If you are an ex-PC gamer, you probably know that Halo (1 & 2) are subpar when put against a lot of games on it. Multiplayer? UT2K4. Single player? Half Life. Both? Painkiller.
The first two games are acceptable recommendations since they are more specialized - however, you should note that one of the two games was only available after Halo 1 and couldn't be played.
Painkiller, on the other hand, isn't strictly a good replacement game for singleplayer, mainly because it uses a different subclass of an FPS where a large quantity of monsters swarm the character, while Halo's enemies try to out-smart the character. These are two different games that require to different sets of tactics to complete.
Can't comment on the multiplayer aspect, but Halo 2 seems to have placed a lot of focus on the game browser - it doesn't make the game play better, but it solves the bottleneck where intermediate players get lumped with ultra-elite advanced players.
Now, for parents they may have a get out saying it's not a 'supply' (IANAL), perhaps the legislators (sp?) slipped up and meant to say 'an offence to make available...'.
If the law was like that, it would probably cause a bit of panic with those who don't understand the legal system - or perhaps make things unnecessairly inconvienent.
-- Early computers (Dos and Windows 95 series) did not have any form of access control unless you went out and purchased specialized software - there is a BIOS password, but that's an all-or-nothing deal. As a result, even installing a 16+ rated game on those older computers could give the feeling that the law is being broken. -- Windows NT-XP as well as file-sysems that provide private user spaces can be setup to allow only one person to access such a game. But by default, other users are given full read access and the average person doesn't know how to configure it otherwise. As a result, even installing can give the same feeling. -- Some games have allowed a parental lock that cuts down on the gore and blood (where the toned down version would receive a lower rating.) I'm sure this would make a real mess of the law - does the law apply the 'R' rating to everything including the toned down version, or does it take the toned down 'T'een version where a parent needs to type the password to make stuff gruesome?
You'll have an instantly large number of cases which fall into one of these three cases.
My personal opinion - how the parents raise their children is their own business, provided that it doesn't mess up other people's lives. Sadly, not all parents understand how to raise children and you end up with these kinds of laws (or attempts to make them into law).
Plain and simple. If the kids got the game from one of his friends whose parents purchased it for him, then the other parents involved need to get on their case.
When I was young, I played video games that were beyond my age rating (e.g. Doom). There were three ways I could get those games:
1. Internet download (shareware versions). 2. Shareware compilation CDs, which usually had shareware versions of the "greatest" games. 3. Friends. Just copy the stuff to disk - I could even smuggle them in the backpack.
Using any three of these covertly would be exploiting trust of my parents if they explicitly forbid those kinds of games. However, my parents did know that I was playing those games and simply tried to discourage me. ("You mean you like that kind of game?")
In the 1996 era, people would basically need a computer to even perform school work - it makes typign and correction much easier than rewriting an entire page. This naturally results in the children getting a computer in their room, and they can naturally find a way to get games on the computer. Thus, don't be suprised if parents don't have as much control as they think (although it's technically abusing the trust of the parent.)
And age doesn't mean a damn thing. I was playing Wolfenstein 3D when I was 12, and for all the screaming and ranting of "concerned" groups, I didn't end up a violent psychotic. You can be mature enough at a young age to grasp such concepts as fantasy and reality without difficulty.
That is true - but those "concerned" groups made their decisions based on the graphics, which doesn't matter either. In a way, Nethack is just as violent than Wolfenstien 3d since the protagonist is slaughtering just about as many enemies butin a greater variety of methods - but isn't considered a problem because of it's highly abstracted graphics. In my opinion, if there are restrictions because of violence, it should be applied to abstract violence as well in games like Nethack or even Chess - but this obviously won't be the case.
You can be mature enough at a young age to grasp such concepts as fantasy and reality without difficulty.
However, a lot of parents don't really seem experienced enough to know if their children can tell the difference. That's why you tend to see age limitations on movies and games as opposed to "EQ-limitations" (Emotional Quotient, similar to IQ but for emotional intregity or whatever it's supposed to measure).
Wolf3d is a great game because it was revolutionary. However, if you play a modern game like, say, Half Life 2, and then try and go back and play Wolfenstein 3D, you will probably quickly become bored.
Actually, no. If I play something as good as Half-Life 2 and then try to play Wolf3D, it's more like trying to walk around on two crutches.
A better comparison would be playing Half-Life 2 followed by ROTT (even though it came out a few years later). For it's time, firing around a wide aray of missle launchers was fun but it's single player component is now considered boring because of the endless use of the MP40.
