For the moment at least, they're still evaporating the moment they hit stores like water hitting a frying pan. Controllers seem to be disappearing even faster - I got my Wii on launch day, but to this day have only been able to get 2 extra controllers and chuks, and those I had to do about a week of searching to find.
By January, they'll probably be easy to get ahold of. If you need one before then, I suggest buddying up to someone at a Toys R Us, Target, or similar store, and finding out the exact moment they plan to unload the Wiis from trucks and put them on the floor.
First off, don't treat me like an idiot. After 10 years of college and graduate school, I know perfectly well how to use google and wikipedia.
My apologies for that. It can be hard to tell with people on the internet sometimes, and I came off as unnecessarily caustic there. However, there's a decent chance that someone viewing this thread might not have been aware of the precise differences between embryos and fetuses, so perhaps I helped someone out.
So, given where we are, is it wrong to not want to pay for that sort of research?
Of course not. If you are against funding research involving embryonic stem cells, then you are welcome to your opinion. The issue I took with your previous posting was the unnecessary reference to aborted fetuses, and then taking that a step further and comparing embryonic stem cell research to performing experiments on live prisoners.
Do the couples get asked what to do with their embryos? I bet many clinics are not upfront about it.
Well, I've never been to an IVF clinic myself, nor has anyone I know. I looked around a bit, and as far as I can tell, in the US there are no legal regulations about how an IVF clinic must deal with unwanted embryos. So, it is entirely possible that some clinics are not upfront with patients about what happens to the embryos after a successful fertlization. It would probably be a very good thing to have some regulations in place, like the UK does.
Though really, the only choices involved here are to let the embryos rot in a freezer, or to let them be destroyed. If they're being destroyed, does it matter if the embryo is destroyed by being doused with bleach, or tossed in an incinerator, or whatever they do, or sent to a research lab?
If I'm guilty of misinformation, then you are just as guilty. Many of the current stem-cell treatments can use adult stem cells, which don't involve embryo/fetus harvesting
You're right on the first part, I was rather overstating the situation. Right now, at least as far as I'm aware, there aren't any actual treatments for people using embryonic stem cells, and there are treatments being performed using adult stem cells. The reason for this is that medical researchers have known about adult stem cells for a lot longer than embryonic ones, so there's more research surrounding adult stem cells, and that research is more mature.
However, the fact remains that many researchers see a lot of potential in embryonic stem cell research. And while we may not have any cures now, we might have some decades from now, whereas we will get nowhere if we don't do the research. And yes, private funding is picking up part of the slack, but removing government funding leaves a pretty large void.
It's true that the embryonic cells are better for basic research, but is it too much to ask to either (1) do that with your own money, or (2) do that in another country.
I touched on point 1 above. In regards to point 2, I personally disagree with the idea of forcing American scientists to fall behind the rest of the world like that, but again, you are welcome to your opinion.
Secondly, most of the controversy that I'm aware of right now does not involve taking stem cells from aborted fetuses, or aborted embryos. It involves taking embryos that were already created and frozen in a lab for in vitro fertilization, but never used. If these embryos are not implanted in a womb within a certain amount of time, even frozen, they stop being viable. Furthermore, most in vitro clinics destroy the unwanted embryos after the couple has successfully conceived. Right now, these embryos are just being destroyed, but instead, they could be use to cure people! However, people like you go around spreading misinformation designed to rile up people's emotions, to the point where they forget what the issue is even about.
As someone from Texas (in the southern tip of tornado alley), I can definately say that I'd rather take my chances with hurricanes, or possibly earthquakes, than having to deal with tornadoes. Hurricanes you can at least see coming for a long time. Tornadoes just decide to show up in the evening wherever they damn well feel like, with very little warning at all.
Earthquakes, major ones anyway, are probably just as sudden as tornadoes, but much less common. And minor earthquakes, from what I hear, just require people to pick up the crap that fell off their shelves. A minor tornado might "just" require people to have a new roof put on their house.
My first guess upon looking at that snippet of code is that it is used to determine what search string brought users to that page. One of the things a web browser usually sends to a web server when requesting a page is the page that referred it. My guess is, the code you are looking at is part of a section of code that will figure out what search string brought the user to this page, if the referrer is a major search engine (ie, google, yahoo, msn, aol).
The second string (q,p,q,query), is probably the variable in the referrer url that contains the search string that was used to send users to this page.
Nothing evil, just some javascript magic so you can figure out how users are finding your webpage, which I imagine is quite useful information to a webmaster.
Playing at bars and clubs is one of the first things you need to do. Few people will go out of their way to download music from someone they've never heard of. Now, the next trick is, you've got to convert the people who came to your show but have never heard of you before into fans. Here's my idea on an approach that might work.
