So did I, I don't think FFX fell anywhere. It combined a lot of what was good about FF VII, plus a few more interesting things to do (the temple puzzles, e.g.) and it was easier. Yes, I prefer an easier game, though many others don't. I also much prefer the "wait your turn" method of combat because I'm very slow.
Interesting you said you've just started playing FFX-2: me too.
You may only have paid $20 for your phone, but that's not what it's worth. If you lose it they'll charge you full whack for the replacement (more like $200-$400)
Not necessarily. I broke my phone and T-mobile sent me a new free phone (actually better than what it replaced, which I paid money for) for extending my contract another two months.
Rolexes cost tens of thousands of dollars (and are, IMHO, butt-ugly!). The majority of decent (non digital) watches cost over $100, $200 is actually quite low end (as it happens, mine cost I think $199). Again, I expect it to last for years.
I think there are some Rolexes in the $2000-$3000 range, but if I'm spending a bunch of money on a watch, I want it to do somethinguseful.
But then, you aren't typically taking your watch off and leaving it places; unlike my sunglasses, which I'm in the habit of losing.
Shall we start the first slashdot sunglasses flamewar?
Seriously, I find Natives to be better put-together than Oakleys for about two-thirds the price (around $100 for good sunglasses with polarized lenses is pretty good these days). Plus they have a killer warranty (though not against loss--too bad but understandable). Anyway, I really got my Natives to replace a pair of Oakleys I lost. I liked the Oakleys but the Natives fit me better, which is how you should pick sunglasses anyway.
hiding GTA behind a counter isn't much "punishment", but where do we stop?
Slippery slope arguments don't hold water. Where do we stop? We make sure we check with the parents of a child when we're planning on giving them things that are generally accepted to be adults-only. That's it. The idea that this is somehow onerous or restrictive is absurd.
The fact is, parents aren't perfect. They make mistakes. Time and mental energy are at a premium when you are a parent. I know roughly what' s in the GTA games--and recently explained to a fellow parent, whose child had asked for it as a gift.
They were going to buy it until I cautioned them otherwise. Guess what? That doesn't mean they "should never have had kids in the first place" or couldn't "be bothered to take an active role in their childrens' lives," it just means there was something they didn't know. Guess what? There's lots of things I don't know about being a parent. And my guess is that there are a lot of things you don't know about being a parent--all of it.
Well, the general argument is that the video game industry doesn't need to be regulated by law because they do a good enough job themselves (by "industry" we're pretty much referring to publishers, distributors and retailers, I would think).
I don't understand your statement, "If the parents of these kids don't care where the kids spend their money, why should the clerk at the game store?" Are you saying that a parent needs to follow their teenager around to check on where they spend their money, and if they don't they "don't care?" That's just silly.
The fact is that there are things that are generally accepted to be for adults only, and it's reasonable to expect the purveyors of it to check with a child's parents before letting them have it. If the industry isn't responsible enough to do this itself, then yes, they do need to be required by a law to do so.
Two subpoints (am I tiresome yet?): Is the issue really one of selling the game or playing it? That is, the child needs to play it somewhere, right? I have no problem with the expectation that I keep tabs on what my kid's playing in my home. If I didn't think there was enough supervision in a friend's home and it was becoming a problem, I might not let them visit, either. So that, actually, I think is a more effective argument against whether an ESRB-style rating and enforcement should be required by law. Then again, game boys and so forth--but the technology isn't there to put something that offensive on a GBA. Maybe not so far off, though.
Secondly: I had quite a bit of money I earned myself when I was 12. I was a little unusual but not that much. But I certainly had enough to buy many toys and videogames.
Again, Japanese culture VS the USA culture. If you WANT to see domestic violence and abuse, you're a sicko- go someplace else.
Sorry, but this statement is very silly. Stories about human beings might include domestic violence. Books, movies--why not video games? Not video games for kids, certainly, but this is what is meant by the author when he says these rules locked Nintendo into being a "kiddie" company.
I watch The Sopranos--it doesn't make me a sicko, and neither would a video game showing domestic violence in a similar context.
Re:From the next-article-please dept.
on
Rio Karma User Review
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Um, if your music collection is in ogg files, then any music player that doesn't play them is just a pretty lump of plastic.
I've been using arch for a while now. It's true that some of the setup is "too difficult"--it discourages adoption, but really, the documentation is quite good and example-laden.
