This "where are the parents" comment always comes up. But really lets think about it a bit. There is more and more media made available in the average household which may be labeled as being for 18 and over. This doesn't mean that younger kids can't get a hold of it. It's the same situation as kids stealing their parents copy of Playboy or sneaking access to HBO. Sure, you could not have any R rated movies or M rated games in the house. You could not allow computers/consoles/dvd players in kids rooms. This still won't change the fact that if the kid really wants to see/play it he/she will probably find away. Can't buy it? Download it off the Internet. Can view or play it at home - do so at a friends house. So what do you do? Never let your kids out of your sight? Don't let your 14 year old son be at home without a parent? That would be another form of bad parenting. It is important for teenagers to be given trust and some independance as they move towards "leaving the nest".
It doesn't even integrate the application menus into the title bar. Another great part of MacOS is the fact it "just works."
Number one thing I HATE about MacOS is the application menu integrated into the title bar. And this is coming from someone who used Amigas and Macs long before Windows or UNIX/Linux. I can't tell you HOW many times on OS 9 I've had to handle support calls where the user is out of memory because they have closed all the windows and don't realize the applications are still open. Integration to the title bar makes the interface screen-centric rather than window-centric. It means you have to mouse farther every time to get to the file menu. This was fine in the old days of 15 inch monitors and single tasking but for modern windowing systems it's not intuitive at all. As for your second comment... "just works". Hahahaha Yeah sure it "just works". Sometimes, except when it doesn't - sort of like other operating systems. And yes I support OS X machines and know what I'm talking about.
CoH has pretty much replaced my nightly Battlefield and Unreal gaming. Its sort of mmorpg light. Not much plot, lots of combat, no user economy whatsoever. For some people that may seem like a negative, for myself its just right. The combat is fun and action oriented (no where near an FPS though). The variety in powers is pretty cool and each character archetype offers a different way to play. The nice thing is that there is progression and I get to see my characters grow and become more powerful. Different than with my usual FPS where its all about winning the current map.
Did you ever consider that some people may WANT to play at high res? Or with antialiasing on? I am upgrading my system - not particularly for this game or half life 2 - but because I love high quality visuals and after trying AA & aniso support in games I want to play that way. To be frank the game I play most is City of Heroes and turning on antialiasing and anisotropic filtering really improved the look of the game dramatically. So is it retarded to buy a top of the line video card? I bought a Geforce 4 4400 when they first came out for $400 - and I loved it. I bought a 5600 Ultra for $200 and was disappointed because it just didn't give me boost I wanted. So personally for me, I find upgrading a big way, less frequently gives me the most enjoyment. And why the upgrade now? The 2.4 pent 4 with 1GB DDR 333 and 5600 Ultra chokes on Far Cry unless I play at 800x600 no AA or aniso. Do I care that much about Far Cry? No not really, but its a sign that for what I want see onscreen my current setup won't cut it. I wanted to play at 640x480 I'd buy an X box. Some would call me an enthusiast - I guess you would call me a moron. I do however, shop around for prices and try to optimize my purchases to get the best bang for the buck. Saying that DDR 333 is as good as 400 or that a Celeron 2.4 is as good as an Athlon or P4 is just not true for high end applications. Try benching some video encoding on the Celeron. Believe me - I have.
Played BloodRayne and both Serious Sams all the way through. BloodRayne was way less repetitive and had better graphics (and I'm not counting the boobies). Sure it was dumb, I can't say it was dumber than Serious Sam. It had some great seriously over the top blood action sequences which reminded me of Kill Bill. All though my current favorite, I spend less than $20 on it stupid action game was Armed and Dangerous.
I don't know if this subscription is worth the cost - I guess it remains to be seen what they release on the service. I will say that StarDock's Corporate Machine is a very fun little strategy game. Quick paced and doesn't take hours to play. While compared to modern games the graphics are abyssmal, I still find myself loading it up for a quick run every now and then. Great "beer and pretzels" strategy gaming in the same way the Rails Across America is. That being said, the game is available at very low cost from resellers (once saw it for $3 at the local store). Looking forward to seeing how the Political Machine stacks up.
You're description basically shows that in a so called anarchy state - "laws" do arise irregardless of whether or not they are codified by a government. These "laws" restrict the freedom of anarchy (i.e. my neighbor will shoot me if I pick my nose in public - so therefore I cannot pick my nose in public. Ursula LeGuin wrote a great book about this occuring in an anarchistic society called "the Dispossesed". Personally I think that wherever there is no "law" there is always the law of the big stick. As in "I have a big stick and you don't. Do what I tell you to do or I will hit you on the head with it." Then again this may be the main governing law in all forms of government.
