"The funny thing is that after he got it all, he gave it to some noob and deleted his character, since this was this guy's way of "beating" the game."
That's interesting, but I can see it seeming a little unfair. Essentially he performed a huge corporate theft/assassination, and then... committed suicide. Which, on some level, might be just because he is now denied the pleasures of the game. But what if he had just deleted that character, then started anew? Dodging retribution by killing yourself isn't such a smooth move in the real world, but in a virtual one...
It seems like these games (esp Eve, which is more realistic and cruel than most games) are simulating a reality where reincarnation and an afterlife are guaranteed. You're not really role-playing a character just like in this world, you're role-playing one in a world where if it dies, the motivating force behind the character can be put into a new character. Or at least has a heaven to hang around in and do more fun things.
How would people behave differently if they knew for a fact reincarnation was real, and unrelated to past behavior? It'd be fascinating to see a game that directly worked with these concepts of what happens when your character dies, assuming you In Real Life represent the soul.
Lots of extra cash = $6/month. As far as I know, that's the cheapest online service available that isn't free. And considering how smoothly it integrates with all the online games, the unified and useful friends list, the painless way of connecting, online voice chat... I think pc players would pay $6/month for that service as well and be happy with the great deal they're getting. (Not that it's at all feasible on the pc, but you get the idea.)
And I have a friend whom I play Halo 2 with, and no one ever believes she's a girl. Generally they accuse her of being a pre-teen boy. Or constantly talk to her, sometimes crudely, sometimes not crude, just annoying.
Guild Wars == Phantasy Star Online, more or less. Which is available on the Xbox, and I think GameCube. PSO is more arcade-y (a bit...), but that's natural for a console. You team up with 1-3 other people and go do quests and pick up rare items, etc. There is a monthly fee, however.
Ok, so the damaged he inflicted on the s-video cable was extreme. But you do have to admit the point that it is a supremely crappy design in general. Whoever thought of making a connector that was utterly symmetrical on the outside yet with pins on the inside that only fit one way and that can be snagged and bent was an utter moron.
It's not so bad if you can look at the connector, then look at the socket, then only have to fiddle it a little to get it to fit. But try holding the wire in the same orientation as you dig behind your receiver, trying to blindly insert it into the right hole beneath 5 others. I hate s-video cables with a passion.
Keyboard and mouse connectors aren't entirely a fair comparison, because the metal around them is asymmetrical. You can spin it in the socket until it catches without endangering any pins.
But yes, it does look like he let a rabid timber wolf install his wiring. At worst you'd see a pin that you had to straighten with pliers or something.
Re:Maybe an OSS future isn't that bright afterall
on
Nessus Closes Source
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I'm not sure why rude, off-base replies like this get modded up. You seem to have missed the point, adrift in a sea of cliches as you were. The grandparent poster was saying that the OSS approach will not work very well for software that cannot be supplied as a service. There is no incentive for a company such as that to open source at all. If the company meets competition in the form of OSS developers, then yes, the free market will decide who will survive. I believe it is the grandparent's contention that overall, closed-source will win these battles because in the end, people would like to make a living doing what they're doing and as such, the good engineers will end up with the companies.
What exactly is your point? Even assuming your points are true, it's okay if low-lying cities drown because it's not our fault? Massive changes in the food supply situation and the balance of power between nations, but don't worry everyone, go back to work, we didn't cause it.
"I can say: I think/believe/feel/am of the opinion/[any other qualifier] that Farmers is a bunch of scum sucking aholes, the bottom of the insurance barrel. I would believe it if you told me they ate their children and sacrificed policy holders in satanic rituals."
This is not entirely true. Prefixing a statement with 'I think' does not make it automatically protected. (At least in California, for example.) Your statement is probably defensible because you make no provably true/false statements, although it's debatable.
See http://www.casp.net/survival.html: You may be legitimately sued for false statements of fact, but not for statements of opinion. Be careful. You will not be protected for stating, "In my opinion, Senator Squelch is a liar and a thief," unless, of course, your statement is entirely true. If your words contain an assertion of fact that is capable of being proven true or false -- i.e., that Squelch is or is not a liar and a thief -- you can be sued if it is shown that your statement is false, even though you tried to qualify the statement as "opinion."
No, but when they step into a Honda dealership to look at Civics and have a hard time keeping straight what the LX had over the EX or the DX or the HX or the XXX, it's a little more understandable.
