Because Wal*Mart is the single biggest seller of video games in the world. They move more product than stores that specialize in computer games. And because Wal*Mart pulling games in the past has sunk them.
You're not alone in thinking this is a stupid idea for a video game, though. I saw it on the shelf in EB yesterday, and actually had to leave the store because I was laughing so hard. When I'd composed myself and returned, I asked the guy behind the counter, and he said that they hadn't sold a single copy, and there was a reason it was on the top shelf where I, at 6'2", had to stretch to reach it. I mentionned it to my mother's minister (I don't consider myself Christian, but that's a long story), and her response was "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard."
But it's reasonable to expect not to be rooted in the two or three hours it takes to get all the patches you need, if the mean time to failure is three months.
That's up to you. But please don't take it as an offense if I say that I'd never hire you as a sysadmin.
Ask yourself this... is the 5 minutes it takes to set up basic firewalling (or even simply shutting down any daemons you're running) worth the extra time you risk if you have to reinstall the computer? Banking on averages is never a good idea, especially not when you're dealing with something mission-critical. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, at the worst possible moment and all.
Speaking as somebody who's had computers blow up on him on many an occasion, I'd rather not take any chances I don't have to. Recovering from your own fuckups is expensive and annoying, doubly so when it's avoidable.
BSD has the ability to firewall just like Linux with iptables/netfilter. What I'm talking about is a different ability, though. You can set it up at the hardware bridge mode, to set up an invisible firewall. One of the great features is in forcing everybody on the net to use your proxy server... you can tell it that if outbound traffic on port 80 doesn't originate from 192.168.1.5, for example, then it gets redirected to 192.168.1.5:8080. It's a great way to stealthily force your entire network to use a proxy without having to manually configure it in every computer.
I *think* that's the real reason that the system was developped. But it also makes a great way to set up firewalling: all inbound traffic on all ports can be ignored, redirected to your DMZ host, or treated however you want. It's also able to do it transparently, so you could simply drop an appropriately configured NetBSD box between your existing gateway and the world. Not a lot of point in doing it that way, though. As I said, the real advantage is in being able to quietly force traffic to go through proxies of your choice.
3 months average doesn't mean that it'll definitely happen in 3 months. It could never happen, it could happen in 5 minutes. You are taking a gamble every time you go online if you aren't behind some kind of firewall.
With *BSD, it's entirely possible to set up a low-level firewall that offers just as much protection as NAT without actually doing any address translation. It does this by monitoring the traffic at the packet-level, and can be configured to block certain ports, to ignore all unrequested traffic, or any number of QoS-type monitoring/filtering features that are a royal pain in the ass to set up on a NAT box. Really, the biggest advantage of NAT is that the DHCP allows you to have more than one computer on the network. (granted, that's a pretty big advantage).
There's even a howto on NetBSD's website that explains exactly how to go about setting such a box up.
But you're right... generally, it's easier to go with NAT in the long run.
On then other hand, in some states you can get charged with statutory rape if you, at the age of 19, have sex with your 17-year old girlfriend.
Not everybody who's a registered sex offender is some paedophile rapist. A lot of the people on that list are victims of overly puritanical laws. I'm not going to say they're all innocent, but the list could probably be half the size it is.
As to the proposed system... not going to work. Anybody with 5 minutes' experience on the Internet has heard of Hotmail. A better system would be to cooperate with their ISPs so that they get static IP addresses. For free. Automatically as part of their Internet connection. Then publish the list of IP addys that are assigned to sex offenders. No names. No registration. No personal information. Let the websites take responsibility for using the information properly, and hold networking sites like MySpace liable if a sex offender uses their service to commit a crime.
What I'm saying is that if you're a D&D fan, give it a shot, and keep in mind that it may take a couple of hours of fumbling around lost (if you played NWN) to get "into" it.
I agree with your comment, generally... but there's a couple of *very* bad bugs that make the game really hard to play, and there's some minor bugs that really hurt your ability to immerse yourself in the game.
Play it on an AMD CPU. You're screwed. Royally. The game is so incredibly choppy that it becomes virtually unplayable. In some cases, you literally have to pause the game and go make yourself a coffee so that it can do all of the processing that's been slowing it down. And that's on an X2 4800+ with 4GB of RAM and a 512MB X1900 video card. There's no earthly reason that the game should be even remotely choppy at 1280x800 resolution, and yet it is. Even with all of the effects turned off and the graphics textures set to their crappiest available. Compare that to the performance I get out of GuildWars, say, which I play at 1680x1050 with the graphics turned all the way up, and you have a problem. GW has nicer graphics anyway, and it's a perfect example of how obscenely horrible a job Obsidian has really done.
Oh, and half the time when I ALT-F4 out of the game, I get a blue screen. The other half the time, I just get a GPF from the program. It does *NOT* like being ALT-F4'd at all, and hitting ESC and using the menu to close the program is more than a little annoying.