I think the two real weaknesses of Arch are (and neither of these are showstoppers for me and well worth the Arch-y goodness):
Lack of keyword substitution. I believe Tom's explicit position is that keyword substitution is properly the job of some kind of build or release system outside of version control, and that's probably right; but I like embedded version numbers and so forth.
Hooks are client-side-only. Since arch doesn't count on a particular storage backend or access method, it means you can't write hooks that force, for example, certain tests, or does notifications, upon commit or other actions on the tree. I think this is a more serious weakness; but to fix it might mean giving up the advantages of a server-free implementation.
In many cities, there are safety agencies that teach basic safe-driving classes, including a road course. There are expensive classes, as well, at places like Skip Barber and Bondurant that teach safe, fast driving. Our basic driver education includes written information on skid recovery but no practicum.
You call the Suburban owner "not-so-bright" but the CRX driver plows into a parked car? Sounds like the Suburban owner did exactly the right thing, and protected the accident victims from an unsafe driver.
This is a good post getting the subject of the discussion back, I think, to where it belongs, which is that the hazard was specific, not general (that is, it doesn't have anything to do with solar power, minivans, or Hummers). A bad steering accident like this could have as easily sent the young man and the car off a cliff, with equally fatal results.
Well, it takes some practice and skill to do proper skid-recovery in a regular vehicle (I speak as someone who as done it both successfully and spectacularly unsuccessfully), but the "at-the-limit" steering characteristics for a car like this are essentially unknown. And for another thing, most skid-type situations in a car are caused by excess speed, but I would be very surprised if the car were traveling anything like fast enough to actually break loose the tires. So while overcorrection may have been an issue, I don't think there would really have been any way to predictably recover from whatever situation it was that caused it. That's pure speculation straight from ignorance.
It's clear that the organizers and traffic regulators were anticipating one kind of hazard--probably low speed--by having the guard vehicles in front and behind. Probably no one anticipated that at these low speeds a solar car would "veer out of control." I will also bet the car was pretty low on instrumentation so we may never know exactly what caused it, but clearly the safety matters surrounding challenges like this need to be re-examined.
My impression is that you're correct. I'd love to be able to say that commercial trucks have fewer accidents per mile than passenger cars, and it seems reasonable that that's true, but does anyone know of any studies or information to back that up?
You have it correct, but in addition to the impact being too high, this also causes the heavy SUV to "climb" onto the top of the other car in an accident.
The British on the other hand will, when offended, either use insults that the average American don't quite "get", or will smear it on thick with dry sarcasm that tends to pass straight over the heads of the stereotypical obnoxious US tourist...
Probably partly right, but there is also a commitment to politeness in Britain that shouldn't be underestimated.
Leaving aside the international aspect for a moment, I think you've missed what is the real beauty part of the GPL:
In order for someone to use the software at all, for any purpose, they must assert the GPL, because they would have no rights to use, modify, incorporate or distribute otherwise. That is, in your scenario, if the GPL is "invalid" then all those people who downloaded your software can't use it. Period.
Clever, right? RMS must have known what he was doing.
I had nightmares about Darth Vader but not the stormtroopers. In fact I never did think they were "things"--just soldiers in body armor--and the story of their genesis in AotC I found really jarring and out of place.
Is the idea that they can't just be regular people unpalatable now because the good guys killed so many of them?
Or really, just a guy with a gun and a clear shot at Davros, at the right time. Actually, it would be a sort of interesting storyline to see the Doctor take out the Daleks once and for all--as I think he attempted to do once--by preventing their genesis, and examine the perhaps unintended consequences of such an action, such as an even worse yet royalty-free scourge taking their place.
Thanks, but it doesn't really address any of what I asked for. The man page you reference describes how to build a release--that isn't what I need since I can mirror the releases just fine. site.tgz doesn't help, because you still have to have someone sitting there partitioning the disk, selecting the install URL, selecting the disk sets, plus the site.tgz set, and doing other monkey-activities that you can avoid with a good kickstart disk--these are what I would want to automate through a custom bsd.rd. I understand that this is probably already possible--I'm asking for it to be convenient.
And if you're meaning to imply that I should apply a source patch, rebuild a release and then go through the reboot-upgrade cycle on 400 machines, in order to apply a security update; well, that would be impractical. With Debian, on the other hand, this couldn't be easier.
Better resumability/recoverability during the install would be nice, and the ability to easily build custom bsd.rd's that run your own install
script/whatever for mass provisioning, would be nice.
I would like semi-automatic security updating
like you can get with Debian's apt-get.
