"every person over the age of 25 that I've heard comment on the cel-shading has been supportive of it. The only people complaining about the style not being sufficiently grown-up are 14 year old morons who have no sense of how not to bitch about things, and no idea of what adult actually means. They want the blood and guts style in an effort to seem macho. they have no concept of game development, art, or the technology."
And I could argue that the proponents of the cel-shaded Zelda seem to rely on ad hominem attacks and false assertations about the people they disagree with in order to booster their own opinion, much as you seem to be doing.
First, some quick background on me: I'm 28, I love video games, and I even enjoy cartoons, if they've got enough of a hook to interest me. The last 3 GTA games have been some of my all-time favorites, more so for the free-form travel and exploration than anything else, though I also like that they don't pull punches on some of the more graphic content (which fits well with the overall criminal theme of the games). However, also on my favorite list are the two US released Ape Escape games -- games with horrifically bad voice acting, cartoony graphics, silly plots, and inconsistent difficulty, but they're fun as hell so I could overlook the small stuff. It's also worth noting that I originally bought my Gamecube (which was my second console of this generation, as I already owned a PS2) in order to get in on an Animal Crossing craze that was sweeping through another forum I was on.
Given my background, I think it would be fair to say that I'm not automatically prejudiced against a game because it's less sophisticated or even aimed at a "kiddy" market. I already own plenty of games over which people could challenge my "street cred" or whatever other wannabe-badass status the pro-cel-shading crowd is using to try and discredit their opponents. That being said, I still didn't like Wind Waker, largely for stylistic reasons.
In my opinion, the problem with Wind Waker isn't exclusive to the cel-shading, but the cell-shading is the most blatant symptom of the larger stylistic problem. That larger problem is that Wind Waker seems to be closer to the Mario games in style than it does its actual predecessors. If you were to take copies of Mario64, Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker, and then in each game try multiple attacks(Zelda)/jumps(Mario) and also picking up items (from chests in Zelda, stars in Mario), you'll notice that WW is a lot more like Mario64. Overall, I found the Mario similarities too disconcerting in what was supposed to be a Zelda game.
There are, of course, a number of other problems with WW that made me give up after reaching the boat. Instead of the central valley like Ocarina of Time had (which floored me the first time I ran around in it), the game features a larger but less interesting ocean that makes each area feel like its own isolated zone with too much travel time to get there. It also didn't help that the first WW dungeon featured quite a bit of forced stealth -- a feature that no one seems to like; at least Ocarina of Time's forced stealth dungeon had a more interested implementation and wasn't forced upon the player first thing.
"Makes you wonder. If nothing ever came from this IP, then shouldn't it be "unsuspicious" or something like that (or at least "unknown")?"
I have to disagree. If an address has never sent mail before, it is slightly suspicious for it to start sending mail. It'll either turn out to be a spam zombie (resulting in a decreasing reputation), or it'll turn out to be a new, legitimate mail server (resulting in an increasing reputation).
I think the way the current spam situation is, a previously unseen IP address sending mail is more likely to be a new zombie than anything else. So while it's unfortunate, I think a degree of initial mistrust may help reduce the spam situation without too much impact on legitimate users. Think of this as sort of a combination whitelist and blacklist, rather than just an outright blacklist.
Also, just because an IP is suspicious (I think "raised concern" was the term I saw) doesn't mean you should outright reject mail from them. Just use it as an extra point or two with something like SpamAssassin. Or maybe greylist email from "raised concern" addresses while immediately accepting mail from addresses with a better reputation.
"my understanding is that if HE will allow you to specify a tracker other than theirs for your torrent (the tracker of the project you want to support), then you ought to be able to set up a seeder."
From the Slashdot summary and reading the FAQ, it sounds like they aren't doing anything like that. It looks like they've distilled Bit Torrent down to work almost the exact same way for users as HTTP does -- just drop the file to be made available into a directory on their account, and they're done. HE is then automagically generating the torrent file, setting it to use their own tracker, and providing a seed on that tracker.
