And two decades later, still no word processor has the equivalent of SpeedScript's Commodore-Z function.
Does that send you to the bottom of the document? If so, CTRL-END has the same effect on most modern word processors. Some editors (such as VI or Emacs) have their own system to jump to the end.
There's an underlying irony to the goofy exercise described in the article. Once upon a time, the business world ran just fine on DOS and 3/486 machines. I remember one of my first real jobs was working as a lowly wordprocessor in an international law firm. Working up a 500 page prospectus was something I did on a daily basis and that, along with the related scheduling, timekeeping, billing and correspondence all just worked.
The 500 page prospectus is usually text only, and could easily be stored in EMS. Also, the documents printed in that era were usually fixed-pitch on impact printers. At least you only needed 4K of video ram for this.
Now, you have a 1600x1200x32 video resolution that displays at least two editable WYSIWYG pages at standard zoom. This requies ~7.5 MB by itself (thankfully contained in VRAM only unless there's double buffering going on), which can require some processor power to refresh (if there's a major change such as a paragraph changing size). Not everyone uses such displays, but I've found even 800x600 is constraining by my "normal" usage (in the same way I find a 80x25 text console to be "small".)
Personally, I'm finding the older I get, the more resistant to upping the processing power ante to continue what doing what I've been doing for years. Everyone has different needs, of course, but for the stuff we all do every day?
Consider it to be a similar advancement from Speedscript for the Commodore 64 to WordPerfect 5.1 for Dos. WordPerfect required more processing power, but had things that weren't available in the older package, including the ability for a print preview and telling the cursor location on a specific page.
Taxes do NOT have to be as complicated as they are, but when they are complicated, the tax preparers have a huge "monopoly" of fear over the average taxpayer -- or even the non-average taxpayer.
I've filled out a tax form - it's not that difficult since you just need to follow the directions as shown. The worst case scenario is trying to find line 323, which is between lines 145 and 146.
If you have trouble filling out a tax form, claim that you have a disability that prevents you from completing it. It isn't your fault if you had an untreated disability, have no one else able to perform your taxes for you, and too impoverished to hire an accountant. You might not get the best return, but you will at least get someting basic enough.
FYI, the government already knows how much you need to pay, as demonstrated by post-submission adjustments that are sometimes made in your favour - they just want to make sure that you agree with their assessment.
That's not entirely true. When most black people use "nigga" as a greeting/casual term, it doesn't have the same connotation that it does when a white person says "nigger," or to a lesser extent if a white person says "nigga."
It also doesn't have the same connotation if a white person assigns it a different definition (e.g. he targets those listening to ganster rap regardless of whether or not they are black.)
This qualifies as hear-say, but this was used as a defence at a corporate-level diciplinary hearing. Apparently, he targeted a white person first and was only targetting those who were listening to rap (regardless of skin colour).
3) Bob the Merchant ships Evil Bad Guy his product.
Does Bob the Merchant have access to Joe's credit-card billing address?
I've recently observed a new type of CC scam - where the Evil Bad Guy enters the credit-card billing address as the ship-to. After that, Evil Bad Guy calls the Joe on "behalf" of Bob the Merchant saying that he accidently shipped the product to him, and arranges a "return" where UPS comes by and picks up the product from Joe.
The return generally has a temporary address to the Evil Bad Guy - who tries to cut-and-run.
I have seen this tactic used suprisingly often against the company that I work for, almost as if there is or was an inside contact on how the system works. It doesn't always work, but some packages did manage to get stolen by this method.
I remember overhearing two kids talking about that. One complained who he was just stuck in that dark room. The other kid then instructed him to turn off the god mode.
I swear to god - kids just keep getting dumber and dumber.
No, that's a bug in the game. At the cutscene where you are knocked out and get carried for a little bit, you must avoid all form of movement - otherwise, you will get stuck in a mysterious dark room instead of being thrown into the compactor.
Finishing Myst requires no amount of cleverness. It's learning what you're supposed to be doing in the first place that is the primary challenge of Myst, and most people are understandably not interested in dicking around, which is basically what the game makes you do.