You are suggesting that people are too dumb to be able to easily tell between 'truck' and 'economy car' and 'sports car'. But really, they're too dumb to tell the difference between 'escort model 1', 'escort model 2' and 'escort model 3', and also 'civic model 1-7'. Which isn't so dumb after all, considering the endless stream of car comparison guides.
b) Your obvious solution does not work. Suppose I have two versions of the song, one from a greatest hits compliation, one from the original cd. They might be remastered, slightly shorter by the span of a second or two of silence, or longer. Or the cd version blends into the next song, while the greatest hits doesn't. So much for MD5. The point of duplicate songs is exactly this, not to check if you have identical files laying around. (Although it will find those too.)
You know, for every person who beat Super Mario or whatever, there were half a dozen who just got frustrated and stopped playing because they couldn't make it past a certain point. I think to some extent, game developers have realized this and are targeting people who want to have a bit of a challenge, not drive themselves nuts.
Compare how many times you've thrown an NES controller in frustration to the number of times you've thrown an XBOX or PS2... It _may_ be satisfying when you win, but it's very annoying to get there. Are 15 hours of frustration worth the rush when you win? Games 'back in the day' had a poor balance, often because of technological limitations.
And sometimes tedious repetition just because you keep flubbing one jump, or the boss uses cheap one-shot-kill tactics detracts from satisfaction. When you finally get past it, you're more irritated than triumphant, and you never, ever want to pick up the game again and have to get through that part.
Anyhow. Unrelated to the above, but related to my subject, the author has clearly never _played_ The Adventures of Cookie and Cream, if he thinks it's just some kid game. It's an innovative two-player game that requires coordination and a fair amount of puzzle solving and skill. Bosses require thought to figure out how to harm them, and the courses are timed; you can't just dally for an hour figuring out puzzles, or repeating it until you get it right. And it's quite exhilirating to squeak past the finish line before time runs out. If he hadn't dismissed it as a degraded platformer, he might've realized it's more or less everything he'd been looking for.
Computer systems aren't the only things that think that the latter sentence is about flying fruit... On first and second and third readings, I was chuckling at the thought of flying bananas. Because, I mean, bananas and other banana-shaped fruit does indeed fly like a banana, when thrown. Or maybe I just have a habit of flinging bananas around.
I think my more on-topic point is that a computer that sometimes makes mistakes like this, but for the most part is doing okay is still a pretty big advance.
Yeah, but guys, you have to remember: basically every single page in that book was funny. But to include every joke would just not work. I love the leopard bit as much as anyone, but the removal of some very funny jokes does not necessarily make it a bad film.
You have a point, but I think the idea is that since it's kind of a pain to track down and prosecute spammers, there better be a serious penalty for when they do.
Think of it like odds. If you have low odds of getting caught, then the punishment better be fairly stiff to make the number balance out so that people think 'erm, maybe I'd better not...'. If everyone who spammed could get easily punished, then your suggestions would be more appropriate.
Does that mean you and the rest of the humor-impared will also stop making whiny game forum/slashdot posts when you stop playing the games? If so, I can't wait. I can't believe how many people couldn't figure out that the 6-year comment was a bit of self-deprecating humor on their part poking fun at the fact that it took so long for HL2 to come out after HL1.
Having to box things up and get shelf space would add time. Doing it via Steam means it comes quicker to you. That's all they were saying.
Depends on how you hold the mouse, I think. I used to have a sore wrist from mousing too much, because my wrist would be sharply bent. (Rest your wrist on a flat surface, then raise your hand up. That gets tiring after a while.) However a $10 attachment-thingie to the back of the mouse to keep my wrist straight cleared it right up.
So, yes, it can happen. But you're probably also right in that people will try very hard to sell $100 solutions to it for people who never had the problem.
In my opinion (as someone who owns it and has played for 5-6 hours), they're not as good in the sense of 'They're just about the same, some beautiful views, some dull grey corridors, but given that it's two years later, you will probably be disappointed that it's not better'.
So basically there's no reason at all to complain about the graphics, unless you're looking for something to complain about.
Yeah, but it could be said that the true target of the parody there was American McGee's Alice. Penny Arcade parodies games and game companies. One could argue that children's dolls do not often feature as the target of their wit. Using the trademarked Strawberry Shortcake to parody some game is not protected.
Not that it makes American Greetings' response any less stupid; they just made themselves look bad. But stupid or not, they could conceivably been right.