"Those of you younger than 35 or so aren't going to remember how much fun it was learning about digital cicuit design on an Apple ][ with Rocky's Boots"
I think you're aiming a bit high with "35 or so". I'm only 27, and I not only remember Rocky's Boot (which inspired my fifth grade science project on logic gates), but I also remember the much more complicated follow-up, Robot Odyssey. Those were both amazingly fun and engrossing games.
"Lost seems like neat idea, D.H. is just tittilatory crap IMHO."
While D.H. might not be the pinnacle of high art, I think it still helps pave the way for the viability of a Sims show. It's an hour-long show, a lot of focus is on the characters themselves and how their personalities affect their lives, even more emphasis is put on the development of the relationships between characters, and the show has enough continuity that they don't reset everything each week. In fact, if you were to take D.H., get rid of the murder subplot, and put little green diamonds over the character's heads when they're the focus of attention, you'd have a decent prototype for a Sims show.
"At bugzilla you can file bugs against the suite [mozilla browser+mail], firefox [a browser-only implementation], thunderbird [mail-only implementation] and core components [covering "rendering", "dom", "forms" etc etc.]"
Oops. You're right. I took a quick glance at mozilla.org and just noticed that they've still got the integrated suite available, although it seems to have been deemphasized with the main spotlight on Firefox and Thunderbird.
"What is the relationship between Mozilla and Firefox development/releases?"
I think you misunderstand what Firefox is. Firefox is just the new name for the browser component of Mozilla. It's all the same open source project, they just changed the naming around a bit.
"TV is about 6-minute chucks of instant gratification and resolving every problem within a half hour."
The ratings for shows like Desperate Housewives and Lost would disagree with you. Both shows are hour-long dramas with extended storylines that aren't neatly wrapped up by the end of each episode, and they're both popular as hell.
On the other hand, you could argue that he's doing something that will provide him with much more social interaction than that seen by the average slashdotter, just by virtue of all the random people on the street who he'll inevitably wind up talking to.
"Yes, Nethack lets the player gain skill, but that's meaningless if you don't actually win a game via that increased skill but only because the random number generator finally gave you a 1 in 100 or worse winnable combination where applying that skill mattered."
In my experience, that's not quite the case. It's only the relatively inexperienced players who need that lucky break from the random number generator -- usually in the form of getting a wish from a water demon early on in the game.
As players get more experienced, they discover that despite the RNG's reputation for being pure concentrated evil, it really does balance itself out over the course of a game. It's really just a matter of being prepared for the few inevitable hiccups that occur early on.
To use your game as an example, your getting drained by the vampire (which was a different color because it was higher level) makes it sound like you didn't have armor with high enough magic cancellation. Magic cancellation is one of the best kept secrets of Nethack -- it's crucial to minimizing some of the most devastating attacks in the game, and it's hard to discover since there's no in-game messages directly pointing out its existence. A spoiler site would have more information.
Anyway, even a veteran player can get screwed over by really bad luck, but I'd say that a lot more control rests with the player than people give the game credit for.
"Like it or not, if you tell 100 acquantences about Nethack, you just turned 98 off to free software, at least until they encounter a counter example."
As long as you don't let them play Nethack in a vacuum, I think a lot more than 2% will get hooked on it. The fact that several of my friends were constantly discussing Nethack did wonders for getting the rest of them into it because they got to hear about all the neat things in the game and also got tips to avoid some of the early newbie deaths.
Re:Keeping it simple: answer to all astroturf post
on
LokiTorrent vs. MPAA
·
· Score: 1
"Lokitorrents probably falls into the common carrier clauses of the DMCA, since they do not host the actual content themselves. The DMCA requires a takedown notice to be sent prior to taking legal action."
I think you're being overly kind to Lokitorrent. To quote from their own FAQ, "I am an author of some commercial software that was posted on your site and I want it removed We have a help page just for you here. Note that, by reading this FAQ, you have already agreed to our terms and conditions and sneding DMCA letters to our hosting providers is in direct violation of those terms and will only result in your requests being ignored. So please save yourself the trouble and follow our simple procudures to have you material removed." So it sounds like they're going out of the way to shoot themselves in the foot.
