Apart from WoW, they've not actually released a game in what, a decade? More?
Warcraft III released in July 2002. Before that was Diablo II in 2000, and Starcraft in 1998. So up to WoW (which released in 2004), they were pretty consistently hitting a game every two years. Since WoW, it's been five.
It DEFINED THE STANDARD for RTS games, and is still the litmus test over a decade later.
Well, not really. Nobody followed it; the only game to follow in TA's footsteps has been Supreme Commander. Not even Kingdoms really followed TA's lead (one reason it flopped, I think; there were others). The standards were defined by Warcraft/Starcraft and Dawn of War.
It's a hell of game and has fanatical followers. I like it myself--in fact, I was playing it just a few days ago. That's staying power. Heck, I even kinda liked Kingdoms. But it didn't define a standard.
You're ignoring the cap (which is presumably meant to represent reaching terminal velocity)--that's the killer (or rather, the not-killer). 20d6 won't kill a 13th level fighter, and that's the most you can do.
Fortunately, they changed the 1d6 for the first 10 feet to subdual damage, so at least your 1st level commoner won't almost always get killed by a 10 foot fall. He will still almost always be knocked out by it, of course.
Also, the basic rule is simple: 1d6 points of damage per 10 feet fallen, to a maximum of 20d6.
Leading to the infamous Murhpy's Rules observation that the average 13th level fighter can survive a fall from *any* height ("His top is made out of rubber, his bottom is made out of springs", as MR observed).
Our asteroid belt is boring, with every rock more or less tidally locked to each other.
It's also a lot sparser than a lot of people realize--enormously more empty than any representation you see on film, TV or video games. You could fly through it and never see an asteroid with the naked eye except as a point of light.
It needs a human being to translate "how to the fix the problem" into the actual physical actions needed to fix the problem. Delicate physical action and feedback is still something machines still really suck at.
I've seen disk encryption set ups where you never have to supply an outside key or password to start up the computer--it's all self contained. Meaning that all the information necessary for decryption is being kept on the disk. Yeah, that's secure.
Where did you get the sources? It's not on their download site. Wikipedia said Boxee included propriety code, so I thought you couldn't get it. However, if you can get the source, that's a different story, of course.
Re:What's so special about Ubuntu “Karmic&am
on
Boxee Opens Beta To All
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
This wouldn't work on fedora 12?
Apparently not.
I mean, the kernels are Linux - period. So, I'm not getting why the specification of Ubuntu here.
It takes a lot more than a kernel to install and run a program, which list grows only longer and more complex the more complicated the program is, and they're all different from distro to distro. For one thing, they're only offering a.deb file--there's no RPM. I wouldn't be surprised if dependency hell made it a major hackery job just to get it up and running in Debian, let alone a distro as different as Fedora.
So now Ubuntu is to Linux what Kleenex is to tissue?
Nope, it's just not available to Linux at large. It's not open source. You can download an Ubuntu.deb of the binaries, but if you want to run it another distribution? Sorry, Charlie.
This would land on the desk of a company lawyer, whose thought processes on the matter would be: "If I grant permission and something bad comes of this guy cloning the game, I'll get blamed for it. If I grant permission and this guy makes a lot of money cloning the game, I'll get blamed for the company not getting that money. If I don't grant permission, I can't get blamed for anything. Which do I choose?"
downloading a song from the internet took 25-30 minutes, or more
I remember when downloading a song from a BBS (internet? What's that?) took a less than five minutes--'cause you were downloading a MIDI file. What other kind of music was there on a computer?
While the citizenship service was not necessarily military (there were indications to that effect in the book, not real obvious), there was no mention of anybody being able to do service while avoiding a combat role (like conscientious objectors).
If by "not real obvious indications", you mean stated explicitly several times, then yeah. The book is very clear that the majority of volunteers do NOT wind up in military service (although they all get something hard, unpleasant, and usually dangerous to some degree). The protaganist's high school friend who signed up the same time he did wound up doing civvie work at a research station on Pluto (which got blown up by the Bugs offstage, as a matter of fact).
