I admit that that's what it looks like. In fact, what is really happening is that conservatives tend to believe that any discussion of serious import is worth taking a looonnng time to discuss. In the current debate, progressives say "we don't understand the situation, but WE MUST ACT!!!!" Conservatives say "we don't understand the situation, so let's watch it for a bit before we go interfering." It's not a question of status quo, but rather not jumping into things.
I think that the only people with any claim whatsoever to the "conservative" mantle in Congress (Republicans) are going to have a really hard time selling that image of themselves. While I don't doubt that a large number of people also calling themselves conservatives oppose this for the reasons you mention, the people that the major "conservative" party elected have been screaming "OMG it's an emergency act NOW!" over so much stuff (and getting their way, unfortunately) for so long that whining about it now makes them look like hypocrites.
Mind you, I'm not calling you a hypocrite; I don't want that to be misunderstood. I'm just saying that the "conservative" half of congress has no credible claim to your philosophy, which is a sad state of affairs IMO. A cautious but honest and rational party would be awesome.
OTOH, I'd love to see a response to Obama's press conference from Congressional Republicans, held in much the same style. I thought that the press conference was superb, and I'd love to see more of that from both sides--little question-dodging (the only really bad one I saw was where the Hearst lady asked him whether he knew of any Middle Eastern countries that had nukes, clearly meaning to get him confirm that Israel has them) and long, complete, well-qualified answers. No sugar-coating things that are obviously big piles of shit, which means that some time later when he says something's going well people might actually believe him. I want more of that, and I want it from Republicans, too.
Couple that with some actual reporting from the newspapers and cable news networks (yeah, I should probably just ask for a unicorn that farts rainbows along with that second one) including, most importantly, some analysis of the situation by actual economists, and we might have a real, meaningful national discourse in the works.
Could be cool, provided the dumb-ass media doesn't turn it in to "well, this economist says this and this one says this, we're not going to tell you why, tell you how many other economists agree with each, do any historical analysis of our own, or any of that crap that costs money though--anyway, that might look too biased *GASP*!" which, of course, they will:(
Heck, as far as I'm concerned, Obama is turning into a 3rd term for GWB. I can't seen anything but stylistic differences.
Hell, if nothing else it's nice to have a president who doesn't make me sad for my country when I hear him speak in public, regardless of topic and whether or not I agree with him.:)
I like most of what I've seen from Obama so far, but I'm withholding judgement. His moves toward transparency are definitely welcome, and so far seem to be genuine. Hopefully I'll never get that same acute, "oh god, we are so fucked" feeling like I did some time between when Bush proposed his "Total Information Awareness" program (with none other than John Poindexter at its head--WTF?) and when he started talking up a war with Iraq.
Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how long it'll be before I can form any kind of meaningful opinion on Obama. Years, maybe. My bar for satisfactory presidential performance is so low at this point that he could suck pretty hard and I'd not have the perspective to see it. Anything in between "horrible failure" and "100% success" may just appear to me as one big mass of "pretty good", no matter which side of the spectrum it's truly closer to.
8Mbps is what they call the service. I'd guess that the bell curve for the average actual speed of service for people with nominally 8Mbps 'tubes is fat right around the 3Mbps mark.
I used to work for a phone company that also delivered TV over a combination of fiber and twisted pair copper. DSL too, of course. This was over 5 years ago.
We weren't the only option in the area, but such all-in-one beasts do exist.
Conservatives (not neo-con's) say "Let's look at what has worked before, and try that."
I must say, I've seen little evidence of this. Don't get me wrong, it's not like the democrats are the shining beacon of reason or anything, but ever since Reagan it looks to me like the bulk of the conservative movement has decided that looking at what actually works and thinking about problems is way too hard when you can just pick an ideological position and stick to it, no matter how large the mountain of evidence against you is. See: health care.