Versus the usual family time around the boob tube watching some non-interactive entertainment? I think a little Rise of Nations over the home lan is more entertaining and more educational. Besides its no different then playing a board game. Children love to play, it helps them learn. You may be bored of it at 24 because of where you are in your life. I probably played less at 24 because social life, finding a mate and developing career skills were more important.
I would agree. My house has 3 computers and PS2 and a Gamecube. My 8 year old son games and sometimes mom joins us too. We buy a ton of games for both console and PC. I think not only is the 30+ gaming crowd growing, the 30+ gaming crowd that plays with its children is growing too. I have influence over what gets bought and played in the house.
When you get a new part its hard to contain your excitement - you want it installed yesterday. This agitation can lead to all kinds of mistakes. Throughout my long history of building upgrading computers some of my favorite moments include:
Plugging my nifty Amiga video chip (Super Denise)upgrade in backwards. Causing all kinds of nice colors to appear on the screen. Luckily it didn't fry the chip.
Cranking down the lever on the socket to my brand new Pentium 200 - and then noticing that one of the pins was sticking out of it at a right angle. Several anxious seconds with a pair of tweezers straightened the pin out without breaking it off but it was a close thing.
Before embarking on any upgrade I try to sit down, lay out the components, make sure I have all my tools and get a plan of attack in my head. Oh yeah and suck down a cold one before I begin hehe.
"Just glad I decided not to buy 2&3 - I was sure they would bring out more complete disks in time (if not better-scripted)."
I'm glad I decided not to buy them too - but for entirely different reasons.
I will say - the Animatrix was pretty cool. Most of the shorts where very nicely done with decent stories. It was nice to see so many different animation styles in one place. By far more entertaining than the 2nd and 3rd movies in my opinion.
You're going to experience what most people accept as "reality" for all of the period of your life that you spend not under the influence of psychedelic drugs. It's the default state of the organism.
The thing is drugs like LSD make you realize that this EXACT point is false. They show you that what you experience in your normal reality is just that - your SUBJECTIVE reality. Colored by everything from the language you speak to how good your eyesight is to whether you prefer sweet to sour.
You wake up to the fact that your brain does not perceive in the same manner as everyone elses. Your "software" interprets and places relevance and value on different things than your neighbors. This is why Star Wars is lame to one person and an obsession to another. Whether or not there is an objective reality is pretty irrelevant. The only things that are relevent are your subjective reality and the consensual reality you agree to exist in with those around you (i.e. we all agree this green piece of paper can be exchanged for a candy bar within these geographic boundaries).
Your brain creates an interpretive map of the world you navigate and no two individuals maps are the same (never mistake the map for the territory).
Rise of Nations Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam (as well as the Desert Combat mod) City of Heroes
There are countless others not available on Linux or don't run on Linux. Basically if you are a casual computer gamer than Linux or Macintosh are fine. If you are an enthusiast you are going to be at least dual booting Windows. Especially if you are into MMPOGs or want to play the latest without waiting (i.e. BF 1942 - now out for Mac after almost TWO years). Alternatly, just get a console. But once again if you are a diehard gamer you'll probably have a console (or two) and a PC (or two).
I the case of the games you mention - the fact that they don't work with XP is in truth a FEATURE and not a bug. Saving anyone from experiencing Force Commander is a saintly act.
Whats really cool - is that some of the old commercials showed people playing games on a Commodore computer using an Atari 2600 joystick. I loved that joystick and became quite proficient and rebuilding them throughout using them on the C64 and the Amiga.
Uh - I got my Commodore 64 in 1982. It enjoyed a long lifespan but even in 1985 it was capable of much better graphics than the PCs nauseating CGA video cards. Of course it depends on what you wanted it for. If you wanted a machine to program business software on you were probably better off with a PC. As a kid the C64 gave me great game playing, sufficient word processing for school reports as well as being a fun little machine to program. In 1985 the Amiga was released which blew away everything else out there for graphics and sound. But of course it was extremely expensive and I didn't get one until the cheaper A500s came out in 87. Still, I owe Commodore for my UNIX affinity as AmigaDOS was a much better primer for UNIX shells than MS DOS.
I prefer Computer Games Magazine. It seems to be a little more grown up than the rest. Even Computer Gaming World's editorial has degenerated to lame potty humor and "smack talking".