It's also interesting that there's been a lot of recent discussion about the problems people have playing classic games on new PCs: for example, Tomb Raider, the original is a great game but it's hard (I hear) to get playing on a new PC. I love the fact I can just pop the game in my PS2 and play it, and without the disadvantages of keeping the old console around.
Plus, you know, things break. I really hope the PS3 has PS2 and PS1 emulation so I can continue to play all my games, even the old one, with one console. Without this support, even if you can keep the old consoles around they eventually break and it's not the same as if there is current support for the platform.
Slashdot Mirror
So did I, I don't think FFX fell anywhere. It combined a lot of what was good about FF VII, plus a few more interesting things to do (the temple puzzles, e.g.) and it was easier. Yes, I prefer an easier game, though many others don't. I also much prefer the "wait your turn" method of combat because I'm very slow.
Interesting you said you've just started playing FFX-2: me too.
Not necessarily. I broke my phone and T-mobile sent me a new free phone (actually better than what it replaced, which I paid money for) for extending my contract another two months.
I think there are some Rolexes in the $2000-$3000 range, but if I'm spending a bunch of money on a watch, I want it to do something useful.
But then, you aren't typically taking your watch off and leaving it places; unlike my sunglasses, which I'm in the habit of losing.
No way, man, Native rules!
Shall we start the first slashdot sunglasses flamewar?
Seriously, I find Natives to be better put-together than Oakleys for about two-thirds the price (around $100 for good sunglasses with polarized lenses is pretty good these days). Plus they have a killer warranty (though not against loss--too bad but understandable). Anyway, I really got my Natives to replace a pair of Oakleys I lost. I liked the Oakleys but the Natives fit me better, which is how you should pick sunglasses anyway.
Slippery slope arguments don't hold water. Where do we stop? We make sure we check with the parents of a child when we're planning on giving them things that are generally accepted to be adults-only. That's it. The idea that this is somehow onerous or restrictive is absurd.
The fact is, parents aren't perfect. They make mistakes. Time and mental energy are at a premium when you are a parent. I know roughly what' s in the GTA games--and recently explained to a fellow parent, whose child had asked for it as a gift.
They were going to buy it until I cautioned them otherwise. Guess what? That doesn't mean they "should never have had kids in the first place" or couldn't "be bothered to take an active role in their childrens' lives," it just means there was something they didn't know. Guess what? There's lots of things I don't know about being a parent. And my guess is that there are a lot of things you don't know about being a parent--all of it.
Well, the general argument is that the video game industry doesn't need to be regulated by law because they do a good enough job themselves (by "industry" we're pretty much referring to publishers, distributors and retailers, I would think).
I don't understand your statement, "If the parents of these kids don't care where the kids spend their money, why should the clerk at the game store?" Are you saying that a parent needs to follow their teenager around to check on where they spend their money, and if they don't they "don't care?" That's just silly.
The fact is that there are things that are generally accepted to be for adults only, and it's reasonable to expect the purveyors of it to check with a child's parents before letting them have it. If the industry isn't responsible enough to do this itself, then yes, they do need to be required by a law to do so.
Two subpoints (am I tiresome yet?): Is the issue really one of selling the game or playing it? That is, the child needs to play it somewhere, right? I have no problem with the expectation that I keep tabs on what my kid's playing in my home. If I didn't think there was enough supervision in a friend's home and it was becoming a problem, I might not let them visit, either. So that, actually, I think is a more effective argument against whether an ESRB-style rating and enforcement should be required by law. Then again, game boys and so forth--but the technology isn't there to put something that offensive on a GBA. Maybe not so far off, though.
Secondly: I had quite a bit of money I earned myself when I was 12. I was a little unusual but not that much. But I certainly had enough to buy many toys and videogames.
Sorry, but this statement is very silly. Stories about human beings might include domestic violence. Books, movies--why not video games? Not video games for kids, certainly, but this is what is meant by the author when he says these rules locked Nintendo into being a "kiddie" company.
I watch The Sopranos--it doesn't make me a sicko, and neither would a video game showing domestic violence in a similar context.
Um, if your music collection is in ogg files, then any music player that doesn't play them is just a pretty lump of plastic.
I've been using arch for a while now. It's true that some of the setup is "too difficult"--it discourages adoption, but really, the documentation is quite good and example-laden.
I think the two real weaknesses of Arch are (and neither of these are showstoppers for me and well worth the Arch-y goodness):
Was there excessive advertising in Neuromancer? I don't remember it, but it's been a long time since I read it.
I can't believe nobody's pointed out that transparent aluminum was referenced in Neuromancer long before Star Trek IV.
