maybe Dan's company recognizes his true skill and value, or maybe they just see 100 other guys who will do Dan's job for half the price.
The phrase, "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" seems relevant right about now...
Yup, his name is JetFire, I believe. IIRC, the model was originally made for some sort of Robotech toy line, and was modified for Transformers. Without a doubt the coolest Transformer ever.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean like breeding them, raising them in pens and coops for the sole purpose of killing them, devouring their corpses, flesh and organs, and walking about in their skin and fur?
;)
I can't believe you would dare compare cruelty against cute, smart, fuzzy, fluffy, straight from heaven creatures like Kittens to those gross, dumb animals like cows. There isn't any comparison! What kind of sick perverted freak are you? Kitten are cute, and nice, and warm, and fuzzy, and cute, and cute, and nice. Cows are stupid, ignorant creatures, who are ugly and deserve what they get. If me and my Animal Activist friends ever catch you on the street, we'll be sure to have words with you, right after we get done eating our dolphin safe tuna.
Heh, looks like the moderators on that board are in full troll-hunt mode, so I have to get my "Hypocritical Animal Rights Activists" rant off my chest here, sorry for the indulgence.
In France for example, someone other than the director approving the final cut is unheard of.
Good for the French, but that's not likely to happen around here anytime soon. Hollywood's got too much control over the industry in America. If a director doesn't want studio execs messing with his pic, he's got to go find an independent studio, or release it himself. Either way, it's not going to get near the exposure, or make near the money, as it would being released by a Hollywood studio. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part that's the way it is.
Besides, how are we supposed to know if a film is what the director intended or not, until he tells us? It's not like most directors go around telling people why their movie sucks before it's released.
You'd probably be bitter too if every word you posted was critisized, contradicted, or flamed in some way by trolls and AC's.
What's worse is when you don't have a choice to live elsewhere (like where I went to school).
Good point. Many schools require first, or even second, year students to live in the dorms. They most times claim it's "for the good of the student", to help "better acclimate them to college life", but in reality it's just another way to leech some more money out of students.
If you want to get out of living in the dorms, the excuses that work pretty much come down to "I'm married", "My parents spent $90k for a house", or "I'm a football/basketball player".
From the article:
Friends of the student whose room was raided said the police might have been concerned about a Web site where several Kent State students set up a "war-like" game.
Isn't calling StarCraft a "war-like" game kinda like calling Jurassic Park a "science-like" movie?
Oops, never mind, reread Yahoo article and found the relevant paragraph.
I love MS bashing as much as the next guy, but do we have any kind of source for the whole "NT in slot machines" part?
or do some simple card counting at blackjack
Damn Rainman, you do realize casino's run 5-6 deck games, right? You have about as much chance at successfully counting cards in a blackjack game as you do....well...hitting the jackpot on a slot machine I suppose.
The X is for EXTREME!
You know, as in, extremely boring, extemely pointless, extemely mind-numbing, and extreme insult of our intelligence...and last but not least, an extreme over-use of a buzz-word.
Gee, I'm glad this has been brought up, because I'm quite concerned about this new invention, paper. People are able to write things down, so they don't have to remember important information! Also, we should take a closer look at telephones. I haven't ever met my insurance agent in real life: this must be because of the telephone!
My god, this "study" is so full of holes it's laughable. A 28 year old salesman who suddenly couldn't remember where he was going, when his appointments were, or what he was even selling? And it's a computer's fault? Jeez, aren't people responsible for any of their own stupidity any more?
...but this seems rather silly. Isn't is just a little odd to try and propose a solution to a problem that won't manifest itself for billions of years? A billion years is enough time for human civilization to rise and fall many times: chances are that by the time this becomes a problem, our technology will make this solution obsolete, or we'll have regressed to a point where it's no longer feasable.
And even if humanity in a billion years is at a point where this knowledge would be useful, would we even recognize it for what it is? What will language, thought processes, ideas and such be like for humans in a billion years? Very different I would guess. Even if future man understood the problem/our proposed solution, would he trust the knowledge?
Consider: if someone today found millions-year-old writings on the cave walls of Africa or France warning about our immenent demise and suggesting a solution, would we trust this knowledge? Or would we dismiss it a legend or fairy tale of ancient man?
Formidable, but their mincemeat up against a stack of fortified slingers or longbowman. That's another thing I loved about the game: no one killer strategy. Would have made some kick-ass multiplayer.
