I decided many years ago that telemarketing was too high a price for allowing incoming calls. So I do not. Anyone who wishes to speak with me by phone must inform me by email and give me a time to call. I will then call them. After I finish the call, I unplug the phone. Oh... no cell phone either. Life is much improved.
Meh... all of this mouse psychology stuff came out in the Pinky and The Brain cartoon series. So now we have a bunch of deranged scientists doing the whole series script, no doubt at taxpayer expense through some pork barrel grant. Pretty cush I must admit, sit around and watch cartoons and then turn them into exciting "scientific" experiments. Seem to remember may 7 or 8 years ago MIT students set up a web site showing a variety of cute mice. People who registered got to vote on which cute little mouse would be treated with catnip and given to a mean looking tom cat to play with the following Friday night. Think the school made them take it down.... Maybe these are the same students...
My favorite, but no longer obscure. Puppy is now v. 5.0 and # 10 in page hit ranking on Distrowatch. Puppy is arguably the cutest distribution, the most sincere distribution, and the most beloved distribution. Not to mention very compact, very capable, very easy to install or run live, and very extensible. Try some now! Try some today! Puppy is good for you! Everyone should know about it!
By George $1 trillion is a lot of money! And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg! Imagine how much more the geologists could find if they were not dodging bullets all the time.
Now let us be practical and reasonable. Extraction will be much easier if the country is uninhabited.
It is time to declare the native population surplus and obsolete and zero them out.
Well... perhaps not all... We will put the "good ones" on reservations. Plenty of firewater. They will be happy.
Intelligent design or not. How many signs of human intelligence have you seen lately? Perhaps there is an intelligent alien species somewhere.
I get very tired of the ID people trying to convince me that vicious parasites were carefully and intentionally designed by The Designer.
I get even more tired of the fanatical preachers of Holy Evolution, most of whom have never even bothered to read Darwin, nor anything else for that matter. They "know" that evolution is a fact in much the same way that Medieval Europeans "knew" that the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin was a "fact." Both sides of the controversy wildly cackle trash in the belief they are communicating something useful. A plague on both your houses.
In 1985 I decided television itself was $#*! and I got rid of mine. For 25 years almost I have not watched television, will not even stay in the room if there is a television running. And I am the better for it. How wonderful to be free of the torrent of advertisements for useless $#*!, the stupid programs, the newscasters who spewed nothing but bull$#*!.
Ten years ago, I got rid of that noisy box known as radio. Life is much more peaceful now. Yeah, I keep a windup radio around in case there is a disaster such as nuclear war where I might receive useful information from it.
Glance at the headlines on the internet, that's about it. Will not watch videos on the internet either.
It is not an occasional naughty word that is bad for children. It is Mass Media that is bad for both children and adults. Cut yourself off from Mass Media for a couple of months, or at least minimize your exposure, and you will see what I mean.
At least a good number of us don't. A larger number don't understand the steam and have heard many horror stories. So some fair percentage of your potential Civ 5 players are likely to give this one a pass. Sid, I don't know what you're smoking, but I suggest you smoke something else!
He is not to be believed because he plays chess, reason enough.
Let us instead make a list of abductees who could really create a stir with their story.
Richard Dawkins, my personal favorite nominee. President Obama of course. More?
True flibbidyfloo, guess I'll claim the last 20 years and yes most of the games sucked. They did not live up to their hype or even their specs.
I do not want to see good short games, really. I don't mind paying $60 or more either. But I do want to make sure I am getting a game I will really like.
So, what is my game acquisition strategy these days?
1. Let the game be out long enough for the "new" to wear off.
2. Check in to the forums, see what the players are complaining about. Pay particular attention to the tech issues forums. It may be best to wait for a high patch level before considering the game again.
3. If the game is any good at all there should be some game play or play through videos on YouTube to watch. These will tell you more than all the hype and pro reviews. Read player reviews on metacritic and similar sites.
4. The ultimate degeneracy. The ultimate lazy. The game doesn't look worth buying, but watching someone else play it turns out to be entertaining. Spend some hours watching someone else do all the work while chugging cokes and snorting popcorn! And call it a day!
Oh, yes. I agree the Indie game developers sometimes produce really good games for a low low price. So I keep an eye on ImpulseDriven and hang around gog.com for good deals on old classics.
This analysis is wrong. Lies, damn lies, and statistics. Complexity, game length, and difficulty are not the problems.
Good tutorials, a learning stage in the game, and consistent smooth increase of difficulty are what are often missing.
The best game reward that will keep players coming back for more is the growing realization that "hey, I'm getting good at this!" They cannot have that reward unless there is something to get good at!
Look at the most successful game franchises, consistent money makers for the developers and publishers over the years. Go ye and do likewise and ye shall be rich and famous.
