Indeed. Crossfire's purpose is to tow the party line for the Republicrats. It's thinly-veiled propaganda.
(Is propaganda the word I'm looking here? I can't think of a better word, but "propaganda" has strong connotations of the "progressive"/Indymedia/hippie term for "opinions we don't like".)
You're either too far left to realize or too ignorant to understand that Bush is in no way a "hardcore capitalist". Bush has multiplied the size of the federal government, cheered on NAFTA and GATT and all those other "free trade" treaties which bring on yet more regulatory nonsense, redistributes wealth...the list goes on and on.
How would the news media have had access when it occurred anyway? It's not like American reporters have access to intelligence sattelites, foreign intelligence officials, etc. For anyone to know about this, the gummints would have to release it.
And no government wants to say something until they know if they're right. Er, something like that.
About your opinions on High School chemistry: I suppose that's because you're an organic guy. So am I, but no one learns organic chem in High School. That's called "sophomore in university" material. (Oh, but I went ahead and studied on my own in 11th grade anyways...;x)
Still, HS Chemistry was *plenty* interesting, and it managed to warp me from a CS major to a chem major instantly. Your chem teacher showed you what happens when you add glycerol and KMnO4, right? Maybe your teacher wasn't cool, but mine most definitely was, and we even experimented to find the exact time it took from pouring the potassium permanganate on the glycerol to spontaneous ignition. (8-10 seconds, regardless of relative quantities of reactants.)
...and how does your concept of "national security" involve infringing on our God-given rights, using the media to create widespread fear (e.g. duct-tape and plastic bagging, etc.), and attacking the Middle East (and planning to since Day One of the current administration)?
You don't sound too libertarian to me. You sound like a rather weak-spined "political migrant" who latched onto the libertarian ideology for the ego boost, and jumped to the neoconservative camp (since that's where all the beta-male jingoists are these days).
IIRC, Microsoft did the same thing with a service pack for NT 4, adding new features that broke existing systems. Didn't they learn? Why isn't the service pack limited to fixes? Why couldn't they throw the firewall in an Option Pack?
At least I know I'll never use XP again.
Don't blame him. He's blindly spouting rhetoric. The reason he's a neocon is because neoconservatism strongly appeals to insecure people...i.e., nerds. Neoconservatism is a "manly man" political philosophy. (I'm trying to remain as neutral as possible.) Neoconservative rhetoric appeals to the insecure because it makes people feel dominant, in control, alpha-male, and morally superior.
As far as I'm concerned, as a recovered ex-neoconservative, this rhetoric does not correlate with reality. However, I can't blame him. It's taken him over like a virus, just like it had done to me. Even the most logically rigorous are prone to this powerful fallacy.
Sonic Advance for the GBA takes absolutely no skill at all. Sure, it's fun, but it's not a real Sonic game.
Sonic games do take skill. Pick up Sonic 2 and play it. If all you do is hold right and press Jump at the right times, you'll Fail It in minutes. But Sonic 1 & 2 are still more fun.
How is the diversity of Linux implementations a "failure"? While the less technical among us may prefer something more like Lycoris or Xandros, other people might want something more like plain old Red Hat. Then there are the source code riceboy types that like Gentoo. Me? Slackware or LFS.
There's something for everybody. How is this a failure?
I'm confused, I was of the mindset that the N64 had excellent wavetable synthesis, better than the SNES. If the music is terrible, that is the fault of the game maker.
On the other hand, if you're simply whining about the fact that the N64 didn't use CDDA for music, you've got to face the facts: typical cart size for the N64 was 32MB, and that's hardly enough to hold a whole digital audio soundtrack.
It does. The N64 wavetable synth owns all. I'm talking about the digital audio effects, voices, etc. I always thought they were quite lo-fi, and I believe I stated that's probably due to the limits of the cartridge.
If you're bitching and moaning about the lack of 60fps at super high-resolution, you'll have to remember that the N64 was released in 1996, and there was no consumer-level solution capable of reaching such high performance until the Voodoo 2 SLI. 15-30fps was considered quite playable on both the N64 and PSX.