Not yet, but you can try to find "Bobots". The AI players are fairly accurrate at the default setting, but don't really understand most of the player actions.
I like ET but it doesn't seem like a good choice for smaller LAN parties(4-10). Am i wrong?
It does work for 6-10 players, as long as the players know what they are doing. (e.g. not like most pubbers on Internet play that seal off access to the fuel dump, thus losing the game to the engy/covert op combo.)
So if you forget to lock your front door, and I waltz in your living room, but don't take or damage anything, just look around, take a few pictures and leave quietly while you are out, I'm legally in the clear?
Incorrect analogy. Entering the house through the front door is tresspass, even if the door happened to be unlocked at the time. Besides, I've seen doors that do not lock (or open) properly - a defective lock does not mean public access.
Setting up public anonymous FTP access is a different case. Instead of leaving your front door unlocked, you are effectivly placing a sign on the front door saying "Guests Welcome, Come on in!", keeping the door unlocked, and restricing more sensitive areas from guests (e.g. the upstairs sleeping area, or the basement.)
In the case of the public FTP server, SCO explicitly intended the public to enter and roam the server to download stuff - why else would there be an anonymous account?
Hmm, I thought that in Canada it was always illegal to share/trade copyrighted music over e.g. P2P networks. Isn't the only thing allowed being downloading copyrighted music, and not uploading?
That used to be the case, right up until a judge said that uploading was also legal (since it was only an equivalent of giving access to a digital photocopy machine.) Now, I don't know what the current status is, as another judge can just as easily disagree with that precedent.
Of course, there's plenty of strange rulings in Canada done by trial judges. The most recent one I heard of would be a cousin of a hockey player being convicted of gangsterism, which never received a sentence below one year. The judge on the case instead gave a small fine of $25000. (This also resulted in plenty of complaints about favouritism - guess that hockey player isn't really that famous after all.)
Checking with another news source indicates that it was a plea bargin because of lack of evidence. But this fact is generally overlooked, especially when there's an ultra-light sentence involved for something occurring over a long period of time.
I thought Total Annihlation was a 3D game, it may not have required a fancy videocard but I am pretty sure it was 3D.
Total Annihilation is basically a 2D game. While there was implementation of altitude, and that the unit models were 3D models, the map was a 2D enviroment with tiles contiaining picutres and height information. IIRC, there was also either limited no perspective done in the rendering.
The same applied to TA:K, even though it allowed support for a 3D-Accellerator for better graphic quality.
Are there any rts games that put intelligence in the units?
Honestly, I doubt it. The prerequisites for even basic intellegence aren't met in most games.
Total Annihilation got it right a bit by having engagement orders and movement tolerance orders. TA had problems with this - for example, if you had a boat try to attack an underwater metal extrator, it wouldn't fire at all (unless you typed "+shootall"). In addition, the TA units are relativly simple - if you start including spells in auto-cast or auto-attack, then things might get a little interesting. However, Warcraft 3 demonstrated that auto-cast does work with spells (other than the Necromancer's Raise Dead spell - it auto-casts outside of combat, wasting valuable mana.)
Once you have auto-attack implementation, you then need auto-retreat. Warzone 2100 implements this (but doesn't include retreating upon first hit as in Dark Reign 2). A retreat by itself isn't good enough - you also need to include an option to allow units to ignore other orders until they are repaired. Warzone 2100 flubbed this a bit since it deselects the damaged unit - wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that it always deselects the unit even if it's the only selection.
Along with these two features, you need to give smart commands. For example, if you select all combat units across the map (either they scattered or are newly built reinforcements) and order them to attack a given target, you don't want half the group to stop wherever they may be as soon as the target is destroyed - you either want the group to engage other nearby targets or form up at a given rally point. (Tiberian Sun Does this, along with Red Alert 2. Mysteriously, this feature disappeared in C&C:Generals.)
And finally, you need basic fighting tactics. For example, AT soldiers shouldn't be wasting their ammo on an incoming soldier when they could be taking out the T80 that's about to crush them. (Unless there's a good reason, such as another AT solder fired the "final" shot about to connect.)
Implementing all these four requirements are the abolute minimum for true playability of an RTS game. However, these could be deceptivly simple - the last requirement in question can cause the game to slow down significantly if unoptimized.
Are there any rts games that allow scripts for each unit?