Actually, most people aren't interested in tedium. Here's three examples within Myst:
The spaceship section's maze had to be gone through twice (and slowly). In addition, you don't know the correct procedure for the maze unless you've been through another section.
The lighthouse telescope turned slowly.
Another turning thing in the spaceship section was either too slow (eroding paitence) or too fast (causing frustration).
I've played text-adventure games on the IfComp, most of which do a better job of plopping you in an unknown situation than Myst.
Lavos is undefeatable, you die so fast that there's no doubt about the impossibility of the battle.
When I fought against Lavos in that battle, Alya managed to survive the initial volley.
The only reason Lavos is too powerful is because he's a "premature" boss that's too powerful for the characters at that point. The intention is that the players become bored of power-levelling before the post-Zeal subquests and instead collect the more powerful weapons and items before the final confrontation.
Consensus IS better than expertise because if the expert cannot explain his argument in such a way that other people can understand the truth behind it, he's probably wrong.
There was a very stong consensus that the Earth was flat, as the experts could not explain their arguments in a way the people could understand. This is why Wikipedia is not a democracy - if a person has a legitimate reference that doesn't get debunked (or otherwise gets removed for another valid reason), it is included.
Top 10 PC 2007 (5 "Casual", 4 "hardcore", 1 both (WoW has both kinds of players) 1. World of Warcraft--Vivendi Games 2. The Sims 2--Electronic Arts 3. The Sims 2: Open For Business Expansion Pack--Electronic Arts
Slight problem with your list - you mix standalone games with expansion packs. While not a problem in itself, it allows a game as popular as The Sims to choke out a top ten list by releasing tons of expansions.
As a result, it could be read that the "top 5" has plenty of hardcore games, or by some other reading that has an entirely different interpretation.
1 turn was 60 rounds, and a round was 10 seconds. Normal character movement rate is 120' per turn, 12' per minute, or 2.4" per second - Sneakers must have stolen that idea from DND. At least the encounter movement was more reasonable even if on the high side - 40' per round, or 4' per second. I might as well force-attack invisible targets to speed across the dungeon.
At least they fixed that sillyness.
Then as each monster gets wounded enough for a magic missile to take it down you point at each of them and they die, freeing the fighters' attacks for the remaining monsters.
That would work - although it's probably more suited for preparation behind safety or before combat when possible - to take out those really powerful monsters.
The 1st edition D&D had the magic missles follow your character until you decide to release them (duration was 1 turn). I don't know why they did it that way, as most people preferred it to fire all those projectiles at once.
I remember trying to convince my friends of the complete lack of need for using stats in a game, and how it would be better if they were a lot more obscure. But people just didn't seem to understand.
Most people familiar with Table-top RPGs consider a lack of numbers to be equivalant to arbitrary - in the same way that some consequences of a Choose-your-own-adventure book are just as arbitrary.
People are comfortable with numbers because it gives them a comfort that their Infinitly-powerful character won't be one-hit-perma-killed by a lowly kobold.
For some reason, I couldn't get across to them that just because something is represented numerically internally, it doesn't have to be explicitely known.
Try an example, such as explaining it's just like playing Tie Fighter when you receive a critical hit that takes out the screen that shows your craft's hull and shield strength. You know that your craft is severly damaged, but not by how much (unless you've been counting hull hits.)
www.speeddemosarchive.com recently posted a run of Deus Ex: Invisible War. It makes the game look semi-entertaining to watch as it short-circuts portions of the map, dodges through large number of enemies, and throws objects at AI players that simply stand around doing nothing.
You're obviously very young or very sarcastic or very ignorant or all three...
ClarisWorks had a spell checker. I don't recall if it did grammar, but we were in school at the time. We were expected to correct our own grammar. It had "font" support in that any installed font could be used in a document. True, it didn't embed fonts, but it wasn't expected that there would be a huge market for addon fonts.
I've used Speedscript for the Commodore 64, Wordperfect 4.1.2 for the Amiga, and the latest version of Wordperfect. Speedscript supported one font.
Wordperfect 4.1.2 fit on a pair of floppies and supported basic word processing features (spell, grammar, etc.) It ran on a 640x200x4 monitor (or 640x400x4 interlaced), and use a fixed-width font.