And there's still the bug where right-clicking a link in Linux randomly performs one of the context menu actions without even bringing up the menu. Too lazy to look up the bug entry, but it's been there quite a while. Installing the mouse gestures extension fixes it (even when the extension is disabled) so I'd think they could track it down from that. SO annoying.
I'll pay $250 for an e-book reader with a touchscreen so it doesn't waste so much space with all those keys (like the Sony one, then), MP3 playback capability, and a ton of built-in flash storage (64GB or more; SD cards are just too low-capacity).
Or, $150 without the MP3 capabilities and the enormous storage capacity. Either way.
When that happens (and I think it will) I'll pick one up.
I also want to recommend Men of Mathematics by E. T. Bell. The calc kids were very interested to know about Newton and Riemann's lives. Considering that most of what we do in middle and high school is actually math history, it seemed fitting to bring some of the personalities in.
YES.
Picked it up on a whim in the bargain section at Borders (I'd never heard of it--I wasn't a math major); Hard cover, $6. I'm about 1/4 of the way through it now, and loving it. Great way to introduce most of the major branches of mathematics and how they relate to each other, at least IMO.
I'm currently reading the 1936 (IIRC) Men of Mathematics by E.T. Bell. It's a collection of short biographies of prominent mathematicians, with a sampling of any of their math that can be described (in layman's terms, anyway) in a small enough space for the format. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
It might also serve as a good introduction to the various branches of higher math, as in the course of telling about the mathematicians it also discusses their major discoveries--which usually either found a new branch of mathematics or greatly expand an earlier one. This sort of biographical and relational approach to the topic is certainly helping me to get a better handle on it.
Market share also means more 3rd party support. I'd love to be able to play new games (reliably) on Linux, and Adobe's software would be awesome. Give me those things and I can stop dicking around with Microsoft operating systems and dual-booting to Linux when I need to get real work done (other than in Adobe products).
More market share for Linux will indirectly improve my experience as a user. That market share has to come from somewhere, and MS has the biggest slice of the pie, so yes, I want Linux to beat Microsoft.
You act like they owe you something. But their success was of their own making. They don't owe you anything.
Uh, well I do give them money for these games, so certainly they owe me something.
That success you mention comes from a history of good relations with gamers and giving them a great value for their money. I'm saying that if they fail to live up to the expectations created by their past actions--expectations that almost certainly drove a large chunk of the sales for this game--then I'll be disappointed and feel kind of cheated, as I will have gotten something different than I expected for the money I gave them. I believe I'm entirely entitled to change my opinion of the company if they change their behavior.
I'm not among the ones upset at the lack of new free content so far, though I definitely would have liked to see the SDK come out closer to the release date. Many are, though, and you can go to the steampowered forums or just listen to the mic chatter in game to get a sense of this dissatisfaction. The fact is, the game came out a bit unpolished and with some content clearly cut so that it could get out the door faster--namely, the two versus campaigns that they're releasing in this DLC pack. Valve gets a pass on that kind of sloppiness because they have a track record of setting things right if they fuck up; however, were they to charge for this upcoming patch, that would represent a large black mark on their record for many of their customers.
Aside from the finale, Death Toll seems like a much more natural choice for the versus mode than Blood Harvest. I suspect that once it's out and the dust settles, it'll be the most popular official versus campaign.
I'm not sure about Dead Air; it'll probably be damn tough on the survivors. Then again, in the commentary they said that they wanted it to be rare for the survivors to make it to the safe room in versus, though they've clearly changed their minds on that based on some of the things they've modified since release. Personally, I prefer it to be a big struggle to get even one survivor to the safe room, and find matches where we get 3-4 there on every map to be extremely dull. Greater difficulty for survivors would also keep the scores closer, so you'd have fewer games with 3800 to 250 scores by the third map.
I am very disturbed that it doesn't mention whether the "new" levels (really existing levels with slight modifications to improve play in Versus mode) and new play mode will be free for PC users. The way they specifically say that the SDK will be has me worried.