Computer Games has interesting articles on everything from religion in games to games in the classroom and actual discussion about violence and addiction in games.
They are also not afraid to trash games in their reviews. I recall one recent issue where nothing scored higher than 3 out of 5 stars.
For Windows 2000 and XP updating without using Internet Explorer is easy. Service pack 4 adds the automatic updates control panel to Win2k and XP has it by default. For even better corporat patching use Microsoft's Software Update Services(the name is changing to Windows Update Services)which acts like a local windows update server that client pcs can automatically receive patches from. It's a free download and works well for MS oriented offices.
Doesn't currently support updating MS Office or other applications (supposedly coming in the next version) but it will handle standard OS patches including IE and service packs.
I agree with you in principle that there are much better ways to manage mail, including large attachments. Unfortunately from my experience most people who actively started using computers with the web like to use their email inbox as a filing cabinet. They don't understand the filesystem on their hard drive but they do understand using the email system. Our inbox limit at work is 300MB and there are a lot of users (mostly sales people with gimantic pdf attachments) who frequently go over the limit. I do think that a lot of it is laziness and that once you stop cleaning it out a bit everyday it just builds up into an awful mess. Not to mention people who never bother to clear out their sent items compounding the problem.
Truth is that Unreal 2004 doesn't require a monster gaming box to run decently. It runs just fine on my son's p3 850 with geforce4 4400. A better question is how Far Cry runs, as thats about the only current game out that brings machines to their "knees".
Of course homework, dinner and bath time come first. That's a rule that must be followed to avoid pain later. And bedtimes are kept on school nights, with a little bit later allowed on the weekends.
I think that at the very least Age of Mythology and the other RTS games are a good starting place for helping to trigger a general interest in ancient cultures or history in general. It opens up questions which lead to good discussions about history.
Overall though I think the games themselves really just teach things like multitasking and resource planning. To me the actual benefit of City of Heroes is educating him about working together in a team. Much the same as his soccer playing.
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This "where are the parents" comment always comes up. But really lets think about it a bit.
There is more and more media made available in the average household which may be labeled as being for 18 and over. This doesn't mean that younger kids can't get a hold of it. It's the same situation as kids stealing their parents copy of Playboy or sneaking access to HBO. Sure, you could not have any R rated movies or M rated games in the house. You could not allow computers/consoles/dvd players in kids rooms. This still won't change the fact that if the kid really wants to see/play it he/she will probably find away. Can't buy it? Download it off the Internet. Can view or play it at home - do so at a friends house.
So what do you do? Never let your kids out of your sight? Don't let your 14 year old son be at home without a parent? That would be another form of bad parenting. It is important for teenagers to be given trust and some independance as they move towards "leaving the nest".
It doesn't even integrate the application menus into the title bar. Another great part of MacOS is the fact it "just works."
Number one thing I HATE about MacOS is the application menu integrated into the title bar. And this is coming from someone who used Amigas and Macs long before Windows or UNIX/Linux. I can't tell you HOW many times on OS 9 I've had to handle support calls where the user is out of memory because they have closed all the windows and don't realize the applications are still open.
Integration to the title bar makes the interface screen-centric rather than window-centric. It means you have to mouse farther every time to get to the file menu. This was fine in the old days of 15 inch monitors and single tasking but for modern windowing systems it's not intuitive at all.
As for your second comment... "just works". Hahahaha Yeah sure it "just works". Sometimes, except when it doesn't - sort of like other operating systems. And yes I support OS X machines and know what I'm talking about.
CoH has pretty much replaced my nightly Battlefield and Unreal gaming. Its sort of mmorpg light. Not much plot, lots of combat, no user economy whatsoever. For some people that may seem like a negative, for myself its just right.
The combat is fun and action oriented (no where near an FPS though). The variety in powers is pretty cool and each character archetype offers a different way to play.
The nice thing is that there is progression and I get to see my characters grow and become more powerful. Different than with my usual FPS where its all about winning the current map.
Mighty Morphing Power PCs?
Did you ever consider that some people may WANT to play at high res? Or with antialiasing on?
I am upgrading my system - not particularly for this game or half life 2 - but because I love high quality visuals and after trying AA & aniso support in games I want to play that way.
To be frank the game I play most is City of Heroes and turning on antialiasing and anisotropic filtering really improved the look of the game dramatically.
