Bruce hits Metal Slime for 1 damage.
Bruce misses Metal Slime.
Bruce misses Metal Slime.
Bruce misses Metal Slime.
Bruce misses Metal Slime.
Bruce misses Metal Slime.
Bruce misses Metal Slime.
Bruce hits Metal Slime for 1 damage.
Bruce misses Metal Slime.
Bruce misses Metal Slime.
Metal Slime runs away.
Now people can draw incorrect conclusions based on no info at all about the chip (except of course the company telling us "this chip is better than the last one") At least clock speed was SOMETHING.
Now they could release an old 100 Mhz chip, call it Brandname 1000A, and people will obviously assume its twice as good as the 2Ghz Brandname 500A
Its not the violence, its the realism. If you play a Nintendo derived game, all the characters are casted as "cartoons" (starfox, mario, etc). Hell, even Mario Tennis involved fantasy creatures. And in some of them, you're often doing insanely unrealistic things like getting mushrooms to make you grow. Now, while they games are fun nonetheless, the PS2/Computer genre brings a whole new level of fun in realism.
Games like Operation Flashpoint, Deus Ex, etc where you can pick up a sniper rifle, hide out in some bushes, and actually FEEL like a sniper. Or sports games like NCAA Football for the PS2...I'm a season ticket holder for my random local college football team and I can derive a very similar level of enjoyment from the PS2 that I do from the actual reallife game, BECAUSE of the level of realism in the game.
You wouldn't get that with a Nintendo-variant. If they released a football game, it would have stupid stuff like red shells homing in on your receivers and fire flowers that can toast your quarterback. These are the kind of things that make the PS2 more "mature". Though don't get me wrong, I like them both. It's just that sometimes you want the realism, not the cartoon.
And how much did you pay for the extra controller? The memory card? The TV to run it on? It adds up as well.
Not to mention the fact that computers are dirt cheap nowdays anyways...you can get a decent gaming machine (equivalent to any console) for easily under a thousand bucks
Also since when did Win95/98/ME involve ANY configuration headaches? 2Win000 I could understand...they had driver problems up the wazoo. But I've _rarely_ heard of a Win9x compatibility issue.
Firstly, the human mind is much more complex than a cat's mind.
Secondly, changing the way a person thinks or acts can be taught with simple conditioning (brainwashing), and that has been around for decades. This is hardly new news.
Actually, all things get tedious now and then. College is just one of those things you have to suffer through before you actually pick what you want to do. If you're just looking for "hobby" type activity to make you enjoy CS again, try coding a talker (chat room) or a mud. Fairly easy, quite rewarding, and fun. If you actually want your work to be fun, well wait til you get out of college, then just make sure you pick something that won't grow into monotony.
Though trust me, in almost ANY job, you get that at some time...the 8 hour, 5 days a week thing just grows dull after awhile.
I just wish they would have released more tech branches and more wonders. I've only started playing the game, but it looks like every single tech advance in the first "age/era" was also in civ3! And why'd they take the movies out? I built a wonder and only got a crappy picture of it for my efforts. You would think such an accomplishment would at least be worth one of the neat FMVs they had in the old civ. The culture aspect is a neat change of pace, and I like the idea of nationally supported units, but I must say I was slightly disappointed in how much similar it still is to civ2 overall. I was hoping for loads of new wonders and technologies like Call to Power added.
Take, for instance, StarCraft. The last time I played with someone actually used a strategy besides simply building a lot of medium units and some large units and then sent them all as soon as possible was.. well, never.
OK, then apparently you haven't played enough Starcraft. I've been in it for about 4 years, mostly playing BGH games. And I've noticed that the "defend early, build alot of units, attack" strategy fails miserably most of the time I've seen it. Reaver drops, dark temp rushes, early lurker rushes, temp drops, marines/medic/tank progression, cannoning someone in, among many many other straegies, this game is much, much more than you make it out to be. Being good in Starcraft is much about expanding and scouting, recon is essential. Expansion is needed so that you can outproduce your opponents. It's also about building an adequate defense without wasting so much money that you lack an offense. In fact, some people take their chances with no defense at all and often get away with it due to bad recon/scouting by their enemies. No strategy? You're just playing the wrong people. I don't play as much ever since I graduated college, otherwise I'd offer a game;)
Btw, regarding the "defend early, build massive army, attack" strategy: me and my friends would deal with this one quite easily every game...triple rush one of them. Since everyone is building defenses, no one has offensive units to assist with. It then becomes a 3v2. We then proceed to expand and shift to more advanced strategies. And normally (unless they're really good), they never recover.
The thing that pissed me off about Civ 2 was that I would go out of my way to race through the tech tree, only to have a squadron of archers and horse riding dragoons take out my plasma tanks and heavy bombers when I finally got them. I mean, seriously...
That combat system needed some DEFINITE revamping. I don't care how good those phalanxes or archers were in their day, they aint tanking out a tank.
Also, Call to Power was sheer crap. The addition of lawyers, corporations, subneural ads, etc, added a whole new level of annoyance to the game that eventually made the thing unbearable to even continue playing.