GoldenEye/Perfect Dark. 'Nuff said.
Well, I'll elaborate. 60fps on a TV is ridiculous. The TV is interlaced, yielding a net 30fps. No one wanted 60fps super-high-res graphics on a console either. That's not the point. I'm talking about the slowdowns you get, like in Perfect Dark. Perfect Dark is INCREDIBLE, barring the FPS flaw.
While I do, on occasion, troll, whether out of boredom or chemical means, this was not meant as a troll. This is too nerdy a subject to troll about.
Let me elaborate on my previous comment.
When I suggest Nintendo shot themselves in the foot with the N64, I simply think it could have been so much better. Losing Final Fantasy VII due to their stubbornness on media type was a horrible decision. Likewise, the sound capabilities of the N64 are almost inexcusable[1]; whether this was the fault of the sound hardware or the simple lack of storage space on the cartridge, I don't know. The N64 had framerate and memory issues too--the expansion pack solved some problems, but should not have been needed in the first place. (Don't get me started on Nintendo's add-on gimmickry...)
The Nintendo 64 could've rocked the PSX's world if it was done right, but sadly it wasn't. We got our kickass first/second party titles (even though I never liked Rare's 3D platformer offerings) but got lackluster third-party support, which plagues Nintendo to this day.
The GameCube overcame the technical limitations of the N64 but by that time it was too late; Nintendo had firmly wedged itself into its current reputation. The sheer quantity of third-party titles that we had with the SNES is gone. And let's not get started on Rare[2].
I've always been a Nintendo fanboy--I'll admit that. But lately, Nintendo is starting to wear me out. Once, we were a Nintendo-only house. NES, SNES, N64, GameBoy, you know. Nowadays, we gave a PSX, PS2, and a Dreamcast along with our GameCube. I've been losing my dedication to Nintendo lately, seeing all the Great Games on the PS2 I was missing out on. Now, I've sold out. So shoot me. Or Nintendo.
[1] And if it wasn't for the Great Games of the N64; i.e. Super Mario 64 (still one of the greatest games of all time), Zelda 5 (the GameCube port kicks ass, by the way), StarFox 64 (one of the greatest games made), Paper Mario (say what you want but I still enjoyed it), GoldenEye (BEST. CONSOLE FPS. EVAR.), Superman 64 (I'm kidding); it would have been completely inexcusable.
Their control of the handheld market is the only thing keeping them alive. They've made horrible decisions with the N64 and GameCube. They're killing themselves!
I think I'll be in my corner hugging my Super NES and weeping.
Good point. I think it's the constant flood of unimaginative sameness that's burning gamers out.
Sony seems to be successful with that formula, however. And Nintendo's struggling despite all their innovations. I think it's not as much saturation as it is simply lack of Great Games.
Let's face it. In recent years, the amount of Great Games released has dropped. I can't remember the last time we got a game like Zelda 3 or FF7 or Super Mario World or Secret of Mana or Chrono Trigger or all the other masterpieces we've seen in the history of console gaming. The GameBoy hasn't seen a new Super Mario game since the mid 1990s, and does Wario Land 1 even count? We've had rehashes, rehashes, and more rehashes. I'm worried that Nintendo is about to do the same thing with the DS, reading about Super Mario 64X4.
Good troll, you'd win my mod points, but it also brings up a good point about culture. The demographics are simply different.
Gaming in America simply doesn't take the same cultural role as it does in Japan. Gaming here is largely casual. While I woed the death of the "hardcore gamer" and the overrun of Joe Schmo with his X-Box into the gaming world, the casual Joe Gamer is by far the largest market. Japan really doesn't have a casual Joe Gamer, thus they don't really release "casual games". Most, if not all, Japanese games are deep, engrossing, and masterpieces in their own right. When they come over here, they get the "hardcore gamer" market, since the average American gaming nerd scoops this stuff up, whether it's a masterpiece or simply mediocre. Plus, there's the fanboy effect.