Probably not many are still reading this thread, but I'll post it anyway. Gamefaqs.com has a MOM message board that a few of us have been haunting in recent weeks. The posting has dropped to a minimum as of late, but if anyone out there's still listening and interested, stop on by, and do your part to revitalize the board!
Here's The Link!
I think the point the author was trying to make is not that we don't need OS's, we just need them to be more transparent in certain situations.
Certainly I, nor a large portion of the general computing public, would ever accept such a PC. My computer can be anything from a game console to a web server: I want and need and OS I can work with as an application. But what I want and need isn't necessarily what my uncle or grandmother wants and needs. Yes, anyone can be taught how to operate a computer to make it useable (how to install apps, how to run a program, etc), but why should navigating an OS be a requirement for using a computer, be it Windows, Linux, Be, or whatever?
The idea of being able to walk up to a machine and just start typing a document, or drawing a picture seems interesting to me. Of course, it would take a very powerful OS to give this level of functionality while still remaining transparent, without degrading itself to little more than a toy. At the very least, it's an idea worth exploring at the research level.
ok, i'm getting really sick of the same old jokes here in every single patent thread
Well, so am I, and that's kinda the point of the post...
I, the Great Jayhawk88, chock-full of awesome psychic powers, will now hearby predict 5 of the lame "I'm going to patent X" posts that are soon to appear in this article:
1. Air
2. The Wheel
3. HTML
4. The word "the"
5. The Internet
Thank you, thank you! Yes, my powers are truely mystical and beyond compare! Be sure to catch my next showings at 3:10, 4:15, 5:45 and 7:00! Don't forget to tip your waitresses!
Nintendo used ROM carts for the N64 because they got caught behind in technology, not because ROM carts have any significant advantages over CD-based systems. Go look on the bottom of an first-run SNES sometime, you'll find and odd-looking expansion slot. That was originally designed to accomodate an external CD-Rom player that was being designed by Sony. The idea was to get a product out that would compete with the Sega CD, and be the basis for Nintendo's next gen console.
Problem is, Nintendo was being difficult with licensing issues and what not, so Sony finally gave up and basically said "Screw Nintendo, we'll make our own console", which eventually morphed into the Playstation. All of the sudden, Nintendo's got to put out a next-gen console, but thanks to Sony's departure, doesn't have any kind of clue how to make said console CD-based. So, they fell back to what they knew best, ROM carts.
While ROM carts do access faster, they're extremely limited in storage space. With 600+ meg of CD space to play with, developers can put on all kinds of goodies, like richer music scores and FMV cut-scenes (see Final Fantasy series). In actuallity, Nintendo and their deveopers have done wonderous things with N64 games, considering the limited nature of the hardware. But the N64 is definitely running on outdated technology, and has been almost since Day 1.
Take it from one with experience, you can get a college degree and still get in all the gaming that you require. Use the following as a guideline:
- Forget your dreams of Stanford or Northwestern, and enroll at a university where they don't get all upset about missing class once or twice a week. Focus your search on mid-sized universities with either an excellent basketball or football program: chances are they have many classes that grade "on the curve".
- Limit your course load to around 15 hours a semester, or better yet, the minimum of 12. Sure, it will add another year to your stay, but that can only be a good thing. A lot of advisors will try to sneak you into Physics and Calculus class in the same semester with promises of "similar course material": resist the temptation.
- Never take more than 2 classes that count for more than 3 credit hours in one semester. Also, for every class that has a number starting with 5 or higher (501, 637, etc), you must have two classes that are 250 or lower.
- Be sure to get a job as a computer lab procter, preferrably in the education, english, or buisness departments. You can pretty much do anything you want on a computer in those places.
- Focus your energies! Sure, that lab paper was due two days ago, but is it really worth losing valuable Achilles Targeting Unit research time?
A couple of other people have mentioned it, but I just want to plug my all-time favorite game, Master of Magic, or MOM.
To say MOM was inspired by MOO is of course accurate, but it's also not doing MOM justice. Not exactly a "sequel", and more than just a knock-off, MOM had a level of strategy and depth of gameplay all it's own. As you might expect by the title, it's a fantasy-based game, which borrows heavily from the Magic:The Gathering style of magic system (Chaos, Life, Death, Nature, and Sorcery magics). The gameplay was also similar to MOO, in that you started with a home city (planet), and from there could build or capture other cities while battling enemy wizards. A unique twist in MOM was the addition of "nodes"; mana-generating squares that you had to capture, guard, and channel for more magical energy.