And as for actually getting into the game... try playing with a female PC. Your suspension of disbelief will last about 20 minutes. That's about how long it takes before you notice the first of the hundreds of text bugs that I've seen in the game. Throughout the game, you encounter dialogues where your female PC is referred to as a male. Even more annoying is when the VO uses the right pronouns while the subtitles fuck it up. Screwing up gender, bad spelling, not even an attempt at getting the grammar right, and you've got some serious problems. I switched it to French to try to get away from it, but had to switch back because it read like it was produced by Babelfish.
Couple that with absolutely shitty AI (what kind of Cleric doesn't heal her party members?) and horrendous pathfinding, and the end result is a game that has absolutely no polish at all, and it one of the technically worst games I have ever seen in my life. It's awful. And I doubt I will ever buy another Obsidian game that hasn't been out for at least a year.
Oh, thank "Bob". I gave up on the campaign halfway through the 2nd chapter for two reasons... the first was realizing that you wouldn't have a choice about using a longsword as your weapon to finish the game, and the second was the craptastic AI.
Hold on there, Bob. I'm not suggesting people need fully automatic weapons to protect themselves. In fact, I would wager that most of the law-abiding gun owners in the U.S. would agree with that for the simple fact that they recognize that they have family and neighbors to worry about, and spraying 30 rounds at a burglar in 3 seconds isn't a great idea. However, at the same time, I don't see a problem with people being able to own weapons like that for target shooting and the like, or at the very least, semi-auto variants of those weapons.
With the M16, you can. It's made by Colt, and doesn't have the automatic or burst firing modes. You can't get the 5.56x45 ammo for it, but if you walk into your local Wal*Mart, you can probably get.223 calibre rounds, which will fit in the weapon without jamming it. The difference is that.223 isn't armour piercing, and it's got a much lower grain count.
I'm sure you're right that most law-abiding gun owners would agree that owning a weapon capable of fully automatic is going over the top. Those aren't the ones that I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of the ones who would disagree, and I'm afraid of the criminals who then break into their homes and steal their weapons. Gun control isn't about disarming the populace, it's about limiting the number of guns in circulation. Fewer guns on the street doesn't mean the criminals won't have guns, but it does mean the criminals will have to work harder to get them.
The problem I have here in New Jersey is that the state doesn't believe that I have any right to protect myself when I'm outside my home. Carrying a discretely concealed, smaller caliber, semi-automatic pistol is not too much to ask. And I'm not opposed to a requirement for training and licensing for carrying concealed weapons. But at least give me the option. Oh, there's a concealed carry law on the books. But actual permits are nearly mythical.
That's where you an I differ, I suppose. Quite simply, I don't think that there's ever a need to carry a concealed firearm. It isn't that I believe the cops will always be around to protect me, it's that I believe that more harm than good is done by the ability to walk around with a gun in your hand (figuratively speaking). I'm more concerned about cases of road rage, or other arguments that get out of hand than I am about being mugged, because those situations happen a *lot* more frequently.
Not necessarily related to personal defense as we've been debating it, but the founders of the United States went out of their way to see that the citizenry would always be armed, be it to provide a citizen militia in the event of a foreign invasion, or to react in the event that an oppressive government came to power, similar to the one that they had fought to get out from under. When the government tells me that it's restricting gun ownership more and more and more and more and more, I can't help but think about that. And it's not just guns that are the issue. Personal choice and personal accountability are slowly being taken from us everywhere we turn. There are a lot of people here that are more on the liberal side and oppose both gun ownership and the PATRIOT Act. The PATRIOT Act is precisely why these same people should support private gun ownership. People tend to only support the parts of the Constitution that they deem important. Well they need to think more about the other parts and why they're important too. I understand it sounds like paranoia because the government is very stable (same for Canada). But the Bill of Rights has been slowly eroding over the last 200 years. Some day we'll hit a point where the government has become unacceptable. Our founders saw to it that we'd have the tools for the situation. I hope I never see that day.
I suppose that's where some other differences arise. Our "bill of rights", the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, was signed into law in 1982. Some of the politicians who wrote it are still in office.
You're allowed to think that. Just as I'm allowed to think you're an idiot. Isn't freedom of speech grand?
Ever read a story in your local paper about "man forced into car by two assailants, taken to ATM, forced to withdraw cash, murdered, body burned" and realized that you've got a car, ATM card, and body? The robbery in question was strong-arm, by the way, no weapons involved.
Actually, no. Stories like that don't get reported in the newspapers around here, largely because they don't happen with any sort of regularity. Violence isn't as much a part of our culture as it seems to be in yours. (though interestingly enough, violent crime has been steadily decreasing in the US. Has been since the 1970's.) Actually, there's fewer than 50 murders a year in the city I live in, and at over a million residents, it's not exactly a small city. There have been 13 homicides so far this year in this city... how does that compare to the daily rate in, say... Los Angeles or New York?
10/10 what, Bob? Blimps? Bowling pins? Nuns? If I'm shooting a pistol at a target 20 M away, I'm stupid or showing off.
I'll take door number 3. You're neither stupid, nor showboating. You're demonstrating that you can actually hit what you're pointing the weapon at. Funny thing about bullets... they don't care what you want to hit, they're going to damage/hurt whatever target they ultimately reach. If, in ideal circumstances, you can't consistently hit your intended target, what on Earth makes you think you're going to consistently hit it when you're stressed/panicking? Or did you miss the part where I said that I've seen people unload entire mags from 15 feet away (less than 5m) and hit nothing?