So is it retarded to buy a top of the line video card? I bought a Geforce 4 4400 when they first came out for $400 - and I loved it. I bought a 5600 Ultra for $200 and was disappointed because it just didn't give me boost I wanted. So personally for me, I find upgrading a big way, less frequently gives me the most enjoyment.
And why the upgrade now? The 2.4 pent 4 with 1GB DDR 333 and 5600 Ultra chokes on Far Cry unless I play at 800x600 no AA or aniso. Do I care that much about Far Cry? No not really, but its a sign that for what I want see onscreen my current setup won't cut it.
I wanted to play at 640x480 I'd buy an X box.
Some would call me an enthusiast - I guess you would call me a moron.
I do however, shop around for prices and try to optimize my purchases to get the best bang for the buck.
Saying that DDR 333 is as good as 400 or that a Celeron 2.4 is as good as an Athlon or P4 is just not true for high end applications. Try benching some video encoding on the Celeron. Believe me - I have.
Played BloodRayne and both Serious Sams all the way through. BloodRayne was way less repetitive and had better graphics (and I'm not counting the boobies). Sure it was dumb, I can't say it was dumber than Serious Sam. It had some great seriously over the top blood action sequences which reminded me of Kill Bill.
All though my current favorite, I spend less than $20 on it stupid action game was Armed and Dangerous.
I don't know if this subscription is worth the cost - I guess it remains to be seen what they release on the service.
I will say that StarDock's Corporate Machine is a very fun little strategy game. Quick paced and doesn't take hours to play. While compared to modern games the graphics are abyssmal, I still find myself loading it up for a quick run every now and then. Great "beer and pretzels" strategy gaming in the same way the Rails Across America is.
That being said, the game is available at very low cost from resellers (once saw it for $3 at the local store).
Looking forward to seeing how the Political Machine stacks up.
Considering it was a game revolving around a vampire - you would expect it to hit high levels on the "suck-o-meter".
Seriously - it was a fun little mindless action game with well done boobie physics (why don't more games have boobie physics anyway?).
Just so long as Elf doesn't shoot the food. I hate it when he does that.
You're description basically shows that in a so called anarchy state - "laws" do arise irregardless of whether or not they are codified by a government. These "laws" restrict the freedom of anarchy (i.e. my neighbor will shoot me if I pick my nose in public - so therefore I cannot pick my nose in public.
Ursula LeGuin wrote a great book about this occuring in an anarchistic society called "the Dispossesed".
Personally I think that wherever there is no "law" there is always the law of the big stick. As in "I have a big stick and you don't. Do what I tell you to do or I will hit you on the head with it."
Then again this may be the main governing law in all forms of government.
Gamers with families, well, it's just sad.
Versus the usual family time around the boob tube watching some non-interactive entertainment?
I think a little Rise of Nations over the home lan is more entertaining and more educational.
Besides its no different then playing a board game. Children love to play, it helps them learn. You may be bored of it at 24 because of where you are in your life. I probably played less at 24 because social life, finding a mate and developing career skills were more important.
I would agree. My house has 3 computers and PS2 and a Gamecube. My 8 year old son games and sometimes mom joins us too. We buy a ton of games for both console and PC. I think not only is the 30+ gaming crowd growing, the 30+ gaming crowd that plays with its children is growing too. I have influence over what gets bought and played in the house.
When you get a new part its hard to contain your excitement - you want it installed yesterday. This agitation can lead to all kinds of mistakes. Throughout my long history of building upgrading computers some of my favorite moments include:
Plugging my nifty Amiga video chip (Super Denise)upgrade in backwards. Causing all kinds of nice colors to appear on the screen. Luckily it didn't fry the chip.
Cranking down the lever on the socket to my brand new Pentium 200 - and then noticing that one of the pins was sticking out of it at a right angle. Several anxious seconds with a pair of tweezers straightened the pin out without breaking it off but it was a close thing.
Before embarking on any upgrade I try to sit down, lay out the components, make sure I have all my tools and get a plan of attack in my head. Oh yeah and suck down a cold one before I begin hehe.
Would it be incorrect to mod this -1 troll? :)
"Just glad I decided not to buy 2&3 - I was sure they would bring out more complete disks in time (if not better-scripted)."
I'm glad I decided not to buy them too - but for entirely different reasons.
I will say - the Animatrix was pretty cool. Most of the shorts where very nicely done with decent stories. It was nice to see so many different animation styles in one place. By far more entertaining than the 2nd and 3rd movies in my opinion.
You're going to experience what most people accept as "reality" for all of the period of your life that you spend not under the influence of psychedelic drugs. It's the default state of the organism.