However, in Japan, the quality will make or break the game, and their tastes are much more discriminating. It seems that Japanese gamers are simply burning out of the latest round of less-than-wonderful games. Maybe it's a retro thing. Who knows. I suppose Japanese gamers are burned out of the latest fare in gaming.
This is a problem America will never have, because America is much more casual in this respect. The Japanese gamers are quite serious about it, while American gamers aren't. Thus, the Japanese market is much more vulnerable to losing ground because of sheer mediocrity.
As an aside, even as a Nintendo fanboy I'm starting to doubt their latest developments, and I'm quite skeptical that the Nintendo DS will save Nintendo. Nintendo has suffered from games built around gimmicks lately, like Luigi's Mansion for the GameCube controller, the E-Reader, the GC-GBA connectivity, and now the "dual-screen" gimmick. It's starting to get old.
The difference is that of culture. In America, the gaming industry is quite buoyant because the typical American gamer is simply different than the typical Japanese gamer.
The typical American gamer is not "hardcore"; he is a casual gamer who plays with friends, or simply for light entertainment. He isn't "into" games like the typical Japanese gamer, who is, for lack of a better term, a nerd. He simply wants to play his Madden 2004 on his X-Box with his homeez.
That's also why the X-Box never took off in Japan. The demographic the X-Box is marketed to in America simply doesn't exist in Japan.
Sorry I misidentified you. The fact of the matter is that Israel's crushing of the Palestinian people's freedom may be quite abhorrent, but comparing Israel to Hitler is just plain despicable. Israel is not Hitler's Nazi Germany. It is not as much of a slur against Israel as it is a trivialization of the evil of Nazi Germany.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. Crossfire's purpose is to tow the party line for the Republicrats. It's thinly-veiled propaganda. (Is propaganda the word I'm looking here? I can't think of a better word, but "propaganda" has strong connotations of the "progressive"/Indymedia/hippie term for "opinions we don't like".)
He's a conservative of the free-market/paleoconservative/libertarian persuasion, as far as I can tell.
You're either too far left to realize or too ignorant to understand that Bush is in no way a "hardcore capitalist". Bush has multiplied the size of the federal government, cheered on NAFTA and GATT and all those other "free trade" treaties which bring on yet more regulatory nonsense, redistributes wealth...the list goes on and on.
Damn I'm burned out. I need sleep.
How would the news media have had access when it occurred anyway? It's not like American reporters have access to intelligence sattelites, foreign intelligence officials, etc. For anyone to know about this, the gummints would have to release it.
And no government wants to say something until they know if they're right. Er, something like that.
About your opinions on High School chemistry: I suppose that's because you're an organic guy. So am I, but no one learns organic chem in High School. That's called "sophomore in university" material. (Oh, but I went ahead and studied on my own in 11th grade anyways...;x) Still, HS Chemistry was *plenty* interesting, and it managed to warp me from a CS major to a chem major instantly. Your chem teacher showed you what happens when you add glycerol and KMnO4, right? Maybe your teacher wasn't cool, but mine most definitely was, and we even experimented to find the exact time it took from pouring the potassium permanganate on the glycerol to spontaneous ignition. (8-10 seconds, regardless of relative quantities of reactants.)
...and how does your concept of "national security" involve infringing on our God-given rights, using the media to create widespread fear (e.g. duct-tape and plastic bagging, etc.), and attacking the Middle East (and planning to since Day One of the current administration)?
You don't sound too libertarian to me. You sound like a rather weak-spined "political migrant" who latched onto the libertarian ideology for the ego boost, and jumped to the neoconservative camp (since that's where all the beta-male jingoists are these days).
IIRC, Microsoft did the same thing with a service pack for NT 4, adding new features that broke existing systems. Didn't they learn? Why isn't the service pack limited to fixes? Why couldn't they throw the firewall in an Option Pack? At least I know I'll never use XP again.