Back up a minute. I didn't say you weren't capable of handling an assault rifle, I said you shouldn't be allowed to have one in a non-military context. Two *very* different statements. Point of fact, an M16 is a really easy weapon to use. It's cheap, it's accurate, it's easy to maintain, it's lightweight, and you can carry a lot of ammo because it uses a lightweight 5.56mm (.223) ball. It's a very good weapon, as evidenced by the fact that it's been in service for more than 40 years.
So no. I didn't say you weren't capable of operating a weapon like that. I said you shouldn't be allowed to own a weapon like that. And for what I would consider to be a very good reason: rate of fire. The C7, which I use, is basically a copy of the M16, with rails and an optical sight instead of iron sights. The other main difference is that the C7 supports fully automatic firing instead of 3 round burst firing. With the selector on fully automatic, the limiting factor to your rate of fire is the muzzle velocity, which is directly impacted by the grain count in the shells you're using. It's capable of shooting 600-900 rounds per minute. I mean... you can empty a 30 round mag in less than 3 seconds. And the armour-piercing 5.56mm FMJ rounds that it uses are going so fast that they usually explode as soon as they hit flesh, and do as much damage as a hollow-point or flechette.
You do not need that kind of firepower to defend yourself, unless you're going up against a group of 15 thugs. In that case, you're pretty much fucked no matter which way you cut it. More than that... anybody who's ever fired on full automatic can tell you that it's next to impossible to keep the weapon on target past the first couple of rounds. That's actually why the M16 has the 3-round burst instead of full automatic.
I've been using firearms my entire life and I'm fully capable of making that decision for myself.
That's nice. No offense meant here, but your word means fuck all to me when my life is on the line. Put up or shut up. Prove to me that you know how to handle the firearms you wish to own, and prove to me that you're taking care of them and operating them safely, and that if you're going to be shooting at teh criminalz, you're actually going to hit them, and I don't have a problem with you owning a rifle or even a pistol. Until you've proven that to me, as I described in the previous post, I will vehemently oppose any "right" you think you have to own one. And you need to prove to me that you're keeping your skills up, because believe it or not, they do fade with disuse. Basic public safety.
See. The thing is... while you personally may be perfectly capable of owning and operating a machine gun safely, the moment I let you have one, I have to let everybody have the chance at owning one. And that's a risk I'm simply not prepared to take. Weapons without an automatic firing mode? No problem at all. They're a lot safer in general, and it's a lot harder to fuck up and accidentally shoot something you didn't mean to. (Not that that stopped a certain Vice President in recent history....) I don't care that you think you're capable of making that decision for yourself, because the average IQ in the world is fucking retarded. There are certain decisions that should, under no circumstances, be left to the public at large, and that's one of them.
A gun isn't going to shoot anyone until it's loaded, pointed at someone, and fired. While it's sitting on the table (even loaded), it's no danger to anyone.
Never seen/heard of a round cooking off because of other factors, I take it? They do occasionally cook off without you pulling the trigger, though such cases are exceedingly rare. It can be caused by fire, electrical shock, overheating, poor storage, or a number of other avoidable factors. As to actual gun control? It's a double-edged sword. I work with guns and rifles on a daily basis. It's my job. I'm trained with the maintenance and operation of restricted and prohibited weapons as a member of the military. Should the average Joe sixpack be allowed to own an assault rifle, an easily concealed weapon, or a semi- or fully automatic weapon? I don't think so.
Now... take this as an outsider's view (I'm Canadian), but I very much doubt that the founding fathers of the USA had M16 or other fully automatic weapons in mind when they wrote the 2nd ammendment. Even revolvers or magazine-fed weapons hadn't been invented yet: they only had long-muzzle smooth-bore muskets and single-shot muzzle-loading pistols as their frame of reference, and I suspect that they had no reason to presume that the technology behind weapons would advance as quickly as it has, or in the direction it has.
I have no problem with people being allowed to possess manually-fed or single shot weapons, as long as they are responsible with the ownership. You should be (and are) required to obtain a license, and to attend firearm safety classes. What isn't covered by law is proper maintenance of weapons, and recertification. In the military, I'm required to recertify every year on all of the weapons I use. This includes marksmanship testing, and proving that I know how to take care of and maintain my weapon. And there's a damned good reason for that: if I can't shoot straight, the weapon in my hands is a hazard to everybody else. If I'm not taking care of my weapon, I can get myself killed, and I can get the guy standing next to me killed. Civilian laws should be the same.