The latest version of Wordperfect runs on 1600x1200, with a real-time print preview with a variable-width font and plenty of other features that run while you type. Even if this doesn't require the latest and greatest system, it is not recommended to run this on what amounts to an Amiga 500.
If I wanted automatic text I'd use LaTeX and perl (oh wait, that's what I do). Not only is it easier but it's infinitely more customizable.
If you have to look something up, have to spend a year studying how to use the product, or have to personally write it, it's not easier. It's just like saying that rolling your own 3D-Modelling software is easier than using a prefab application such as Blender.
What people seem to forget is that we were doing word processing, vector graphics and all that on old school Mac IIs in the mid to early 80s. Those programs certainly didn't require hundreds of megabytes of ram or gigabytes of disk space
Word processors in the Mac II era were strict Word processors. There was no need to worry about anything more advances than basic documents.
Nowadays, word processors are expected to have: - A Spell checker, and grammar checker: This will detect mistakes you cannot sea. - Font support: The old processors don't have that "scribble" font that's in extremely high demand. - Anti-aliasing support: Makes the fonts look nicer, and print out better. - Printer profiles: For getting the colours on your printer correct. - Forign language/unicode support: Effectivly doubles the size of the application. - Support for many document types: Interoperability. - Automatic text: For Table of contents and index. - VBM support: For compatability with Word Macro viruses. - Online Documentation: Informes pirates on how to use the product, complete with pictures. (Otherwise, the product lauded for lack of documentation.) - Et Cetra: For things that nobody has thought of yet.
None of these would individually cause the word processor to become very large. However, the market demand wants everything put into one neat package, resulting in extremely large word processing packages.
What people seem to forget is that we were doing word processing, vector graphics and all that on old school Mac IIs in the mid to early 80s. Those programs certainly didn't require hundreds of megabytes of ram or gigabytes of disk space.
The scale, however, has increased. Many people wouldn't consider making a very large image, such as >2048*1536, but such an image managed to max out the memory on a 256MB system. (This was in MSPaint, and yes, the system did run out of memory.)
Too many employers look for checklists of skills rather than overall knowledge of an area. In a job interview I was once asked why I didn't ever get an A+ certification. I told them that since I had 6 years experience in the field, I didn't need it. They still pressed me to take the A+ test after I was hired.
The A+ cert, in theory, is supposed to cover all of the components, compatability, and other stuff within the system. Depending on the systems you had exposure to within your six years, you still might not have exposure to things currently on the market. (In practice, the A+ practice exams don't seem to cover everything.)
The God Box from ArsTechnica is a good example of what I'm talking about - it currently recommends the Tyan Thunder n6650w as the mainboard. However, you cannot use a normal ATX or ATX12V powersupply due to compatability issues, and you won't notice unless you read the mainboard documentation.
Similarly, the fact that I'll have a related degree in the field won't matter to a lot of HR drones. They care more about MSCE and CCNP certifications than they do a Bachelor's degree.
The trick is to say that you're MSCE/CCNP certifyable. If you starty studying for the MSCE/CCNP, you would only have to worry about studying the interface to the system in question rather than having to study the theory behind it (in case something more comples goes wrong.)
Seriously, why would you want to get rid of an opponent that is such a raving loon that he ends up making you look good every time out?
As you know, this opponent has recently tried to sue companies for releasing games (e.g. Bully). This procedure, known as vexatious litigation, ties up resources in court which may or may not be recoverable.
If they report it as a firing, then you are entitled to EI. All the better for the employee. They don't usually give you EI if you quit. Unless you have good reasons such as excessive stress for leaving. I don't see how it would be a disadvantage to be fired, when if you're leaving on that short notice, you're probably not expecting a good reference.
That's a simplistic method of looking at it. In the case of Ontario (which was being referred to in the GP), it's incorrect.
"Excessive stress" isn't a good reason to leave, as it can be treated as an inability to handle the workload. However, "undue pressure" is valid, since the employer is trying to make it unpleasurable or is otherwise trying to claim that you voluntairly left.
StarCraft: high terrain serves only to create choke points and barriers to units. It is completely ignored for anything but restricting movement.