After the show, have the band members at various exits handing out cards/flyers/whatever. The cards should each have a unique ID number on it, and a URL for the band's web page. Allow people to download some number (say 3) songs from the band's webpage for free with that ID number. Any 3 they want - make sure the whole catalog of songs you have available online is eligible. Make the rest of the mp3s (or oggs, or whatever) are reasonably priced, say $0.50 - $1.00.
This does a few things for you. First off, people won't forget about you after the show. If you're just starting out, you're probably not the main attraction at the show, so you can't count on people buying any merchandise you have for sale at the show. If they don't take something with your name on it home with them, they'll forget about you.
And by giving them a few mp3s of your songs for free, they'll likely keep listening to you. Next time they see your name attached to a show, they'll probably go to it. Maybe they'll buy that t-shirt they thought was really cool, or decide to pick up a CD. They'll play the mp3s for their friends, and bring them along when they come to the show. Before long, you'll have a following, and you'll be getting more and more gigs. Once this has happened, you can look into joining with a label, but you'll be in a better position to negotiate your own terms, since you've already done a lot of the start up work yourself.
They gave an exclusive to Game Informer?! Wow. That's really rather ridiculous. I mean, at least with Game Informer, you can buy your game a damn good review, but no one I know reads the reviews in there because they're generally a complete pile of crap. At least the last time I read the magazine, a year ago, it was like this...and I can't imagine they've changed a whole lot. Some of the reviews it was pretty obvious had simply been paid for, and it was also obvious when you were reading a review that wasn't paid for, because they would make up stuff about how bad it was.
Giving an exclusive to Game Informer sounds pretty fishy to me, then...almost like they have something to hide, and want to make sure they can guarantee a good review.
You may want to do a bit more research about Steam before you decide to pass up on Half-Life 2. First off, a lot has changed in the nearly a year since the article you linked to was written. For starters, Steam now features a "Start in offline mode" option. When Steam starts up, if it's not connected to the internet, it lets you do that. Then, you have access to all your single player games just fine. I imagine you can also play all your LAN games just fine as well, but I haven't had an oppurtunity to try that.
Did Steam have an awful lot of problems when it was first released? Yes, it did. But, believe it or not, the people working on Steam at Valve are not some kind of evil sadists who enjoy making people jump through hoops to play their game. They've created a rather nice system for making sure your games are always updated, and giving you an easy way to purchase new games from them without having to run down to the nearest Gamestop. Problems do occur, and they try to fix them as soon as possible.
And, I certainly doubt Valve is going to make it hard for mods to be created. They aren't stupid - they know that one of the big reasons Half-Life has sold so well over the past 6 years is because of fun mods like TFC and CS. How many other 6 year old games do you see with thousands of servers running right now? Currently, they allow really popular mods to be listed in the Steam gui, with a screenshot and a short writeup. Other mods can still be played (I remember at least once getting in a game of Pirates, Vikings, and Knights over Steam) just as they always could.
Just out of curiousity, in what way is this post insightful?
Personally, I don't see all the problems people have with Steam. Oh no, I never have to manually download patches, because the system downloads them automatically for me! Oh no, they put in a rather nice user interface rather than the less than spectacular one that shipped with the game. Heaven forbid, there's a tiny little icon in my system tray!
Also, if you haven't noticed, when Steam fails to connect to the internet, it gives you the option of using "Start in offline mode", which allows you to play single player games, as well as lan games, without being connected to the internet.
Admittedly, I don't have much experience with doing this. At the lan parties I go to, we tend not to play games that are 6 years old. So it's entirely possible there are some quirks involved in playing lan games while not connected to the internet. So, if playing steam based games on a lan not connected to the internet is such a problem, vote with your cash and buy one of the many games that have been released in the 6 years since Counter-Strike came out.
Well, I'm sure that no one wants to admit it, but I know the truth about why there have been so many 503 errors recently. CmdrTaco and friends are trying to get their machines ready to run Doom 3, and realizing that they need more horsepower in their gaming machines, have been taking parts from the servers that host Slashdot.
Unfortunately, we will likely have these errors for quite a while, because now that they all have machines capable of running Doom 3, and since Doom 3 is now out (and undoubtedly in CmrdTaco and friend's hands), they'll be far too busy with that to even remember than they run a website.
The recommended way to deal with this is to go out and purchase Doom 3 yourself. It won't bring Slashdot back, but you'll be too busy fighting demons to care.
English is a horrible repeat of writing papers every year. My first year in college was exactly the same. I never learned anything new and my paper writing skills never increased after probably 9th grade.