To wit: If you want to own a rifle or shotgun for hunting or home defense, more power to you. So be it. I wouldn't own one myself, but I'm not going to stop you, as long as I am satisfied that you know what the hell you're doing. If you want to own a pistol, I don't mind, as long as it is not semi- or fully automatic, and has a reasonably small magazine. There's a reason you can't own a weapon in Canada with a magazine larger than 5 rounds. And pistols should absolutely be restricted to a higher degree than rifles and shotguns, because they can be easily concealed. In all cases, you should be required to submit your weapon to a smith for inspection on an annual or semi-annual basis to prove that you've been taking proper care of it (and they should be allowed to suspend your license if you haven't), and you should be required to maintain your proficiency with the weapon by undergoing state-monitored recertification in weapon safety, maintenance and marksmanship on a regular (and frequent) basis. I honestly think that the biggest risk in civilian gun ownership is people who buy one and have no fucking clue how to use or take care of it. It's a tool. In the right hands, it's a very effective tool. In the wrong hands, it's a hazard to everybody.
I've seen people unload an entire mag (13 + 1 in the chamber for the Browning HP that we use) from 15 feet away and hit nothing, and there's no reason for that to happen. Pistols are not difficult weapons to master. But you absolutely *need* to practice with the weapon for it to be effective. If you can't hit 10/10 from 20m away under controlled conditions, then you have no fucking business owning a pistol.
And I think it's a privilege, not a right. Just like driving.
Oh, one last thing. Sort of a post-script. I wish that media would stop calling them "guns". Call them what they are: weapons.
Ever get the feeling you're trying to explain quantum mechanics to a goat?:-)
Just to add to what you're saying... every car on the market today has an onboard computer. Even kit-cars have onboard computers. They serve a few very useful purposes. One of the three in my car controls the transmission (tiptronic... best of both worlds. have the fun of a manual transmission, and the convenience of an automatic when you're feeling lazy), another has a temperature sensor and controls the fuel/air mixture, and the third handles all of the guages. Now... there's no reason that all of those functions can't be handled by a mechanical or analogue mechanism. Hell... there were even automatic transmissions available on the market before the invention of the transistor, so even that isn't something that *requires* a computer.
*BUT*... analogue/mechanical systems to do that kind of stuff are, well, analogue or mechanical. They're just as prone to breakage as digital/computerized systems, and in many ways are less reliable than their modern counterparts. They're also a lot more expensive and complicated to implement. There's a *reason* that you can't get a car these days that doesn't have at least one onboard computer. And the notion that the "average joe" can't fix a car once there's a microchip in it? Complete and utter bullshit. Unadulterated bovine scatology. I've been fixing cars my entire life, and I have never owned a car that didn't have an onboard computer. I've replaced onboard computers several times... when I was fixing a 1990 Subaru XT-6, for example, I went through 3 computers before I fixed the problem with the suspension. And yes, I've even reprogrammed the onboard computers. It's not rocket surgery. It's actually pretty fucking easy to replace the computer in your car, and they're no more expensive than most of the other parts in your car. If you wouldn't balk at the thought of pulling the engine to get a head rebored, then there's absolutely no reason you should find replacing the computer difficult: the computer is cheaper than getting the head rebored (to say nothing of buying a new engine as the alternative), and usually you only have to pull the dashboard or one of the front seats to get at it, which is significantly easier. It's a one-person job that can be done in less than an hour.
If we define nullity as the answer to the question (X/0) for all X, then it can be treated as a fraction. As we know, if you're dividing by a fraction, you invert the fraction and multiply... You end up with (0*0)/X, which is equal to zero for all X != 0. If X=0, then the answer is 0*0/0, which returns "nullity".
Of course, it's utter BS. Then again... people were saying that about the introduction of the number zero, or about negative numbers, or about real numbers (as opposed to natural numbers)
I am sure I am not the only one getting this. Any ideas how to combat this?
My setup:
personal domain ------fetchmail ----> local postfix ------> procmail / spamassasin ----> BINC IMAP server
Rule number 1, get rid of the catch-all. Most virtual domain servers (companies that host your mail and let you grab it through POP3) have a rule for *@yourcompany.com that redirects into your main address. Go into the management, and set up your address as yourname@yourcompany.com, and get rid of the *@yourcompany.com catch-all. If it's a.com or an actual company, then make the addresses on your website into links. That way, Joe User just has to click the link to start an e-mail.
Getting rid of the catch-all will send most bounces back to their originating servers, and let the servers deal with it. Unless the spam is actually post-marked with your e-mail address, it'll get rid of all of it.
As for other stuff, it's extremely rare that the spammers will consistently use your e-mail address as a return address. Unless a spammer has specific hostile intent against you, you will probably only ever see it once. Unless you've chosen an obvious e-mail address like support@yourcompany.com, or webmaster@yourcompany.com. Those are pretty common for spammers to use. In that case, change your e-mail addy to something less obvious.
If you're still getting screwed over, SA has a rule for stuff from mailer daemons (bounces), and you can increase the score for that rule. It doesn't stop the message from reaching your server, but at least it stops the message from reaching your inbox.
Failing that, you *could* also put a signature in your message, to the effect of "do not delete any part of signature when responding {secret key}", and set up a procmail filter that adds a warning header to any message that doesn't contain your secret key. You can play with the filter, so that it only applies to replies or bounces, too. Same as tweaking SA's rule values, but possibly more graceful.
