Actually, Balmung is a sword from the Norse mythology. It was forged by Wayland the smith (Anglo-Saxon god of smithing), and then used by Odin to stab the Branstock tree. He then said that he who could pull the sword from the tree was destined to win every battle.
Nintendo has quite a lot of niche games like Zelda and Metroid -- neither of these has any voiceovers (apart from a few sentences in the intro to Metroid Prime), and they work just fine without them.
Many would probably think that Zelda was just plain wrong if it had voices. Zelda has such a long history that you've made yourself a picture of Link in your mind, and a voice would disturb that picture. The Wind Waker works just fine with just grunts and shouts for expressions, since the faces of the characters are incredibly good at showing emotion.
And in the Metroid games there's never anyone to talk to anyway.:-)
A very underrated game is Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube, witch has voiceover. And it's not crappy Resident Evil-style voices either, it's real good. Characters actually sound like they care for what they are doing, though the main bad guy does get a bit over the top sometimes...
however, this is a temporary solution, because the Spammers will easily have enough resources to learn how to generate false reports.
False reports? Eh? I don't get it. Do you mean that spammers will start to use RSS feeds? Sure. Fine for them. But how will they get me to subscribe to their spam feed?
That is nothing if not confusing. You have three names; all of them related to cars. I want to use the fastest one. Is that Turbo or F1 I'm looking for?
I used to play a lot on a MUD where they had both an age requirement (18 or over, or no go), and roleplaying was required. If you didn't roleplay, the other players simply started to ignore you, and sooner or later the admin would give you the "start acting your role or look for another MUD" deal.
It did have a chat channel for out of game-talk, though. I pity the soul who used it for metagaming talk...
I think I'll start playing there again. I miss it.
The fact that there currently is only one Gamecube game (Phantasy Star Online) with online capabilities available in Europe certainly doesn't help. I'd love to try some online gaming, but I have a Gamecube. I don't want to buy another console just to play online.
The Xbox is dirt cheap here in Sweden now, though. My old DVD player is starting to act weird, so I'm considering an Xbox just for the DVD capabilities. That it plays games is a nice bonus.:-)
Save it. Final Fantasy: Chrystal Chronicles uses a GBA hooked up to your Gamecube as a controller.
Some people will shout that they did this just to sell more GBAs, but it all makes sense, really. A Final Fantasy where the game pauses every time one of four players need to change equipment?
This method also encourages you to talk to each other during the game, since you only see your own stuff and need to tell the other players that you're low on healing potions or whatever.
I have a vague memory of a woman named Babcock who tried to sign up for something, but wasn't allowed due to the "cock" part of her name. So she used "Babpenis" instead, which passed the filter with flying colors.
The hotmail spam I get is typical in that it contains a word similar to the name of my account. I guess they bulk mail a bunch of similar accounts in a row, with one of the accounts in the topic, trying to make it look like it's addressed personally to you.
Yeah, right. Unless I see my REAL name in the topic, it's spam.
That's how it works here in Sweden -- if a company sends you something you didn't order, you get to keep it. No matter what weird shrinkwrapped license they've attached.
Once again I wonder how they're able to do this on DirectConnect hubs -- as soon as an op discovers someone is sharing fake crap, he gets booted out of there so fast his ass will leave skid marks.
To stop the DirectConnect sharing, they'll have to resort to the "tried and true" ways -- suing the hub owner into oblivion.
Sooner or later the file sharing protocols (is there really no p2p network that has this already?) will implement crc32/md5 checksums, and then you just need a release list from the group who released the CD (if you're downloading "deluxe stuff") and search for the checksums.
Just how are they planning to DoS the Direct Connect network? Short of flooding individual hubs, I can't think of anything they can do to harm the DC network.
If lots of clients pop up with fake files, they'll get noticed by the ops sooner or later and get kicked. Or banned. Or most likely both -- the DC community isn't gentle to fake sharers.
And sooner or later the DC protocol will be rewritten, implementing checksums on files, so you just need a checksum to find the file, no matter what its name is.