I'm pretty sure everyone who bought the game at release was counting on major FREE updates, like those that Team Fortress 2 has received. It certainly isn't worth $45 ($50 if you didn't pre-order) in its present state, but people paid that much so they could play the existing content now and enjoy new free content later. That's definitely what I did.
Valve is one of a handful of gaming companies that (many) players respect, and that respect drove early sales of this game. I'd hate to see them abuse it.
They better damn well not try to charge for this stuff, or they're going to have some very pissed-off users.
Hell, quite a few people are already pissed off that it's taking them so long to get enough content out to make this full-price game actually be worth more than $20, and they're all assuming it'll be free. The funny thing is, by the time it's worth $50, it'll probably be selling for $20.
1. I use Vista, I'm an IT professional, and I don't think it's that great. It's not horrible, but it's not worth paying money for.
Which brings me to...
2. Any new Microsoft OS after XP needed to be compelling. XP does everything anyone would want--the only exceptions being things that MS deliberately kept it from doing, like DX10, and 64-bit support, which floundered in XP due to poor support from hardware vendors. There's terribly little innovation in Vista. Mediocrity in a release at this point in MS history (that is, after SP2 in XP when they finally had a stable, pretty good OS released and widely installed) deserved harsh criticism, and it received it. Failure to add any must-have new features coupled with a few annoyances left people rightly asking why the hell anyone would pay to upgrade.
By a year or so after XP came out, doing a 98/ME->XP upgrade was a no-brainer. I can't say the same for XP->Vista, even if you're getting the Vista upgrade for free.
On a related note, do you know if they "improved" the AI in the original FarCry in one of the later patches? I really enjoyed it my first time through, and recently fired it up for another go, installing the newest patches (only one of which, IIRC, had been out when I played it the first time).
I didn't even get 30 minutes in before quitting in frustration. I remember the AI being pleasantly smart for what they were, but now they're INSANELY hard to fight. I played on normal, which is the same way I played the first time, so it's not that.
The main problem? Well, they've always fired through tents to try to hit you... but now, they can pinpoint you inside the tent. Run and hide, crouch, move over to a corner... and some asshole starts shooting you in the back, straight through the tent wall behind you. Move, and he follows you. They're not just spraying, they're firing right at you. Doesn't take long before you're dead.
I definitely don't remember that happening the first time, but now it happens constantly. I guess I'll have to play it unpatched and hope nothing important was broken:(
I'll pirate it and consider it payment for the time I spent trying to get the game to work on my desktop (never did, and yes the hardware on it is plenty capable; I had to played it on my laptop, first game I've seen in YEARS with problems like that) and fixing broken quests (some of them in the main storyline).
I paid $50 and got a broken, incomplete game. Now a few months later they want more money for a bit more content (lord knows the game needs it)? No. I'll take what I need to until I feel the game is complete, thanks.
I didn't even try that hard to protect myself, and I was taking on less radiation that I'd get from standing in a puddle.
Add in the ridiculous, "I'm going to kill you and myself to stop you from forcing me to turn on the machine that I was about to turn on!" scene earlier in the game (which jarred me so far out of the story that I never really got back in) and you've got a big steaming pile of fail. If it had 1/2 as much other stuff to do as F1 and F2--especially stuff that felt important--it might not matter, but it doesn't, so it does.
Fallout 2 had, at minimum, 2 voiceovers for pretty much every town you visited. New Reno definitely had more. So, quick calculation in my head... maybe 25-30 potential bits of voice over for the ending?
Way more than F3's--what, 4 or 5?
Of course, it helps that F1 and F2 had more than 3 towns.
I sure hope he's Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, which means Angel used a demonic incantation to travel across dimensions for the purpose of kicking ass.
As we all know,
"If there's no great glorious end to all this, if... nothing we do matters... then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do. Now. Today."