Learning isn't something that just happens, you know. Skills don't increase on their own just by going to class. You have to take responsibility for that. Don't blame your teachers because your writing skills didn't increase. If you were writing well enough, in 9th grade, to get A's in every English course up through freshman level in college, that's great. But that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement. You could have participated in essay writing contests, challenging yourself, improving your skills, all while giving yourself the chance to win prizes and/or scholarships. Or, at the very least, taken the AP tests (even if your school didn't offer the class, you can still take the tests, and if your writing and reading comprehension were good enough that college freshman English wasn't a problem, you probably would have done well on the AP tests)
As for history, it's a pity your school focused on the easy to test date memorization rather than the harder to test, but more important, understanding the reason why those dates were important, and what led up to those events in history. But again, don't blame your teachers because you didn't learn much. That big history book almost certainly had more information than just dates that you could have read yourself, and if not, there are dozens more books to be found in your local library or bookstore. Perhaps you'll never be a king or president, but history is important nonetheless. Learning how the world came to be what it is today helps you to understand politics, which effects you even if you choose to ignore it. It also will help you to understand other cultures. You will almost certainly, at some point in your life, meet someone from another culture, and understanding a bit about that culture might just be helpful to you when that happens.
Certainly, hands on experience is useful. But, if you want to do more with your life than simply reboot the server when it crashes, books should not be overlooked.
A math game with no storyline! You've got to be kidding me!
What storyline, exactly, should a math game have? How does one work a meaningful plot into a game where, for instance, a little green thing has to hop around the screen eating all the numbers that are evenly divisible by seven, or where you must answer some math problem before a bomb goes off?
For the most part, these games are puzzle games. Puzzle games, in general, do not have much of a story behind them, nor are the graphics amazing. The point of a puzzle game is simply to solve the puzzle so you can move onto the next one - they are meant to challenge your mind, not astound you with character development and plot twists, or fancy 3d effects. Many of these "lame maths games" are puzzle games with some knowledge of math required, and are a good way to get the kids who normally aren't interested to pay a little attention. Should Math Blaster (or any of those other old games) replace a conventional math class? Of course not! But they can certainly supplement one.
Also, good idea, ignoring school and letting your entire education come from TV and the internet. Teachers and books can't possibly teach you anything. The internet is a wholly factual, unbiased source of information, whereas teachers wake up every morning imagining what lies they can teach you today! You seem to have already picked up excellent writing skills - using either "fuck", "shit", or "crap" in almost every paragraph is the sign of someone who has mastered the art of written communication.
Perhaps the reason they are teaching you exactly the same stuff year after year is because that stuff is important? If you already understand every single thing that you are being taught, then talk to your teachers about other things you can do. Maybe they will suggest some books you can read to improve yourself further? Maybe you should be taking some more advanced classes? What you're doing is giving up, when really you should try to make the most of your time in school.
Also, I'm curious as to where you're getting this idea that you will only ever use 5% of what you learn in "real life." Define use. Maybe you don't intend to teach English, but learning how to write, and write well, will benefit you in almost any field. Not to mention the ability to read, and comprehend what you read. Maybe you don't think of History as useful, but knowing how the world has become what it is today is useful in helping you understand other cultures, as well as in helping you undersetand politics. Perhaps you have no intention of using calculus in "real life", but the problem solving skills you learn in there will benefit you anywhere. Knowing a foreign language, any foreign language, is a good way to learn about other cultures. Some understanding of the arts is a nice thing to have, even if it isn't, strictly speaking, "useful." So if all you want to do is learn some particular trade and be told what to do all your life, then maybe school isn't for you. But otherwise, stay in school, and eat the "baby food" they're feeding you so you'll be ready when it comes time to get some steak.
Also, comparing yourself to Einstein is a bit premature. First, make some major advancements in your field. Then, maybe you can consider comparing yourself to Einstein.
This reminds me of my junior year high school history class. Our teacher (who also happened to be the baseball coach), decided on an...interesting way of teaching WWII during the last few weeks of school (which is also, if I remember correctly, when HS baseball season is at it's highest point)
He broke the class up into teams, four I think. Then, he hooked his computer up to the TV in the room, and the teams played Axis and Allies against eachother for a few weeks. This was, truly, an incredibly educational experience. We learned how dice rolls determined the outcome of battles, among other amazing history facts.
Of course, it was the most interesting history class I've ever taken, too.
Adult swim is on Cartoon Network, which has not been taken away from Dish. How do I know this? My college uses Dish for all the dorm TV, I can't get Comedy Central right now, but I am watching Cowboy Bebop as I right this.
Wal-marts in Canada close?! Here where I live, we have two types of Wal-marts - the normal, grocery store type wal-marts, and the "Super" Wal-marts, that sell everything under the sun. I have yet to go to one of these super wal-marts that wasn't open 24/7.
I'm in Dallas, TX, by the way. I haven't sampled the Wal-marts in other states or countries.