Likewise... I use the ads as an excuse to get a drink, check my e-mail, visit the loo, etc. Ads on TV are pretty harmless, really. Besides... I like some ads. Every now and then, they'll come up with a witty, intelligent ad that makes you laugh. I'll actually watch those ones...
As far as crap on the Internet... Firefox 2, Adblock Plus, the list found at http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/, and on my mail server, milter-greylist, SpamHaus RBL, and SpamAssassin with a sensitivity threshhold of 1.0. (and a daily cron task that has SA learn my "Spam-Bin" folder on IMAP as spam). Oh, and ClamAV, too, to block viruses.
I'm not actually referring to Deep Impact so much as I am the analysis of other meteorites that have been found on Earth, as well as analysis on some of the moon rocks. You're right, though. We can also look at the composition of the star to give a rough estimate of its age... but that relies on a few assumptions, just like any other method we have. In that case, the assumption is that the lifecycle of a star is predictable. It also relies on an assumption about the general composition of the nebula that we formed from (and as a consequence, the original composition of Sol).
Reasonable assumptions, given what our observations have shown. We're fairly sure that Jupiter's atmosphere is about as close to the initial composition as we're going to find, and we're pretty sure what's in the planet's atmosphere. But just as any other method we have, it's a guesstimate of the rough age of the solar system. We really don't know how old the solar system is, and we really don't have a way to definitively measure it.
Slashdot Mirror
Because Wal*Mart is the single biggest seller of video games in the world. They move more product than stores that specialize in computer games. And because Wal*Mart pulling games in the past has sunk them.
You're not alone in thinking this is a stupid idea for a video game, though. I saw it on the shelf in EB yesterday, and actually had to leave the store because I was laughing so hard. When I'd composed myself and returned, I asked the guy behind the counter, and he said that they hadn't sold a single copy, and there was a reason it was on the top shelf where I, at 6'2", had to stretch to reach it. I mentionned it to my mother's minister (I don't consider myself Christian, but that's a long story), and her response was "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard."
Even Christians think it's dumb.
That's up to you. But please don't take it as an offense if I say that I'd never hire you as a sysadmin.
Ask yourself this... is the 5 minutes it takes to set up basic firewalling (or even simply shutting down any daemons you're running) worth the extra time you risk if you have to reinstall the computer? Banking on averages is never a good idea, especially not when you're dealing with something mission-critical. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, at the worst possible moment and all.
Speaking as somebody who's had computers blow up on him on many an occasion, I'd rather not take any chances I don't have to. Recovering from your own fuckups is expensive and annoying, doubly so when it's avoidable.
BSD has the ability to firewall just like Linux with iptables/netfilter. What I'm talking about is a different ability, though. You can set it up at the hardware bridge mode, to set up an invisible firewall. One of the great features is in forcing everybody on the net to use your proxy server... you can tell it that if outbound traffic on port 80 doesn't originate from 192.168.1.5, for example, then it gets redirected to 192.168.1.5:8080. It's a great way to stealthily force your entire network to use a proxy without having to manually configure it in every computer.
I *think* that's the real reason that the system was developped. But it also makes a great way to set up firewalling: all inbound traffic on all ports can be ignored, redirected to your DMZ host, or treated however you want. It's also able to do it transparently, so you could simply drop an appropriately configured NetBSD box between your existing gateway and the world. Not a lot of point in doing it that way, though. As I said, the real advantage is in being able to quietly force traffic to go through proxies of your choice.
3 months average doesn't mean that it'll definitely happen in 3 months. It could never happen, it could happen in 5 minutes. You are taking a gamble every time you go online if you aren't behind some kind of firewall.
With *BSD, it's entirely possible to set up a low-level firewall that offers just as much protection as NAT without actually doing any address translation. It does this by monitoring the traffic at the packet-level, and can be configured to block certain ports, to ignore all unrequested traffic, or any number of QoS-type monitoring/filtering features that are a royal pain in the ass to set up on a NAT box. Really, the biggest advantage of NAT is that the DHCP allows you to have more than one computer on the network. (granted, that's a pretty big advantage).
There's even a howto on NetBSD's website that explains exactly how to go about setting such a box up.
But you're right... generally, it's easier to go with NAT in the long run.
On then other hand, in some states you can get charged with statutory rape if you, at the age of 19, have sex with your 17-year old girlfriend.
Not everybody who's a registered sex offender is some paedophile rapist. A lot of the people on that list are victims of overly puritanical laws. I'm not going to say they're all innocent, but the list could probably be half the size it is.
As to the proposed system... not going to work. Anybody with 5 minutes' experience on the Internet has heard of Hotmail. A better system would be to cooperate with their ISPs so that they get static IP addresses. For free. Automatically as part of their Internet connection. Then publish the list of IP addys that are assigned to sex offenders. No names. No registration. No personal information. Let the websites take responsibility for using the information properly, and hold networking sites like MySpace liable if a sex offender uses their service to commit a crime.
I agree with your comment, generally... but there's a couple of *very* bad bugs that make the game really hard to play, and there's some minor bugs that really hurt your ability to immerse yourself in the game.