So, I guess you can't fault the AC too much for his dedication for repeating the textual truth from the article. He still, however, should have tapped that cutie Fred when he had the chance.
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I think that the only people with any claim whatsoever to the "conservative" mantle in Congress (Republicans) are going to have a really hard time selling that image of themselves. While I don't doubt that a large number of people also calling themselves conservatives oppose this for the reasons you mention, the people that the major "conservative" party elected have been screaming "OMG it's an emergency act NOW!" over so much stuff (and getting their way, unfortunately) for so long that whining about it now makes them look like hypocrites.
Mind you, I'm not calling you a hypocrite; I don't want that to be misunderstood. I'm just saying that the "conservative" half of congress has no credible claim to your philosophy, which is a sad state of affairs IMO. A cautious but honest and rational party would be awesome.
OTOH, I'd love to see a response to Obama's press conference from Congressional Republicans, held in much the same style. I thought that the press conference was superb, and I'd love to see more of that from both sides--little question-dodging (the only really bad one I saw was where the Hearst lady asked him whether he knew of any Middle Eastern countries that had nukes, clearly meaning to get him confirm that Israel has them) and long, complete, well-qualified answers. No sugar-coating things that are obviously big piles of shit, which means that some time later when he says something's going well people might actually believe him. I want more of that, and I want it from Republicans, too.
Couple that with some actual reporting from the newspapers and cable news networks (yeah, I should probably just ask for a unicorn that farts rainbows along with that second one) including, most importantly, some analysis of the situation by actual economists, and we might have a real, meaningful national discourse in the works.
Could be cool, provided the dumb-ass media doesn't turn it in to "well, this economist says this and this one says this, we're not going to tell you why, tell you how many other economists agree with each, do any historical analysis of our own, or any of that crap that costs money though--anyway, that might look too biased *GASP*!" which, of course, they will :(
Hell, if nothing else it's nice to have a president who doesn't make me sad for my country when I hear him speak in public, regardless of topic and whether or not I agree with him. :)
I like most of what I've seen from Obama so far, but I'm withholding judgement. His moves toward transparency are definitely welcome, and so far seem to be genuine. Hopefully I'll never get that same acute, "oh god, we are so fucked" feeling like I did some time between when Bush proposed his "Total Information Awareness" program (with none other than John Poindexter at its head--WTF?) and when he started talking up a war with Iraq.
Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how long it'll be before I can form any kind of meaningful opinion on Obama. Years, maybe. My bar for satisfactory presidential performance is so low at this point that he could suck pretty hard and I'd not have the perspective to see it. Anything in between "horrible failure" and "100% success" may just appear to me as one big mass of "pretty good", no matter which side of the spectrum it's truly closer to.
8Mbps is what they call the service. I'd guess that the bell curve for the average actual speed of service for people with nominally 8Mbps 'tubes is fat right around the 3Mbps mark.
I used to work for a phone company that also delivered TV over a combination of fiber and twisted pair copper. DSL too, of course. This was over 5 years ago.
We weren't the only option in the area, but such all-in-one beasts do exist.
That was the source of the "snicker". The people paying for 8Mbps are largely getting something only marginally better than you are.
I must say, I've seen little evidence of this. Don't get me wrong, it's not like the democrats are the shining beacon of reason or anything, but ever since Reagan it looks to me like the bulk of the conservative movement has decided that looking at what actually works and thinking about problems is way too hard when you can just pick an ideological position and stick to it, no matter how large the mountain of evidence against you is. See: health care.
And there's still the bug where right-clicking a link in Linux randomly performs one of the context menu actions without even bringing up the menu. Too lazy to look up the bug entry, but it's been there quite a while. Installing the mouse gestures extension fixes it (even when the extension is disabled) so I'd think they could track it down from that. SO annoying.
I'll pay $250 for an e-book reader with a touchscreen so it doesn't waste so much space with all those keys (like the Sony one, then), MP3 playback capability, and a ton of built-in flash storage (64GB or more; SD cards are just too low-capacity).