Earth 2150 allows giving units a battle script (Basic, Advanced, and a few specialist units). WBC2 and WBC3 allows units to be given a standing orders with different effects. (e.g. rampage, Scout, etc.)
While both of these games allows users to create their own unit AI scripts, I'm not putting my full support behind them until they come with a reference manual and compiler telling the users how to customize the AI.
Luminous Horizon is a well-polished game, but it's the third part of a superhero series and the story is nothing new. The most interesting part about it is the way it handles switching characters and hints.
Actually, that isn't the problem with Luminous Horizon. The main complaint produced by the people that hated the game was that the game felt much too short and railroaded. In particular, almost all of the puzzles (save one or two) can be auto-solved by talking to the other character.
The only manipulatable object would be the gizmos - they appear to be intended to solve one of the puzzles, but it turns out that they aren't really needed.
Blue Chairs is far more interesting. It's hard to summarize, but it starts out with a drug trip at a party that turns into a dream sequence. Even if that's not your thing, it allows for some amazing writing. Highly recommended.
Blue Chairs did have a somewhat weak beginning, and perhaps was a bit too wierd for some of the judges. The group of people that didn't like the game most likely didn't understand the concept or message behind the game.
After seeing the comments after the results were announced, I ended up liking the game - however, this was after the 2 hour rating session where I was placing my focus on the puzzle aspects (which were trumped by All That Devours).
There was one game that was widly considerd to be underrated: "Goose, Egg, Badger", as it's puzzles relating to interesting use of vocabulary (which I and some others didn't notice until judging was finished.) One other underrated game "PTBAD 3" was supposed to be a satire of bad text-adventures, but almost nobody understood that it was a satire - but even an improved rating wouldn't bring it past average.
(Not sure why the OP suggested "Murder at the Aero Club" and "Magocracy" - those were actually average and there didn't seem to be any visible reason why it should have been higher.)
Grab a copy of Vice, download the.d64 file, and realize that the puzzle fragments you have to find make up a punch-card that you will use to exit the facility.
Break-in the facility, actually. I don't have the actual manual for the game, but from what I can tell, the player character has six hours (pausable real-time, with 10 minute penalty for each death) to search all rooms for the puzzle pieces, assemble them to get the password, and to pass through the enterence to the mad scientist's inner sanctum. When time runs out, there's some explosion and manical laughter - probably the world's been destroyed.
I've completed the game, but my version had an issue that killed the player when a robot fired off the left hand-side of the screen. Could either be a bug, or a copy-protection that somehow got tripped.
I've also played Impossible Mission 2 - while the robots have been improved, it feels that there's less strategy in the game because you don't exactly have to search everything.
Driving impaired is wrong, whether it's due to drugs, fatigue, or talking on a cellphone. You're not suggesting we ban cell phones entirely just becuase they cause some accidents. Why should pot be any different? Keep in mind that a little benadryl impairs driving more than Cannabis.
The difference with impared driving caused by recreational drugs is that the user doesn't ususally know about the imparement status - or thinks that it's either okay or possible to get away with. In addition, the drugs don't exactly have any real purpose aside from personal recreation, and most of these recreational drugs can be hazardous even without impurities. Pot isn't singled out - however, it's been lumped in with most other highly addictive substances (even if it isn't really too addictive).
There's also a bit more practical reason to illegalize pot usage in public places - just consider it to be the equivalent of a public smoking ban. People can still do it in their own homes, but it will work better than just considering it a criminally restricted substance.
Fraudulent or coercive behavior also voids the agreement, plus you can then go after the miscreant for fraud or racketeering.
I am aware of that, but there are many people who do not.
There are also reports about contracts made under questionable circumstances in some countries where contract law is not as well defined (although not forceful, more like a false pretence by incorrectly telling the illiterate signer that he'll get 100 thousand dollars instead of 10 thousand.) Plus, there have been movies where coercive contracts were treated as legally enforcable (and thus people believe they are valid.)
The tricks that I'm talking about aren't meant to be valid - just believable enough to fool a person into thinking they are (or some other false pretense). It worked for the Casino virus, and it will work for later viruses.
I think one reason why RCE is not done as fast as it potentially could might be that there are just fewer and fewer programmers out there who are able to quickly read, analyse and understand assembly code. Because they're simply not familiar enough with it.
The problem isn't that there are fewer and fewer programmers - it has to do with the fact that it's hard to interpret it in the first place.