"Music creators have the right to protect their property from theft, just like owners of any other property," Sherman said.
Oh, I agree. They have a right to protect their property. But not by destroying their customers' hardware, damnit!
On a similar notice, yesterday I crashed a Win2k server by inserting a scratched CD. It just froze. No blue screen, no error message, it died. Had to punch the Big Red Button. How's that for copy protection?
I've been thinking about buying it for the past two weeks, but this "review" (you call that a review? Bah.) made me really want to read it. Now. I'll pick it up on monday.
Not much info to spoil here, actually. Consider it a teaser instead.
He indicated that Yagharek should turn the page. Yagharek did so, and something
clucked deep in his throat. Isaac supposed it was the garuda equivalent of a
sudden intake of breath. Isaac looked briefly at the picture, then looked up,
not too quickly, at Yagharek's face.
'Those things in the background like melting statues used to be houses,' he
said levelly. 'The thing you're looking at, as far as they could work out, is
descended from the domestic goat. Apparently they used to keep them as pets in
Suroch. This could be second, tenth, twentieth generation post-Torque,
obviously. We don't know how long they live.'
Yagharek stared at the dead thing in the heliotype.
'They had to shoot it, he explains in the text,' Isaac went on. 'It killed two
of the militia. They had a go at an autopsy, but those horns in its stomach
weren't dead, even though the rest of it was. They fought back, nearly killed
the biologist. Do you see the carapace? Weird splicing going on there.' Yagharek
nodded slowly.
'Turn the page, Yag. This next one, no one has the slightest idea what it used
to be. Might have been spontaneously generated in the Torque explosion. But I
think those gears are descended from train engines.'
[...]
'There were twenty militia, Sacramundi the heliotypist and three research
scientists, plus a couple of engineers who stayed in the airship the whole time.
Seven militia, Sacramundi and one chymist came out of Suroch. Some were
Torque-wounded. By the time they got back to New Crobuzon one militiaman had
died. Another had barbed tentacles where his eyes should be, and pieces of the
scientist's body were disappearing every night. No blood, no pain, just...
smooth holes in her abdomen or arm or whatever. She killed herself.'
[...]
'Yag,' Isaac said softly, 'we ain't going to use the Torque. You might be
thinking "You still use hammers and some people are murdered with them". Right?
Eh? "Rivers can flood and kill thousands or they can drive water turbines." Yes?
Trust me... speaking as one who used to think the Torque was/terribly/
exciting... it's not a/tool/. It's/not/ a hammer, it's not like water. It's...
the Torque is/rogue//power/. We're not talking crisis energy here, right? Get
that/right/ out of your head. Crisis is the energy underpinning the whole of
physics. Torque's not about physics. It's not/about/ anything. It's... it's an
entirely pathological force. We don't know where it comes from, why it appears,
where it goes. All bets are off. No rules apply. You can't tap it -- well, you
can try, but you've seen the results -- you can't play with it, you can't trust
it, you can't understand it, you sure as godsdamn-fuck can't control it.'
A part of the book that really intrigued med was when Isaac held a long monologue about the Torque. The Torque is a mysterious force that can be used as an incredibly powerful energy source -- as well as big-ass bombs. Sort of like nuclear power and nuclear bombs. But the Torque doesn't kill by radiation -- it has the power to distort reality. In a "people grow tentacles and act weird" kind of way.
Isaac described an expedition where the members got Torque poisoning. Quote from memory: "One of the scientists started disappearing. Part by part. Large holes appeared in her body. There was no pain, there was just large holes where here flesh disappeared. She killed herself when both her legs were gone."
I think "The Scar" will most likely deal with the Torque.
Other Torque quotes: "We think it was a domestic goat. The scientists shot it, but the claws in its stomach killed a crew member when they dissected it. [...] That was once a house. The mouth appears to be made from engine gears."
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, Balmung is a sword from the Norse mythology. It was forged by Wayland the smith (Anglo-Saxon god of smithing), and then used by Odin to stab the Branstock tree. He then said that he who could pull the sword from the tree was destined to win every battle.
