It should now just be a matter of stopping the light travelling through the optic fiber connections. Sure, it stops all other data travelling through the fiber as well, but who said stopping spam never came without certain sacrifices?:-)
Why didn't he just contact those guys in Antarctica (or someone that could in turn contact them) so he was sure that it would be ok with them if he needed some help out there.
Sure, it might be silly of them to not offer fuel, but maybe they have their reasons to why they aren't doing that, but offering him a trip home as an alternative solution. Can't really blame them with a guy at least as silly, going to Antarctica and relying on people's hospitality when he could have used his brain a little before going there. It doesn't take a genius to understand that maybe you should check if there's anyone there to help if you'd happen to crash on one of the most inhospitable places on earth. He should be glad everything got sorted out so well, with them giving options to get home and also offering him a place to stay while waiting for it. That's a perfectly reasonable solution to me.
NASA (and the public opinion driving it) are way too optomistic about the idea of life on Europa. Just because there's water (which is barely above freezing temperature, and lacking in the organic molecules required by life as we know it), there is no reason to assume any kind of life-forms.
If it's like you say -- barely above freezing temperature, then hey, that's great!
And the life might *not* be as we know it, if there's anything there. So it would just be naive to think that we should use our knowledge of earth life when deciding if we should go there or not.
How many Slashdotters would prefer Linux, but have to use Windows at work ?
*raises hand*
It's problematic for us to develop Windows software on Linux boxes.:-/ Maybe we should start making Linux software, but I doubt our customers would like that.
Also, you can't have it both ways either. If BioWare had given us a MMORPG, we would *still* be without a decent RPG development system to make campaigns for playing with friends. I think NWN fills an important niche, and there would be a risk that NWN would just drown in all MMORPG's out there if BioWare had chosen to go that path.
You can definitely tell that Black Isle's story telling abilities are sorely missed. It never seemed to draw you in or give you any "cool" story experiences.
Agree. The BG1/2 (+ Throne of Bhaal) were beautifully told and had an excellent story to tell as well.
NWN henchmen seemed like a hack. Something bolted on as to not make it Diablo
Agree that NWN henchmen, even in HotU, isn't as interactive as before. They still feel a bit too much like AI drones you can talk to and give orders to. There *is* one option to say "I want to talk with you" (doh!), so there was some effort spent in making them more human, but I don't feel it's enough. It still feels too much like "oh, we can't just let these be like bots following you around, we need something more... lets give them a choice to speak with them".
Third, the tile engine was way too obvious. In many ways the Infinity Engines looked better. How many random identical looking caves can someone go through?
Agree, but I'm afraid that's necessary to not have players need to *draw* entire, huge, 4096x4096 images for their campaigns. This was actually how the Infinity Engine games worked, but it would make campaign building a bit too annoying for NWN. Of course, that makes comparing a BG2 map to an NWN map like comparing an oil painting to a construction with Lego blocks. I guess it's a trade off they made in order to make campaign creation quicker.
Lastly, the fights sucked. Mostly slashing weak monsters and an occasional boss. Of course, with only two companions there is only so much you can do.
I agree that the whole thing about leaving behind the party system is the most fatal flaw in NWN.:-( I simply can not understand why it was done. Of course BioWare could restrict multiplayer games to one controlled character, but think about single player gameplay! Not only this, but there are extreme restrictions to the amount of summons too. Why!? The D&D rules were *balanced* for these facts (party and summons). Just removing all this will either a) put severe limits on what campaigns you can do, b) force changes to the rules, or c) make it necessary to give players uber items in order to survive. I think this was apparent especially in the official campaign in NWN.
... and that was some negative remarks that quickly became considered as flames by NWN zealots.:-)
So I'd just like to say that HotU seems to be great! In the end, after these two (?) years, BioWare has produced a VERY feature rich system for creating campaigns. I haven't played it for long, but already noticed lots of new major features in the Toolset:
- Skies depending on tileset - Robes realistically flowing as the character wearing them walks around - Beholders, mindflayers, dracoliches, even OOZE:-D (with a beautiful model with skeleton parts floating inside its body) - Weapon and armor crafting, potion brewing, oh my... - Support for epic levels, with epic feats and all - Lots of new prestige classes - Attachable demon/angel/dragon/butterfly/bird wings to characters, attachable tails of several variations as well. Making cool celestial, demonic and draconic humanoids just became so much easier.