Furthermore, you argue that "What you fail to realize here is the copyright owner has a job to do too. They can't expect every soul on this planet to know they own movies x, y & z and studiously make sure they never let anyone do anything with them." However, if you check Lokitorrent's site, you'll see that they've even set up a category labelled "Movies - CAM-TS" for handheld camera recordings and telesync copies of first-run movies that haven't seen a proper DVD release. Arguing that they might not know whether or not the movies posted in this category is disingenuous at best.
Re:Keeping it simple: answer to all astroturf post
on
LokiTorrent vs. MPAA
·
· Score: 1
"If things like Grokster and Kazaa can be legal, exactly HOW would Lokitorrents be illegal? It's even less in control over the content than Grokster and Kazaa are."
From the front page of the site:
"Anyone who posts a torrent listed in the banned torrents list (located on the upload page) will be banned forever from this site without warning"
They've established that they can control what's posted, and they've established that they do control what's posted. That puts them in a much weaker defensive position compared to Grokster and Kazaa. There's a very good chance that they're going to get nailed to the wall in court.
"4. The students were genuinely lazy.
Believe me, this can happen. Of course, it's highly unlikely but that doesn't make it entirely impossible. Yet it's a scenario that you and most of the other people that have replied to my original comment seem to have totally discounted."
And they've discounted it with good reason, considering the original story submitter claims to have put 300 hours into the course. That's the equivalent of 7.5 weeks of working full-time.
"I'm scanty on the details, but aren't the developers of "City of Heroes" being sued for this very same thing?"
However, there's a big difference between public and private. In City of Heroes, when John Smith of Muncie, Indiana gives his character a yellow outfit, funny hair, and the name "Woolvverine," everyone on the City of Heroes server can see it and the CoH administraters could force him to change it after receiving complaints.
On the other hand, it's entirely possible that John's named his characters "Wolverine", "Cyclops", "Phoenix", and "Storm" in every RPG he's played for the last 15 years. But there's really no way for the public to know that nor is there anything the RPG makers could do about it after the fact to get him to stop.
"You're starting a game that's expected to take over the screen... what use is making the splash screen smaller?"
UT2k4 will actually start itself up in windowed mode if it doesn't have focus when it finishes loading -- which takes it a good 20-30 seconds or so. Anyway, I'd much rather use the time to start up Teamspeak 2 or IRC rather than just sitting there watching the loading screen.
"Stop following our example. IT IS NOT A GOOD ONE."
Following our example? In a couple ways, the Australian copyright laws are worse than the US laws. First, with America's DMCA, only the copyright owner (or someone authorized to act on their behalf) can send a takedown notice. In contrast, this Australian law seems to allow third-parties to send complaints (although the article was unclear on whether that meant anyone or just specific third-parties).
Also, Australia's got some bad laws when it comes to format shifting. Over there, if you rip a CD that you own to mp3, you've violated the copyright laws. It doesn't matter if you own the CD, don't share the mp3s, and only listen to the mp3s while the CD is in your possession -- it's still technically illegal.
"If a splash screen is done properly, there is no reason to hate it as much."
Yeah, but they never, ever seem to get done properly. Even if the splash screen isn't one of those obnoxious ones that insists on always being on top, it's still blocking a good portion of my desktop. The result is that I can't get to the icons of other programs that I want to also start during a time where I'm otherwise stuck twiddling my thumbs.
On a related note, with Unreal Tournament 2004, I found a bit of a nifty workaround. The splash screen is just a bitmap stored in the Help directory. Also, the size of the splash screen isn't hardcoded into the application. So I replaced the splash screen with a white 10x10 square, which is enough to give me feedback but which doesn't get in the way of anything.
"Half-life 1 is included with Half-life 2. They even upgraded it to the Source Engine (which means better graphics, prettier effects)."
The Source version of Half-Life has some improvements of the original incarnation Half-Life, but it also has some problems that the original didn't have.
First, the good stuff: Water in the game looks pretty. Really pretty. Well, the first bit of water you encounter isn't that great, as it's kind of murky, but the rest of the water looks really damn nice. They may have improved some of the other textures as well, but it's really the water that stands out.
