As you note, the next patch supposedly supports this, but it takes all of about ten seconds to do it yourself in the current version (and you can bind it to a keystroke if you want). Check my reply to the parent post. FarCry is worth the minor hassle.
For FarCry -- I agree, the automatic saves were too few & far between for my tastes. Sometimes I just don't have that much time to burn.
Put "-DEVMODE" on the command line. In-game hit the reverse-apostrophe/tilde key to go to the console. Type "\save_game" and it'll create a savegame file called "quicksave". You can load that through the UI, or you can go to the console again and type "\load_game" to reload it. On rare occasions there are HUD bugs reloading, but if you simply reload through the UI, the problem fixes itself. You can also specify a name for the save, but I haven't really found a reason to bother.
My only other complaints with FarCry are balance and, frankly, the "monsters". I was having a huge amount of fun just stalking/fighting/killing other guys at all the cool outdoor bases. Then they introduce these insanely hard monsters (if you crank up the difficulty so the humans are fun to fight, the monsters are practically impossible to kill). And as if that wasn't enough, the last three levels are almost impossible even on the normal setting (medium difficulty, setting 2 of 5).
And still, it's so damned good, I just love it. And I rarely get that effusive about games. I think the last game I enjoyed this much was Atari Space Duel, and I have the full-size arcade machine to prove it.:)
To the contrary, the consequences to Microsoft are the impact on their image. The consequences are long term and not so easily quantified, but they are real. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.
This is what we call "market forces". Like many things in the real world, they don't act at "Internet speed"...
If you can't find or build a PC without Windows installed, you probably aren't the kind of user who can keep a computer running without Windows' hand-holding in the first place. I have NEVER bought a machine with Windows pre-installed -- I've bought very few pre-built machines, in fact -- which basically proves this "Microsoft Tax" thing is pure bullshit.
If you actually want a non-Windows PC, it's extremely easy to find one -- now more than ever, in fact.
I worked there for several months -- I didn't work for Microsoft, I was working with them because my company had identified a rather nasty, deeply-seated COM bug (which was so embedded in the fundamental guts of COM that they simply decided not to fix it). Anyway -- I found it very easy to go literally everywhere on campus, even though I was really only supposed to be in a few specific places. I even wandered around the giant room full of servers where they run the daily builds (back then, of WinNT) through their test-script paces.
No badge-stealing was required.
I'd say maybe they just screwed up when the set up my badge, but we rotated maybe ten or twelve people during those several months, and everybody seemed to have full access to almost everything.
Not that it was really that exciting. For the most part, it's just a bunch of office buildings like any other big business.
I'd love to see what you think makes you so amazing. At this point you just sound boorishly pompous. Probably it'll go away when you get older.
And I stick by my statement -- I can't think of anyone who feels "implicitly insulted" by the accomplishments of another person, no matter how amazing. Based on this recent post, I'd bet everything I have that they simply grow tired of you, as a person, and it's totally unrelated to your accomplishments (except perhaps in the sense that your behavior is tied to the value you associate with them, whatever they are).
Sorry for the AC confusion -- I don't normally respond to AC's so I simply assumed you must have posted under a username originally. I suppose that also raises the question, if you someday achieve all this wonderful recognition you feel you deserve, how am I supposed to know it's actually you once you present your evidence? Not that I expect it will actually happen, but the question does occur to me.
Define "accomplish". Work? I head up software development that affects the day-to-day work of 25,000 of my company's 65,000 employees. Leading a satisfying life? I have a great wife, we party a lot, I take European vacations whenever I can make the time, and I can generally do whatever I feel like doing. Material goods? I own a race car. I own two other cars, a truck, two motorcycles, a boat, a half-million dollar house, and several acres of land. Plain old coding? In my spare time I write D3D and OGL screen savers for the amusement of my wife. At work I'm currently involved in a system that directly processes $8 billion in transactions monthly.
All of which is beside the point.
What do you accomplish that's so much more valuable than everyone around you? I can honestly say I've never met someone who would mistreat another person simply because they "accomplish" things.
And why the sudden switch to AC, if you are indeed the same person?
Yeah, and you're talking about adding an additional layer of systems to do this -- generating waste heat in addition to the heat your body already generates.
He said each and every piece of TECHNOLOGY, not each and every OBJECT. Granted, the statement is still overly broad, but your sarcasm is unwarranted.
For more than a decade, the CDC has shown a steady decline in the number of gun-related child deaths. I wasn't able to find fatality statistics related to TNT, so I have to assume it isn't a significant source of accidental deaths.