For example, IBM PCs running Dos will access operating system calls by calling an Interrupt. Unless you have a reference book, you will not know that Interrupt 21H Function 36H (AH=36H) will get the amount of free disk space on a drive specified by DL. The same applies to the other operating systems, which may or may not be more complex.
For instance, they would write "x/4" when I would write "x>>2". But then again, who cares? Today's compilers should optimize that by themself, anyway.
I've tried my hand at reverse-engineering an application. The compiler optimizations generally make things much harder to reverse, because the assembly language does not necessairly look like similar instructions written in C or some other language. It's still possible to examine, but causes a slow down even if you know what you are doing.
'd like that. So, if I click "I do not agree", then I'm not permitted to have my computer infected by the virus and it will exit? Brilliant!
It won't be long before the virus writers begin to play tricks - things like flipping around the "Yes" and "No" buttons around (so that people who instinctivly click on "No" will accidently hit "Yes" instead).
Alternativly, the virus could blackmail the user by stating that diagreeing would trash the data on your hard drive. This is very similar to the old Casino virus that had the user "gamble" to retain his data.
Yeah, but a lot of modern email viruses just exploit the part of the system between the keyboard and the chair. Unfortunately no-one has worked out how to issue auto-updates for this part of the system...
Auto-updates might not be possible for that component, but certification is.
Doctors, Lawyers, Drivers, and other trades or tasks are given a license recognised by the government stating that you are qualified for the task in question. Apply the same to computers, and the problem is solved. (Of course, this requires a social engineering change because people consider Computers and the Internet to be magical devices that do stuff for them, and they can't live without it.)
My congratulations to President Bush. I may not like the man or his policies, but he did win not only the Electoral but the Popular Vote. In a sense we can put behind us the issues from the 2000 Election.
Not quite...
There have been reports of voting irregularities even before the magical voting day. While I have only know of one confirmed report, the report in question does indicate that the voter can correct the problem. There's also the case with electronic voting machines. There isn't anything confirmed, but their bad reputation will cause people to believe that irregularities exist.
In any case, incidents like Flordia aren't easy to forget - especially if the elected president seems to lose the respect of the entire world (or antagonize them). It's uncertain if a Flordia repeat will come up, but if it does, it will most likely appear in a different form.
As well, (as far as I know) certain stipulations of the Patriot Act make it somehow illegal for these companies to tell their employees that they are being probed. Obviously, this is something most Canadians would object to.
If they don't, they will most likely raise complaints about being in conflict with Canada's latest privacy law, which requires disclosing information being shared to third parties. This will either force the company to receive massive PR problems, disengage from Canada entirely, or some other thing that I wouldn't expect. (I'm not talking about the actual law here, I'm referring to the fact that laypersons know that the law exists but aren't experienced enough to know for sure whether or not it applies.)
The law in question is called the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. It's basically a government mandated privacy policy that must be implemented by all Canadian companies, and is naturally the complete opposite of the Patriot Act.
This is generally why the Privacy commissioner is recommending to withhold information from US companies - providing it is most likely a violation of either the PIPED Act or basic social trust (unless you state upfront that the information may be disclosed to the US government for whatever, but that may be forbidden as well).
Actually, there is one problem that remains. Under C/C++, you are allowed to do questionable things like defining macros so that malloc is redirected to a special debugging function. For example:
(This is a basic transparent memory leak detector - it redirects calls to malloc to a special function in another module being liked. In turn, the function calls malloc and keeping the file and line information just before the pointer returned to the user. There may be complaints for using a macro, but that's a style issue. )
While I haven't been pushing all my effort into this task, it is more difficult to do the same under the new operator for some reason. I could live with a non-transparent equivalent, but that generally causes a minor change in programming style that might not be for the best.
There is one thing, though - I've just found out how to overload the new operator. While this does help, the information that I found so far indicates that there must be a small change in how I code. (e.g. typing "NEW" instead of "new").
Well, I don't want to start a flamewar here, but while this may be true for the GNU compiler, it certainly is NOT true for, for example, the Microsoft compiler. (I know, how dare I say that...) It has produced code from C++ source for a _very_ long time and even the optimizer works very well.
I've run into some constructs that were valid C++, but were either rejected by the MSVC compiler, or caused a crash during the build process. I don't have a specific example, but they were found in the FreeCNC Project.
Of course, this is with the MSVC 6.0 compiler - ancient technology. I can't say fore sure, but I suspect that Microsoft probably fixed these bugs.