FYI, this statement (among a few others) is usually present on certain "lists" indicating why TA is better than Starcraft. It is also coupled with other known mistakes - and usually indicates that the person making the list hasn't played Starcraft.
In Starcraft, terrain gives a defensive bonus to units on high ground compared to those on low ground - in general, units get a 30% defence against attacks. Likewise, units in "cover" get the same defensive bonus.
While the TA system is better in this regard, it's almost moot since LOS is generally required to attack targets anyway.
StarCraft: Every shot fired hits its target, even when a moving target changes direction as a slow-moving projectile approaches.
See above - terrain will cause attacks to miss. In all other cases, attacks are considered to hit because they are bound to do so (e.g. volley, instant-hit, etc.) or are seekers (e.g. missles.)
TA: Weapons are semi-realistic; they can miss a fast-moving target or be stopped by terrain.
I have a small correction to your statement: for TA, most weapons *WILL NOT* hit a fast moving target. As you know, TA was written in a time where developers haven't yet implemented a concept known as leading a target for Real-Time Strategy games (a.k.a. C&C syndrome.)
Fixing this would probably change the gameplay of TA significantly. It would make the Zippers and air units much weaker as they would be shot down much more quickly.
Whichever method is better is a matter of personal taste, as long as any associated implementation quirks get ironed out.
Has the industry gotten to the point where retreads are all that will sell, or is there still room in the marketplace for original ideas?
No, it's gotten to the point where conglomerates decide what is the main demographic for video games, in the same way that the movie industry have conglomerates that decide the same thing. Unless you are going to play games, watch movies, or read books in bulk, you will most likely have limited exposure to the variety within that media you choose.
I don't read that many books myself - but one of the few books I chose to read (i.e. it wasn't required in school) would be the within Hitchhiker's guide series, and the LotR series. By extrapolation, those who don't watch movies normally would go for the mainstream films (and won't go for the imports that aren't heavily advertised), and those who don't play games normally would go for the "mainstream" games (although in this case, I suspect they would go for something more casual, such as Bejewelled.)
The last book I read is the Zombie Survival Guide which I liked. Of course, recommending this book is almost equivalant to recommending a random game that you probably wouldn't have easy access to.
Really? Because AFAIK you need to authenticate to w WON server before you can connect to any internet server, direct IP or not...
Do you have the original halflife (non steam) and the original 1.5/1.6 mod to try this out? I do if you are interested.
Authentication is not required if you are on the same LAN as the server, the server is configured as LAN only, and if the internet access is off. Otherwise, there wouldn't be lan parties for Counterstrike in areas without Internet access.
Alternativly, you can get hold of the server patches to disable WON authentication. The fans call it WON2. There's steamless downloads available, or you can use the NO-WON/WON 2 patch available on the same site.
I already know "MY" best weapons, i know what weapons I want to use... I don't want to use a P90, don't force me to by making every other gun unaffordable.. there is a reason people primarily use specific guns...
The alternative is "rebalancing" the weaponry if it's determined that the M4 is too powerful for it's price. This will have the same effect - since it's the most commonly used weapon, there will be complaints whether it's for the better or worse.
It's no different from the change in the sniper weapon between UT99 and UT2003 - people hated it because it fired too slowly and had a smaller head-shot zone. However, the UT99 version was too powerful - in single player on CTF-LavaGiant, I needed to load up on armor and/or shielding just to even grab the flag only to be nailed by the AI player using that rifle. Even when I took care of that enemy, there was a second one on standby already equipped with that who will react (although that's probably an illusion) to their teammate being killed. At least I could have supper without worring about map ending - the sniper was that powerful. (Which reminds me - I'm still suprised that the AWP isn't the most expensive weapon due to "AWP Whoring".)
While I understand there's no requirement for everything to be perfectly balanced to be fun, I'd rather play Insta-gib if there's going to be a one-weapon match.
And Armor+helmet for 4500?.. is your advice really just to use no helmet? That is ludicrous.
My advise is not to use armor. You get two-hit-killed anyway (one per frame) on online-servers, no point in using it even if it was the original pricing. While I do notice some difference with a Kevlar+Helmet, it's not enough for me because of my low snap-shot accurracy.