Here's a site demo'ing the Machinese syntax parser. It can build parse trees for sentences you type in where the components in the sentence are separated and related to each other.
Cool,/. doesn't understand Unicode, and not even Latin characters (!) like the german sharp s. Is it still living in the world of 7 bit characters or what?:-O
I wonder what its' application could be, other than to detect duplicates... Perhaps, a tool to suggest ways of rewriting sentences? Or maybe part of a more advanced grammar check?
My first thought was translation tools. GOOD translation tools that understand the grammar in the source language, and uses the grammar in the destination language to form the resulting sentence.
There has been some work on something to solve this problem, where a phrase in language A was translated to some special "universal" code, and then finally to language B. The developers would then need to make the translator translate all languages to the universal code, and vice versa. The universal code could be whatever necessary to make the software as easily as possible be able to preserve the "meaning" of the sentence.
However, if this is done, the problem could change from this:
Source: I love hot dogs. Destination: Ich liebe heiBe Hunde. (i.e. a literal translation, from Altavista Babelfish)... to this:
Source: I love hot dogs. Destination: Ich liebe Nahrung. ("I love food")
In case the universal language wasn't advanced enough and the english -> universal translator conversion was "lossy". So we might exchange our current problem with mangled grammar with lots information.
Here's a web site about it, and I'm sure there are many more.
The main factors for this are: - The bubble from 1999 - Revelations of corporate scandals that occurred during the last presidents watch. - The terror attacks of 9/11.
Maybe you should include "redundant war in Iraq" there too.
Last time I checked Germany and France were running record deficits too. Are those Bush's fault too?
OK, finally got it confirmed that there will be an extended edition of ROTK as well. Anything else would be very surprising, but so was the EE-sized cinamtic version. From swedish news:
Do you know any long cut scenes from ROTK?
Cut by whom? The movie has recently had its premiere in the version Peter Jackson wants it on the cinema. He says there will be more scenes on the extended edition that will be released next year.
... oh, and even in a case where the P3 processor would send its serial number upon login, this only applies to P3 processors. From intel.com:
Only the Pentium(R) III Xeon(TM), Mobile Pentium(R) III and Pentium III processors support the processor serial number feature introduced by the Pentium(R) III processor. No other Intel(R) processor supports the processor serial number feature.
Does the Pentium III processor broadcast its serial number when it is enabled and a user is connected to the Internet?
- No. The processor serial number is passive. Thus, it does not transmit or broadcast itself. If a person chooses to enable the feature, then, when visiting a website that can utilize processor serial numbers, the website needs to send software to the PC to read the processor serial number.
shes hot? man, us geeks must really have low standards. wait. i dont have standards that low. maybe im not a geek! woot! no...im probably just more out of touch with reality than most other geeks.
Geeks who don't have a girlfriend don't have high standards. Geeks who have a harem of girlfriends whose surnames are JPG have high standards, as evident by their harem.
Slashdot Mirror
It should now just be a matter of stopping the light travelling through the optic fiber connections. Sure, it stops all other data travelling through the fiber as well, but who said stopping spam never came without certain sacrifices? :-)
Why didn't he just contact those guys in Antarctica (or someone that could in turn contact them) so he was sure that it would be ok with them if he needed some help out there.
Sure, it might be silly of them to not offer fuel, but maybe they have their reasons to why they aren't doing that, but offering him a trip home as an alternative solution. Can't really blame them with a guy at least as silly, going to Antarctica and relying on people's hospitality when he could have used his brain a little before going there. It doesn't take a genius to understand that maybe you should check if there's anyone there to help if you'd happen to crash on one of the most inhospitable places on earth. He should be glad everything got sorted out so well, with them giving options to get home and also offering him a place to stay while waiting for it. That's a perfectly reasonable solution to me.
