In GTA3: Vice City I like to put on the police uniform and calmly drive around the streets in a Police Cruiser. When I see a gang of Haitians or Cubans I will proceed to exit my vehicle, AND BEAT THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF THEM WITH MY TRUNCHEON. Then I get back in my car and keep driving.
This isn't so much about the 70s and 80s games, but recently I found some games I used to play in the early 90s on an abandonware site - one of the ones I remember was A-10 Tank Killer by Dynamix (I think?). Anyway, I recall spending HOURS playing this game because it was so immersive and stuff, when I fired up the copy now I couldn't see how I could ever have played the game that much as the graphics were very primitive. I think modern gaming has in some way spoiled us, obviously I must've been using my imagination a fair bit when playing the game 12 years ago in order to have memories of it being that interesting and realistic.
Obviously this only applies to games with a basis in reality, mainly flight and driving simulators, and not so much to puzzle games and RTS type games. I can only imagine how a flight simulator will look in another 12 years time!
Interestingly though, Doom, from around the same time, is still quite playable and the graphics aren't TOO bad - obviously nothing like UT2K3 or the Doom III screenshots, but not as bad as a comparison between the aforementioned A-10 game and FS2003:)
I've only used BitTorrent (BT) a few times, but as far as I can see problems occur when something is freshly released. For example, recently when Red Orchestra was mentioned on/. I thought i'd download it. Saw the BT link within the comments and tried to give it a go. Gave up after 30 minutes when I'd downloaded 10MB of 250 or whatever and uploaded 25MB. Got in a FilePlanet queue and had the whole thing in 60 minutes, including a 25 minute wait in the queue.
The problem, as far as I can tell, when something is "new" is that there are few seeds and everyone is starting up downloads.. so the seed is saturated serving the first chunk out to 100 leechers at 2KB/sec each, then once the leechers have the first chunk they're serving the first chunk to new leechers while they're all trying to get the next chunk. In theory performance would increase as leechers become seeders, but in practice most people are glad to have finally got the whole file and just close the window.
Anyway, that's how I see it. I've also had good downloads with BT where there was a number of seeders and relatively few leechers, but that's hardly different from downloading from a website that's not busy.
Congrats, China! You managed to put a man into orbit (and return safely to the Earth) without the benfit of stolen German technology!
Yay! Instead it was done with upgraded Russian technology!
On a related note, my favourite story about Chinese space exploration is this:
About 650 years ago, an inventive Chinese mandarin named Wan Hu tied 47 large rockets filled with gunpowder to his chair and, firmly clutching a kite in each hand, ordered his servants to light the touchpapers.
He vanished in a cloud of sparks and blue smoke, according to legend, with many of his Ming dynasty contemporaries believing he was somewhere in the heavens.
I would say Valve are not allowed to release the code for the HL engine since it's based on a licensed copy of the Quake I engine (with some Quake II functionality added in when Id released Q2 to licensees). Feel free to download the Quake I and Quake II source and write your own Half Life engine:)
Your first paragraph is exactly what XForms is intended to replace. Validation will be done on the client, by the XForms implementation in the browser, which will validate against, for example, XSD datatypes. Things like adding or deleting an entry on the form will also be handled on the client. And when you're done, the server receives a pre-validated XML document as form submission. What could be easier?
Which you then have to go revalidate again at the server end because you can't trust anything you get from the client. Still, not much different from the way a lot of web apps work today but probably a bit more "standardised" which is nice.
Yes, they trade in mp3s, but the mp3s are encoded VBR and the bit rates vary from file to file. I know this probably depends on the content, but somehow I'd feel better having straight 192 kbps files.
VBR stands for "Variable Bit Rate" so of course the bit rate will vary from file to file (and from frame to frame!). You'll probably find VBR files are better quality than straight 192kbps files as when the music is "busy" the bit rate will be as high as 256 or 320 (depending on the encoder settings). I find most of my VBR files are around 180-200kbps average bitrate anyway, so i'm getting a higher quality file for around the same file size as a straight 192kbps file.
Tin foil hat privacy issues aside, the reason for this is because Gilette Mach 3 Razor Blades are the most shoplifted item in Britain. This is due to Gilette's "strategy" of giving away the razors and charging through the nose for the blades.