Besides, his point was also that technologies are often (or usually) turned to violent ends INTENTIONALLY. Dredging up the tired old "Think of the children!" argument is irrelevant.
When you go to the zoo, do you consider the gorilla, lion, or giraffe a "machine"? Sure you could form a highly abstract argument to make the case, but realistically the answer is No.
Personally, I think interest in "nanobots" is misguided.
According to your earlier assertion, there isn't any difference. Which is it?
Whole armies fighting between the pores of your skin and in your tissues - weird!
Other responders have covered the more reasonable angles, but taking your post at face value, do you have any idea how much waste-heat you're talking about? Your little Neil Stephenson bad-sci-fi nanowar scenario would probably cook you alive.
In the past, people probably predicted that replacing hardware with software would solve a lot of the worlds problems, because software costs zero to copy or modify. It would even every one etc. and educate us all etc. etc.
I've read quite a lot about the early days of computing, and I started using them myself back in 78. I don't recall ever reading anything of the sort. When computers were new, they were still very hard to use, and going back to the earliest days they were quite huge and expensive. So it seems doubtful that anyone foresaw easily copied software as a useful thing until computers began to approach a form-factor that permitted true mass production. At that point, people were already playing with the idea of selling software independent of the companies making the computers. So your assumption is probably wrong.
Copyright and patents are being applied to software the way farmers might use copyright to prevent "Food Replicators" from solving world hunger.
Close, but no cigar. Companies will patent the vastly complicated instructions required to assemble desirable products. For all intents and purposes, this is still just software.
"Normals", not having imagination or vision, aspire to the highest goals that they can see within their inborn limitations
P.S. I feel qualified to speak for geniuses solely because people ostracize me for being one.
Or maybe they're just tired of your shitty opinion of them, or are tired of hearing about what a genius you are. I've been ranked genius IQ my whole life, yet I have a huge number of friends. I don't get ostracized. I never got beaten up in school. I've had no more than the normal share of ups and downs with women.
Here's a clue: a genius is exceptional. The specific meaning of that word is critical. Assuming you actually are one, it doesn't mean you have something others lack, which is what you appear to believe. It isn't a unique capability, it's enhanced capability. You are a lot more like those "normals" (possibly one of the more rude characterizations I've seen in a long time, by the way) than you're willing to admit.
The point you have to realize is: nobody cares. The minute you stop getting hung up on being a genius, and a lot of what you posted suggests you are -- people will start treating you normally. And you clearly DO want people to treat you normally, otherwise you wouldn't have concluded your post by pouting about being ostracized.
No, it does make a difference; for what you pay Microsoft for the product licensing alone, you can purchase the 'product' (which is more-or-less free) and awesome support from IBM. We're talking come-to-your-business, customize-the-software, keep-you-running support, not 90-days-after-its-installed support that comes by default with a Microsoft solution. Sure, you can add MS support on top of things, but a shop with full MS kit and an MS support contract will cost an imperial shitload (that's 36 craploads) more than a comparible IBM solution.
You've clearly never actually had a hand in any of this. First of all, any company who has "come to your business" support from IBM is also going to be looking at the kind of enterprise licensing from Microsoft which often involves Microsoft employees permanently assigned to your company. Just like IBM, but certainly not this "90-days" line of BS you're spouting.
And for the record, pretty much ANYTHING with IBM is going to be vastly more expensive. And I DO have direct experience with this, in a company with 65,000+ employees, two enormous data centers, acres of mainframes, and trillions of dollars in assets.
on the flip side, can you show me a *major* open-source software project where the core development team is all desperately looking for work
Not necessarily, but I can easily find a slew of major OSS projects that have floundered untouched for years on end. For most people in the world, the automatic response to losing your job is NOT to run off and update a blog.
Second, IBM hires a lot of these people; one of the reasons they justify their support costs is
If what you said earlier was true, I'd think IBM wouldn't have to justify their cost.
For one thing, geothermal is too impractical in many areas -- perhaps most areas. I live in Florida. The only thing you'll find underground around here is cold mud and cold water. As a child I lived in Iceland for awhile, and their geothermal projects are expansive and fascinating. But by comparison, their heat sources are plentiful and very easy to tap.
I'm not sure what you mean by "ground source".
As for oil -- are you asking about the efficiency of burning oil for energy, or are you asking how widespread is the use of oil? I think coal is still the primary source of electrical power generation in the world. Surprisingly, only France has it right, generating almost all of their power from nuclear fission.
Torque is the really interesting number. Horsepower is just a figure derived from torque (they're always equivalent at 5252 RPM due to the way HP is calculated). Torque and HP are not speed-related at all -- they're a description of how much power the engine (or engine plus drivetrain) makes at a given RPM.