They've also included a bit of Source's Havok physics in the game. There's nothing too major (since that'd require changing puzzles or potentially breaking gameplay), but you can see it here and there. The one thing that stood out was a jumping puzzle early in the game with crates suspended by ropes. Now when you land on the crates, they'll swing a little -- not enough to make the jumping significantly harder, but just enough to be nifty.
And now the bad: Load times. HL:S takes awhile to load up, just like the other Source engine games. Also, I haven't played the original Half-Life single-player in awhile, but I believe that HL:S has more in-game load time, as well.
The other thing that annoyed me is monster behavior is a little off. It's not enough to be a big problem, but it's noticeable if you played the original. For example, the first time you encounter a bullsquid in HL, it rather efficiently dispatches a couple headcrabs before turning its attention to you. In the HL:S version, it seems to have a bit more trouble doing this, as if they either moved from a more script-heavy system to just relying on monster AI or they moved from one form of monster AI to a slightly different implementation.
Overall, it's nothing to major. But depending on your preferences, it might be worth playing the true original version, which is also included in any Steam packages that have the Valve back catalog (I believe that's just the Silver and Gold packages).
"I understand it took a while to validate the thing, but after spending hours downloading it on Monday, fifteen extra minutes to verify didn't matter much--I was up and playing at 3:15 EST..."
Yeah, but 15 hours later, when everyone was getting home from work or school and trying it out, things went to hell. I had the Steam-based version and had no problem unlocking and playing it at 4 am. But after work, the Steam authentication servers were too overloaded to let me login in, even though the game was already unlocked and playable on my machine. To make matters worse, Steam reacted to the server's being overloaded by deleting my cached authentication information, so I couldn't even play the game in offline mode. I finally got in later that evening, and I've left my PC running with Steam logged in just to be on the safe side.
What they really need to do is get the SG-1 team back on track in the show. To do this, they need to replace the opening left by Jack and start doing off-world missions again. Too many of the current shows have had them futzing around Earth, giving a "filler episode" feel to almost the entire season.
As for filling Jack's shoes, a suggestion I liked from another forum was to let Adam Baldwin reprise his role from "Heroes". He'd be good at providing the aggressive, militaristic mentality that'd help keep the same brain vs. brawn balance that the team had before.
"But suprnova.org, torrentreactor, and all the top directory sites of warez, movies and music are big, easy targets. The torrents and torrent directories give nice centralized locations to smack down with lawsuits. BT just isn't a legally resilient P2P technology in its current form."
However, it's only the uses that're engaging in copyright infringement that aren't legally resilient. When suprnova and torrentreactor go down, we aren't going to lose other sites with just legal torrents of Linux ISOs, game patches, freely redistributable amateur movies, and so forth. The technology of P2P remains safe and we can still reap the bandwidth benefits is has over things like HTTP and FTP, but we just can't use it as a means of magically ignoring copyright law.
Re:More pages v.s more relevant pages
on
Google Index Doubles
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· Score: 3, Interesting
"But in this case, with the architecture they have in place, anyone ever doing what you're asking would require a full-text search through their multi-TB dataset, which I suspect is highly impractical."
Actually, they could cut that down considerably. For example, say we were doing an exact search for '#windows EFNET' as in the original example. The first thing they could do is start with a traditional search on "#windows EFNET". At that point, they've cut their multi-TB dataset down to just a few megs or less of likely matches (in this case, only 10 pages matched). Then they could do a full-text check on each result, looking for an exact match and discarding all the rest.
Slashdot Mirror
And I could argue that the proponents of the cel-shaded Zelda seem to rely on ad hominem attacks and false assertations about the people they disagree with in order to booster their own opinion, much as you seem to be doing.
First, some quick background on me: I'm 28, I love video games, and I even enjoy cartoons, if they've got enough of a hook to interest me. The last 3 GTA games have been some of my all-time favorites, more so for the free-form travel and exploration than anything else, though I also like that they don't pull punches on some of the more graphic content (which fits well with the overall criminal theme of the games). However, also on my favorite list are the two US released Ape Escape games -- games with horrifically bad voice acting, cartoony graphics, silly plots, and inconsistent difficulty, but they're fun as hell so I could overlook the small stuff. It's also worth noting that I originally bought my Gamecube (which was my second console of this generation, as I already owned a PS2) in order to get in on an Animal Crossing craze that was sweeping through another forum I was on.