Or, $150 without the MP3 capabilities and the enormous storage capacity. Either way.
When that happens (and I think it will) I'll pick one up.
Wow, I didn't know any desktop apps in Linux that needed a DB defaulted to anything other than SQLlite. Weird.
YES.
Picked it up on a whim in the bargain section at Borders (I'd never heard of it--I wasn't a math major); Hard cover, $6. I'm about 1/4 of the way through it now, and loving it. Great way to introduce most of the major branches of mathematics and how they relate to each other, at least IMO.
I'm currently reading the 1936 (IIRC) Men of Mathematics by E.T. Bell. It's a collection of short biographies of prominent mathematicians, with a sampling of any of their math that can be described (in layman's terms, anyway) in a small enough space for the format. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
It might also serve as a good introduction to the various branches of higher math, as in the course of telling about the mathematicians it also discusses their major discoveries--which usually either found a new branch of mathematics or greatly expand an earlier one. This sort of biographical and relational approach to the topic is certainly helping me to get a better handle on it.
Market share also means more 3rd party support. I'd love to be able to play new games (reliably) on Linux, and Adobe's software would be awesome. Give me those things and I can stop dicking around with Microsoft operating systems and dual-booting to Linux when I need to get real work done (other than in Adobe products).
More market share for Linux will indirectly improve my experience as a user. That market share has to come from somewhere, and MS has the biggest slice of the pie, so yes, I want Linux to beat Microsoft.
Their generous nature is the main reason people buy a lot of their games. It most certainly is an obligation if they want to keep loyal customers.
Uh, well I do give them money for these games, so certainly they owe me something.
That success you mention comes from a history of good relations with gamers and giving them a great value for their money. I'm saying that if they fail to live up to the expectations created by their past actions--expectations that almost certainly drove a large chunk of the sales for this game--then I'll be disappointed and feel kind of cheated, as I will have gotten something different than I expected for the money I gave them. I believe I'm entirely entitled to change my opinion of the company if they change their behavior.
I'm not among the ones upset at the lack of new free content so far, though I definitely would have liked to see the SDK come out closer to the release date. Many are, though, and you can go to the steampowered forums or just listen to the mic chatter in game to get a sense of this dissatisfaction. The fact is, the game came out a bit unpolished and with some content clearly cut so that it could get out the door faster--namely, the two versus campaigns that they're releasing in this DLC pack. Valve gets a pass on that kind of sloppiness because they have a track record of setting things right if they fuck up; however, were they to charge for this upcoming patch, that would represent a large black mark on their record for many of their customers.
Aside from the finale, Death Toll seems like a much more natural choice for the versus mode than Blood Harvest. I suspect that once it's out and the dust settles, it'll be the most popular official versus campaign.
I'm not sure about Dead Air; it'll probably be damn tough on the survivors. Then again, in the commentary they said that they wanted it to be rare for the survivors to make it to the safe room in versus, though they've clearly changed their minds on that based on some of the things they've modified since release. Personally, I prefer it to be a big struggle to get even one survivor to the safe room, and find matches where we get 3-4 there on every map to be extremely dull. Greater difficulty for survivors would also keep the scores closer, so you'd have fewer games with 3800 to 250 scores by the third map.
I am very disturbed that it doesn't mention whether the "new" levels (really existing levels with slight modifications to improve play in Versus mode) and new play mode will be free for PC users. The way they specifically say that the SDK will be has me worried.
I'm pretty sure everyone who bought the game at release was counting on major FREE updates, like those that Team Fortress 2 has received. It certainly isn't worth $45 ($50 if you didn't pre-order) in its present state, but people paid that much so they could play the existing content now and enjoy new free content later. That's definitely what I did.
Valve is one of a handful of gaming companies that (many) players respect, and that respect drove early sales of this game. I'd hate to see them abuse it.