It's impossible to purchase Quake III? Since when? Quake III is now one of those games you can get for roughly $10 or so almost anywhere that sells games. It's not in a big box anymore, but it's a cd and a cdkey, and that's all that matters. Just yesterday I was at Wal-mart (no, I don't usually shop for games there, but it was 3 in the morning, I was bored, and my roommate had money to burn), and saw a jewel case with Quake 3 in it for $10.
If Quake III works on Macs, I assume this CD would work just fine on one.
It is a pity that WolfET isn't supported on Macs, though. I imagine it's not too hard to port (the engine it's based on was cross platform, after all), I suspect it's more a question of why bother. After all, no one is making a dime from this - it's free because it was planned on being a commercial product, but they decided that wasn't gonna work out, so instead of tossing the whole project out, they just cleaned it up a bit and put it on the internet for free. That's pretty nice of the company to do already, but it'd be bordering on insane for them to spend resources to port a game that they don't sell to another platform.
Oh well...if you can afford a Mac, you can probably afford a couple hundred to throw together a cheap PC;)
Because with most laptops (at least, every one I've ever owned), you can plug in a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Sound of course depends on what built in sound card they have, but I don't find 5.1 sound to be a necessity when I game.
The reason these disks seem so full is because of a little trick used to make games load faster. While the angular speed of the disk is the same no matter where you read it, it's the linear speed that's important. And the further out from the center you are, the faster the linear speed is. So, basically, the further out on the disc you are, the faster it loads.
So what they do is, they usually include a big, empty dummy file which they will put at the beginning of the disc. This pushes all of the important information into the faster-loading regions of the disc. Of course, this also means that a simple scan of the size of the disc will return a size close to the maximum size of the media.
Now, I don't claim to be an expert on GTA specifically, so I still can't answer about whether or not the game could fit on a 1.5 gb Gamecube disc.
That's a very good point. For most music, I personally can hardly tell the difference between a 128 kbps mp3 and a CD. I'm not sure I've ever been able to hear any audio defects coming from a 192 kbps or above mp3. However, when I'm listening to music, it's either on relatively cheap pc speakers, relatively cheap headphones, or my car's factory speakers.
Here's another idea that an "ideal" (ie, one that listens to the customer, rather than to the RIAA) music service could use. Sell FLAC (or some similar completely lossless codec) encoded songs for 99 cents. Sell 128 kbps mp3s for 50 cents, and maybe 56kbps mp3s for a quarter or so. That way, people like me who don't mind listening to a 128kbps encoding can get the "discount" version, and someone who has better audio hardware (or simply better ears) can pay for the "full" version.
This even provides the company with the ability to "resell" recordings to people who previously only wanted a lower quality encoding, but have decided to get a higher quality encoding later on.
Better yet, sell things the customers want! They're getting closer to that, at least. iTunes, Napster 2.0, BuyMusic.com (or whatever that other one is), let people buy music on a per-track basis, which is exactly what I want. Sometimes I want a whole album, if it's buy a group I know well enough to be assured I'll like the CD. But I refuse to buy a cd from an artist I don't know that well, because too often I've forked over cash for a cd I thought would be good, but actually only the track that got radio play was any good. As things stand now, I don't buy cds from artists I've only heard one song from before, but with iTunes and friends, I wouldn't mind risking a dollar on a song I hadn't heard before.
As soon as a service appears that will let me, for a good price (99 cents is good, but less is always better), download an mp3 with no restrictions on the number of times I can burn it to cd, copy it to my mp3 player, or copy it to other computers, then I will immediately start buying a lot of music.
Well, the way I read this (IANAL), it now seems legal to break the whatever copyright protection was installed onto a game if the format of the game has become obsolete, and which in unaltered form would require the original media/hardware to use. So basically, if you own an old, obsolete arcade game, you can legally circumvent the copyright protection so that you can extract the ROM and use it on your PC.
Now, how many MAME users actually own old arcade hardware, and intend to use MAME to play that arcade game? Distributing the ROMs to anyone is still illegal, but I guess it would now be legal for me to tell you how to rip the ROM out of your own board yourself.
Windows 95 is considered obsolete and unsupported by Microsoft, right?
Yes, Windows 95 is considered obsolete by Microsoft, but the format it is distributed on (CDs) are not. Furthermore, there's not really any DRM on the Windows 95 cd anyway, aside from the installation program asking for a valid key, so the point is moot.
What this exemption really means is that if, in the future, software was distributed on DRM enabled media, and then further into the future, the DRM media they 'obsolete' and few people had drives that could read them, it would be legal to tell someone how to extract data from that media and use it on the current hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
For the moment at least, they're still evaporating the moment they hit stores like water hitting a frying pan. Controllers seem to be disappearing even faster - I got my Wii on launch day, but to this day have only been able to get 2 extra controllers and chuks, and those I had to do about a week of searching to find.