You can think of turbos and superchargers as air compressors. This is how they feed enough air into the engine. (The common term is "forced induction", versus "naturally aspirated".) You can starve an engine for air (this is what happens when it runs rich, or on older engines when you engage the choke), at which point it simply won't run well, or perhaps at all. You can also introduce too much air (running lean) at which point you risk damaging the engine, since running lean is running hot. (Of course, you can also run it so lean there is insufficent fuel to run well, or at all.)
Aerodynamics is also unrelated to torque and horsepower. In terms of how much speed you can get out of a given vehicle, low drag aerodynamics would make MORE difference to a lower HP car since there is less drag to slow it down. My Viper makes 525 engine horsepower (driveline loss is about 12% so it makes about 462 HP at the wheels) and it has all the aerodynamic efficiency of a brick wall, so while it theoretically should be good for about 220 MPH (based on horsepower and gear ratios) it's actually only good for about 185 MPH in the real world, at which point it's just plowing too much air to continue to accelerate.
Several manufaturers are releasing a displacement on command feature. making the V8 a V4 by shutting down four cylinders and removing the oil that keeps the lifters filled (and hence, lifting valves.) GM, Porsche and IIRC BMW have motors announced.
GM did this on the 6 cylinder Grand Prix GTP as far back as 1995. They're doing it on Caddy's this year. Add Benz and Chrysler to that list, too. Benz has announced it, and Chrysler offers it in the 5.7L Hemi 300C.
Speaking of mileage, my 525 HP Viper, which runs about 9 MPG in city driving, is capable of about 28 MPG as long as I can maintain a steady ~100 MPH in sixth gear (which is only 2000 RPM). I was surprised to discover this little factoid driving home from the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta in the middle of the night a few years ago. Calculating that you just milked 28 MPG for a full tank in a Viper is a real shocker...
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As you note, the next patch supposedly supports this, but it takes all of about ten seconds to do it yourself in the current version (and you can bind it to a keystroke if you want). Check my reply to the parent post. FarCry is worth the minor hassle.
I agree, it was a really stupid design decision.
For FarCry -- I agree, the automatic saves were too few & far between for my tastes. Sometimes I just don't have that much time to burn.
:)
Put "-DEVMODE" on the command line. In-game hit the reverse-apostrophe/tilde key to go to the console. Type "\save_game" and it'll create a savegame file called "quicksave". You can load that through the UI, or you can go to the console again and type "\load_game" to reload it. On rare occasions there are HUD bugs reloading, but if you simply reload through the UI, the problem fixes itself. You can also specify a name for the save, but I haven't really found a reason to bother.
My only other complaints with FarCry are balance and, frankly, the "monsters". I was having a huge amount of fun just stalking/fighting/killing other guys at all the cool outdoor bases. Then they introduce these insanely hard monsters (if you crank up the difficulty so the humans are fun to fight, the monsters are practically impossible to kill). And as if that wasn't enough, the last three levels are almost impossible even on the normal setting (medium difficulty, setting 2 of 5).
And still, it's so damned good, I just love it. And I rarely get that effusive about games. I think the last game I enjoyed this much was Atari Space Duel, and I have the full-size arcade machine to prove it.
To the contrary, the consequences to Microsoft are the impact on their image. The consequences are long term and not so easily quantified, but they are real. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.
This is what we call "market forces".
Like many things in the real world, they don't act at "Internet speed"...
If you can't find or build a PC without Windows installed, you probably aren't the kind of user who can keep a computer running without Windows' hand-holding in the first place. I have NEVER bought a machine with Windows pre-installed -- I've bought very few pre-built machines, in fact -- which basically proves this "Microsoft Tax" thing is pure bullshit.
If you actually want a non-Windows PC, it's extremely easy to find one -- now more than ever, in fact.
I worked there for several months -- I didn't work for Microsoft, I was working with them because my company had identified a rather nasty, deeply-seated COM bug (which was so embedded in the fundamental guts of COM that they simply decided not to fix it). Anyway -- I found it very easy to go literally everywhere on campus, even though I was really only supposed to be in a few specific places. I even wandered around the giant room full of servers where they run the daily builds (back then, of WinNT) through their test-script paces.
No badge-stealing was required.
I'd say maybe they just screwed up when the set up my badge, but we rotated maybe ten or twelve people during those several months, and everybody seemed to have full access to almost everything.
Not that it was really that exciting. For the most part, it's just a bunch of office buildings like any other big business.
Ha! Excellent. I came so close to posting that myself. :)
I blow the state-of-the-art away.