"Oh, and a smart playlist parameter for whether or not a song is checked!"
That exists. Choose edit smart playlist, and notice there's a checkbox that says "Match only checked songs". I suppose the only drawback is that it doesn't allow you to choose only non-checked songs. Maybe you use yours differently. Mine are for dupes (say I have a song on a Best of and on a single), so I never really care about the non-checked ones.
I dunno about the money issue. The thought process I would go through would run something like this:
You can't cheat unless you have a modded xbox. So if all modded xboxes are blocked, there can be no cheaters.
Otherwise, how would you detect cheating? Each game would have to have logic built in for that. Logic which could, of course, be hacked. They really seem to want to have a fun experience with Live, and cheating seriously harms that. They get money when people buy games because their friends say 'Dude, this game is so fun, and unlike the PC, there's no cheaters!' At least I do.
Re:Why I dislike Halo (and all modern console game
on
Halo 2 Goes Gold
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· Score: 1
This might just be me making things up, but perhaps the fact that the controls are a little sub-optimal is actually good for most people. If it introduces a cap on the amount of skill, then there's a little less reward for playing 8 hours a day. And it's more likely that someone starting new won't be totally dominated once they get the hang of things. Because there are far fewer people that can home in on them and do a headshot every time.
That nonwithstanding, the fact that people can't cheat (Yes, you can hack consoles, but how many people do you see online that are cheating? I've never seen a one.) is a huge draw. No aim bots, no wall hacks, no better video cards giving them better resolution (okay, I guess tv quality affects things a bit.) But it's a fairly level playing field.
Well, and I'm not trying to be mean here, you do realize that claiming to be the number one fan before the game has even been released doesn't raise your credibility, right?
I mean, do you blame the advertisers when you go out and buy a new ford mustang because they look so cool, then find out it drives like suck? There is a certain amount of responsibility expected on the part of the buyer here.
You're probably thinking of... something that I've forgotten the name of, as well. The upshot is that intermittent reward is the strongest addictor. It seems a little odd, but it's much more addicting to sometimes get a reward for a behavior than to get it reliably.
Killing monster after monster, sometimes getting a decent goodie, rarely getting a super item is practically straight out of those experiments.
Slashdot Mirror
"The funny thing is that after he got it all, he gave it to some noob and deleted his character, since this was this guy's way of "beating" the game."
... committed suicide. Which, on some level, might be just because he is now denied the pleasures of the game. But what if he had just deleted that character, then started anew? Dodging retribution by killing yourself isn't such a smooth move in the real world, but in a virtual one...
That's interesting, but I can see it seeming a little unfair. Essentially he performed a huge corporate theft/assassination, and then
It seems like these games (esp Eve, which is more realistic and cruel than most games) are simulating a reality where reincarnation and an afterlife are guaranteed. You're not really role-playing a character just like in this world, you're role-playing one in a world where if it dies, the motivating force behind the character can be put into a new character. Or at least has a heaven to hang around in and do more fun things.
How would people behave differently if they knew for a fact reincarnation was real, and unrelated to past behavior? It'd be fascinating to see a game that directly worked with these concepts of what happens when your character dies, assuming you In Real Life represent the soul.
Lots of extra cash = $6/month. As far as I know, that's the cheapest online service available that isn't free. And considering how smoothly it integrates with all the online games, the unified and useful friends list, the painless way of connecting, online voice chat ... I think pc players would pay $6/month for that service as well and be happy with the great deal they're getting. (Not that it's at all feasible on the pc, but you get the idea.)
And I have a friend whom I play Halo 2 with, and no one ever believes she's a girl. Generally they accuse her of being a pre-teen boy. Or constantly talk to her, sometimes crudely, sometimes not crude, just annoying.
Guild Wars == Phantasy Star Online, more or less. Which is available on the Xbox, and I think GameCube. PSO is more arcade-y (a bit...), but that's natural for a console. You team up with 1-3 other people and go do quests and pick up rare items, etc. There is a monthly fee, however.
Ok, so the damaged he inflicted on the s-video cable was extreme. But you do have to admit the point that it is a supremely crappy design in general. Whoever thought of making a connector that was utterly symmetrical on the outside yet with pins on the inside that only fit one way and that can be snagged and bent was an utter moron.
It's not so bad if you can look at the connector, then look at the socket, then only have to fiddle it a little to get it to fit. But try holding the wire in the same orientation as you dig behind your receiver, trying to blindly insert it into the right hole beneath 5 others. I hate s-video cables with a passion.