The "vocal minority on the forums" is of concern. All of us have seen games become focused on a tiny minority of the players. All too many games. There may be 5% of the players involved in PvP, but the entire game gets rebalanced for PvP, the ordinary casual PvE players and new players completely forgotten. Completely forgotten until sales evaporate and the casual players pack it in and leave; and by then it is often too late to ever restore the player base. All of us can fill pages with examples and anecdotes of the downfall and demise of this or that game.
Since I am buying no more Ubisoft games, fine with me. And not buying Ubisoft is even greener!
Actually, this policy is not new. The great manuals of olden days were cut down to mere pamphlets with the same argument.
Will Civ 5 have a good manual? Probably.
Will SC2 come with a good manual? Bet they want you to buy the strategy guide instead.
All the games I get by digital download come with.pdf manuals, no real problem. And you read Keybindings through the Options interface anyway.
If governments have not come to any solid conclusions over this long period of time, it is very unlikely a university course will have anything significant to contribute. Except a raging debate between the skeptics and the true believers.
In the late fall of 1965 I trudged over to where the PDP-1 or 6, can't remember, was located. Down in some basement. There was an open demo of Spacewar and the room was packed. I stayed until the wee hours of the morning and finally got a chance to play for 5 or 10 minutes. I was fascinated. Fast forward to 2008 and Sins of a Solar Empire came out. Playing it, I had to chuckle a bit. It made me remember Spacewar. Gravity wells, hyperspace, ships firing torpedoes and other mayhem. Brought back old memories.
Chess began as a symbolic war game. The pawns were swordsmen, the knights were knights, the rooks were war elephants, etc. The same principle might apply to other board games with opposing sides, such as checkers.
PC and Console Games, anybody's guess really as to how the legislation will be written in each country. The clash between market demand as fulfilled by game developers and the perceived need for protecting the mental health of children has led to this crisis, which may turn into a growing international crisis all too soon.
MIT, Eli.
Ref your signature, the bizarre coincidence of Nazi and Nazirite, English Bible spelling. I also remember, either in The Source by James Michener, or The Exodus by Leon Uris, that the new Israeli government needed an air force and found that what they could afford was a bunch of Messerschmitt 109s which were at the time very surplus and very cheap. They arrived with swastikas still painted on the stabilizers. In spite of several attempts to paint the swastikas out of existence, they continued to shine through after the new paint had dried and set. Might want to look this one up.
Stardock seems to have grown and prospered by selling games that have no DRM on the disk. A "friend" gives you a copy, you can see if you like it. If you do like it and want bug fixes, updates, and other benefits, then you go online, register, and pay for it. Works for them, maybe, because their games appeal to more intelligent gamers who are also usually honest. The big houses that sell games that are mostly fluff aimed at the 95% of gamers who only have fluff for brains have to defend themselves against the subhuman fuel screws that are their chosen market.
Might have been Charles Pellegrino who said that intelligent life would not long stay on a planet if they had a better option such as living on space constructs. Space constructs might most likely be found near proto star systems where a true star never formed and never blew away all the clouds of organics and heavy elements. Nanotech harvesters, fusion power, communication by point to point laser. Or communication by something we have not even the power to conceive of yet. Only real signature would be heat and we do not have the space borne technology to do a significant survey for something as subtle as that.
Fred Hoyle and Arthur C. Clarke also provided alternatives that would make intelligent alien life almost impossible to detect, even if they were actually here!
The odds we are facing with our present technology resemble finding a needle in a haystack, where it could be hid in any one of all the haystacks on earth during harvest season but no way to tell which it might be.
I grew up in Dallas long ago when text books were even more conservative. I do not remember anyone being influenced by the views therein. Everyone knew that the text books were simple strokes for bears of little brain. The bears of little brain understood this as well, so in the end nobody paid much attention to text books.
By age 16 I had read Darwin's Origin of Species and The Voyage of the Beagle. I was surprised that neither those who were pro evolution nor those who were anti evolution had bothered to do so. So I ignored both camps. College in Massachusetts, much the same. Students might be on the side of "science" but had remarkable little knowledge of science itself.
Probably what is needed is text books that can also double as toilet paper. At least that way you could get some use out of them.
Their applications are very limited. Leave them with XP since it is working for them.
You should only suggest Linux as an alternative if they are considering a netbook. But just suggest it, let them decide.
Nothing and nobody is served by becoming an evangelist for Linux. It is just another operating system, nothing more.
I think the unofficial motto of various aerospace corporations used to be, "Everything we make either kills people or gives them cancer!"
When you think about it, the military industrial complex is focused on developing destructive devices. You don't see them building farm tractors or a new line of gardening tools.
So, if you are an engineer perhaps it is only a matter of choosing an employer.
I have never noticed engineers being conservative nor particularly religious neither.