NASA (and the public opinion driving it) are way too optomistic about the idea of life on Europa. Just because there's water (which is barely above freezing temperature, and lacking in the organic molecules required by life as we know it), there is no reason to assume any kind of life-forms.
If it's like you say -- barely above freezing temperature, then hey, that's great!
And the life might *not* be as we know it, if there's anything there. So it would just be naive to think that we should use our knowledge of earth life when deciding if we should go there or not.
How many Slashdotters would prefer Linux, but have to use Windows at work ?
:-/ Maybe we should start making Linux software, but I doubt our customers would like that.
*raises hand*
It's problematic for us to develop Windows software on Linux boxes.
Bah -- do it right with direct link and working links inside :-)
Also, you can't have it both ways either. If BioWare had given us a MMORPG, we would *still* be without a decent RPG development system to make campaigns for playing with friends. I think NWN fills an important niche, and there would be a risk that NWN would just drown in all MMORPG's out there if BioWare had chosen to go that path.
You can definitely tell that Black Isle's story telling abilities are sorely missed. It never seemed to draw you in or give you any "cool" story experiences.
:-( I simply can not understand why it was done. Of course BioWare could restrict multiplayer games to one controlled character, but think about single player gameplay! Not only this, but there are extreme restrictions to the amount of summons too. Why!? The D&D rules were *balanced* for these facts (party and summons). Just removing all this will either a) put severe limits on what campaigns you can do, b) force changes to the rules, or c) make it necessary to give players uber items in order to survive. I think this was apparent especially in the official campaign in NWN.
Agree. The BG1/2 (+ Throne of Bhaal) were beautifully told and had an excellent story to tell as well.
NWN henchmen seemed like a hack. Something bolted on as to not make it Diablo
Agree that NWN henchmen, even in HotU, isn't as interactive as before. They still feel a bit too much like AI drones you can talk to and give orders to. There *is* one option to say "I want to talk with you" (doh!), so there was some effort spent in making them more human, but I don't feel it's enough. It still feels too much like "oh, we can't just let these be like bots following you around, we need something more... lets give them a choice to speak with them".
Third, the tile engine was way too obvious. In many ways the Infinity Engines looked better. How many random identical looking caves can someone go through?
Agree, but I'm afraid that's necessary to not have players need to *draw* entire, huge, 4096x4096 images for their campaigns. This was actually how the Infinity Engine games worked, but it would make campaign building a bit too annoying for NWN. Of course, that makes comparing a BG2 map to an NWN map like comparing an oil painting to a construction with Lego blocks. I guess it's a trade off they made in order to make campaign creation quicker.
Lastly, the fights sucked. Mostly slashing weak monsters and an occasional boss. Of course, with only two companions there is only so much you can do.
I agree that the whole thing about leaving behind the party system is the most fatal flaw in NWN.
... and that was some negative remarks that quickly became considered as flames by NWN zealots. :-)
:-D (with a beautiful model with skeleton parts floating inside its body)
So I'd just like to say that HotU seems to be great! In the end, after these two (?) years, BioWare has produced a VERY feature rich system for creating campaigns. I haven't played it for long, but already noticed lots of new major features in the Toolset:
- Skies depending on tileset
- Robes realistically flowing as the character wearing them walks around
- Beholders, mindflayers, dracoliches, even OOZE
- Weapon and armor crafting, potion brewing, oh my...
- Support for epic levels, with epic feats and all
- Lots of new prestige classes
- Attachable demon/angel/dragon/butterfly/bird wings to characters, attachable tails of several variations as well. Making cool celestial, demonic and draconic humanoids just became so much easier.
Here's a site demo'ing the Machinese syntax parser. It can build parse trees for sentences you type in where the components in the sentence are separated and related to each other.
http://www.connexor.com/demos/syntax_en.html
Destination: Ich liebe heiBe Hunde
/. doesn't understand Unicode, and not even Latin characters (!) like the german sharp s. Is it still living in the world of 7 bit characters or what? :-O
Cool,
I wonder what its' application could be, other than to detect duplicates... Perhaps, a tool to suggest ways of rewriting sentences? Or maybe part of a more advanced grammar check?