That said, it must be admitted that the novel focuses on the military service to the exclusion of all else; Heinlein felt that honorable military service was the highest form of duty to one's fellow man.
You do get to specify which branches of the service you want to serve in when you sign up, but there's no guarantee you'll get them. The protagonist definitely did NOT sign up for the Mobile Infantry! But on the other hand, it was blatantly obvious that he was unsuited of all the branches he did ask for. We're not really given enough data to judge how likely you are to get your choice. Heinlein didn't deal with conscientious objectors because he didn't have much time for them. He regarded pacifists as people who enjoyed the benefits of civilization but didn't want to shoulder the duties necessary to maintain it.
In the end, however, I'm perfectly willing to admit the novel's limitations. It really doesn't go much into how the government itself works at all, other than how you must volunteer for service in order to become a voting citizen. The command structure of the Mobile Infantry is described in much greater detail.
Re:My ThinkPad had some trouble too.
on
Y2.01K
·
· Score: 1
If it's the battery, you'd expect to see this behavior every time you power up the computer, but it's possible the problem is only intermittent, in which case there's no easy way to determine. If you see it during a restart where the computer was never actually powered down, then it's probably not the battery. I'd give serious thought to just replacing the battery on general principles, since losing CMOS configuration this way is a battery problem the vast majority of times. CMOS batteries aren't very expensive (generally about $12, although it can vary considerably depending on the exact model). You'll need to determine exactly what battery your motherboard takes, as different boards use different battery models.
Absolutely. If you'd read the book, you'd know that the military in Starship Troopers had extensive and fairly balanced civic and political education.
I wonder if *you've* read the book. In the book a course in the "extensive and fairly balanced civic and political education" (called "Moral Philosophy") was required in high school as part of universal public education--*everybody* took the course...but they didn't have to pass it. Military *officer candidates* had to take a much heavier-duty version of it and could get bounced if they were unsatisfactory in it. But the enlisted men did *not* get their own course in it, and they still got to vote when they were honorably discharged. Enlisted men in the MI were 90% of the force.
Re:Perpetual calendar anyone ?
on
Y2.01K
·
· Score: 1
Frankly, having the machine handle dates in any fashion other than in POSIX time format or similar is nutso. Convert it when you have to show it to a user to whatever is convenient for that user, but internal format should be be something that encourages simple, bug-free code.
Slashdot Mirror
The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
Warcraft III released in July 2002. Before that was Diablo II in 2000, and Starcraft in 1998. So up to WoW (which released in 2004), they were pretty consistently hitting a game every two years. Since WoW, it's been five.
Well, not really. Nobody followed it; the only game to follow in TA's footsteps has been Supreme Commander. Not even Kingdoms really followed TA's lead (one reason it flopped, I think; there were others). The standards were defined by Warcraft/Starcraft and Dawn of War.
It's a hell of game and has fanatical followers. I like it myself--in fact, I was playing it just a few days ago. That's staying power. Heck, I even kinda liked Kingdoms. But it didn't define a standard.
You're ignoring the cap (which is presumably meant to represent reaching terminal velocity)--that's the killer (or rather, the not-killer). 20d6 won't kill a 13th level fighter, and that's the most you can do.
Fortunately, they changed the 1d6 for the first 10 feet to subdual damage, so at least your 1st level commoner won't almost always get killed by a 10 foot fall. He will still almost always be knocked out by it, of course.
Leading to the infamous Murhpy's Rules observation that the average 13th level fighter
can survive a fall from *any* height ("His top is made out of rubber, his bottom is
made out of springs", as MR observed).
It's also a lot sparser than a lot of people realize--enormously more empty than any representation you see on film, TV or video games. You could fly through it and never see an asteroid with the naked eye except as a point of light.
Wait a minute, that's not right. Navi *is* a computer.
"Hello, Navi."
There's no motion sensor in a Claymore. Now, granted, you can obtain some interesting results by connecting a motion sensor and a Claymore together...
BTW, did you know that the guy who designed the Claymore was named MacLeod? There can be only one!
If you get in trouble on the Internets, just say, "Let's Cyber!"