Nintendo has quite a lot of niche games like Zelda and Metroid -- neither of these has any voiceovers (apart from a few sentences in the intro to Metroid Prime), and they work just fine without them.
Many would probably think that Zelda was just plain wrong if it had voices. Zelda has such a long history that you've made yourself a picture of Link in your mind, and a voice would disturb that picture. The Wind Waker works just fine with just grunts and shouts for expressions, since the faces of the characters are incredibly good at showing emotion.
And in the Metroid games there's never anyone to talk to anyway. :-)
A very underrated game is Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube, witch has voiceover. And it's not crappy Resident Evil-style voices either, it's real good. Characters actually sound like they care for what they are doing, though the main bad guy does get a bit over the top sometimes...
At least in the beta, you have to be connected to the internet even to play the single player mode.
Digital Gunfire. Not techno, though -- more electronic and EBM. But it's my favorite stream.
That is nothing if not confusing. You have three names; all of them related to cars. I want to use the fastest one. Is that Turbo or F1 I'm looking for?
I used to play a lot on a MUD where they had both an age requirement (18 or over, or no go), and roleplaying was required. If you didn't roleplay, the other players simply started to ignore you, and sooner or later the admin would give you the "start acting your role or look for another MUD" deal.
It did have a chat channel for out of game-talk, though. I pity the soul who used it for metagaming talk...
I think I'll start playing there again. I miss it.
The fact that there currently is only one Gamecube game (Phantasy Star Online) with online capabilities available in Europe certainly doesn't help. I'd love to try some online gaming, but I have a Gamecube. I don't want to buy another console just to play online.
The Xbox is dirt cheap here in Sweden now, though. My old DVD player is starting to act weird, so I'm considering an Xbox just for the DVD capabilities. That it plays games is a nice bonus. :-)
Save it. Final Fantasy: Chrystal Chronicles uses a GBA hooked up to your Gamecube as a controller.
Some people will shout that they did this just to sell more GBAs, but it all makes sense, really. A Final Fantasy where the game pauses every time one of four players need to change equipment?
This method also encourages you to talk to each other during the game, since you only see your own stuff and need to tell the other players that you're low on healing potions or whatever.
I have a vague memory of a woman named Babcock who tried to sign up for something, but wasn't allowed due to the "cock" part of her name. So she used "Babpenis" instead, which passed the filter with flying colors.
The hotmail spam I get is typical in that it contains a word similar to the name of my account. I guess they bulk mail a bunch of similar accounts in a row, with one of the accounts in the topic, trying to make it look like it's addressed personally to you.
Yeah, right. Unless I see my REAL name in the topic, it's spam.
"Tung sten" means literally "heavy rock" in Swedish. I wouldn't buy a hand computer called that.
I find it interesting that five Scandinavian countries are in the top ten. Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
That's it, I'm not leaving the apartment for a while.
OK, I only won 10 bucks, so I suppose the ice blocks won't be much larger than tennis balls. Yay.
That's how it works here in Sweden -- if a company sends you something you didn't order, you get to keep it. No matter what weird shrinkwrapped license they've attached.
Excellent. Now we can make a robot that can both use harsh language and give you the finger.
Wow. I downloaded (well, still downloading) the track from Convergence 8, and the first thing that hits me is a sample from Haujobb's State. Great!
Really nice playlist, too. Should you happen to move to Stockholm, Sweden, I'd love to see you at Tech Noir. :)
Once again I wonder how they're able to do this on DirectConnect hubs -- as soon as an op discovers someone is sharing fake crap, he gets booted out of there so fast his ass will leave skid marks.
To stop the DirectConnect sharing, they'll have to resort to the "tried and true" ways -- suing the hub owner into oblivion.
Sooner or later the file sharing protocols (is there really no p2p network that has this already?) will implement crc32/md5 checksums, and then you just need a release list from the group who released the CD (if you're downloading "deluxe stuff") and search for the checksums.
Just how are they planning to DoS the Direct Connect network? Short of flooding individual hubs, I can't think of anything they can do to harm the DC network.