They better damn well not try to charge for this stuff, or they're going to have some very pissed-off users.
Hell, quite a few people are already pissed off that it's taking them so long to get enough content out to make this full-price game actually be worth more than $20, and they're all assuming it'll be free. The funny thing is, by the time it's worth $50, it'll probably be selling for $20.
I believe he'd proposing exactly that: playing the game. To win.
Ah, good to know.
1. I use Vista, I'm an IT professional, and I don't think it's that great. It's not horrible, but it's not worth paying money for.
Which brings me to...
2. Any new Microsoft OS after XP needed to be compelling. XP does everything anyone would want--the only exceptions being things that MS deliberately kept it from doing, like DX10, and 64-bit support, which floundered in XP due to poor support from hardware vendors. There's terribly little innovation in Vista. Mediocrity in a release at this point in MS history (that is, after SP2 in XP when they finally had a stable, pretty good OS released and widely installed) deserved harsh criticism, and it received it. Failure to add any must-have new features coupled with a few annoyances left people rightly asking why the hell anyone would pay to upgrade.
By a year or so after XP came out, doing a 98/ME->XP upgrade was a no-brainer. I can't say the same for XP->Vista, even if you're getting the Vista upgrade for free.
On a related note, do you know if they "improved" the AI in the original FarCry in one of the later patches? I really enjoyed it my first time through, and recently fired it up for another go, installing the newest patches (only one of which, IIRC, had been out when I played it the first time).
I didn't even get 30 minutes in before quitting in frustration. I remember the AI being pleasantly smart for what they were, but now they're INSANELY hard to fight. I played on normal, which is the same way I played the first time, so it's not that.
The main problem? Well, they've always fired through tents to try to hit you... but now, they can pinpoint you inside the tent. Run and hide, crouch, move over to a corner... and some asshole starts shooting you in the back, straight through the tent wall behind you. Move, and he follows you. They're not just spraying, they're firing right at you. Doesn't take long before you're dead.
I definitely don't remember that happening the first time, but now it happens constantly. I guess I'll have to play it unpatched and hope nothing important was broken :(
Shit, just tell the lawyers they can have half if they win at least 75% of the full amount.
750,000-1,000,000 is a hell of a lot better than 100,000.
That's an extreme example, but come on, if there was any chance of winning I'm sure an arrangement could be made.
I'll pirate it and consider it payment for the time I spent trying to get the game to work on my desktop (never did, and yes the hardware on it is plenty capable; I had to played it on my laptop, first game I've seen in YEARS with problems like that) and fixing broken quests (some of them in the main storyline).
I paid $50 and got a broken, incomplete game. Now a few months later they want more money for a bit more content (lord knows the game needs it)? No. I'll take what I need to until I feel the game is complete, thanks.
I didn't even try that hard to protect myself, and I was taking on less radiation that I'd get from standing in a puddle.
Add in the ridiculous, "I'm going to kill you and myself to stop you from forcing me to turn on the machine that I was about to turn on!" scene earlier in the game (which jarred me so far out of the story that I never really got back in) and you've got a big steaming pile of fail. If it had 1/2 as much other stuff to do as F1 and F2--especially stuff that felt important--it might not matter, but it doesn't, so it does.
Fallout 2 had, at minimum, 2 voiceovers for pretty much every town you visited. New Reno definitely had more. So, quick calculation in my head... maybe 25-30 potential bits of voice over for the ending?
Way more than F3's--what, 4 or 5?
Of course, it helps that F1 and F2 had more than 3 towns.
I sure hope he's Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, which means Angel used a demonic incantation to travel across dimensions for the purpose of kicking ass.
As we all know,
"If there's no great glorious end to all this, if ... nothing we do matters ... then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do. Now. Today."
So, I guess you can't fault the AC too much for his dedication for repeating the textual truth from the article. He still, however, should have tapped that cutie Fred when he had the chance.