I assume that a transmission as you describe would have added what they consider an unacceptable amount of weight, since that ocurred to me too.
In many cities, there are safety agencies that teach basic safe-driving classes, including a road course. There are expensive classes, as well, at places like Skip Barber and Bondurant that teach safe, fast driving. Our basic driver education includes written information on skid recovery but no practicum.
You call the Suburban owner "not-so-bright" but the CRX driver plows into a parked car? Sounds like the Suburban owner did exactly the right thing, and protected the accident victims from an unsafe driver.
This is a good post getting the subject of the discussion back, I think, to where it belongs, which is that the hazard was specific, not general (that is, it doesn't have anything to do with solar power, minivans, or Hummers). A bad steering accident like this could have as easily sent the young man and the car off a cliff, with equally fatal results.
Well, it takes some practice and skill to do proper skid-recovery in a regular vehicle (I speak as someone who as done it both successfully and spectacularly unsuccessfully), but the "at-the-limit" steering characteristics for a car like this are essentially unknown. And for another thing, most skid-type situations in a car are caused by excess speed, but I would be very surprised if the car were traveling anything like fast enough to actually break loose the tires. So while overcorrection may have been an issue, I don't think there would really have been any way to predictably recover from whatever situation it was that caused it. That's pure speculation straight from ignorance.
It's clear that the organizers and traffic regulators were anticipating one kind of hazard--probably low speed--by having the guard vehicles in front and behind. Probably no one anticipated that at these low speeds a solar car would "veer out of control." I will also bet the car was pretty low on instrumentation so we may never know exactly what caused it, but clearly the safety matters surrounding challenges like this need to be re-examined.
My impression is that you're correct. I'd love to be able to say that commercial trucks have fewer accidents per mile than passenger cars, and it seems reasonable that that's true, but does anyone know of any studies or information to back that up?
You have it correct, but in addition to the impact being too high, this also causes the heavy SUV to "climb" onto the top of the other car in an accident.
Probably partly right, but there is also a commitment to politeness in Britain that shouldn't be underestimated.
Leaving aside the international aspect for a moment, I think you've missed what is the real beauty part of the GPL:
In order for someone to use the software at all, for any purpose, they must assert the GPL, because they would have no rights to use, modify, incorporate or distribute otherwise. That is, in your scenario, if the GPL is "invalid" then all those people who downloaded your software can't use it. Period.
Clever, right? RMS must have known what he was doing.
It doesn't create anything--if you are the copyright holder, you can release your software under more than one license, as answered by the GPL FAQ.
I had nightmares about Darth Vader but not the stormtroopers. In fact I never did think they were "things"--just soldiers in body armor--and the story of their genesis in AotC I found really jarring and out of place.
Is the idea that they can't just be regular people unpalatable now because the good guys killed so many of them?
Or really, just a guy with a gun and a clear shot at Davros, at the right time. Actually, it would be a sort of interesting storyline to see the Doctor take out the Daleks once and for all--as I think he attempted to do once--by preventing their genesis, and examine the perhaps unintended consequences of such an action, such as an even worse yet royalty-free scourge taking their place.
Thanks, but it doesn't really address any of what I asked for. The man page you reference describes how to build a release--that isn't what I need since I can mirror the releases just fine. site.tgz doesn't help, because you still have to have someone sitting there partitioning the disk, selecting the install URL, selecting the disk sets, plus the site.tgz set, and doing other monkey-activities that you can avoid with a good kickstart disk--these are what I would want to automate through a custom bsd.rd. I understand that this is probably already possible--I'm asking for it to be convenient.
And if you're meaning to imply that I should apply a source patch, rebuild a release and then go through the reboot-upgrade cycle on 400 machines, in order to apply a security update; well, that would be impractical. With Debian, on the other hand, this couldn't be easier.
Better resumability/recoverability during the install would be nice, and the ability to easily build custom bsd.rd's that run your own install script/whatever for mass provisioning, would be nice.
I would like semi-automatic security updating like you can get with Debian's apt-get.
It's also interesting that there's been a lot of recent discussion about the problems people have playing classic games on new PCs: for example, Tomb Raider, the original is a great game but it's hard (I hear) to get playing on a new PC. I love the fact I can just pop the game in my PS2 and play it, and without the disadvantages of keeping the old console around.
Plus, you know, things break. I really hope the PS3 has PS2 and PS1 emulation so I can continue to play all my games, even the old one, with one console. Without this support, even if you can keep the old consoles around they eventually break and it's not the same as if there is current support for the platform.