I dunno, I wonder how this would effect weak-minded people who would be unable to tell where the game ended and their life and responsibilities began. I guess that's true for any game, right? But having to mentally divide your day into reality/fantasy could be difficult for some folks.
This sounds like Red Planet to me, yes? I loved that game too and at a place they had it here in Sydney you could play unlimited games for $10 a day on Tuesdays (but it didn't count towards your "Veteran" status or whatever it was). I think over the course of about a year or so I played a couple of hundred games and got really good at it.
It's a shame there's no version of it for the PC, which would look even sweeter on modern hardware. From what I recall seeing some of the machines booting they were just standard P90 (or so) PCs with custom hardware to handle the controllers and the extra status monitors etc.
I would say that based on the interview above, she would have a hard time writing anything more complex than a small grocery list. At very least she's not a friend of the big words.
Well, after reading that I concur. Like I said, her writing her own songs was just "as far as I am aware". It seems those "rumours" may well have been part of the whole scam.:)
(of course, "The Matrix" songwriting group, previously responsible for Christina Aguilera, writes Avril's stuff, but that's by the by)
Actually, as far as I am aware, Avril writes her own songs. At least the lyrics, you may be talking about the "music" part - but I don't think her stuff is so much about the music as the lyrics.
In Australia it's not as common to live on campus, therefore most students don't have evenings etc to just sit around downloading music in their dorms:)
Re: USa has the largest credit card boom
on
Giant Sucking Noise
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· Score: 1
You can never have 0% unemployment, unless your economy is super ineffficient with heaps of red tape (as is usa govt now) fors forms forms for everything. Theres always some people that can't or don't work. People under 14 usually dont, people over 70 usually dont.
Unemployment is normally a measure of how many people who in fact can work but aren't working. So it excludes people below the minimum working age (there's one in Australia, don't know about the US), students, pensioners, etc. So 0% unemployment would mean everyone who is able to work is actually working, which in theory should be possible.
Was just reading this post while listening to my Sony NetMD player and I thought i'd clear up some false statements in your post..
I almost gave in and bought a netMD minidisc player because it sounded so good, [...]The player can only be recorded to with special software bundled with it. For some incomprehensible reason, the software will only work on a pre-installed version of windows on a brand name computer.
While it's true that it will only record to the NetMD with the bundled software, the software can be installed on any version of Windows you like. I have a home built PC running a self installed OEM XP Pro and it works fine. You might be thinking of the Sony VAIO notebooks which I believe come with the software pre-installed.
The software is also much to paranoid about piracy, you have to re-rip your music using their software to a secure sony file format.
You have to convert your music to the Sony ATRAC3 format because that's the format for MiniDisc audio. It just happens to be that ATRAC3 has protection built in so you can prevent an ATRAC3 file from being copied, however an ATRAC3 file doens't have to be protected - it's just the ones that OpenMG create are.
Then, you can only write each song to MD 3 times before having to re-rip the file.
This is true if using the OpenMG software, however there is another piece of software that comes bundled called "SimpleBurner" (SB).. basically you stick in a CD, plug in your MD player and hit "Record". SB looks up track titles in CDDB and rips your whole CD in one go into a Group on your MD. No restrictions, no ripped files left around on your harddrive. You can do your renaming/grouping/etc with SB or even run OpenMG just to organise the files on your MD without introducting any restriction.
Sure it's a bit hackish, but you can get away without using OpenMG at all even for putting MP3s onto your MD player - simply make an Audio CD image using Nero of your MP3s, then using Nero's Virtual Drive thingie you burn that CD using SimpleBurner. It's actually probably less work than dealing with OpenMG:)
Still, it seems you didn't do your research into the NetMD very well.
You can add your cygwin\bin directory to your Windows path and use most of the commands from a normal Windows command prompt. The only stuff that won't work is stuff that's not an exe but triggered by a shell script or something. Works well for most things I use day to day like grep, sort, awk, etc..
According to the site it's a "reinvention" of the original. Which is good, because as far as I remember the original was basically a Laserdisc movie where you moved the joystick in a certain direction at the right time and either died or went on to the next screen - hardly the kind of game you'd want to shell out $90-$100 (Australian) on for your console:) Looks like some very pretty cel shaded graphics from the screenshots (incase they're slashdotted) - one of those adventure 3D platformer games like Zelda, Mario Sunshine or Starfox Adventures.