Play it on an AMD CPU. You're screwed. Royally. The game is so incredibly choppy that it becomes virtually unplayable. In some cases, you literally have to pause the game and go make yourself a coffee so that it can do all of the processing that's been slowing it down. And that's on an X2 4800+ with 4GB of RAM and a 512MB X1900 video card. There's no earthly reason that the game should be even remotely choppy at 1280x800 resolution, and yet it is. Even with all of the effects turned off and the graphics textures set to their crappiest available. Compare that to the performance I get out of GuildWars, say, which I play at 1680x1050 with the graphics turned all the way up, and you have a problem. GW has nicer graphics anyway, and it's a perfect example of how obscenely horrible a job Obsidian has really done.
Oh, and half the time when I ALT-F4 out of the game, I get a blue screen. The other half the time, I just get a GPF from the program. It does *NOT* like being ALT-F4'd at all, and hitting ESC and using the menu to close the program is more than a little annoying.
And as for actually getting into the game... try playing with a female PC. Your suspension of disbelief will last about 20 minutes. That's about how long it takes before you notice the first of the hundreds of text bugs that I've seen in the game. Throughout the game, you encounter dialogues where your female PC is referred to as a male. Even more annoying is when the VO uses the right pronouns while the subtitles fuck it up. Screwing up gender, bad spelling, not even an attempt at getting the grammar right, and you've got some serious problems. I switched it to French to try to get away from it, but had to switch back because it read like it was produced by Babelfish.
Couple that with absolutely shitty AI (what kind of Cleric doesn't heal her party members?) and horrendous pathfinding, and the end result is a game that has absolutely no polish at all, and it one of the technically worst games I have ever seen in my life. It's awful. And I doubt I will ever buy another Obsidian game that hasn't been out for at least a year.
Bioware didn't create NWN2. Bioware did create Baldur's Gate (Minsc & Boo), and KOTOR (HK-47).
Obsidian created NWN2. You remember Obsidian, right? No? What about KOTOR2 which was released incomplete?
You'd be wrong... it's Ursula Abbott.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808396/
Psst... if you want to karma whore, a link usually helps....
Actually... there's an object you can't kill without the sword, but that you have to kill in order to finish the game.
Oh, and the ending sucked. Royally.
Oh, thank "Bob". I gave up on the campaign halfway through the 2nd chapter for two reasons... the first was realizing that you wouldn't have a choice about using a longsword as your weapon to finish the game, and the second was the craptastic AI.
With the M16, you can. It's made by Colt, and doesn't have the automatic or burst firing modes. You can't get the 5.56x45 ammo for it, but if you walk into your local Wal*Mart, you can probably get
I'm sure you're right that most law-abiding gun owners would agree that owning a weapon capable of fully automatic is going over the top. Those aren't the ones that I'm afraid of. I'm afraid of the ones who would disagree, and I'm afraid of the criminals who then break into their homes and steal their weapons. Gun control isn't about disarming the populace, it's about limiting the number of guns in circulation. Fewer guns on the street doesn't mean the criminals won't have guns, but it does mean the criminals will have to work harder to get them.
That's where you an I differ, I suppose. Quite simply, I don't think that there's ever a need to carry a concealed firearm. It isn't that I believe the cops will always be around to protect me, it's that I believe that more harm than good is done by the ability to walk around with a gun in your hand (figuratively speaking). I'm more concerned about cases of road rage, or other arguments that get out of hand than I am about being mugged, because those situations happen a *lot* more frequently.
I suppose that's where some other differences arise. Our "bill of rights", the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, was signed into law in 1982. Some of the politicians who wrote it are still in office.
You're allowed to think that. Just as I'm allowed to think you're an idiot. Isn't freedom of speech grand?
Actually, no. Stories like that don't get reported in the newspapers around here, largely because they don't happen with any sort of regularity. Violence isn't as much a part of our culture as it seems to be in yours. (though interestingly enough, violent crime has been steadily decreasing in the US. Has been since the 1970's.) Actually, there's fewer than 50 murders a year in the city I live in, and at over a million residents, it's not exactly a small city. There have been 13 homicides so far this year in this city... how does that compare to the daily rate in, say... Los Angeles or New York?
I'll take door number 3. You're neither stupid, nor showboating. You're demonstrating that you can actually hit what you're pointing the weapon at. Funny thing about bullets... they don't care what you want to hit, they're going to damage/hurt whatever target they ultimately reach. If, in ideal circumstances, you can't consistently hit your intended target, what on Earth makes you think you're going to consistently hit it when you're stressed/panicking? Or did you miss the part where I said that I've seen people unload entire mags from 15 feet away (less than 5m) and hit nothing?
So no. I didn't say you weren't capable of operating a weapon like that. I said you shouldn't be allowed to own a weapon like that. And for what I would consider to be a very good reason: rate of fire. The C7, which I use, is basically a copy of the M16, with rails and an optical sight instead of iron sights. The other main difference is that the C7 supports fully automatic firing instead of 3 round burst firing. With the selector on fully automatic, the limiting factor to your rate of fire is the muzzle velocity, which is directly impacted by the grain count in the shells you're using. It's capable of shooting 600-900 rounds per minute. I mean... you can empty a 30 round mag in less than 3 seconds. And the armour-piercing 5.56mm FMJ rounds that it uses are going so fast that they usually explode as soon as they hit flesh, and do as much damage as a hollow-point or flechette.