You realize these cars get such gas mileage because they have like 40 HP, right?
You slam on the gas, and you hit 60 mph in about 30 seconds.
I'd never buy any of those "hybrid" cars, because:
A) They're ugly as sin
B) I can probably run faster than they accelerate
You: Sorry, I'm kinda busy right now. Could you give me your home number and I'll call you later? Telemarketer: Sorry, I can't do that. You: Why? Is it because you don't want people calling you at home? Telemarketer: Yes. You: Well, now you know how I feel. (hang up)
What right does Napster have to complain about ANYTHING?
Why shouldn't they have a right? The music labels went out of their way to drive Napster out of business, and now that Napster is ruined and out of the picture, they intend to profit heavily through almost the same exact means Napster was using. If I were Napster, I'd be pissed too.
High school should be for "well-rounding" a person. College should be job specific. Too much time is wasted on useless crap (you don't need 4 years of high school AND 4 years of college just to well-round a person). That time would have been much more useful had useful things been taught. Not once in my entire operating systems class did we even LOOK at a line of kernel code, and thats just sad.
Magius_AR
Stopping terrorism by removing freedom is like securing a Linux box by throwing up a firewall that blocks all port access.
The correct security method of course would be to actually correctly patch and secure the system (aka adding guards on planes and better security at airports)
Everyone knows that simply firewalling a system but leaving the back defenses completely unguarded is the lazy, halfassed (and practically wrong) way to handle security. Intelligence is similar. To use it to assist in security is one thing, to rely on it is another.
Step 1 is to actually beef up security in this system, like they are going to do now on airlines. If you want to add another layer of defense by trading privacy for information, well thats an option. But don't act like its the only one. You can say this would have never happened if we would have knew about it beforehand. I say it never would have happened if airlines put security over convenience in the first place. Americans seem to love convenience, despite the awful risks that come with it. That explains the large prevalent number of insecure Windows boxes out there. I for one wouldn't mind giving up some of my conveniences to gain a little security. Privacy I might gawk on, but it shouldn't be necessary to go that far.
I hear numerous comments about how the sentence is just, and not ridiculously easy.
The kid is 17. That's one year (probably not even that) short of an adult, and _well_ into the range of "responsible decision making." Hell, you can drive at 16. If they're gonna give people THAT kind of a responsibility at 16, they sure as hell can endure some harsher punishments at 17.
I agree with the statement that this is a rather poor message to send the script kiddies. Not saying 8 months is a cakewalk, but DoS'ing a bunch of businesses is NOT comparable to the "simple vandalism" examples people here have been comparing it to. DoS attacks cost businesses ALOT of money. It's not a matter of scrubbing some paint from a wall. Its a huge loss in business.
Argh, i hate these damn MMORPGS. I really don't see where the interest comes from.
Normally the servers are lagged to all hell, the game is vastly unbalanced (future patches just serving to unbalance the game further), most of them are fairly poor in dealing with anything more than "kill things and get more powerful" (aka questing and plot and rpg value are serverely lacking) In many of them, you spend almost half your time walking or running somewhere. In fact some games like Ultima Online had you doing monotonous tasks like building shit like chairs and tables for hours just so you could get money to buy stuff. At least the text based MUDS of old had pretty good rpg value with clans and semi-balanced play and people who new how to roleplay rather than simply log on and gain xp for a couple hours and log off. Bah.
Slashdot Mirror
Awwwww :(
At least clock speed was SOMETHING.
Now they could release an old 100 Mhz chip, call it Brandname 1000A, and people will obviously assume its twice as good as the 2Ghz Brandname 500A
Magius_AR
Games like Operation Flashpoint, Deus Ex, etc where you can pick up a sniper rifle, hide out in some bushes, and actually FEEL like a sniper. Or sports games like NCAA Football for the PS2...I'm a season ticket holder for my random local college football team and I can derive a very similar level of enjoyment from the PS2 that I do from the actual reallife game, BECAUSE of the level of realism in the game.
You wouldn't get that with a Nintendo-variant. If they released a football game, it would have stupid stuff like red shells homing in on your receivers and fire flowers that can toast your quarterback. These are the kind of things that make the PS2 more "mature". Though don't get me wrong, I like them both. It's just that sometimes you want the realism, not the cartoon.
Magius_AR
Not to mention the fact that computers are dirt cheap nowdays anyways...you can get a decent gaming machine (equivalent to any console) for easily under a thousand bucks
Also since when did Win95/98/ME involve ANY configuration headaches? 2Win000 I could understand...they had driver problems up the wazoo. But I've _rarely_ heard of a Win9x compatibility issue.
Magius_AR
Magius_AR
Actually, all things get tedious now and then. College is just one of those things you have to suffer through before you actually pick what you want to do. If you're just looking for "hobby" type activity to make you enjoy CS again, try coding a talker (chat room) or a mud. Fairly easy, quite rewarding, and fun. If you actually want your work to be fun, well wait til you get out of college, then just make sure you pick something that won't grow into monotony. Though trust me, in almost ANY job, you get that at some time...the 8 hour, 5 days a week thing just grows dull after awhile.
Magius_AR
Ha! I'll show them.