Also, it's not just for xbox as the article title states but for PS2 and GameCube too. In fact the site shows pictures of the PS2 and GC boxes but not the xbox one.
Slashdot Mirror
Halo PC doesn't have co-op though, which is annoying.
In GTA3: Vice City I like to put on the police uniform and calmly drive around the streets in a Police Cruiser. When I see a gang of Haitians or Cubans I will proceed to exit my vehicle, AND BEAT THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF THEM WITH MY TRUNCHEON. Then I get back in my car and keep driving.
Sometimes I use the minigun.
I like stories.
This isn't so much about the 70s and 80s games, but recently I found some games I used to play in the early 90s on an abandonware site - one of the ones I remember was A-10 Tank Killer by Dynamix (I think?). Anyway, I recall spending HOURS playing this game because it was so immersive and stuff, when I fired up the copy now I couldn't see how I could ever have played the game that much as the graphics were very primitive. I think modern gaming has in some way spoiled us, obviously I must've been using my imagination a fair bit when playing the game 12 years ago in order to have memories of it being that interesting and realistic.
:)
Obviously this only applies to games with a basis in reality, mainly flight and driving simulators, and not so much to puzzle games and RTS type games. I can only imagine how a flight simulator will look in another 12 years time!
Interestingly though, Doom, from around the same time, is still quite playable and the graphics aren't TOO bad - obviously nothing like UT2K3 or the Doom III screenshots, but not as bad as a comparison between the aforementioned A-10 game and FS2003
I've only used BitTorrent (BT) a few times, but as far as I can see problems occur when something is freshly released. For example, recently when Red Orchestra was mentioned on /. I thought i'd download it. Saw the BT link within the comments and tried to give it a go. Gave up after 30 minutes when I'd downloaded 10MB of 250 or whatever and uploaded 25MB. Got in a FilePlanet queue and had the whole thing in 60 minutes, including a 25 minute wait in the queue.
The problem, as far as I can tell, when something is "new" is that there are few seeds and everyone is starting up downloads.. so the seed is saturated serving the first chunk out to 100 leechers at 2KB/sec each, then once the leechers have the first chunk they're serving the first chunk to new leechers while they're all trying to get the next chunk. In theory performance would increase as leechers become seeders, but in practice most people are glad to have finally got the whole file and just close the window.
Anyway, that's how I see it. I've also had good downloads with BT where there was a number of seeders and relatively few leechers, but that's hardly different from downloading from a website that's not busy.
Yay! Instead it was done with upgraded Russian technology!
On a related note, my favourite story about Chinese space exploration is this:
I would say Valve are not allowed to release the code for the HL engine since it's based on a licensed copy of the Quake I engine (with some Quake II functionality added in when Id released Q2 to licensees). Feel free to download the Quake I and Quake II source and write your own Half Life engine :)
URL 4 pics plz.
And what's a saladpuncher? Is that like a saladshooter, only less violent? :)
Well, in the phrase "tossing the salad" the "salad" is the arsehole. Therefore, the action "punching the salad" should be pretty obvious.
Your first paragraph is exactly what XForms is intended to replace. Validation will be done on the client, by the XForms implementation in the browser, which will validate against, for example, XSD datatypes. Things like adding or deleting an entry on the form will also be handled on the client. And when you're done, the server receives a pre-validated XML document as form submission. What could be easier?
Which you then have to go revalidate again at the server end because you can't trust anything you get from the client. Still, not much different from the way a lot of web apps work today but probably a bit more "standardised" which is nice.
Yes, they trade in mp3s, but the mp3s are encoded VBR and the bit rates vary from file to file. I know this probably depends on the content, but somehow I'd feel better having straight 192 kbps files.
VBR stands for "Variable Bit Rate" so of course the bit rate will vary from file to file (and from frame to frame!). You'll probably find VBR files are better quality than straight 192kbps files as when the music is "busy" the bit rate will be as high as 256 or 320 (depending on the encoder settings). I find most of my VBR files are around 180-200kbps average bitrate anyway, so i'm getting a higher quality file for around the same file size as a straight 192kbps file.
Tin foil hat privacy issues aside, the reason for this is because Gilette Mach 3 Razor Blades are the most shoplifted item in Britain. This is due to Gilette's "strategy" of giving away the razors and charging through the nose for the blades.
Err, RvB is done in Halo on xboxes.