You do not need that kind of firepower to defend yourself, unless you're going up against a group of 15 thugs. In that case, you're pretty much fucked no matter which way you cut it. More than that... anybody who's ever fired on full automatic can tell you that it's next to impossible to keep the weapon on target past the first couple of rounds. That's actually why the M16 has the 3-round burst instead of full automatic.
That's nice. No offense meant here, but your word means fuck all to me when my life is on the line. Put up or shut up. Prove to me that you know how to handle the firearms you wish to own, and prove to me that you're taking care of them and operating them safely, and that if you're going to be shooting at teh criminalz, you're actually going to hit them, and I don't have a problem with you owning a rifle or even a pistol. Until you've proven that to me, as I described in the previous post, I will vehemently oppose any "right" you think you have to own one. And you need to prove to me that you're keeping your skills up, because believe it or not, they do fade with disuse. Basic public safety.
See. The thing is... while you personally may be perfectly capable of owning and operating a machine gun safely, the moment I let you have one, I have to let everybody have the chance at owning one. And that's a risk I'm simply not prepared to take. Weapons without an automatic firing mode? No problem at all. They're a lot safer in general, and it's a lot harder to fuck up and accidentally shoot something you didn't mean to. (Not that that stopped a certain Vice President in recent history....) I don't care that you think you're capable of making that decision for yourself, because the average IQ in the world is fucking retarded. There are certain decisions that should, under no circumstances, be left to the public at large, and that's one of them.
25 years and counting, they still haven't caught me. :-)
Never seen/heard of a round cooking off because of other factors, I take it? They do occasionally cook off without you pulling the trigger, though such cases are exceedingly rare. It can be caused by fire, electrical shock, overheating, poor storage, or a number of other avoidable factors. As to actual gun control? It's a double-edged sword. I work with guns and rifles on a daily basis. It's my job. I'm trained with the maintenance and operation of restricted and prohibited weapons as a member of the military. Should the average Joe sixpack be allowed to own an assault rifle, an easily concealed weapon, or a semi- or fully automatic weapon? I don't think so.
Now... take this as an outsider's view (I'm Canadian), but I very much doubt that the founding fathers of the USA had M16 or other fully automatic weapons in mind when they wrote the 2nd ammendment. Even revolvers or magazine-fed weapons hadn't been invented yet: they only had long-muzzle smooth-bore muskets and single-shot muzzle-loading pistols as their frame of reference, and I suspect that they had no reason to presume that the technology behind weapons would advance as quickly as it has, or in the direction it has.
I have no problem with people being allowed to possess manually-fed or single shot weapons, as long as they are responsible with the ownership. You should be (and are) required to obtain a license, and to attend firearm safety classes. What isn't covered by law is proper maintenance of weapons, and recertification. In the military, I'm required to recertify every year on all of the weapons I use. This includes marksmanship testing, and proving that I know how to take care of and maintain my weapon. And there's a damned good reason for that: if I can't shoot straight, the weapon in my hands is a hazard to everybody else. If I'm not taking care of my weapon, I can get myself killed, and I can get the guy standing next to me killed. Civilian laws should be the same.
To wit: If you want to own a rifle or shotgun for hunting or home defense, more power to you. So be it. I wouldn't own one myself, but I'm not going to stop you, as long as I am satisfied that you know what the hell you're doing. If you want to own a pistol, I don't mind, as long as it is not semi- or fully automatic, and has a reasonably small magazine. There's a reason you can't own a weapon in Canada with a magazine larger than 5 rounds. And pistols should absolutely be restricted to a higher degree than rifles and shotguns, because they can be easily concealed. In all cases, you should be required to submit your weapon to a smith for inspection on an annual or semi-annual basis to prove that you've been taking proper care of it (and they should be allowed to suspend your license if you haven't), and you should be required to maintain your proficiency with the weapon by undergoing state-monitored recertification in weapon safety, maintenance and marksmanship on a regular (and frequent) basis. I honestly think that the biggest risk in civilian gun ownership is people who buy one and have no fucking clue how to use or take care of it. It's a tool. In the right hands, it's a very effective tool. In the wrong hands, it's a hazard to everybody.
I've seen people unload an entire mag (13 + 1 in the chamber for the Browning HP that we use) from 15 feet away and hit nothing, and there's no reason for that to happen. Pistols are not difficult weapons to master. But you absolutely *need* to practice with the weapon for it to be effective. If you can't hit 10/10 from 20m away under controlled conditions, then you have no fucking business owning a pistol.
And I think it's a privilege, not a right. Just like driving.
Oh, one last thing. Sort of a post-script. I wish that media would stop calling them "guns". Call them what they are: weapons.