Given my background, I think it would be fair to say that I'm not automatically prejudiced against a game because it's less sophisticated or even aimed at a "kiddy" market. I already own plenty of games over which people could challenge my "street cred" or whatever other wannabe-badass status the pro-cel-shading crowd is using to try and discredit their opponents. That being said, I still didn't like Wind Waker, largely for stylistic reasons.
In my opinion, the problem with Wind Waker isn't exclusive to the cel-shading, but the cell-shading is the most blatant symptom of the larger stylistic problem. That larger problem is that Wind Waker seems to be closer to the Mario games in style than it does its actual predecessors. If you were to take copies of Mario64, Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker, and then in each game try multiple attacks(Zelda)/jumps(Mario) and also picking up items (from chests in Zelda, stars in Mario), you'll notice that WW is a lot more like Mario64. Overall, I found the Mario similarities too disconcerting in what was supposed to be a Zelda game.
There are, of course, a number of other problems with WW that made me give up after reaching the boat. Instead of the central valley like Ocarina of Time had (which floored me the first time I ran around in it), the game features a larger but less interesting ocean that makes each area feel like its own isolated zone with too much travel time to get there. It also didn't help that the first WW dungeon featured quite a bit of forced stealth -- a feature that no one seems to like; at least Ocarina of Time's forced stealth dungeon had a more interested implementation and wasn't forced upon the player first thing.
I have to disagree. If an address has never sent mail before, it is slightly suspicious for it to start sending mail. It'll either turn out to be a spam zombie (resulting in a decreasing reputation), or it'll turn out to be a new, legitimate mail server (resulting in an increasing reputation).
I think the way the current spam situation is, a previously unseen IP address sending mail is more likely to be a new zombie than anything else. So while it's unfortunate, I think a degree of initial mistrust may help reduce the spam situation without too much impact on legitimate users. Think of this as sort of a combination whitelist and blacklist, rather than just an outright blacklist.
Also, just because an IP is suspicious (I think "raised concern" was the term I saw) doesn't mean you should outright reject mail from them. Just use it as an extra point or two with something like SpamAssassin. Or maybe greylist email from "raised concern" addresses while immediately accepting mail from addresses with a better reputation.
I'm sure Seinfeld fans will be rather annoyed that you left out the ever popular "Mulva".
From the Slashdot summary and reading the FAQ, it sounds like they aren't doing anything like that. It looks like they've distilled Bit Torrent down to work almost the exact same way for users as HTTP does -- just drop the file to be made available into a directory on their account, and they're done. HE is then automagically generating the torrent file, setting it to use their own tracker, and providing a seed on that tracker.
I think you're aiming a bit high with "35 or so". I'm only 27, and I not only remember Rocky's Boot (which inspired my fifth grade science project on logic gates), but I also remember the much more complicated follow-up, Robot Odyssey. Those were both amazingly fun and engrossing games.
While D.H. might not be the pinnacle of high art, I think it still helps pave the way for the viability of a Sims show. It's an hour-long show, a lot of focus is on the characters themselves and how their personalities affect their lives, even more emphasis is put on the development of the relationships between characters, and the show has enough continuity that they don't reset everything each week. In fact, if you were to take D.H., get rid of the murder subplot, and put little green diamonds over the character's heads when they're the focus of attention, you'd have a decent prototype for a Sims show.
Oops. You're right. I took a quick glance at mozilla.org and just noticed that they've still got the integrated suite available, although it seems to have been deemphasized with the main spotlight on Firefox and Thunderbird.
I think you misunderstand what Firefox is. Firefox is just the new name for the browser component of Mozilla. It's all the same open source project, they just changed the naming around a bit.
The ratings for shows like Desperate Housewives and Lost would disagree with you. Both shows are hour-long dramas with extended storylines that aren't neatly wrapped up by the end of each episode, and they're both popular as hell.