By January, they'll probably be easy to get ahold of. If you need one before then, I suggest buddying up to someone at a Toys R Us, Target, or similar store, and finding out the exact moment they plan to unload the Wiis from trucks and put them on the floor.
First off, don't treat me like an idiot. After 10 years of college and graduate school, I know perfectly well how to use google and wikipedia.
My apologies for that. It can be hard to tell with people on the internet sometimes, and I came off as unnecessarily caustic there. However, there's a decent chance that someone viewing this thread might not have been aware of the precise differences between embryos and fetuses, so perhaps I helped someone out.
So, given where we are, is it wrong to not want to pay for that sort of research?
Of course not. If you are against funding research involving embryonic stem cells, then you are welcome to your opinion. The issue I took with your previous posting was the unnecessary reference to aborted fetuses, and then taking that a step further and comparing embryonic stem cell research to performing experiments on live prisoners.
Do the couples get asked what to do with their embryos? I bet many clinics are not upfront about it.
Well, I've never been to an IVF clinic myself, nor has anyone I know. I looked around a bit, and as far as I can tell, in the US there are no legal regulations about how an IVF clinic must deal with unwanted embryos. So, it is entirely possible that some clinics are not upfront with patients about what happens to the embryos after a successful fertlization. It would probably be a very good thing to have some regulations in place, like the UK does.
Though really, the only choices involved here are to let the embryos rot in a freezer, or to let them be destroyed. If they're being destroyed, does it matter if the embryo is destroyed by being doused with bleach, or tossed in an incinerator, or whatever they do, or sent to a research lab?
If I'm guilty of misinformation, then you are just as guilty. Many of the current stem-cell treatments can use adult stem cells, which don't involve embryo/fetus harvesting
You're right on the first part, I was rather overstating the situation. Right now, at least as far as I'm aware, there aren't any actual treatments for people using embryonic stem cells, and there are treatments being performed using adult stem cells. The reason for this is that medical researchers have known about adult stem cells for a lot longer than embryonic ones, so there's more research surrounding adult stem cells, and that research is more mature.
However, the fact remains that many researchers see a lot of potential in embryonic stem cell research. And while we may not have any cures now, we might have some decades from now, whereas we will get nowhere if we don't do the research. And yes, private funding is picking up part of the slack, but removing government funding leaves a pretty large void.
It's true that the embryonic cells are better for basic research, but is it too much to ask to either (1) do that with your own money, or (2) do that in another country.
I touched on point 1 above. In regards to point 2, I personally disagree with the idea of forcing American scientists to fall behind the rest of the world like that, but again, you are welcome to your opinion.
First off, Embryo != Fetus
_ Human_Embryo
If you don't know what embryo means, here's a helpful link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo#Growth_of_the
Secondly, most of the controversy that I'm aware of right now does not involve taking stem cells from aborted fetuses, or aborted embryos. It involves taking embryos that were already created and frozen in a lab for in vitro fertilization, but never used. If these embryos are not implanted in a womb within a certain amount of time, even frozen, they stop being viable. Furthermore, most in vitro clinics destroy the unwanted embryos after the couple has successfully conceived. Right now, these embryos are just being destroyed, but instead, they could be use to cure people! However, people like you go around spreading misinformation designed to rile up people's emotions, to the point where they forget what the issue is even about.
As someone from Texas (in the southern tip of tornado alley), I can definately say that I'd rather take my chances with hurricanes, or possibly earthquakes, than having to deal with tornadoes. Hurricanes you can at least see coming for a long time. Tornadoes just decide to show up in the evening wherever they damn well feel like, with very little warning at all.
Earthquakes, major ones anyway, are probably just as sudden as tornadoes, but much less common. And minor earthquakes, from what I hear, just require people to pick up the crap that fell off their shelves. A minor tornado might "just" require people to have a new roof put on their house.
So yeah, tornadoes kind of suck.
My first guess upon looking at that snippet of code is that it is used to determine what search string brought users to that page. One of the things a web browser usually sends to a web server when requesting a page is the page that referred it. My guess is, the code you are looking at is part of a section of code that will figure out what search string brought the user to this page, if the referrer is a major search engine (ie, google, yahoo, msn, aol).
The second string (q,p,q,query), is probably the variable in the referrer url that contains the search string that was used to send users to this page.
Nothing evil, just some javascript magic so you can figure out how users are finding your webpage, which I imagine is quite useful information to a webmaster.
A Hitchhiker's guide reference, and an anti-Bush message, all in one post? Mr. Adams would have been proud.
Playing at bars and clubs is one of the first things you need to do. Few people will go out of their way to download music from someone they've never heard of. Now, the next trick is, you've got to convert the people who came to your show but have never heard of you before into fans. Here's my idea on an approach that might work.