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I decided many years ago that telemarketing was too high a price for allowing incoming calls. So I do not. Anyone who wishes to speak with me by phone must inform me by email and give me a time to call. I will then call them. After I finish the call, I unplug the phone. Oh ... no cell phone either. Life is much improved.
Meh ... all of this mouse psychology stuff came out in the Pinky and The Brain cartoon series. So now we have a bunch of deranged scientists doing the whole series script, no doubt at taxpayer expense through some pork barrel grant. Pretty cush I must admit, sit around and watch cartoons and then turn them into exciting "scientific" experiments. Seem to remember may 7 or 8 years ago MIT students set up a web site showing a variety of cute mice. People who registered got to vote on which cute little mouse would be treated with catnip and given to a mean looking tom cat to play with the following Friday night. Think the school made them take it down. ... Maybe these are the same students ...
My favorite, but no longer obscure. Puppy is now v. 5.0 and # 10 in page hit ranking on Distrowatch. Puppy is arguably the cutest distribution, the most sincere distribution, and the most beloved distribution. Not to mention very compact, very capable, very easy to install or run live, and very extensible. Try some now! Try some today! Puppy is good for you! Everyone should know about it!
By George $1 trillion is a lot of money! And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg! Imagine how much more the geologists could find if they were not dodging bullets all the time. Now let us be practical and reasonable. Extraction will be much easier if the country is uninhabited. It is time to declare the native population surplus and obsolete and zero them out. Well ... perhaps not all ... We will put the "good ones" on reservations. Plenty of firewater. They will be happy.
Intelligent design or not. How many signs of human intelligence have you seen lately? Perhaps there is an intelligent alien species somewhere. I get very tired of the ID people trying to convince me that vicious parasites were carefully and intentionally designed by The Designer. I get even more tired of the fanatical preachers of Holy Evolution, most of whom have never even bothered to read Darwin, nor anything else for that matter. They "know" that evolution is a fact in much the same way that Medieval Europeans "knew" that the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin was a "fact." Both sides of the controversy wildly cackle trash in the belief they are communicating something useful. A plague on both your houses.
In 1985 I decided television itself was $#*! and I got rid of mine. For 25 years almost I have not watched television, will not even stay in the room if there is a television running. And I am the better for it. How wonderful to be free of the torrent of advertisements for useless $#*!, the stupid programs, the newscasters who spewed nothing but bull$#*!. Ten years ago, I got rid of that noisy box known as radio. Life is much more peaceful now. Yeah, I keep a windup radio around in case there is a disaster such as nuclear war where I might receive useful information from it. Glance at the headlines on the internet, that's about it. Will not watch videos on the internet either. It is not an occasional naughty word that is bad for children. It is Mass Media that is bad for both children and adults. Cut yourself off from Mass Media for a couple of months, or at least minimize your exposure, and you will see what I mean.
At least a good number of us don't. A larger number don't understand the steam and have heard many horror stories. So some fair percentage of your potential Civ 5 players are likely to give this one a pass. Sid, I don't know what you're smoking, but I suggest you smoke something else!
He is not to be believed because he plays chess, reason enough. Let us instead make a list of abductees who could really create a stir with their story. Richard Dawkins, my personal favorite nominee. President Obama of course. More?
True flibbidyfloo, guess I'll claim the last 20 years and yes most of the games sucked. They did not live up to their hype or even their specs. I do not want to see good short games, really. I don't mind paying $60 or more either. But I do want to make sure I am getting a game I will really like. So, what is my game acquisition strategy these days? 1. Let the game be out long enough for the "new" to wear off. 2. Check in to the forums, see what the players are complaining about. Pay particular attention to the tech issues forums. It may be best to wait for a high patch level before considering the game again. 3. If the game is any good at all there should be some game play or play through videos on YouTube to watch. These will tell you more than all the hype and pro reviews. Read player reviews on metacritic and similar sites. 4. The ultimate degeneracy. The ultimate lazy. The game doesn't look worth buying, but watching someone else play it turns out to be entertaining. Spend some hours watching someone else do all the work while chugging cokes and snorting popcorn! And call it a day! Oh, yes. I agree the Indie game developers sometimes produce really good games for a low low price. So I keep an eye on ImpulseDriven and hang around gog.com for good deals on old classics.
This analysis is wrong. Lies, damn lies, and statistics. Complexity, game length, and difficulty are not the problems. Good tutorials, a learning stage in the game, and consistent smooth increase of difficulty are what are often missing. The best game reward that will keep players coming back for more is the growing realization that "hey, I'm getting good at this!" They cannot have that reward unless there is something to get good at! Look at the most successful game franchises, consistent money makers for the developers and publishers over the years. Go ye and do likewise and ye shall be rich and famous. The "vocal minority on the forums" is of concern. All of us have seen games become focused on a tiny minority of the players. All too many games. There may be 5% of the players involved in PvP, but the entire game gets rebalanced for PvP, the ordinary casual PvE players and new players completely forgotten. Completely forgotten until sales evaporate and the casual players pack it in and leave; and by then it is often too late to ever restore the player base. All of us can fill pages with examples and anecdotes of the downfall and demise of this or that game.