If lots of clients pop up with fake files, they'll get noticed by the ops sooner or later and get kicked. Or banned. Or most likely both -- the DC community isn't gentle to fake sharers.
And sooner or later the DC protocol will be rewritten, implementing checksums on files, so you just need a checksum to find the file, no matter what its name is.
I've been thinking about buying it for the past two weeks, but this "review" (you call that a review? Bah.) made me really want to read it. Now. I'll pick it up on monday.
(Here == Sweden)
Not much info to spoil here, actually. Consider it a teaser instead.
He indicated that Yagharek should turn the page. Yagharek did so, and something clucked deep in his throat. Isaac supposed it was the garuda equivalent of a sudden intake of breath. Isaac looked briefly at the picture, then looked up, not too quickly, at Yagharek's face.
'Those things in the background like melting statues used to be houses,' he said levelly. 'The thing you're looking at, as far as they could work out, is descended from the domestic goat. Apparently they used to keep them as pets in Suroch. This could be second, tenth, twentieth generation post-Torque, obviously. We don't know how long they live.'
Yagharek stared at the dead thing in the heliotype.
'They had to shoot it, he explains in the text,' Isaac went on. 'It killed two of the militia. They had a go at an autopsy, but those horns in its stomach weren't dead, even though the rest of it was. They fought back, nearly killed the biologist. Do you see the carapace? Weird splicing going on there.' Yagharek nodded slowly.
'Turn the page, Yag. This next one, no one has the slightest idea what it used to be. Might have been spontaneously generated in the Torque explosion. But I think those gears are descended from train engines.'
[...]
'There were twenty militia, Sacramundi the heliotypist and three research scientists, plus a couple of engineers who stayed in the airship the whole time.
Seven militia, Sacramundi and one chymist came out of Suroch. Some were Torque-wounded. By the time they got back to New Crobuzon one militiaman had died. Another had barbed tentacles where his eyes should be, and pieces of the scientist's body were disappearing every night. No blood, no pain, just... smooth holes in her abdomen or arm or whatever. She killed herself.'
[...]
'Yag,' Isaac said softly, 'we ain't going to use the Torque. You might be thinking "You still use hammers and some people are murdered with them". Right? Eh? "Rivers can flood and kill thousands or they can drive water turbines." Yes? Trust me... speaking as one who used to think the Torque was /terribly/
exciting... it's not a /tool/. It's /not/ a hammer, it's not like water. It's...
the Torque is /rogue/ /power/. We're not talking crisis energy here, right? Get
that /right/ out of your head. Crisis is the energy underpinning the whole of
physics. Torque's not about physics. It's not /about/ anything. It's... it's an
entirely pathological force. We don't know where it comes from, why it appears,
where it goes. All bets are off. No rules apply. You can't tap it -- well, you
can try, but you've seen the results -- you can't play with it, you can't trust
it, you can't understand it, you sure as godsdamn-fuck can't control it.'
A part of the book that really intrigued med was when Isaac held a long monologue about the Torque. The Torque is a mysterious force that can be used as an incredibly powerful energy source -- as well as big-ass bombs. Sort of like nuclear power and nuclear bombs. But the Torque doesn't kill by radiation -- it has the power to distort reality. In a "people grow tentacles and act weird" kind of way.
Isaac described an expedition where the members got Torque poisoning. Quote from memory: "One of the scientists started disappearing. Part by part. Large holes appeared in her body. There was no pain, there was just large holes where here flesh disappeared. She killed herself when both her legs were gone."
I think "The Scar" will most likely deal with the Torque.
Other Torque quotes: "We think it was a domestic goat. The scientists shot it, but the claws in its stomach killed a crew member when they dissected it. [...] That was once a house. The mouth appears to be made from engine gears."
They released it yesterday. And apparently Soldier of Fortune II just hit the net.
And before someone asks the inevitable question: NO, you can't download it on the URL I posted. It's just an info site.
I give you... Super Console Wars!
I really like the Super Star X-Box chasing the poor Blockade Game Boy in the opening scene.