After the show, have the band members at various exits handing out cards/flyers/whatever. The cards should each have a unique ID number on it, and a URL for the band's web page. Allow people to download some number (say 3) songs from the band's webpage for free with that ID number. Any 3 they want - make sure the whole catalog of songs you have available online is eligible. Make the rest of the mp3s (or oggs, or whatever) are reasonably priced, say $0.50 - $1.00.
This does a few things for you. First off, people won't forget about you after the show. If you're just starting out, you're probably not the main attraction at the show, so you can't count on people buying any merchandise you have for sale at the show. If they don't take something with your name on it home with them, they'll forget about you.
And by giving them a few mp3s of your songs for free, they'll likely keep listening to you. Next time they see your name attached to a show, they'll probably go to it. Maybe they'll buy that t-shirt they thought was really cool, or decide to pick up a CD. They'll play the mp3s for their friends, and bring them along when they come to the show. Before long, you'll have a following, and you'll be getting more and more gigs. Once this has happened, you can look into joining with a label, but you'll be in a better position to negotiate your own terms, since you've already done a lot of the start up work yourself.
They gave an exclusive to Game Informer?! Wow. That's really rather ridiculous. I mean, at least with Game Informer, you can buy your game a damn good review, but no one I know reads the reviews in there because they're generally a complete pile of crap. At least the last time I read the magazine, a year ago, it was like this...and I can't imagine they've changed a whole lot. Some of the reviews it was pretty obvious had simply been paid for, and it was also obvious when you were reading a review that wasn't paid for, because they would make up stuff about how bad it was.
Giving an exclusive to Game Informer sounds pretty fishy to me, then...almost like they have something to hide, and want to make sure they can guarantee a good review.
THERE CAN BE ONLY NONE!
You may want to do a bit more research about Steam before you decide to pass up on Half-Life 2. First off, a lot has changed in the nearly a year since the article you linked to was written. For starters, Steam now features a "Start in offline mode" option. When Steam starts up, if it's not connected to the internet, it lets you do that. Then, you have access to all your single player games just fine. I imagine you can also play all your LAN games just fine as well, but I haven't had an oppurtunity to try that.
Did Steam have an awful lot of problems when it was first released? Yes, it did. But, believe it or not, the people working on Steam at Valve are not some kind of evil sadists who enjoy making people jump through hoops to play their game. They've created a rather nice system for making sure your games are always updated, and giving you an easy way to purchase new games from them without having to run down to the nearest Gamestop. Problems do occur, and they try to fix them as soon as possible.
And, I certainly doubt Valve is going to make it hard for mods to be created. They aren't stupid - they know that one of the big reasons Half-Life has sold so well over the past 6 years is because of fun mods like TFC and CS. How many other 6 year old games do you see with thousands of servers running right now? Currently, they allow really popular mods to be listed in the Steam gui, with a screenshot and a short writeup. Other mods can still be played (I remember at least once getting in a game of Pirates, Vikings, and Knights over Steam) just as they always could.
Just out of curiousity, in what way is this post insightful?
Personally, I don't see all the problems people have with Steam. Oh no, I never have to manually download patches, because the system downloads them automatically for me! Oh no, they put in a rather nice user interface rather than the less than spectacular one that shipped with the game. Heaven forbid, there's a tiny little icon in my system tray!
Also, if you haven't noticed, when Steam fails to connect to the internet, it gives you the option of using "Start in offline mode", which allows you to play single player games, as well as lan games, without being connected to the internet.
Admittedly, I don't have much experience with doing this. At the lan parties I go to, we tend not to play games that are 6 years old. So it's entirely possible there are some quirks involved in playing lan games while not connected to the internet. So, if playing steam based games on a lan not connected to the internet is such a problem, vote with your cash and buy one of the many games that have been released in the 6 years since Counter-Strike came out.
Well, I'm sure that no one wants to admit it, but I know the truth about why there have been so many 503 errors recently. CmdrTaco and friends are trying to get their machines ready to run Doom 3, and realizing that they need more horsepower in their gaming machines, have been taking parts from the servers that host Slashdot.
Unfortunately, we will likely have these errors for quite a while, because now that they all have machines capable of running Doom 3, and since Doom 3 is now out (and undoubtedly in CmrdTaco and friend's hands), they'll be far too busy with that to even remember than they run a website.
The recommended way to deal with this is to go out and purchase Doom 3 yourself. It won't bring Slashdot back, but you'll be too busy fighting demons to care.
English is a horrible repeat of writing papers every year. My first year in college was exactly the same. I never learned anything new and my paper writing skills never increased after probably 9th grade.