You don't have to use all the bells and whistles, shit, you can write plain ANSI-C and still use a C++ compiler for it's superior type checking etc.
Not quite... Consider this statement:
char *ptr = malloc (3200);
This is perfectly valid in C, but a C++ compiler will complain. (You may have to use a different data type for the complaint to arise, but you will encounter a problem.) The only way to remove the error or warning is to use an explicit C-style cast or a reinterpret cast, both of which make the source code look more cluttered than it should be.
But other than this small problem, C to C++ conversions should be smooth (unless you are playing with a memory buffer of inconsistant datatypes packed together).
Afterward, the guy puts his arm around me and tells me I passed and that one lie that I told about the pot wouldn't be held against me. He patted me on the back and sent me on my may.
A polygraph test needs is composed of four parts:
1. Reaction when no question is being asked. 2. Reaction to a question where you have no reason to lie. 3. Reaction to a question that where the true answer is embarrasing. For this question, the polygraph is detecting an emotional response rather than a lie (e.g. Have you ever imagined what it's like to have sex with your mother?) 4. Reaction to a question where they explicitly expect you to lie.
If any of these aspects is missing, then the test is incomplete. Until then, you cannot tell whether a general statement is truthful or a lie.
The common patterns for this minitest would be #3 being higher then normal, incidating that you are generally truthful, and #3 and #4 indicating that you are generally lying. Other cominations are possible - if reaction to the four tests are the same, then either you are a nervous wreck or extremely relaxed.
Polygraphs are bunk. People who make their living in that industry are, by my definition, liars and should be shunned.
Yes, I know I'm only one data point. But sometimes it only takes one data point to know when a technology has failed and is not trustworthy in broad application.
That's definatly true. All polygraphs do is measure body reaction to something, which doesn't always indicate truth or a lie. The only true way to tell if a person is lying is if you take a look at the person's brain to examine the memories precisely - a method that's extremely invasive.
The problem with manual/printed copy protection is that the pirate can just scan the whole thing and put it on the actual cd. No need even for the person to be able to hack the software!
There are still ways to counter this. First is to simply fill up the 640MB of the disk - either content will be removed, or the ISO will become an "overburn" CD-ROM that can be detected by an installer. The pirate may just distriubte it with a sepearte file, but that does make the distribution a bit more fragmented (some pirates just pass on the base CD without passing on the manual as well. Common mistake, but exactly what the publisher would like to snare people with.)
The method that I would prefer would be a file scan. It's slightly harder to implement as you need to how the files will be stamped on the production CD, but will require software modification to defeat.
The manual itself can include a background watermark designed to look beautiful on paper, but then require the scanned manual to be very large for it to be readable. There's nothing more annoying than the manual taking just as much space as the game itself...
The listing seems to be fairly accurrate for the needs of the average player.
Make a complex game that requires lots of documentation, and include it in a printed book.
The trick is to keep it fairly simple... For example, Wizball required shaking the joystick to activate a powerup (information which was not visible in some pirated versions of that game.) It collapeses as soon as the player asks a helpful friend with a manual, but is effective in most cases.
No need for complexity at all - just nonchantingly place one or two key facts in the manual and that will be good enough.
Require that the CD be in the drive while playing the game. We don't like this, but we generally tolerate it if there's no other problems.
There are cases where I would consider this to be unacceptable - for example, the games that must constantly stream content from the CD at maximum spin speed. While I don't mind reading data from the CD, the developers should give an option to cache things from the harddrive instead. Likewise, games that demand that everything be copied to the harddrive shouldn't be demanding the CD as well (unless they allow for a smaller installation level).
As far as I know, there was only one game where the CD being in the drive is purely acceptable - and that game didn't need to install anything on the hard drive to run.
`Please enter the third word of page 25 now.' (or other sorts of code wheels, books, etc.)
I would sort of disagree about this being unacceptable. In the early days of computers, I've encountered this sort of thing to be very common - it was generally the only form of copy-protection that didn't require anything too serious (e.g. ones that knocked the floppy drive heads out of alignment).
I'd classify it as barely acceptable instead - but it should either be roleplayed in the sense of Pirates! (where the crew is shocked at your incompetence if you incorrectly give the time of arrival for one of the two treasure convoys...), or appear only occassionally as in Stunt Island (first loading time, and very rarely afterwards...)
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Painkiller, on the other hand, isn't strictly a good replacement game for singleplayer, mainly because it uses a different subclass of an FPS where a large quantity of monsters swarm the character, while Halo's enemies try to out-smart the character. These are two different games that require to different sets of tactics to complete.