Don't blame him. He's blindly spouting rhetoric. The reason he's a neocon is because neoconservatism strongly appeals to insecure people...i.e., nerds. Neoconservatism is a "manly man" political philosophy. (I'm trying to remain as neutral as possible.) Neoconservative rhetoric appeals to the insecure because it makes people feel dominant, in control, alpha-male, and morally superior.
As far as I'm concerned, as a recovered ex-neoconservative, this rhetoric does not correlate with reality. However, I can't blame him. It's taken him over like a virus, just like it had done to me. Even the most logically rigorous are prone to this powerful fallacy.
Sonic Advance for the GBA takes absolutely no skill at all. Sure, it's fun, but it's not a real Sonic game. Sonic games do take skill. Pick up Sonic 2 and play it. If all you do is hold right and press Jump at the right times, you'll Fail It in minutes. But Sonic 1 & 2 are still more fun.
How is the diversity of Linux implementations a "failure"? While the less technical among us may prefer something more like Lycoris or Xandros, other people might want something more like plain old Red Hat. Then there are the source code riceboy types that like Gentoo. Me? Slackware or LFS. There's something for everybody. How is this a failure?
I'm not sure what you're talking about. I have yet to find a website that won't work in Firefox.
Not only that, but tabbed browsing seems to encourage this. It's like some depraved addiction.
I'll be waiting for the gummint to launch the War On Tabs. Meanwhile, I'm off to rehab (NCSA Mosaic).
Ever since I first browsed at -1, that day I got mod points and went out to "look for abuses", I've found it consistently more entertaining.
It does. The N64 wavetable synth owns all. I'm talking about the digital audio effects, voices, etc. I always thought they were quite lo-fi, and I believe I stated that's probably due to the limits of the cartridge.
GoldenEye/Perfect Dark. 'Nuff said.
Well, I'll elaborate. 60fps on a TV is ridiculous. The TV is interlaced, yielding a net 30fps. No one wanted 60fps super-high-res graphics on a console either. That's not the point. I'm talking about the slowdowns you get, like in Perfect Dark. Perfect Dark is INCREDIBLE, barring the FPS flaw.
Relatively, that is.
Ha! Maybe that's why I stopped playing video games when I met my girlfriend...
While I do, on occasion, troll, whether out of boredom or chemical means, this was not meant as a troll. This is too nerdy a subject to troll about.
Let me elaborate on my previous comment.
When I suggest Nintendo shot themselves in the foot with the N64, I simply think it could have been so much better. Losing Final Fantasy VII due to their stubbornness on media type was a horrible decision. Likewise, the sound capabilities of the N64 are almost inexcusable[1]; whether this was the fault of the sound hardware or the simple lack of storage space on the cartridge, I don't know. The N64 had framerate and memory issues too--the expansion pack solved some problems, but should not have been needed in the first place. (Don't get me started on Nintendo's add-on gimmickry...)
The Nintendo 64 could've rocked the PSX's world if it was done right, but sadly it wasn't. We got our kickass first/second party titles (even though I never liked Rare's 3D platformer offerings) but got lackluster third-party support, which plagues Nintendo to this day.
The GameCube overcame the technical limitations of the N64 but by that time it was too late; Nintendo had firmly wedged itself into its current reputation. The sheer quantity of third-party titles that we had with the SNES is gone. And let's not get started on Rare[2].
I've always been a Nintendo fanboy--I'll admit that. But lately, Nintendo is starting to wear me out. Once, we were a Nintendo-only house. NES, SNES, N64, GameBoy, you know. Nowadays, we gave a PSX, PS2, and a Dreamcast along with our GameCube. I've been losing my dedication to Nintendo lately, seeing all the Great Games on the PS2 I was missing out on. Now, I've sold out. So shoot me. Or Nintendo.