Learning isn't something that just happens, you know. Skills don't increase on their own just by going to class. You have to take responsibility for that. Don't blame your teachers because your writing skills didn't increase. If you were writing well enough, in 9th grade, to get A's in every English course up through freshman level in college, that's great. But that doesn't mean there's no room for improvement. You could have participated in essay writing contests, challenging yourself, improving your skills, all while giving yourself the chance to win prizes and/or scholarships. Or, at the very least, taken the AP tests (even if your school didn't offer the class, you can still take the tests, and if your writing and reading comprehension were good enough that college freshman English wasn't a problem, you probably would have done well on the AP tests)
As for history, it's a pity your school focused on the easy to test date memorization rather than the harder to test, but more important, understanding the reason why those dates were important, and what led up to those events in history. But again, don't blame your teachers because you didn't learn much. That big history book almost certainly had more information than just dates that you could have read yourself, and if not, there are dozens more books to be found in your local library or bookstore. Perhaps you'll never be a king or president, but history is important nonetheless. Learning how the world came to be what it is today helps you to understand politics, which effects you even if you choose to ignore it. It also will help you to understand other cultures. You will almost certainly, at some point in your life, meet someone from another culture, and understanding a bit about that culture might just be helpful to you when that happens.
Certainly, hands on experience is useful. But, if you want to do more with your life than simply reboot the server when it crashes, books should not be overlooked.
A math game with no storyline! You've got to be kidding me!
What storyline, exactly, should a math game have? How does one work a meaningful plot into a game where, for instance, a little green thing has to hop around the screen eating all the numbers that are evenly divisible by seven, or where you must answer some math problem before a bomb goes off?
For the most part, these games are puzzle games. Puzzle games, in general, do not have much of a story behind them, nor are the graphics amazing. The point of a puzzle game is simply to solve the puzzle so you can move onto the next one - they are meant to challenge your mind, not astound you with character development and plot twists, or fancy 3d effects. Many of these "lame maths games" are puzzle games with some knowledge of math required, and are a good way to get the kids who normally aren't interested to pay a little attention. Should Math Blaster (or any of those other old games) replace a conventional math class? Of course not! But they can certainly supplement one.
Also, good idea, ignoring school and letting your entire education come from TV and the internet. Teachers and books can't possibly teach you anything. The internet is a wholly factual, unbiased source of information, whereas teachers wake up every morning imagining what lies they can teach you today! You seem to have already picked up excellent writing skills - using either "fuck", "shit", or "crap" in almost every paragraph is the sign of someone who has mastered the art of written communication.
Perhaps the reason they are teaching you exactly the same stuff year after year is because that stuff is important? If you already understand every single thing that you are being taught, then talk to your teachers about other things you can do. Maybe they will suggest some books you can read to improve yourself further? Maybe you should be taking some more advanced classes? What you're doing is giving up, when really you should try to make the most of your time in school.
Also, I'm curious as to where you're getting this idea that you will only ever use 5% of what you learn in "real life." Define use. Maybe you don't intend to teach English, but learning how to write, and write well, will benefit you in almost any field. Not to mention the ability to read, and comprehend what you read. Maybe you don't think of History as useful, but knowing how the world has become what it is today is useful in helping you understand other cultures, as well as in helping you undersetand politics. Perhaps you have no intention of using calculus in "real life", but the problem solving skills you learn in there will benefit you anywhere. Knowing a foreign language, any foreign language, is a good way to learn about other cultures. Some understanding of the arts is a nice thing to have, even if it isn't, strictly speaking, "useful." So if all you want to do is learn some particular trade and be told what to do all your life, then maybe school isn't for you. But otherwise, stay in school, and eat the "baby food" they're feeding you so you'll be ready when it comes time to get some steak.
Also, comparing yourself to Einstein is a bit premature. First, make some major advancements in your field. Then, maybe you can consider comparing yourself to Einstein.
This reminds me of my junior year high school history class. Our teacher (who also happened to be the baseball coach), decided on an...interesting way of teaching WWII during the last few weeks of school (which is also, if I remember correctly, when HS baseball season is at it's highest point)
He broke the class up into teams, four I think. Then, he hooked his computer up to the TV in the room, and the teams played Axis and Allies against eachother for a few weeks. This was, truly, an incredibly educational experience. We learned how dice rolls determined the outcome of battles, among other amazing history facts.
Of course, it was the most interesting history class I've ever taken, too.
Adult swim is on Cartoon Network, which has not been taken away from Dish. How do I know this? My college uses Dish for all the dorm TV, I can't get Comedy Central right now, but I am watching Cowboy Bebop as I right this.
Wal-marts in Canada close?! Here where I live, we have two types of Wal-marts - the normal, grocery store type wal-marts, and the "Super" Wal-marts, that sell everything under the sun. I have yet to go to one of these super wal-marts that wasn't open 24/7.
I'm in Dallas, TX, by the way. I haven't sampled the Wal-marts in other states or countries.