I'm more concerned about improving accurracy and skill rather than worry about game balance issues - while knowing that they exist can pad your score, you'll risk being thrown back down to the lower tiers as soon as they get fixed.
You are correct, TA had no melee units. One of the 3rd party units I remember was based off a Protoss Zealot (called the Zlot in-game), but it simulated melee attacks by having a projectile range of only the length of its arms.
A better example is TA:K. It's not third-party, but it has plenty of melee units.
However, it showed a glaring flaw with the TA engine - there was no "Move-Fight" command. This was patched later, but it's something that is mandatory in RTS games.
TA did have some differentiation in sides, if only in that they favored different strategies with their units. Overall, the Arm units were faster, while the Core units were more heavily armed and armored. Still, as you say, some of this was lost with the units introduced later, the various sides becoming a more homogeneous.
If you exclude non-official units, there's still differences between the two sides. The most critical one is the game balance with some of the units - Pelican, as it has a targetting bug that makes it hard to hit when swimming, and Eraser, as it's sonar jamming capabilities make it next to impossible to find or destroy.
Of course, there is TA:Spring, which reproduces the TA engine in 3D.
Slashdot Mirror
Does that send you to the bottom of the document? If so, CTRL-END has the same effect on most modern word processors. Some editors (such as VI or Emacs) have their own system to jump to the end.
The 500 page prospectus is usually text only, and could easily be stored in EMS. Also, the documents printed in that era were usually fixed-pitch on impact printers. At least you only needed 4K of video ram for this.
Now, you have a 1600x1200x32 video resolution that displays at least two editable WYSIWYG pages at standard zoom. This requies ~7.5 MB by itself (thankfully contained in VRAM only unless there's double buffering going on), which can require some processor power to refresh (if there's a major change such as a paragraph changing size). Not everyone uses such displays, but I've found even 800x600 is constraining by my "normal" usage (in the same way I find a 80x25 text console to be "small".)
Consider it to be a similar advancement from Speedscript for the Commodore 64 to WordPerfect 5.1 for Dos. WordPerfect required more processing power, but had things that weren't available in the older package, including the ability for a print preview and telling the cursor location on a specific page.
I've filled out a tax form - it's not that difficult since you just need to follow the directions as shown. The worst case scenario is trying to find line 323, which is between lines 145 and 146.
If you have trouble filling out a tax form, claim that you have a disability that prevents you from completing it. It isn't your fault if you had an untreated disability, have no one else able to perform your taxes for you, and too impoverished to hire an accountant. You might not get the best return, but you will at least get someting basic enough.
FYI, the government already knows how much you need to pay, as demonstrated by post-submission adjustments that are sometimes made in your favour - they just want to make sure that you agree with their assessment.
It also doesn't have the same connotation if a white person assigns it a different definition (e.g. he targets those listening to ganster rap regardless of whether or not they are black.)
This qualifies as hear-say, but this was used as a defence at a corporate-level diciplinary hearing. Apparently, he targeted a white person first and was only targetting those who were listening to rap (regardless of skin colour).
I've recently observed a new type of CC scam - where the Evil Bad Guy enters the credit-card billing address as the ship-to. After that, Evil Bad Guy calls the Joe on "behalf" of Bob the Merchant saying that he accidently shipped the product to him, and arranges a "return" where UPS comes by and picks up the product from Joe.
The return generally has a temporary address to the Evil Bad Guy - who tries to cut-and-run.
I have seen this tactic used suprisingly often against the company that I work for, almost as if there is or was an inside contact on how the system works. It doesn't always work, but some packages did manage to get stolen by this method.
No, that's a bug in the game. At the cutscene where you are knocked out and get carried for a little bit, you must avoid all form of movement - otherwise, you will get stuck in a mysterious dark room instead of being thrown into the compactor.
Actually, most people aren't interested in tedium. Here's three examples within Myst:
I've played text-adventure games on the IfComp, most of which do a better job of plopping you in an unknown situation than Myst.
Serious Sam and Shadowgrounds?
When I fought against Lavos in that battle, Alya managed to survive the initial volley.