In normal circumstances you can pass water, but with anti-water.... ** his mind boggles **
Come on, it's obvious.. ANTI-WATER PASSES YOU!
I've got a NetGear MA311 that works swimmingly under OpenBSD. It's Prism 2.5 based, and works great in HostAP mode and all.
Got it at CX in Sydney for $150, might be able to find it cheaper somewhere else but CX was right near work.
I fell for the DWL-520+ at first, not realising it wasn't a Prism like the DWL-520.
you think 9/11 is an indication of american arrogance? if someone came up and kicked you in the face, would you blame yourself?
I might blame myself if i'd been shitting on that person's lawn for the last 50 years.
Sounds like religion.
This sounds like Red Planet to me, yes? I loved that game too and at a place they had it here in Sydney you could play unlimited games for $10 a day on Tuesdays (but it didn't count towards your "Veteran" status or whatever it was). I think over the course of about a year or so I played a couple of hundred games and got really good at it.
It's a shame there's no version of it for the PC, which would look even sweeter on modern hardware. From what I recall seeing some of the machines booting they were just standard P90 (or so) PCs with custom hardware to handle the controllers and the extra status monitors etc.
Ah, those were the days..
Well, after reading that I concur. Like I said, her writing her own songs was just "as far as I am aware". It seems those "rumours" may well have been part of the whole scam. :)
Tenacious D.
Actually, as far as I am aware, Avril writes her own songs. At least the lyrics, you may be talking about the "music" part - but I don't think her stuff is so much about the music as the lyrics.
In Australia it's not as common to live on campus, therefore most students don't have evenings etc to just sit around downloading music in their dorms :)
Unemployment is normally a measure of how many people who in fact can work but aren't working. So it excludes people below the minimum working age (there's one in Australia, don't know about the US), students, pensioners, etc. So 0% unemployment would mean everyone who is able to work is actually working, which in theory should be possible.
I almost gave in and bought a netMD minidisc player because it sounded so good, [...]The player can only be recorded to with special software bundled with it. For some incomprehensible reason, the software will only work on a pre-installed version of windows on a brand name computer.
While it's true that it will only record to the NetMD with the bundled software, the software can be installed on any version of Windows you like. I have a home built PC running a self installed OEM XP Pro and it works fine. You might be thinking of the Sony VAIO notebooks which I believe come with the software pre-installed.
The software is also much to paranoid about piracy, you have to re-rip your music using their software to a secure sony file format.
You have to convert your music to the Sony ATRAC3 format because that's the format for MiniDisc audio. It just happens to be that ATRAC3 has protection built in so you can prevent an ATRAC3 file from being copied, however an ATRAC3 file doens't have to be protected - it's just the ones that OpenMG create are.
Then, you can only write each song to MD 3 times before having to re-rip the file.
This is true if using the OpenMG software, however there is another piece of software that comes bundled called "SimpleBurner" (SB).. basically you stick in a CD, plug in your MD player and hit "Record". SB looks up track titles in CDDB and rips your whole CD in one go into a Group on your MD. No restrictions, no ripped files left around on your harddrive. You can do your renaming/grouping/etc with SB or even run OpenMG just to organise the files on your MD without introducting any restriction.
Sure it's a bit hackish, but you can get away without using OpenMG at all even for putting MP3s onto your MD player - simply make an Audio CD image using Nero of your MP3s, then using Nero's Virtual Drive thingie you burn that CD using SimpleBurner. It's actually probably less work than dealing with OpenMG :)
Still, it seems you didn't do your research into the NetMD very well.
You can add your cygwin\bin directory to your Windows path and use most of the commands from a normal Windows command prompt. The only stuff that won't work is stuff that's not an exe but triggered by a shell script or something. Works well for most things I use day to day like grep, sort, awk, etc..
According to the site it's a "reinvention" of the original. Which is good, because as far as I remember the original was basically a Laserdisc movie where you moved the joystick in a certain direction at the right time and either died or went on to the next screen - hardly the kind of game you'd want to shell out $90-$100 (Australian) on for your console :) Looks like some very pretty cel shaded graphics from the screenshots (incase they're slashdotted) - one of those adventure 3D platformer games like Zelda, Mario Sunshine or Starfox Adventures.
Also, it's not just for xbox as the article title states but for PS2 and GameCube too. In fact the site shows pictures of the PS2 and GC boxes but not the xbox one.