... to this:
My first thought was translation tools. GOOD translation tools that understand the grammar in the source language, and uses the grammar in the destination language to form the resulting sentence.
There has been some work on something to solve this problem, where a phrase in language A was translated to some special "universal" code, and then finally to language B. The developers would then need to make the translator translate all languages to the universal code, and vice versa. The universal code could be whatever necessary to make the software as easily as possible be able to preserve the "meaning" of the sentence.
However, if this is done, the problem could change from this:
Source: I love hot dogs.
Destination: Ich liebe heiBe Hunde. (i.e. a literal translation, from Altavista Babelfish)
Source: I love hot dogs.
Destination: Ich liebe Nahrung. ("I love food")
In case the universal language wasn't advanced enough and the english -> universal translator conversion was "lossy". So we might exchange our current problem with mangled grammar with lots information.
Here's a web site about it, and I'm sure there are many more.
Brenot's wife, Dorothy, said she and her husband were stunned by the claims, offended at the suggestion they listened to such music
:-)
Hehe... I like those, telling RIAA that "we don't listen to your kind of music and are offended by the thought of it".
Actually, I think the message is now "just share with people you can trust, not the whole world".
The problem with P2P networks is that it's hard to do. Maybe that's an idea for a feature... Geographical restrictions for searches and uploads?
I'd immediately block USA.
The main factors for this are:
- The bubble from 1999
- Revelations of corporate scandals that occurred during the last presidents watch.
- The terror attacks of 9/11.
Maybe you should include "redundant war in Iraq" there too.
Last time I checked Germany and France were running record deficits too. Are those Bush's fault too?
??? No.
OK, finally got it confirmed that there will be an extended edition of ROTK as well. Anything else would be very surprising, but so was the EE-sized cinamtic version. From swedish news:
Do you know any long cut scenes from ROTK?
Cut by whom? The movie has recently had its premiere in the version Peter Jackson wants it on the cinema. He says there will be more scenes on the extended edition that will be released next year.
- It is *long* (we didn't get an intermission)
Indeed! I didn't actually notice this until I read your post and checked at IMDb.
FOTR: 178 min (208 min)
TTT: 179 min (222 min)
ROTK: 210 min
Are Peter Jackson actually going to make an Extended Edition of ROTK? I assumed so before, but seeing the non-EE version is about as long...??
WHAT YOU SAY!!
:-O :-O
I've never read about that in this thread!
Cool discovery! Yay! Now I need to change the pants I peed in!
Oh, and we all believe Intel all of a sudden?
*sigh*
After you've put on your tinfoil hat, it's easy enough to check yourself.
Trust no one!!11@
The thief was stupid and got what he deserved.
Yeah, as opposed to smart thieves who steal computers, won't use existing accounts, and who don't deserve to be caught.
*sigh*
Exactly, I doubt there was any stranger things going on than this. Especially such large ISP's as AOL most likely keep user logs.
... oh, and even in a case where the P3 processor would send its serial number upon login, this only applies to P3 processors. From intel.com:
Only the Pentium(R) III Xeon(TM), Mobile Pentium(R) III and Pentium III processors support the processor serial number feature introduced by the Pentium(R) III processor. No other Intel(R) processor supports the processor serial number feature.
Maybe that intel CPU serial number.
Does the Pentium III processor broadcast its serial number when it is enabled and a user is connected to the Internet?
- No. The processor serial number is passive. Thus, it does not transmit or broadcast itself. If a person chooses to enable the feature, then, when visiting a website that can utilize processor serial numbers, the website needs to send software to the PC to read the processor serial number.
-5 !?
:-O
Jeez, I wonder what's going on at that level!
shes hot? man, us geeks must really have low standards. wait. i dont have standards that low. maybe im not a geek! woot! no...im probably just more out of touch with reality than most other geeks.
Geeks who don't have a girlfriend don't have high standards. Geeks who have a harem of girlfriends whose surnames are JPG have high standards, as evident by their harem.
Wow! Look at all those sexy formulae! :-D