The only reason Lavos is too powerful is because he's a "premature" boss that's too powerful for the characters at that point. The intention is that the players become bored of power-levelling before the post-Zeal subquests and instead collect the more powerful weapons and items before the final confrontation.
There was a very stong consensus that the Earth was flat, as the experts could not explain their arguments in a way the people could understand. This is why Wikipedia is not a democracy - if a person has a legitimate reference that doesn't get debunked (or otherwise gets removed for another valid reason), it is included.
Slight problem with your list - you mix standalone games with expansion packs. While not a problem in itself, it allows a game as popular as The Sims to choke out a top ten list by releasing tons of expansions.
As a result, it could be read that the "top 5" has plenty of hardcore games, or by some other reading that has an entirely different interpretation.
1 turn was 60 rounds, and a round was 10 seconds. Normal character movement rate is 120' per turn, 12' per minute, or 2.4" per second - Sneakers must have stolen that idea from DND. At least the encounter movement was more reasonable even if on the high side - 40' per round, or 4' per second. I might as well force-attack invisible targets to speed across the dungeon.
At least they fixed that sillyness.
That would work - although it's probably more suited for preparation behind safety or before combat when possible - to take out those really powerful monsters.
The 1st edition D&D had the magic missles follow your character until you decide to release them (duration was 1 turn). I don't know why they did it that way, as most people preferred it to fire all those projectiles at once.
Most people familiar with Table-top RPGs consider a lack of numbers to be equivalant to arbitrary - in the same way that some consequences of a Choose-your-own-adventure book are just as arbitrary.
People are comfortable with numbers because it gives them a comfort that their Infinitly-powerful character won't be one-hit-perma-killed by a lowly kobold.
Try an example, such as explaining it's just like playing Tie Fighter when you receive a critical hit that takes out the screen that shows your craft's hull and shield strength. You know that your craft is severly damaged, but not by how much (unless you've been counting hull hits.)
Attempted murder, in some cases, doesn't cause damage to anyone.
www.speeddemosarchive.com recently posted a run of Deus Ex: Invisible War. It makes the game look semi-entertaining to watch as it short-circuts portions of the map, dodges through large number of enemies, and throws objects at AI players that simply stand around doing nothing.
Tasvideos.org recently posted a batch of videos.
Granted, these are single player games, but that doesn't prevent anybody from not enjoying them.
Wordperfect 4.1.2 fit on a pair of floppies and supported basic word processing features (spell, grammar, etc.) It ran on a 640x200x4 monitor (or 640x400x4 interlaced), and use a fixed-width font.
The latest version of Wordperfect runs on 1600x1200, with a real-time print preview with a variable-width font and plenty of other features that run while you type. Even if this doesn't require the latest and greatest system, it is not recommended to run this on what amounts to an Amiga 500. If you have to look something up, have to spend a year studying how to use the product, or have to personally write it, it's not easier. It's just like saying that rolling your own 3D-Modelling software is easier than using a prefab application such as Blender.
Nowadays, word processors are expected to have:
- A Spell checker, and grammar checker: This will detect mistakes you cannot sea.
- Font support: The old processors don't have that "scribble" font that's in extremely high demand.
- Anti-aliasing support: Makes the fonts look nicer, and print out better.
- Printer profiles: For getting the colours on your printer correct.
- Forign language/unicode support: Effectivly doubles the size of the application.
- Support for many document types: Interoperability.
- Automatic text: For Table of contents and index.
- VBM support: For compatability with Word Macro viruses.
- Online Documentation: Informes pirates on how to use the product, complete with pictures. (Otherwise, the product lauded for lack of documentation.)
- Et Cetra: For things that nobody has thought of yet.
None of these would individually cause the word processor to become very large. However, the market demand wants everything put into one neat package, resulting in extremely large word processing packages. The scale, however, has increased. Many people wouldn't consider making a very large image, such as >2048*1536, but such an image managed to max out the memory on a 256MB system. (This was in MSPaint, and yes, the system did run out of memory.)