[1] And if it wasn't for the Great Games of the N64; i.e. Super Mario 64 (still one of the greatest games of all time), Zelda 5 (the GameCube port kicks ass, by the way), StarFox 64 (one of the greatest games made), Paper Mario (say what you want but I still enjoyed it), GoldenEye (BEST. CONSOLE FPS. EVAR.), Superman 64 (I'm kidding); it would have been completely inexcusable.
Their control of the handheld market is the only thing keeping them alive. They've made horrible decisions with the N64 and GameCube. They're killing themselves!
I think I'll be in my corner hugging my Super NES and weeping.
Good point. I think it's the constant flood of unimaginative sameness that's burning gamers out.
Sony seems to be successful with that formula, however. And Nintendo's struggling despite all their innovations. I think it's not as much saturation as it is simply lack of Great Games.
Let's face it. In recent years, the amount of Great Games released has dropped. I can't remember the last time we got a game like Zelda 3 or FF7 or Super Mario World or Secret of Mana or Chrono Trigger or all the other masterpieces we've seen in the history of console gaming. The GameBoy hasn't seen a new Super Mario game since the mid 1990s, and does Wario Land 1 even count? We've had rehashes, rehashes, and more rehashes. I'm worried that Nintendo is about to do the same thing with the DS, reading about Super Mario 64X4.
Good troll, you'd win my mod points, but it also brings up a good point about culture. The demographics are simply different.
Gaming in America simply doesn't take the same cultural role as it does in Japan. Gaming here is largely casual. While I woed the death of the "hardcore gamer" and the overrun of Joe Schmo with his X-Box into the gaming world, the casual Joe Gamer is by far the largest market. Japan really doesn't have a casual Joe Gamer, thus they don't really release "casual games". Most, if not all, Japanese games are deep, engrossing, and masterpieces in their own right. When they come over here, they get the "hardcore gamer" market, since the average American gaming nerd scoops this stuff up, whether it's a masterpiece or simply mediocre. Plus, there's the fanboy effect.
However, in Japan, the quality will make or break the game, and their tastes are much more discriminating. It seems that Japanese gamers are simply burning out of the latest round of less-than-wonderful games. Maybe it's a retro thing. Who knows. I suppose Japanese gamers are burned out of the latest fare in gaming.
This is a problem America will never have, because America is much more casual in this respect. The Japanese gamers are quite serious about it, while American gamers aren't. Thus, the Japanese market is much more vulnerable to losing ground because of sheer mediocrity.
As an aside, even as a Nintendo fanboy I'm starting to doubt their latest developments, and I'm quite skeptical that the Nintendo DS will save Nintendo. Nintendo has suffered from games built around gimmicks lately, like Luigi's Mansion for the GameCube controller, the E-Reader, the GC-GBA connectivity, and now the "dual-screen" gimmick. It's starting to get old.
The difference is that of culture. In America, the gaming industry is quite buoyant because the typical American gamer is simply different than the typical Japanese gamer.
The typical American gamer is not "hardcore"; he is a casual gamer who plays with friends, or simply for light entertainment. He isn't "into" games like the typical Japanese gamer, who is, for lack of a better term, a nerd. He simply wants to play his Madden 2004 on his X-Box with his homeez.
That's also why the X-Box never took off in Japan. The demographic the X-Box is marketed to in America simply doesn't exist in Japan.
(oh and first post propz to gnaa etc)
Actually, white people have less melanin, because melanin absorbs sunlight radiation and blocks the synthesis of Vitamin D.
The sun does not cast down Vitamin D.
If you're using Slackware, you shouldn't have to ask this question, but... :P
Dropline GNOME All you'll ever need for Slackware GNOME
Sorry I misidentified you. The fact of the matter is that Israel's crushing of the Palestinian people's freedom may be quite abhorrent, but comparing Israel to Hitler is just plain despicable. Israel is not Hitler's Nazi Germany. It is not as much of a slur against Israel as it is a trivialization of the evil of Nazi Germany.
This is truly a great thing. The Dreamcast really is the Apple II of consoles. Hobbyist hacking is truly a lost art.