Keyboard and mouse connectors aren't entirely a fair comparison, because the metal around them is asymmetrical. You can spin it in the socket until it catches without endangering any pins.
But yes, it does look like he let a rabid timber wolf install his wiring. At worst you'd see a pin that you had to straighten with pliers or something.
I'm not sure why rude, off-base replies like this get modded up. You seem to have missed the point, adrift in a sea of cliches as you were. The grandparent poster was saying that the OSS approach will not work very well for software that cannot be supplied as a service. There is no incentive for a company such as that to open source at all. If the company meets competition in the form of OSS developers, then yes, the free market will decide who will survive. I believe it is the grandparent's contention that overall, closed-source will win these battles because in the end, people would like to make a living doing what they're doing and as such, the good engineers will end up with the companies.
What exactly is your point? Even assuming your points are true, it's okay if low-lying cities drown because it's not our fault? Massive changes in the food supply situation and the balance of power between nations, but don't worry everyone, go back to work, we didn't cause it.
"I can say: I think/believe/feel/am of the opinion/[any other qualifier] that Farmers is a bunch of scum sucking aholes, the bottom of the insurance barrel. I would believe it if you told me they ate their children and sacrificed policy holders in satanic rituals."
This is not entirely true. Prefixing a statement with 'I think' does not make it automatically protected. (At least in California, for example.) Your statement is probably defensible because you make no provably true/false statements, although it's debatable.
See http://www.casp.net/survival.html:
You may be legitimately sued for false statements of fact, but not for statements of opinion. Be careful. You will not be protected for stating, "In my opinion, Senator Squelch is a liar and a thief," unless, of course, your statement is entirely true. If your words contain an assertion of fact that is capable of being proven true or false -- i.e., that Squelch is or is not a liar and a thief -- you can be sued if it is shown that your statement is false, even though you tried to qualify the statement as "opinion."
No, but when they step into a Honda dealership to look at Civics and have a hard time keeping straight what the LX had over the EX or the DX or the HX or the XXX, it's a little more understandable.
You are suggesting that people are too dumb to be able to easily tell between 'truck' and 'economy car' and 'sports car'. But really, they're too dumb to tell the difference between 'escort model 1', 'escort model 2' and 'escort model 3', and also 'civic model 1-7'. Which isn't so dumb after all, considering the endless stream of car comparison guides.
a) That's not new in 5.0
b) Your obvious solution does not work. Suppose I have two versions of the song, one from a greatest hits compliation, one from the original cd. They might be remastered, slightly shorter by the span of a second or two of silence, or longer. Or the cd version blends into the next song, while the greatest hits doesn't. So much for MD5. The point of duplicate songs is exactly this, not to check if you have identical files laying around. (Although it will find those too.)
You know, for every person who beat Super Mario or whatever, there were half a dozen who just got frustrated and stopped playing because they couldn't make it past a certain point. I think to some extent, game developers have realized this and are targeting people who want to have a bit of a challenge, not drive themselves nuts.
... It _may_ be satisfying when you win, but it's very annoying to get there. Are 15 hours of frustration worth the rush when you win? Games 'back in the day' had a poor balance, often because of technological limitations.
Compare how many times you've thrown an NES controller in frustration to the number of times you've thrown an XBOX or PS2
And sometimes tedious repetition just because you keep flubbing one jump, or the boss uses cheap one-shot-kill tactics detracts from satisfaction. When you finally get past it, you're more irritated than triumphant, and you never, ever want to pick up the game again and have to get through that part.
Anyhow. Unrelated to the above, but related to my subject, the author has clearly never _played_ The Adventures of Cookie and Cream, if he thinks it's just some kid game. It's an innovative two-player game that requires coordination and a fair amount of puzzle solving and skill. Bosses require thought to figure out how to harm them, and the courses are timed; you can't just dally for an hour figuring out puzzles, or repeating it until you get it right. And it's quite exhilirating to squeak past the finish line before time runs out. If he hadn't dismissed it as a degraded platformer, he might've realized it's more or less everything he'd been looking for.
Computer systems aren't the only things that think that the latter sentence is about flying fruit... On first and second and third readings, I was chuckling at the thought of flying bananas. Because, I mean, bananas and other banana-shaped fruit does indeed fly like a banana, when thrown. Or maybe I just have a habit of flinging bananas around.