The God Box from ArsTechnica is a good example of what I'm talking about - it currently recommends the Tyan Thunder n6650w as the mainboard. However, you cannot use a normal ATX or ATX12V powersupply due to compatability issues, and you won't notice unless you read the mainboard documentation. The trick is to say that you're MSCE/CCNP certifyable. If you starty studying for the MSCE/CCNP, you would only have to worry about studying the interface to the system in question rather than having to study the theory behind it (in case something more comples goes wrong.)
If you quit without just cause, you might not receive benefits: http://www1.servicecanada.gc.ca/en/ei/information
Likewise, if you are fired with just cause (i.e. misconduct), you might not reveice benefits: http://www1.servicecanada.gc.ca/en/ei/information
"Excessive stress" isn't a good reason to leave, as it can be treated as an inability to handle the workload. However, "undue pressure" is valid, since the employer is trying to make it unpleasurable or is otherwise trying to claim that you voluntairly left.
In Starcraft, terrain gives a defensive bonus to units on high ground compared to those on low ground - in general, units get a 30% defence against attacks. Likewise, units in "cover" get the same defensive bonus.
While the TA system is better in this regard, it's almost moot since LOS is generally required to attack targets anyway. See above - terrain will cause attacks to miss. In all other cases, attacks are considered to hit because they are bound to do so (e.g. volley, instant-hit, etc.) or are seekers (e.g. missles.) I have a small correction to your statement: for TA, most weapons *WILL NOT* hit a fast moving target. As you know, TA was written in a time where developers haven't yet implemented a concept known as leading a target for Real-Time Strategy games (a.k.a. C&C syndrome.)
Fixing this would probably change the gameplay of TA significantly. It would make the Zippers and air units much weaker as they would be shot down much more quickly.
Whichever method is better is a matter of personal taste, as long as any associated implementation quirks get ironed out.
I don't read that many books myself - but one of the few books I chose to read (i.e. it wasn't required in school) would be the within Hitchhiker's guide series, and the LotR series. By extrapolation, those who don't watch movies normally would go for the mainstream films (and won't go for the imports that aren't heavily advertised), and those who don't play games normally would go for the "mainstream" games (although in this case, I suspect they would go for something more casual, such as Bejewelled.)
The last book I read is the Zombie Survival Guide which I liked. Of course, recommending this book is almost equivalant to recommending a random game that you probably wouldn't have easy access to.
Alternativly, you can get hold of the server patches to disable WON authentication. The fans call it WON2. There's steamless downloads available, or you can use the NO-WON/WON 2 patch available on the same site. The alternative is "rebalancing" the weaponry if it's determined that the M4 is too powerful for it's price. This will have the same effect - since it's the most commonly used weapon, there will be complaints whether it's for the better or worse.
It's no different from the change in the sniper weapon between UT99 and UT2003 - people hated it because it fired too slowly and had a smaller head-shot zone. However, the UT99 version was too powerful - in single player on CTF-LavaGiant, I needed to load up on armor and/or shielding just to even grab the flag only to be nailed by the AI player using that rifle. Even when I took care of that enemy, there was a second one on standby already equipped with that who will react (although that's probably an illusion) to their teammate being killed. At least I could have supper without worring about map ending - the sniper was that powerful. (Which reminds me - I'm still suprised that the AWP isn't the most expensive weapon due to "AWP Whoring".)
While I understand there's no requirement for everything to be perfectly balanced to be fun, I'd rather play Insta-gib if there's going to be a one-weapon match. My advise is not to use armor. You get two-hit-killed anyway (one per frame) on online-servers, no point in using it even if it was the original pricing. While I do notice some difference with a Kevlar+Helmet, it's not enough for me because of my low snap-shot accurracy.
I'm more concerned about improving accurracy and skill rather than worry about game balance issues - while knowing that they exist can pad your score, you'll risk being thrown back down to the lower tiers as soon as they get fixed.
However, it showed a glaring flaw with the TA engine - there was no "Move-Fight" command. This was patched later, but it's something that is mandatory in RTS games. If you exclude non-official units, there's still differences between the two sides. The most critical one is the game balance with some of the units - Pelican, as it has a targetting bug that makes it hard to hit when swimming, and Eraser, as it's sonar jamming capabilities make it next to impossible to find or destroy.
Of course, there is TA:Spring, which reproduces the TA engine in 3D.