I'd love to see what you think makes you so amazing. At this point you just sound boorishly pompous. Probably it'll go away when you get older.
And I stick by my statement -- I can't think of anyone who feels "implicitly insulted" by the accomplishments of another person, no matter how amazing. Based on this recent post, I'd bet everything I have that they simply grow tired of you, as a person, and it's totally unrelated to your accomplishments (except perhaps in the sense that your behavior is tied to the value you associate with them, whatever they are).
Sorry for the AC confusion -- I don't normally respond to AC's so I simply assumed you must have posted under a username originally. I suppose that also raises the question, if you someday achieve all this wonderful recognition you feel you deserve, how am I supposed to know it's actually you once you present your evidence? Not that I expect it will actually happen, but the question does occur to me.
Define "accomplish". Work? I head up software development that affects the day-to-day work of 25,000 of my company's 65,000 employees. Leading a satisfying life? I have a great wife, we party a lot, I take European vacations whenever I can make the time, and I can generally do whatever I feel like doing. Material goods? I own a race car. I own two other cars, a truck, two motorcycles, a boat, a half-million dollar house, and several acres of land. Plain old coding? In my spare time I write D3D and OGL screen savers for the amusement of my wife. At work I'm currently involved in a system that directly processes $8 billion in transactions monthly.
All of which is beside the point.
What do you accomplish that's so much more valuable than everyone around you? I can honestly say I've never met someone who would mistreat another person simply because they "accomplish" things.
And why the sudden switch to AC, if you are indeed the same person?
Yeah, and you're talking about adding an additional layer of systems to do this -- generating waste heat in addition to the heat your body already generates.
It isn't to "locate" prospects.
Think of it as advertising.
and exists in nearly every major religion on the planet
Not everybody assumes that makes it a good thing.
He said each and every piece of TECHNOLOGY, not each and every OBJECT. Granted, the statement is still overly broad, but your sarcasm is unwarranted.
For more than a decade, the CDC has shown a steady decline in the number of gun-related child deaths. I wasn't able to find fatality statistics related to TNT, so I have to assume it isn't a significant source of accidental deaths.
Besides, his point was also that technologies are often (or usually) turned to violent ends INTENTIONALLY. Dredging up the tired old "Think of the children!" argument is irrelevant.
I recall reading that they said the same thing about the crossbow.
Nanomachines are NOT NEW!
NanoSCALE is not new.
NanoMACHINES are new.
When you go to the zoo, do you consider the gorilla, lion, or giraffe a "machine"? Sure you could form a highly abstract argument to make the case, but realistically the answer is No.
Personally, I think interest in "nanobots" is misguided.
According to your earlier assertion, there isn't any difference. Which is it?
Whole armies fighting between the pores of your skin and in your tissues - weird!
Other responders have covered the more reasonable angles, but taking your post at face value, do you have any idea how much waste-heat you're talking about? Your little Neil Stephenson bad-sci-fi nanowar scenario would probably cook you alive.
In the past, people probably predicted that replacing hardware with software would solve a lot of the worlds problems, because software costs zero to copy or modify. It would even every one etc. and educate us all etc. etc.
I've read quite a lot about the early days of computing, and I started using them myself back in 78. I don't recall ever reading anything of the sort. When computers were new, they were still very hard to use, and going back to the earliest days they were quite huge and expensive. So it seems doubtful that anyone foresaw easily copied software as a useful thing until computers began to approach a form-factor that permitted true mass production. At that point, people were already playing with the idea of selling software independent of the companies making the computers. So your assumption is probably wrong.
Copyright and patents are being applied to software the way farmers might use copyright to prevent "Food Replicators" from solving world hunger.
Close, but no cigar. Companies will patent the vastly complicated instructions required to assemble desirable products. For all intents and purposes, this is still just software.
Actually, with CVDs it's the other way around -- the De Beers system spectrographically detects mineral flaws in natural diamonds.
"Normals", not having imagination or vision, aspire to the highest goals that they can see within their inborn limitations
P.S. I feel qualified to speak for geniuses solely because people ostracize me for being one.
Or maybe they're just tired of your shitty opinion of them, or are tired of hearing about what a genius you are. I've been ranked genius IQ my whole life, yet I have a huge number of friends. I don't get ostracized. I never got beaten up in school. I've had no more than the normal share of ups and downs with women.
Here's a clue: a genius is exceptional. The specific meaning of that word is critical. Assuming you actually are one, it doesn't mean you have something others lack, which is what you appear to believe. It isn't a unique capability, it's enhanced capability. You are a lot more like those "normals" (possibly one of the more rude characterizations I've seen in a long time, by the way) than you're willing to admit.