Can't comment on the multiplayer aspect, but Halo 2 seems to have placed a lot of focus on the game browser - it doesn't make the game play better, but it solves the bottleneck where intermediate players get lumped with ultra-elite advanced players.
-- Early computers (Dos and Windows 95 series) did not have any form of access control unless you went out and purchased specialized software - there is a BIOS password, but that's an all-or-nothing deal. As a result, even installing a 16+ rated game on those older computers could give the feeling that the law is being broken.
-- Windows NT-XP as well as file-sysems that provide private user spaces can be setup to allow only one person to access such a game. But by default, other users are given full read access and the average person doesn't know how to configure it otherwise. As a result, even installing can give the same feeling.
-- Some games have allowed a parental lock that cuts down on the gore and blood (where the toned down version would receive a lower rating.) I'm sure this would make a real mess of the law - does the law apply the 'R' rating to everything including the toned down version, or does it take the toned down 'T'een version where a parent needs to type the password to make stuff gruesome?
You'll have an instantly large number of cases which fall into one of these three cases.
My personal opinion - how the parents raise their children is their own business, provided that it doesn't mess up other people's lives. Sadly, not all parents understand how to raise children and you end up with these kinds of laws (or attempts to make them into law).
IANAL, so no.
1. Internet download (shareware versions).
2. Shareware compilation CDs, which usually had shareware versions of the "greatest" games.
3. Friends. Just copy the stuff to disk - I could even smuggle them in the backpack.
Using any three of these covertly would be exploiting trust of my parents if they explicitly forbid those kinds of games. However, my parents did know that I was playing those games and simply tried to discourage me. ("You mean you like that kind of game?")
In the 1996 era, people would basically need a computer to even perform school work - it makes typign and correction much easier than rewriting an entire page. This naturally results in the children getting a computer in their room, and they can naturally find a way to get games on the computer. Thus, don't be suprised if parents don't have as much control as they think (although it's technically abusing the trust of the parent.)
That is true - but those "concerned" groups made their decisions based on the graphics, which doesn't matter either. In a way, Nethack is just as violent than Wolfenstien 3d since the protagonist is slaughtering just about as many enemies butin a greater variety of methods - but isn't considered a problem because of it's highly abstracted graphics. In my opinion, if there are restrictions because of violence, it should be applied to abstract violence as well in games like Nethack or even Chess - but this obviously won't be the case.
However, a lot of parents don't really seem experienced enough to know if their children can tell the difference. That's why you tend to see age limitations on movies and games as opposed to "EQ-limitations" (Emotional Quotient, similar to IQ but for emotional intregity or whatever it's supposed to measure).
A better comparison would be playing Half-Life 2 followed by ROTT (even though it came out a few years later). For it's time, firing around a wide aray of missle launchers was fun but it's single player component is now considered boring because of the endless use of the MP40.
E1M4 Rocket jump
MAP14 Arch-vile jump
It does work for 6-10 players, as long as the players know what they are doing. (e.g. not like most pubbers on Internet play that seal off access to the fuel dump, thus losing the game to the engy/covert op combo.)
Setting up public anonymous FTP access is a different case. Instead of leaving your front door unlocked, you are effectivly placing a sign on the front door saying "Guests Welcome, Come on in!", keeping the door unlocked, and restricing more sensitive areas from guests (e.g. the upstairs sleeping area, or the basement.)
In the case of the public FTP server, SCO explicitly intended the public to enter and roam the server to download stuff - why else would there be an anonymous account?
Of course, there's plenty of strange rulings in Canada done by trial judges. The most recent one I heard of would be a cousin of a hockey player being convicted of gangsterism, which never received a sentence below one year. The judge on the case instead gave a small fine of $25000. (This also resulted in plenty of complaints about favouritism - guess that hockey player isn't really that famous after all.)
Checking with another news source indicates that it was a plea bargin because of lack of evidence. But this fact is generally overlooked, especially when there's an ultra-light sentence involved for something occurring over a long period of time.
The same applied to TA:K, even though it allowed support for a 3D-Accellerator for better graphic quality.
Total Annihilation got it right a bit by having engagement orders and movement tolerance orders. TA had problems with this - for example, if you had a boat try to attack an underwater metal extrator, it wouldn't fire at all (unless you typed "+shootall"). In addition, the TA units are relativly simple - if you start including spells in auto-cast or auto-attack, then things might get a little interesting. However, Warcraft 3 demonstrated that auto-cast does work with spells (other than the Necromancer's Raise Dead spell - it auto-casts outside of combat, wasting valuable mana.)