You mean like the Duck Hunt controller?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Hunt
Ever get the feeling you're trying to explain quantum mechanics to a goat? :-)
Just to add to what you're saying... every car on the market today has an onboard computer. Even kit-cars have onboard computers. They serve a few very useful purposes. One of the three in my car controls the transmission (tiptronic... best of both worlds. have the fun of a manual transmission, and the convenience of an automatic when you're feeling lazy), another has a temperature sensor and controls the fuel/air mixture, and the third handles all of the guages. Now... there's no reason that all of those functions can't be handled by a mechanical or analogue mechanism. Hell... there were even automatic transmissions available on the market before the invention of the transistor, so even that isn't something that *requires* a computer.
*BUT*... analogue/mechanical systems to do that kind of stuff are, well, analogue or mechanical. They're just as prone to breakage as digital/computerized systems, and in many ways are less reliable than their modern counterparts. They're also a lot more expensive and complicated to implement. There's a *reason* that you can't get a car these days that doesn't have at least one onboard computer. And the notion that the "average joe" can't fix a car once there's a microchip in it? Complete and utter bullshit. Unadulterated bovine scatology. I've been fixing cars my entire life, and I have never owned a car that didn't have an onboard computer. I've replaced onboard computers several times... when I was fixing a 1990 Subaru XT-6, for example, I went through 3 computers before I fixed the problem with the suspension. And yes, I've even reprogrammed the onboard computers. It's not rocket surgery. It's actually pretty fucking easy to replace the computer in your car, and they're no more expensive than most of the other parts in your car. If you wouldn't balk at the thought of pulling the engine to get a head rebored, then there's absolutely no reason you should find replacing the computer difficult: the computer is cheaper than getting the head rebored (to say nothing of buying a new engine as the alternative), and usually you only have to pull the dashboard or one of the front seats to get at it, which is significantly easier. It's a one-person job that can be done in less than an hour.
This wouldn't be slashdot without the MS-bashing, would it? :-)
Either Zero or nullity.
If we define nullity as the answer to the question (X/0) for all X, then it can be treated as a fraction. As we know, if you're dividing by a fraction, you invert the fraction and multiply... You end up with (0*0)/X, which is equal to zero for all X != 0. If X=0, then the answer is 0*0/0, which returns "nullity".
Of course, it's utter BS. Then again... people were saying that about the introduction of the number zero, or about negative numbers, or about real numbers (as opposed to natural numbers)
Rule number 1, get rid of the catch-all. Most virtual domain servers (companies that host your mail and let you grab it through POP3) have a rule for *@yourcompany.com that redirects into your main address. Go into the management, and set up your address as yourname@yourcompany.com, and get rid of the *@yourcompany.com catch-all. If it's a
Getting rid of the catch-all will send most bounces back to their originating servers, and let the servers deal with it. Unless the spam is actually post-marked with your e-mail address, it'll get rid of all of it.
As for other stuff, it's extremely rare that the spammers will consistently use your e-mail address as a return address. Unless a spammer has specific hostile intent against you, you will probably only ever see it once. Unless you've chosen an obvious e-mail address like support@yourcompany.com, or webmaster@yourcompany.com. Those are pretty common for spammers to use. In that case, change your e-mail addy to something less obvious.
If you're still getting screwed over, SA has a rule for stuff from mailer daemons (bounces), and you can increase the score for that rule. It doesn't stop the message from reaching your server, but at least it stops the message from reaching your inbox.
Failing that, you *could* also put a signature in your message, to the effect of "do not delete any part of signature when responding {secret key}", and set up a procmail filter that adds a warning header to any message that doesn't contain your secret key. You can play with the filter, so that it only applies to replies or bounces, too. Same as tweaking SA's rule values, but possibly more graceful.
Uh huh... and it's a "spam-bin" folder on IMAP. What do you think I do with false negatives, exactly? Delete them?
Likewise... I use the ads as an excuse to get a drink, check my e-mail, visit the loo, etc. Ads on TV are pretty harmless, really. Besides... I like some ads. Every now and then, they'll come up with a witty, intelligent ad that makes you laugh. I'll actually watch those ones...
As far as crap on the Internet... Firefox 2, Adblock Plus, the list found at http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/, and on my mail server, milter-greylist, SpamHaus RBL, and SpamAssassin with a sensitivity threshhold of 1.0. (and a daily cron task that has SA learn my "Spam-Bin" folder on IMAP as spam). Oh, and ClamAV, too, to block viruses.
I'm not actually referring to Deep Impact so much as I am the analysis of other meteorites that have been found on Earth, as well as analysis on some of the moon rocks. You're right, though. We can also look at the composition of the star to give a rough estimate of its age... but that relies on a few assumptions, just like any other method we have. In that case, the assumption is that the lifecycle of a star is predictable. It also relies on an assumption about the general composition of the nebula that we formed from (and as a consequence, the original composition of Sol).
Reasonable assumptions, given what our observations have shown. We're fairly sure that Jupiter's atmosphere is about as close to the initial composition as we're going to find, and we're pretty sure what's in the planet's atmosphere. But just as any other method we have, it's a guesstimate of the rough age of the solar system. We really don't know how old the solar system is, and we really don't have a way to definitively measure it.