It needs a human being to translate "how to the fix the problem" into the actual physical actions needed to fix the problem. Delicate physical action and feedback is still something machines still really suck at.
The Federal Ninth Ciruit Court of Appeals, apparently. The issue has not yet made it to the Supreme Court. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
I've seen disk encryption set ups where you never have to supply an outside key or password to start up the computer--it's all self contained. Meaning that all the information necessary for decryption is being kept on the disk. Yeah, that's secure.
Where did you get the sources? It's not on their download site. Wikipedia said Boxee included propriety code, so I thought you couldn't get it. However, if you can get the source, that's a different story, of course.
Apparently not.
It takes a lot more than a kernel to install and run a program, which list grows only longer and more complex the more complicated the program is, and they're all different from distro to distro. For one thing, they're only offering a .deb file--there's no RPM. I wouldn't be surprised if dependency hell made it a major hackery job just to get it up and running in Debian, let alone a distro as different as Fedora.
Nope, not Linux.
Nope, it's just not available to Linux at large. It's not open source. You can download an Ubuntu .deb of the binaries, but if you want to run it another distribution? Sorry, Charlie.
We're still using a bomber from 1955, and we're planning to keep using it until 2040. Is that good?
Fixed that for you.
This would land on the desk of a company lawyer, whose thought processes on the matter would be: "If I grant permission and something bad comes of this guy cloning the game, I'll get blamed for it. If I grant permission and this guy makes a lot of money cloning the game, I'll get blamed for the company not getting that money. If I don't grant permission, I can't get blamed for anything. Which do I choose?"
I remember when downloading a song from a BBS (internet? What's that?) took
a less than five minutes--'cause you were downloading a MIDI file. What
other kind of music was there on a computer?
Especially when they're on fire.
What bugs is it supposed to fix?
If by "not real obvious indications", you mean stated explicitly several times, then yeah. The book is very clear that the majority of volunteers do NOT wind up in military service (although they all get something hard, unpleasant, and usually dangerous to some degree). The protaganist's high school friend who signed up the same time he did wound up doing civvie work at a research station on Pluto (which got blown up by the Bugs offstage, as a matter of fact).
That said, it must be admitted that the novel focuses on the military service to the exclusion of all else; Heinlein felt that honorable military service was the highest form of duty to one's fellow man.
You do get to specify which branches of the service you want to serve in when you sign up, but there's no guarantee you'll get them. The protagonist definitely did NOT sign up for the Mobile Infantry! But on the other hand, it was blatantly obvious that he was unsuited of all the branches he did ask for. We're not really given enough data to judge how likely you are to get your choice. Heinlein didn't deal with conscientious objectors because he didn't have much time for them. He regarded pacifists as people who enjoyed the benefits of civilization but didn't want to shoulder the duties necessary to maintain it.
In the end, however, I'm perfectly willing to admit the novel's limitations. It really doesn't go much into how the government itself works at all, other than how you must volunteer for service in order to become a voting citizen. The command structure of the Mobile Infantry is described in much greater detail.
If it's the battery, you'd expect to see this behavior every time you power up the computer, but it's possible the problem is only intermittent, in which case there's no easy way to determine. If you see it during a restart where the computer was never actually powered down, then it's probably not the battery. I'd give serious thought to just replacing the battery on general principles, since losing CMOS configuration this way is a battery problem the vast majority of times. CMOS batteries aren't very expensive (generally about $12, although it can vary considerably depending on the exact model). You'll need to determine exactly what battery your motherboard takes, as different boards use different battery models.
I wonder if *you've* read the book. In the book a course in the "extensive and fairly balanced civic and political education" (called "Moral Philosophy") was required in high school as part of universal public education--*everybody* took the course...but they didn't have to pass it. Military *officer candidates* had to take a much heavier-duty version of it and could get bounced if they were unsatisfactory in it. But the enlisted men did *not* get their own course in it, and they still got to vote when they were honorably discharged. Enlisted men in the MI were 90% of the force.
Frankly, having the machine handle dates in any fashion other than in POSIX time format or similar is nutso. Convert it when you have to show it to a user to whatever is convenient for that user, but internal format should be be something that encourages simple, bug-free code.