Once you have auto-attack implementation, you then need auto-retreat. Warzone 2100 implements this (but doesn't include retreating upon first hit as in Dark Reign 2). A retreat by itself isn't good enough - you also need to include an option to allow units to ignore other orders until they are repaired. Warzone 2100 flubbed this a bit since it deselects the damaged unit - wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that it always deselects the unit even if it's the only selection.
Along with these two features, you need to give smart commands. For example, if you select all combat units across the map (either they scattered or are newly built reinforcements) and order them to attack a given target, you don't want half the group to stop wherever they may be as soon as the target is destroyed - you either want the group to engage other nearby targets or form up at a given rally point. (Tiberian Sun Does this, along with Red Alert 2. Mysteriously, this feature disappeared in C&C:Generals.)
And finally, you need basic fighting tactics. For example, AT soldiers shouldn't be wasting their ammo on an incoming soldier when they could be taking out the T80 that's about to crush them. (Unless there's a good reason, such as another AT solder fired the "final" shot about to connect.)
Implementing all these four requirements are the abolute minimum for true playability of an RTS game. However, these could be deceptivly simple - the last requirement in question can cause the game to slow down significantly if unoptimized.
Earth 2150 allows giving units a battle script (Basic, Advanced, and a few specialist units). WBC2 and WBC3 allows units to be given a standing orders with different effects. (e.g. rampage, Scout, etc.)
While both of these games allows users to create their own unit AI scripts, I'm not putting my full support behind them until they come with a reference manual and compiler telling the users how to customize the AI.
The only manipulatable object would be the gizmos - they appear to be intended to solve one of the puzzles, but it turns out that they aren't really needed.
Blue Chairs did have a somewhat weak beginning, and perhaps was a bit too wierd for some of the judges. The group of people that didn't like the game most likely didn't understand the concept or message behind the game.
After seeing the comments after the results were announced, I ended up liking the game - however, this was after the 2 hour rating session where I was placing my focus on the puzzle aspects (which were trumped by All That Devours).
There was one game that was widly considerd to be underrated: "Goose, Egg, Badger", as it's puzzles relating to interesting use of vocabulary (which I and some others didn't notice until judging was finished.) One other underrated game "PTBAD 3" was supposed to be a satire of bad text-adventures, but almost nobody understood that it was a satire - but even an improved rating wouldn't bring it past average.
(Not sure why the OP suggested "Murder at the Aero Club" and "Magocracy" - those were actually average and there didn't seem to be any visible reason why it should have been higher.)
I've completed the game, but my version had an issue that killed the player when a robot fired off the left hand-side of the screen. Could either be a bug, or a copy-protection that somehow got tripped.
I've also played Impossible Mission 2 - while the robots have been improved, it feels that there's less strategy in the game because you don't exactly have to search everything.
There's also a bit more practical reason to illegalize pot usage in public places - just consider it to be the equivalent of a public smoking ban. People can still do it in their own homes, but it will work better than just considering it a criminally restricted substance.
There are also reports about contracts made under questionable circumstances in some countries where contract law is not as well defined (although not forceful, more like a false pretence by incorrectly telling the illiterate signer that he'll get 100 thousand dollars instead of 10 thousand.) Plus, there have been movies where coercive contracts were treated as legally enforcable (and thus people believe they are valid.)
The tricks that I'm talking about aren't meant to be valid - just believable enough to fool a person into thinking they are (or some other false pretense). It worked for the Casino virus, and it will work for later viruses.
For example, IBM PCs running Dos will access operating system calls by calling an Interrupt. Unless you have a reference book, you will not know that Interrupt 21H Function 36H (AH=36H) will get the amount of free disk space on a drive specified by DL. The same applies to the other operating systems, which may or may not be more complex.
I've tried my hand at reverse-engineering an application. The compiler optimizations generally make things much harder to reverse, because the assembly language does not necessairly look like similar instructions written in C or some other language. It's still possible to examine, but causes a slow down even if you know what you are doing.
Alternativly, the virus could blackmail the user by stating that diagreeing would trash the data on your hard drive. This is very similar to the old Casino virus that had the user "gamble" to retain his data.