The thing is drugs like LSD make you realize that this EXACT point is false. They show you that what you experience in your normal reality is just that - your SUBJECTIVE reality. Colored by everything from the language you speak to how good your eyesight is to whether you prefer sweet to sour.
You wake up to the fact that your brain does not perceive in the same manner as everyone elses. Your "software" interprets and places relevance and value on different things than your neighbors. This is why Star Wars is lame to one person and an obsession to another. Whether or not there is an objective reality is pretty irrelevant. The only things that are relevent are your subjective reality and the consensual reality you agree to exist in with those around you (i.e. we all agree this green piece of paper can be exchanged for a candy bar within these geographic boundaries).
Your brain creates an interpretive map of the world you navigate and no two individuals maps are the same (never mistake the map for the territory).
Well my current playlist:
Rise of Nations
Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam (as well as the Desert Combat mod)
City of Heroes
There are countless others not available on Linux or don't run on Linux.
Basically if you are a casual computer gamer than Linux or Macintosh are fine. If you are an enthusiast you are going to be at least dual booting Windows. Especially if you are into MMPOGs or want to play the latest without waiting (i.e. BF 1942 - now out for Mac after almost TWO years).
Alternatly, just get a console. But once again if you are a diehard gamer you'll probably have a console (or two) and a PC (or two).
I the case of the games you mention - the fact that they don't work with XP is in truth a FEATURE and not a bug.
Saving anyone from experiencing Force Commander is a saintly act.
Whats really cool - is that some of the old commercials showed people playing games on a Commodore computer using an Atari 2600 joystick.
I loved that joystick and became quite proficient and rebuilding them throughout using them on the C64 and the Amiga.
Uh - I got my Commodore 64 in 1982. It enjoyed a long lifespan but even in 1985 it was capable of much better graphics than the PCs nauseating CGA video cards.
Of course it depends on what you wanted it for. If you wanted a machine to program business software on you were probably better off with a PC. As a kid the C64 gave me great game playing, sufficient word processing for school reports as well as being a fun little machine to program.
In 1985 the Amiga was released which blew away everything else out there for graphics and sound. But of course it was extremely expensive and I didn't get one until the cheaper A500s came out in 87. Still, I owe Commodore for my UNIX affinity as AmigaDOS was a much better primer for UNIX shells than MS DOS.
I prefer Computer Games Magazine. It seems to be a little more grown up than the rest. Even Computer Gaming World's editorial has degenerated to lame potty humor and "smack talking".
Computer Games has interesting articles on everything from religion in games to games in the classroom and actual discussion about violence and addiction in games.
They are also not afraid to trash games in their reviews. I recall one recent issue where nothing scored higher than 3 out of 5 stars.
For Windows 2000 and XP updating without using Internet Explorer is easy. Service pack 4 adds the automatic updates control panel to Win2k and XP has it by default. For even better corporat patching use Microsoft's Software Update Services(the name is changing to Windows Update Services)which acts like a local windows update server that client pcs can automatically receive patches from. It's a free download and works well for MS oriented offices.
Doesn't currently support updating MS Office or other applications (supposedly coming in the next version) but it will handle standard OS patches including IE and service packs.
I agree with you in principle that there are much better ways to manage mail, including large attachments. Unfortunately from my experience most people who actively started using computers with the web like to use their email inbox as a filing cabinet. They don't understand the filesystem on their hard drive but they do understand using the email system.
Our inbox limit at work is 300MB and there are a lot of users (mostly sales people with gimantic pdf attachments) who frequently go over the limit.
I do think that a lot of it is laziness and that once you stop cleaning it out a bit everyday it just builds up into an awful mess. Not to mention people who never bother to clear out their sent items compounding the problem.
Truth is that Unreal 2004 doesn't require a monster gaming box to run decently. It runs just fine on my son's p3 850 with geforce4 4400.
A better question is how Far Cry runs, as thats about the only current game out that brings machines to their "knees".
Of course homework, dinner and bath time come first. That's a rule that must be followed to avoid pain later. And bedtimes are kept on school nights, with a little bit later allowed on the weekends.
I think that at the very least Age of Mythology and the other RTS games are a good starting place for helping to trigger a general interest in ancient cultures or history in general. It opens up questions which lead to good discussions about history.
Overall though I think the games themselves really just teach things like multitasking and resource planning. To me the actual benefit of City of Heroes is educating him about working together in a team. Much the same as his soccer playing.