The point you have to realize is: nobody cares. The minute you stop getting hung up on being a genius, and a lot of what you posted suggests you are -- people will start treating you normally. And you clearly DO want people to treat you normally, otherwise you wouldn't have concluded your post by pouting about being ostracized.
No, it does make a difference; for what you pay Microsoft for the product licensing alone, you can purchase the 'product' (which is more-or-less free) and awesome support from IBM. We're talking come-to-your-business, customize-the-software, keep-you-running support, not 90-days-after-its-installed support that comes by default with a Microsoft solution. Sure, you can add MS support on top of things, but a shop with full MS kit and an MS support contract will cost an imperial shitload (that's 36 craploads) more than a comparible IBM solution.
You've clearly never actually had a hand in any of this. First of all, any company who has "come to your business" support from IBM is also going to be looking at the kind of enterprise licensing from Microsoft which often involves Microsoft employees permanently assigned to your company. Just like IBM, but certainly not this "90-days" line of BS you're spouting.
And for the record, pretty much ANYTHING with IBM is going to be vastly more expensive. And I DO have direct experience with this, in a company with 65,000+ employees, two enormous data centers, acres of mainframes, and trillions of dollars in assets.
on the flip side, can you show me a *major* open-source software project where the core development team is all desperately looking for work
Not necessarily, but I can easily find a slew of major OSS projects that have floundered untouched for years on end. For most people in the world, the automatic response to losing your job is NOT to run off and update a blog.
Second, IBM hires a lot of these people; one of the reasons they justify their support costs is
If what you said earlier was true, I'd think IBM wouldn't have to justify their cost.
Interesting, I haven't heard of those. (Found some links on Google.)
For one thing, geothermal is too impractical in many areas -- perhaps most areas. I live in Florida. The only thing you'll find underground around here is cold mud and cold water. As a child I lived in Iceland for awhile, and their geothermal projects are expansive and fascinating. But by comparison, their heat sources are plentiful and very easy to tap.
I'm not sure what you mean by "ground source".
As for oil -- are you asking about the efficiency of burning oil for energy, or are you asking how widespread is the use of oil? I think coal is still the primary source of electrical power generation in the world. Surprisingly, only France has it right, generating almost all of their power from nuclear fission.
my gf (yup she's thai, in case you're wondering)
We weren't wondering.
Just in case you were wondering.
Thanks, mom.
I never said it was a great idea, I just said you're flat out wrong asserting that you can't do it over a long period of time.
Torque is the really interesting number. Horsepower is just a figure derived from torque (they're always equivalent at 5252 RPM due to the way HP is calculated). Torque and HP are not speed-related at all -- they're a description of how much power the engine (or engine plus drivetrain) makes at a given RPM.
You can think of turbos and superchargers as air compressors. This is how they feed enough air into the engine. (The common term is "forced induction", versus "naturally aspirated".) You can starve an engine for air (this is what happens when it runs rich, or on older engines when you engage the choke), at which point it simply won't run well, or perhaps at all. You can also introduce too much air (running lean) at which point you risk damaging the engine, since running lean is running hot. (Of course, you can also run it so lean there is insufficent fuel to run well, or at all.)
Aerodynamics is also unrelated to torque and horsepower. In terms of how much speed you can get out of a given vehicle, low drag aerodynamics would make MORE difference to a lower HP car since there is less drag to slow it down. My Viper makes 525 engine horsepower (driveline loss is about 12% so it makes about 462 HP at the wheels) and it has all the aerodynamic efficiency of a brick wall, so while it theoretically should be good for about 220 MPH (based on horsepower and gear ratios) it's actually only good for about 185 MPH in the real world, at which point it's just plowing too much air to continue to accelerate.
Several manufaturers are releasing a displacement on command feature. making the V8 a V4 by shutting down four cylinders and removing the oil that keeps the lifters filled (and hence, lifting valves.) GM, Porsche and IIRC BMW have motors announced.
GM did this on the 6 cylinder Grand Prix GTP as far back as 1995. They're doing it on Caddy's this year. Add Benz and Chrysler to that list, too. Benz has announced it, and Chrysler offers it in the 5.7L Hemi 300C.
Speaking of mileage, my 525 HP Viper, which runs about 9 MPG in city driving, is capable of about 28 MPG as long as I can maintain a steady ~100 MPH in sixth gear (which is only 2000 RPM). I was surprised to discover this little factoid driving home from the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta in the middle of the night a few years ago. Calculating that you just milked 28 MPG for a full tank in a Viper is a real shocker...