Doctors, Lawyers, Drivers, and other trades or tasks are given a license recognised by the government stating that you are qualified for the task in question. Apply the same to computers, and the problem is solved. (Of course, this requires a social engineering change because people consider Computers and the Internet to be magical devices that do stuff for them, and they can't live without it.)
There have been reports of voting irregularities even before the magical voting day. While I have only know of one confirmed report, the report in question does indicate that the voter can correct the problem. There's also the case with electronic voting machines. There isn't anything confirmed, but their bad reputation will cause people to believe that irregularities exist.
In any case, incidents like Flordia aren't easy to forget - especially if the elected president seems to lose the respect of the entire world (or antagonize them). It's uncertain if a Flordia repeat will come up, but if it does, it will most likely appear in a different form.
The law in question is called the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. It's basically a government mandated privacy policy that must be implemented by all Canadian companies, and is naturally the complete opposite of the Patriot Act.
This is generally why the Privacy commissioner is recommending to withhold information from US companies - providing it is most likely a violation of either the PIPED Act or basic social trust (unless you state upfront that the information may be disclosed to the US government for whatever, but that may be forbidden as well).
While I haven't been pushing all my effort into this task, it is more difficult to do the same under the new operator for some reason. I could live with a non-transparent equivalent, but that generally causes a minor change in programming style that might not be for the best.
There is one thing, though - I've just found out how to overload the new operator. While this does help, the information that I found so far indicates that there must be a small change in how I code. (e.g. typing "NEW" instead of "new").
Of course, this is with the MSVC 6.0 compiler - ancient technology. I can't say fore sure, but I suspect that Microsoft probably fixed these bugs.
Not quite... Consider this statement:This is perfectly valid in C, but a C++ compiler will complain. (You may have to use a different data type for the complaint to arise, but you will encounter a problem.) The only way to remove the error or warning is to use an explicit C-style cast or a reinterpret cast, both of which make the source code look more cluttered than it should be.
But other than this small problem, C to C++ conversions should be smooth (unless you are playing with a memory buffer of inconsistant datatypes packed together).
1. Reaction when no question is being asked.
2. Reaction to a question where you have no reason to lie.
3. Reaction to a question that where the true answer is embarrasing. For this question, the polygraph is detecting an emotional response rather than a lie (e.g. Have you ever imagined what it's like to have sex with your mother?)
4. Reaction to a question where they explicitly expect you to lie.
If any of these aspects is missing, then the test is incomplete. Until then, you cannot tell whether a general statement is truthful or a lie.
The common patterns for this minitest would be #3 being higher then normal, incidating that you are generally truthful, and #3 and #4 indicating that you are generally lying. Other cominations are possible - if reaction to the four tests are the same, then either you are a nervous wreck or extremely relaxed.
That's definatly true. All polygraphs do is measure body reaction to something, which doesn't always indicate truth or a lie. The only true way to tell if a person is lying is if you take a look at the person's brain to examine the memories precisely - a method that's extremely invasive.
The method that I would prefer would be a file scan. It's slightly harder to implement as you need to how the files will be stamped on the production CD, but will require software modification to defeat.
The manual itself can include a background watermark designed to look beautiful on paper, but then require the scanned manual to be very large for it to be readable. There's nothing more annoying than the manual taking just as much space as the game itself...
The trick is to keep it fairly simple... For example, Wizball required shaking the joystick to activate a powerup (information which was not visible in some pirated versions of that game.) It collapeses as soon as the player asks a helpful friend with a manual, but is effective in most cases.
No need for complexity at all - just nonchantingly place one or two key facts in the manual and that will be good enough.
There are cases where I would consider this to be unacceptable - for example, the games that must constantly stream content from the CD at maximum spin speed. While I don't mind reading data from the CD, the developers should give an option to cache things from the harddrive instead. Likewise, games that demand that everything be copied to the harddrive shouldn't be demanding the CD as well (unless they allow for a smaller installation level).
As far as I know, there was only one game where the CD being in the drive is purely acceptable - and that game didn't need to install anything on the hard drive to run.
I would sort of disagree about this being unacceptable. In the early days of computers, I've encountered this sort of thing to be very common - it was generally the only form of copy-protection that didn't require anything too serious (e.g. ones that knocked the floppy drive heads out of alignment).
I'd classify it as barely acceptable instead - but it should either be roleplayed in the sense of Pirates! (where the crew is shocked at your incompetence if you incorrectly give the time of arrival for one of the two treasure convoys...), or appear only occassionally as in Stunt Island (first loading time, and very rarely afterwards...)