I wish I had SE :(
It's impossible to purchase Quake III? Since when? Quake III is now one of those games you can get for roughly $10 or so almost anywhere that sells games. It's not in a big box anymore, but it's a cd and a cdkey, and that's all that matters. Just yesterday I was at Wal-mart (no, I don't usually shop for games there, but it was 3 in the morning, I was bored, and my roommate had money to burn), and saw a jewel case with Quake 3 in it for $10.
;)
If Quake III works on Macs, I assume this CD would work just fine on one.
It is a pity that WolfET isn't supported on Macs, though. I imagine it's not too hard to port (the engine it's based on was cross platform, after all), I suspect it's more a question of why bother. After all, no one is making a dime from this - it's free because it was planned on being a commercial product, but they decided that wasn't gonna work out, so instead of tossing the whole project out, they just cleaned it up a bit and put it on the internet for free. That's pretty nice of the company to do already, but it'd be bordering on insane for them to spend resources to port a game that they don't sell to another platform.
Oh well...if you can afford a Mac, you can probably afford a couple hundred to throw together a cheap PC
Because with most laptops (at least, every one I've ever owned), you can plug in a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Sound of course depends on what built in sound card they have, but I don't find 5.1 sound to be a necessity when I game.
one small use for toothpaste...
One giant leap for MacGuyver fans around the world
The reason these disks seem so full is because of a little trick used to make games load faster. While the angular speed of the disk is the same no matter where you read it, it's the linear speed that's important. And the further out from the center you are, the faster the linear speed is. So, basically, the further out on the disc you are, the faster it loads.
So what they do is, they usually include a big, empty dummy file which they will put at the beginning of the disc. This pushes all of the important information into the faster-loading regions of the disc. Of course, this also means that a simple scan of the size of the disc will return a size close to the maximum size of the media.
Now, I don't claim to be an expert on GTA specifically, so I still can't answer about whether or not the game could fit on a 1.5 gb Gamecube disc.
That's a very good point. For most music, I personally can hardly tell the difference between a 128 kbps mp3 and a CD. I'm not sure I've ever been able to hear any audio defects coming from a 192 kbps or above mp3. However, when I'm listening to music, it's either on relatively cheap pc speakers, relatively cheap headphones, or my car's factory speakers.
Here's another idea that an "ideal" (ie, one that listens to the customer, rather than to the RIAA) music service could use. Sell FLAC (or some similar completely lossless codec) encoded songs for 99 cents. Sell 128 kbps mp3s for 50 cents, and maybe 56kbps mp3s for a quarter or so. That way, people like me who don't mind listening to a 128kbps encoding can get the "discount" version, and someone who has better audio hardware (or simply better ears) can pay for the "full" version.
This even provides the company with the ability to "resell" recordings to people who previously only wanted a lower quality encoding, but have decided to get a higher quality encoding later on.
Better yet, sell things the customers want! They're getting closer to that, at least. iTunes, Napster 2.0, BuyMusic.com (or whatever that other one is), let people buy music on a per-track basis, which is exactly what I want. Sometimes I want a whole album, if it's buy a group I know well enough to be assured I'll like the CD. But I refuse to buy a cd from an artist I don't know that well, because too often I've forked over cash for a cd I thought would be good, but actually only the track that got radio play was any good. As things stand now, I don't buy cds from artists I've only heard one song from before, but with iTunes and friends, I wouldn't mind risking a dollar on a song I hadn't heard before.
As soon as a service appears that will let me, for a good price (99 cents is good, but less is always better), download an mp3 with no restrictions on the number of times I can burn it to cd, copy it to my mp3 player, or copy it to other computers, then I will immediately start buying a lot of music.
Would that be so hard?
And doesn't that end many questions on MAME?
Well, the way I read this (IANAL), it now seems legal to break the whatever copyright protection was installed onto a game if the format of the game has become obsolete, and which in unaltered form would require the original media/hardware to use. So basically, if you own an old, obsolete arcade game, you can legally circumvent the copyright protection so that you can extract the ROM and use it on your PC.
Now, how many MAME users actually own old arcade hardware, and intend to use MAME to play that arcade game? Distributing the ROMs to anyone is still illegal, but I guess it would now be legal for me to tell you how to rip the ROM out of your own board yourself.
Windows 95 is considered obsolete and unsupported by Microsoft, right?
Yes, Windows 95 is considered obsolete by Microsoft, but the format it is distributed on (CDs) are not. Furthermore, there's not really any DRM on the Windows 95 cd anyway, aside from the installation program asking for a valid key, so the point is moot.
What this exemption really means is that if, in the future, software was distributed on DRM enabled media, and then further into the future, the DRM media they 'obsolete' and few people had drives that could read them, it would be legal to tell someone how to extract data from that media and use it on the current hardware.