I think my more on-topic point is that a computer that sometimes makes mistakes like this, but for the most part is doing okay is still a pretty big advance.
Yeah, but guys, you have to remember: basically every single page in that book was funny. But to include every joke would just not work. I love the leopard bit as much as anyone, but the removal of some very funny jokes does not necessarily make it a bad film.
You have a point, but I think the idea is that since it's kind of a pain to track down and prosecute spammers, there better be a serious penalty for when they do.
Think of it like odds. If you have low odds of getting caught, then the punishment better be fairly stiff to make the number balance out so that people think 'erm, maybe I'd better not...'. If everyone who spammed could get easily punished, then your suggestions would be more appropriate.
Does that mean you and the rest of the humor-impared will also stop making whiny game forum/slashdot posts when you stop playing the games? If so, I can't wait. I can't believe how many people couldn't figure out that the 6-year comment was a bit of self-deprecating humor on their part poking fun at the fact that it took so long for HL2 to come out after HL1.
Having to box things up and get shelf space would add time. Doing it via Steam means it comes quicker to you. That's all they were saying.
Depends on how you hold the mouse, I think. I used to have a sore wrist from mousing too much, because my wrist would be sharply bent. (Rest your wrist on a flat surface, then raise your hand up. That gets tiring after a while.) However a $10 attachment-thingie to the back of the mouse to keep my wrist straight cleared it right up.
So, yes, it can happen. But you're probably also right in that people will try very hard to sell $100 solutions to it for people who never had the problem.
I could never get the hang of Tuesdays...
I bet some of the people thought it was for KOTOR III, not the movies. (At least I did, and I would like some company in my idiocy.)
In my opinion (as someone who owns it and has played for 5-6 hours), they're not as good in the sense of 'They're just about the same, some beautiful views, some dull grey corridors, but given that it's two years later, you will probably be disappointed that it's not better'.
So basically there's no reason at all to complain about the graphics, unless you're looking for something to complain about.
Yeah, but it could be said that the true target of the parody there was American McGee's Alice. Penny Arcade parodies games and game companies. One could argue that children's dolls do not often feature as the target of their wit. Using the trademarked Strawberry Shortcake to parody some game is not protected.
Not that it makes American Greetings' response any less stupid; they just made themselves look bad. But stupid or not, they could conceivably been right.
"Oh, and a smart playlist parameter for whether or not a song is checked!"
That exists. Choose edit smart playlist, and notice there's a checkbox that says "Match only checked songs". I suppose the only drawback is that it doesn't allow you to choose only non-checked songs. Maybe you use yours differently. Mine are for dupes (say I have a song on a Best of and on a single), so I never really care about the non-checked ones.
I dunno about the money issue. The thought process I would go through would run something like this:
You can't cheat unless you have a modded xbox. So if all modded xboxes are blocked, there can be no cheaters.
Otherwise, how would you detect cheating? Each game would have to have logic built in for that. Logic which could, of course, be hacked. They really seem to want to have a fun experience with Live, and cheating seriously harms that. They get money when people buy games because their friends say 'Dude, this game is so fun, and unlike the PC, there's no cheaters!' At least I do.
This might just be me making things up, but perhaps the fact that the controls are a little sub-optimal is actually good for most people. If it introduces a cap on the amount of skill, then there's a little less reward for playing 8 hours a day. And it's more likely that someone starting new won't be totally dominated once they get the hang of things. Because there are far fewer people that can home in on them and do a headshot every time.
That nonwithstanding, the fact that people can't cheat (Yes, you can hack consoles, but how many people do you see online that are cheating? I've never seen a one.) is a huge draw. No aim bots, no wall hacks, no better video cards giving them better resolution (okay, I guess tv quality affects things a bit.) But it's a fairly level playing field.
Well, and I'm not trying to be mean here, you do realize that claiming to be the number one fan before the game has even been released doesn't raise your credibility, right?
I mean, do you blame the advertisers when you go out and buy a new ford mustang because they look so cool, then find out it drives like suck? There is a certain amount of responsibility expected on the part of the buyer here.
You're probably thinking of ... something that I've forgotten the name of, as well. The upshot is that intermittent reward is the strongest addictor. It seems a little odd, but it's much more addicting to sometimes get a reward for a behavior than to get it reliably.
Killing monster after monster, sometimes getting a decent goodie, rarely getting a super item is practically straight out of those experiments.