On the other hand, you could argue that he's doing something that will provide him with much more social interaction than that seen by the average slashdotter, just by virtue of all the random people on the street who he'll inevitably wind up talking to.
In my experience, that's not quite the case. It's only the relatively inexperienced players who need that lucky break from the random number generator -- usually in the form of getting a wish from a water demon early on in the game.
As players get more experienced, they discover that despite the RNG's reputation for being pure concentrated evil, it really does balance itself out over the course of a game. It's really just a matter of being prepared for the few inevitable hiccups that occur early on.
To use your game as an example, your getting drained by the vampire (which was a different color because it was higher level) makes it sound like you didn't have armor with high enough magic cancellation. Magic cancellation is one of the best kept secrets of Nethack -- it's crucial to minimizing some of the most devastating attacks in the game, and it's hard to discover since there's no in-game messages directly pointing out its existence. A spoiler site would have more information.
Anyway, even a veteran player can get screwed over by really bad luck, but I'd say that a lot more control rests with the player than people give the game credit for.
"Like it or not, if you tell 100 acquantences about Nethack, you just turned 98 off to free software, at least until they encounter a counter example."
As long as you don't let them play Nethack in a vacuum, I think a lot more than 2% will get hooked on it. The fact that several of my friends were constantly discussing Nethack did wonders for getting the rest of them into it because they got to hear about all the neat things in the game and also got tips to avoid some of the early newbie deaths.
I think you're being overly kind to Lokitorrent. To quote from their own FAQ, " I am an author of some commercial software that was posted on your site and I want it removed We have a help page just for you here. Note that, by reading this FAQ, you have already agreed to our terms and conditions and sneding DMCA letters to our hosting providers is in direct violation of those terms and will only result in your requests being ignored. So please save yourself the trouble and follow our simple procudures to have you material removed." So it sounds like they're going out of the way to shoot themselves in the foot. Furthermore, you argue that "What you fail to realize here is the copyright owner has a job to do too. They can't expect every soul on this planet to know they own movies x, y & z and studiously make sure they never let anyone do anything with them." However, if you check Lokitorrent's site, you'll see that they've even set up a category labelled "Movies - CAM-TS" for handheld camera recordings and telesync copies of first-run movies that haven't seen a proper DVD release. Arguing that they might not know whether or not the movies posted in this category is disingenuous at best.
From the front page of the site: "Anyone who posts a torrent listed in the banned torrents list (located on the upload page) will be banned forever from this site without warning"
They've established that they can control what's posted, and they've established that they do control what's posted. That puts them in a much weaker defensive position compared to Grokster and Kazaa. There's a very good chance that they're going to get nailed to the wall in court.
Oops. I missed the "Clearly that isn't the case here" bit. That's what I get for reading Slashdot first thing in the morning. Sorry about that.
Believe me, this can happen. Of course, it's highly unlikely but that doesn't make it entirely impossible. Yet it's a scenario that you and most of the other people that have replied to my original comment seem to have totally discounted."
And they've discounted it with good reason, considering the original story submitter claims to have put 300 hours into the course. That's the equivalent of 7.5 weeks of working full-time.
However, there's a big difference between public and private. In City of Heroes, when John Smith of Muncie, Indiana gives his character a yellow outfit, funny hair, and the name "Woolvverine," everyone on the City of Heroes server can see it and the CoH administraters could force him to change it after receiving complaints.
On the other hand, it's entirely possible that John's named his characters "Wolverine", "Cyclops", "Phoenix", and "Storm" in every RPG he's played for the last 15 years. But there's really no way for the public to know that nor is there anything the RPG makers could do about it after the fact to get him to stop.
UT2k4 will actually start itself up in windowed mode if it doesn't have focus when it finishes loading -- which takes it a good 20-30 seconds or so. Anyway, I'd much rather use the time to start up Teamspeak 2 or IRC rather than just sitting there watching the loading screen.