C:\> fdisk
...
Delete primary partition? (y/n) y
Primary partition deleted.
Ah, all partitions gone. Finally my data is safe!
Magius_AR
I just wish they would have released more tech branches and more wonders. I've only started playing the game, but it looks like every single tech advance in the first "age/era" was also in civ3! And why'd they take the movies out? I built a wonder and only got a crappy picture of it for my efforts. You would think such an accomplishment would at least be worth one of the neat FMVs they had in the old civ. The culture aspect is a neat change of pace, and I like the idea of nationally supported units, but I must say I was slightly disappointed in how much similar it still is to civ2 overall. I was hoping for loads of new wonders and technologies like Call to Power added.
Magius_ARMagius_AR
Btw, regarding the "defend early, build massive army, attack" strategy: me and my friends would deal with this one quite easily every game...triple rush one of them. Since everyone is building defenses, no one has offensive units to assist with. It then becomes a 3v2. We then proceed to expand and shift to more advanced strategies. And normally (unless they're really good), they never recover.
Magius_AR
Magius_AR
The thing that pissed me off about Civ 2 was that I would go out of my way to race through the tech tree, only to have a squadron of archers and horse riding dragoons take out my plasma tanks and heavy bombers when I finally got them. I mean, seriously...
That combat system needed some DEFINITE revamping. I don't care how good those phalanxes or archers were in their day, they aint tanking out a tank.
Also, Call to Power was sheer crap. The addition of lawyers, corporations, subneural ads, etc, added a whole new level of annoyance to the game that eventually made the thing unbearable to even continue playing.
Magius_AR
You slam on the gas, and you hit 60 mph in about 30 seconds.
I'd never buy any of those "hybrid" cars, because:
A) They're ugly as sin
B) I can probably run faster than they accelerate
Magius_AR
Magius_AR
Managerial eyecandy! In other words, a useless term that means nothing. Bet whoever came up with THAT term got a nice raise.
Maigus_AR
Telemarketer: Sorry, I can't do that.
You: Why? Is it because you don't want people calling you at home?
Telemarketer: Yes.
You: Well, now you know how I feel. (hang up)
Magius_AR
Why shouldn't they have a right? The music labels went out of their way to drive Napster out of business, and now that Napster is ruined and out of the picture, they intend to profit heavily through almost the same exact means Napster was using. If I were Napster, I'd be pissed too.
Magius_AR
High school should be for "well-rounding" a person. College should be job specific. Too much time is wasted on useless crap (you don't need 4 years of high school AND 4 years of college just to well-round a person). That time would have been much more useful had useful things been taught. Not once in my entire operating systems class did we even LOOK at a line of kernel code, and thats just sad. Magius_AR
The correct security method of course would be to actually correctly patch and secure the system (aka adding guards on planes and better security at airports)
Everyone knows that simply firewalling a system but leaving the back defenses completely unguarded is the lazy, halfassed (and practically wrong) way to handle security. Intelligence is similar. To use it to assist in security is one thing, to rely on it is another.
Step 1 is to actually beef up security in this system, like they are going to do now on airlines. If you want to add another layer of defense by trading privacy for information, well thats an option. But don't act like its the only one. You can say this would have never happened if we would have knew about it beforehand. I say it never would have happened if airlines put security over convenience in the first place. Americans seem to love convenience, despite the awful risks that come with it. That explains the large prevalent number of insecure Windows boxes out there. I for one wouldn't mind giving up some of my conveniences to gain a little security. Privacy I might gawk on, but it shouldn't be necessary to go that far.
Magius_AR
The kid is 17. That's one year (probably not even that) short of an adult, and _well_ into the range of "responsible decision making." Hell, you can drive at 16. If they're gonna give people THAT kind of a responsibility at 16, they sure as hell can endure some harsher punishments at 17.
I agree with the statement that this is a rather poor message to send the script kiddies. Not saying 8 months is a cakewalk, but DoS'ing a bunch of businesses is NOT comparable to the "simple vandalism" examples people here have been comparing it to. DoS attacks cost businesses ALOT of money. It's not a matter of scrubbing some paint from a wall. Its a huge loss in business.
I say the kid deserves the sentence and more.
Magius_AR
Echelon belongs to the FBI. Get your facts straight.
Change all existing code that looks like this:
void myfunc() {
while(1) {
}
}
to look like this:
void myfunc()
{
while(1)
{
}
}
Obviously more aesthetic, symmetric and eye-pleasing. Its step one towards prettier code.
Magius_AR
Normally the servers are lagged to all hell, the game is vastly unbalanced (future patches just serving to unbalance the game further), most of them are fairly poor in dealing with anything more than "kill things and get more powerful" (aka questing and plot and rpg value are serverely lacking) In many of them, you spend almost half your time walking or running somewhere. In fact some games like Ultima Online had you doing monotonous tasks like building shit like chairs and tables for hours just so you could get money to buy stuff. At least the text based MUDS of old had pretty good rpg value with clans and semi-balanced play and people who new how to roleplay rather than simply log on and gain xp for a couple hours and log off. Bah.
Magius_AR