Since I am buying no more Ubisoft games, fine with me. And not buying Ubisoft is even greener! Actually, this policy is not new. The great manuals of olden days were cut down to mere pamphlets with the same argument. Will Civ 5 have a good manual? Probably. Will SC2 come with a good manual? Bet they want you to buy the strategy guide instead. All the games I get by digital download come with .pdf manuals, no real problem. And you read Keybindings through the Options interface anyway.
If governments have not come to any solid conclusions over this long period of time, it is very unlikely a university course will have anything significant to contribute. Except a raging debate between the skeptics and the true believers.
In the late fall of 1965 I trudged over to where the PDP-1 or 6, can't remember, was located. Down in some basement. There was an open demo of Spacewar and the room was packed. I stayed until the wee hours of the morning and finally got a chance to play for 5 or 10 minutes. I was fascinated. Fast forward to 2008 and Sins of a Solar Empire came out. Playing it, I had to chuckle a bit. It made me remember Spacewar. Gravity wells, hyperspace, ships firing torpedoes and other mayhem. Brought back old memories.
Yes, we do. And I'm probably old enough to be your grandfather!
Chess began as a symbolic war game. The pawns were swordsmen, the knights were knights, the rooks were war elephants, etc. The same principle might apply to other board games with opposing sides, such as checkers. PC and Console Games, anybody's guess really as to how the legislation will be written in each country. The clash between market demand as fulfilled by game developers and the perceived need for protecting the mental health of children has led to this crisis, which may turn into a growing international crisis all too soon.
MIT, Eli. Ref your signature, the bizarre coincidence of Nazi and Nazirite, English Bible spelling. I also remember, either in The Source by James Michener, or The Exodus by Leon Uris, that the new Israeli government needed an air force and found that what they could afford was a bunch of Messerschmitt 109s which were at the time very surplus and very cheap. They arrived with swastikas still painted on the stabilizers. In spite of several attempts to paint the swastikas out of existence, they continued to shine through after the new paint had dried and set. Might want to look this one up.
Stardock seems to have grown and prospered by selling games that have no DRM on the disk. A "friend" gives you a copy, you can see if you like it. If you do like it and want bug fixes, updates, and other benefits, then you go online, register, and pay for it. Works for them, maybe, because their games appeal to more intelligent gamers who are also usually honest. The big houses that sell games that are mostly fluff aimed at the 95% of gamers who only have fluff for brains have to defend themselves against the subhuman fuel screws that are their chosen market.
For some reason when I read this I immediately thought of Animal House and the dead horse in the Dean's office.
Might have been Charles Pellegrino who said that intelligent life would not long stay on a planet if they had a better option such as living on space constructs. Space constructs might most likely be found near proto star systems where a true star never formed and never blew away all the clouds of organics and heavy elements. Nanotech harvesters, fusion power, communication by point to point laser. Or communication by something we have not even the power to conceive of yet. Only real signature would be heat and we do not have the space borne technology to do a significant survey for something as subtle as that. Fred Hoyle and Arthur C. Clarke also provided alternatives that would make intelligent alien life almost impossible to detect, even if they were actually here! The odds we are facing with our present technology resemble finding a needle in a haystack, where it could be hid in any one of all the haystacks on earth during harvest season but no way to tell which it might be.
I grew up in Dallas long ago when text books were even more conservative. I do not remember anyone being influenced by the views therein. Everyone knew that the text books were simple strokes for bears of little brain. The bears of little brain understood this as well, so in the end nobody paid much attention to text books. By age 16 I had read Darwin's Origin of Species and The Voyage of the Beagle. I was surprised that neither those who were pro evolution nor those who were anti evolution had bothered to do so. So I ignored both camps. College in Massachusetts, much the same. Students might be on the side of "science" but had remarkable little knowledge of science itself. Probably what is needed is text books that can also double as toilet paper. At least that way you could get some use out of them.
Their applications are very limited. Leave them with XP since it is working for them. You should only suggest Linux as an alternative if they are considering a netbook. But just suggest it, let them decide. Nothing and nobody is served by becoming an evangelist for Linux. It is just another operating system, nothing more.
I think the unofficial motto of various aerospace corporations used to be, "Everything we make either kills people or gives them cancer!" When you think about it, the military industrial complex is focused on developing destructive devices. You don't see them building farm tractors or a new line of gardening tools. So, if you are an engineer perhaps it is only a matter of choosing an employer. I have never noticed engineers being conservative nor particularly religious neither.