Following our example? In a couple ways, the Australian copyright laws are worse than the US laws. First, with America's DMCA, only the copyright owner (or someone authorized to act on their behalf) can send a takedown notice. In contrast, this Australian law seems to allow third-parties to send complaints (although the article was unclear on whether that meant anyone or just specific third-parties).
Also, Australia's got some bad laws when it comes to format shifting. Over there, if you rip a CD that you own to mp3, you've violated the copyright laws. It doesn't matter if you own the CD, don't share the mp3s, and only listen to the mp3s while the CD is in your possession -- it's still technically illegal.
Yeah, but they never, ever seem to get done properly. Even if the splash screen isn't one of those obnoxious ones that insists on always being on top, it's still blocking a good portion of my desktop. The result is that I can't get to the icons of other programs that I want to also start during a time where I'm otherwise stuck twiddling my thumbs.
On a related note, with Unreal Tournament 2004, I found a bit of a nifty workaround. The splash screen is just a bitmap stored in the Help directory. Also, the size of the splash screen isn't hardcoded into the application. So I replaced the splash screen with a white 10x10 square, which is enough to give me feedback but which doesn't get in the way of anything.
Your very good link won't protect me from people who can't link because my web browser is lynx.
The Source version of Half-Life has some improvements of the original incarnation Half-Life, but it also has some problems that the original didn't have.
First, the good stuff: Water in the game looks pretty. Really pretty. Well, the first bit of water you encounter isn't that great, as it's kind of murky, but the rest of the water looks really damn nice. They may have improved some of the other textures as well, but it's really the water that stands out.
They've also included a bit of Source's Havok physics in the game. There's nothing too major (since that'd require changing puzzles or potentially breaking gameplay), but you can see it here and there. The one thing that stood out was a jumping puzzle early in the game with crates suspended by ropes. Now when you land on the crates, they'll swing a little -- not enough to make the jumping significantly harder, but just enough to be nifty.
And now the bad: Load times. HL:S takes awhile to load up, just like the other Source engine games. Also, I haven't played the original Half-Life single-player in awhile, but I believe that HL:S has more in-game load time, as well.
The other thing that annoyed me is monster behavior is a little off. It's not enough to be a big problem, but it's noticeable if you played the original. For example, the first time you encounter a bullsquid in HL, it rather efficiently dispatches a couple headcrabs before turning its attention to you. In the HL:S version, it seems to have a bit more trouble doing this, as if they either moved from a more script-heavy system to just relying on monster AI or they moved from one form of monster AI to a slightly different implementation.
Overall, it's nothing to major. But depending on your preferences, it might be worth playing the true original version, which is also included in any Steam packages that have the Valve back catalog (I believe that's just the Silver and Gold packages).
Yeah, but 15 hours later, when everyone was getting home from work or school and trying it out, things went to hell. I had the Steam-based version and had no problem unlocking and playing it at 4 am. But after work, the Steam authentication servers were too overloaded to let me login in, even though the game was already unlocked and playable on my machine. To make matters worse, Steam reacted to the server's being overloaded by deleting my cached authentication information, so I couldn't even play the game in offline mode. I finally got in later that evening, and I've left my PC running with Steam logged in just to be on the safe side.
As for filling Jack's shoes, a suggestion I liked from another forum was to let Adam Baldwin reprise his role from "Heroes". He'd be good at providing the aggressive, militaristic mentality that'd help keep the same brain vs. brawn balance that the team had before.
However, it's only the uses that're engaging in copyright infringement that aren't legally resilient. When suprnova and torrentreactor go down, we aren't going to lose other sites with just legal torrents of Linux ISOs, game patches, freely redistributable amateur movies, and so forth. The technology of P2P remains safe and we can still reap the bandwidth benefits is has over things like HTTP and FTP, but we just can't use it as a means of magically ignoring copyright law.
Actually, they could cut that down considerably. For example, say we were doing an exact search for '#windows EFNET' as in the original example. The first thing they could do is start with a traditional search on "#windows EFNET". At that point, they've cut their multi-TB dataset down to just a few megs or less of likely matches (in this case, only 10 pages matched). Then they could do a full-text check on each result, looking for an exact match and discarding all the rest.