Unlike MOO, where exploration and combat was relegated mostly to ships, you had a variety of forces at your command in MOM. Normal units like pikeman, archers, and magicians could be trained. You could also summon up to 6 hero's, who not only had thier own unique skills and abilities (plus the ability to cast magic for some), but could wield powerful artifacts to increase thier strenght. In addition, you could summon monsters to do your bidding, things like drakes, fire giants, and the ever-popular wraiths.
Thanks to the sheer number of possibilities of starting pick combinations, combined with different strategies available for waging war, MOM had some incredible replay value. I still occasionally play MOM even today, and I still get a kick out of trying some new strategy or pick-combination once in a while.
Microprose made me their bitch for most of the 90's with MOM, along with titles like MOO, MOO2, Civ, Civ2, Colonization, and XCom 1&2. It's a damn shame that they never got around to making MOM2, and there are those of us still hopeful, though the possibility seems less likely every day. I mean damn: if they can churn out 3 MOO's, 3 Civ's, and 4 XCom titles, surely there's room in the world for MOM2?
Baloney. If Nintendo had kept hold of their "almost monopoly" they had on the console market back in the SNES days (there were others there, but they weren't much of a threat), we'd still be playing games squeezed on ROM chip carts. As it is, Nintendo tried to get away with that aging technology with the N64, and they got butchered by the PS1. If not for the incredible character lineup (Pokemon, Mario, etc), the N64 might have been the death of Nintendo.
On the contrary, console competition is a good thing, just like it is in practically every other business. Sony kinda fscked up with the PS2 release, by limiting (intentionally or not) the number of units, and not having a good selection of games at release. The result? A bunch of pissed off gamers who can't get a PS2, and another bunch who got them, but are wondering why they bothered for 3-4 decent games.
Think maybe MS and Nintendo will take a cue from that? One can only imagine the marketing opportunities. "XBox: Go ahead and sleep in, we made plenty". "GameCube: Cause one game isn't enough".
I don't remember the name of it, and I can't seem to find the related story in the Slashdot archives, but there was a law(?) passed a while back about collecting information from children on websites. The result was disclaimers on kid-related web sites, pop-ups asking you if you were at least 13, etc.
It might be a reach, but I for one would think that if it's illegal for Disney.com to know my address if I'm under 13, what this company is doing should be illegal as well.
Please don't take this as a personal assualt, but I don't think your giving enough credit to the skill many forms of manual labor take. Sure, you could quickly learn to weld, work a metal lathe, assemble sheet metal on an aircraft: but that doesn't mean your doing the job as good as those who have been working the job for years.
If any one skill set becomes less in demand, an IT worker can quickly jump to another
Really? So if you spent the first 10 years of your professional life as a programmer of various languages, you could jump right into a network admin job should the situation require it? Or perhaps a chip designer position?
I'll grant you that IT professionals are on a whole more adaptable than most other professions, but that's no guarentee of employment down the road. The IT job pool is only going to get more diluted in future years, as more and more children start migrating to the field. Chances are they'll be trained and educated very similar to you and I, and will have many of the same marketable and adaptable skills.
i highly doubt you would see a highly skilled manual laborer spending his dough on such plastic crap
Your right. They're too busy spending their money on Big Mouth Billy Bass and 40 piece Sears Craftsmen rachet sets.
and probably has a life anyways
Yeah, and most of it revolves around drinking beer at the pool-hall, or finding a good Ford LTD to run in next years Demolition Derby.
Gee, management of a company doesn't think they need a union? Gosh, that's suprising!
*End Sarcasm Mode*
It seems a lot of the posts have been critical of unions, but please remember that they have been absolutely critical in the development of many nations. There may yet come a day when the number of programmers/admins/technicians in the job market outweighs the number of available jobs. If that day ever comes, unions are going to start looking a lot more attractive to a lot of us.
What's that? Your highly trained, and have a unique skill set? That's what IronWorker Dan thought at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Then one day he looked around, and all his friends were trained as iron workers as well. Now, maybe Dan's company recognizes his true skill and value, or maybe they just see 100 other guys who will do Dan's job for half the price.
The phrase, "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" seems relevant right about now...
Yup, his name is JetFire, I believe. IIRC, the model was originally made for some sort of Robotech toy line, and was modified for Transformers. Without a doubt the coolest Transformer ever.
That "The Matrix" is now being used as an adjective. Guess that's when you really know the impact a movie has had on society.