Yet you won't see me calling for its criminalization, because I don't think the government should enforce "my right to computing."
This is where your argument falls apart. Spyware is not a problem with your "right to computing", unless you are the exclusive user of each computer you touch, and each computer that your computer networks with.
Want to know how quickly spyware accumulates on a shared family computer? You'll find out very quickly as soon as you discover your family clicks on every flashy thing.
This is also nothing compared to public computers used in cyber cafes. Unless the owner knows how to lock down their computers (some probably don't), you can expect multiple keyloggers to be grabbing passwords from the users.
The "writing slower is better" story is a myth. Please don't spread it further. And yes, if you want more information about disc testing Media Sciences is a company that is dedicated to disc quality and testing. I do not work for them.
The "writing slower is better" story is only a myth when applied in a general sense.
While I should agree that the writing speed should always be at the speed of the burner, I seem to be in a unique case with my Lite-ON LTR-31223S 32x12x40x. When I attempt to write at the maximum speed of 32x, the attempt is denied (over max. speed) and throttled down to 20x. That rate causes the burner to slowly decelerate the CD as it is writing (and causing the CD to speed back up as it reaches somethreshold.) I'm not offhandedly sure what the optimal setting is, but I think it is around 12 or 8X.
It could be that I'm using cheap CDRs, but similar stories appear often enough that the "writing slower is better" is the one of the more common pieces of advice.
Flexing (bending) the disc by any means, such as removing it from a jewel case or sitting on it, may harm the disc by causing stresses. The disc should be stored in its case and placed vertically, like a book, on a shelf. Long-term horizontal storage, particularly in a heated environment, can cause the disc to become permanently bowed.
From what I can tell, horizontal or vertial storage doesn't appear to have a difference on the degredation of CDs. In addition, the advice given is a bit incorrect as well - a disc stored in it's case will need to be "flexed" in order to be removed (unless it's a paper envelope.)
In my experience, CDs seem to degrade more quickly from other factors - mainly scratches. I have one commercial CD that has a strange scratch that penetrated both the label and data layers. A few more CDs had major scratches that caused portions to be unreadable (fixed after using a repair kit.)
CDRs aren't good either - I bought a 100-pack a few years ago, and still has plenty left. Just recently, I noticed that if I hold it up to my monitor, I can still see distinct text through the CD, whether it is a used portion or not. In addition, a light rub or something similar managed to pull off some of the silver and damaged a music track (analog music, thankfully.)
Because of the problems with CDs, I'm a little more liberal in making backups.
Re:What old DOS games did you play that were easy?
on
Is DOS Gaming Dead?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"This program needs 514K free to run. You have 512K free."
512K free is a bit on the low side - I've usually experienced around 580-600K because of UMBs and HMA. Are you sure you're stripped to the bare minimum?
In any case, conventional memory requirements was beginning to be a little rediculous even after Windows 95 was released. Games were beginning to require 590K of memory for full functionality (or sometimes any) and it was almost always an extremely tight fit. There wasn't any excuse either since the target market for those games required at least a 386 to remain playable. (e.g. Master of Magic - could only get it running on a modern computer without sound. Haven't checked with VDMsound.)
Honestly, who do you know that bitches and moans about having to use a separate key for both their car and house/apartment? But users constantly whine about having to remember too many passwords. You have a fucking memory; use it and quit bitching.
The difference between having a seperate key for your house and car and remembering a variety of passwords is that one of them is owned by you, and that the other is remembered by you.
It is much easier to have something than it is to remember something, especially when it is normally a random composition. In most cases, a lot of people do not have anything similar to a password manager than as opposed to a standard keyring. As a result, they either have to write it down on a random piece of paper (which is much more easily lost than a keyring) or use a password that is much simpler than it should be (e.g. "11111111").
You have a fucking memory; use it and quit bitching.
The problem is memorizing too many passwords -- every single web forum requires a password of 'X' characters long, with at least one capital letter , one number, etc. In practice, you cannot remember the password for every single account on the web, along for the username associated with it.
If there was just a few passwords that had to be remembered, than I'd be fine with it. Instead, I have to remember multiple passwords for the same network (login passwords and mail passwords weren't synced), along with passwords for my dial-up ISP, password for Slashdot, a password for Forumplanet, a password for New York "Free registration Required" Times, a password to login to my personal computer, and a password for every other website I have to visit. An average person can only remember so many passwords before they just give up and stick with something very simple.
Re:The chapel area in Duke3D
on
SimChurch
·
· Score: 1
There was indeed a (hanged) nun hanging in the rafters, near an atomic health powerup. Either that or she contained the powerup, I can't remember precisely...
Honestly, it looked a bit more like a monk, especially with the red lighting.
Whatever that person is, you should be able to find an atomic health at the same level (near the ceiling - find a switch to activate it.) You can also destroy the hanged body to reveal another atomic health. Sort of like a 2-in-1 deal.
They end up implementing the quickest way of ignoring the problem. The result is that we're no better off than if we just checked return values.
True, but in this case it's explicitly the developer's fault for lousy error checking. While not checking for a return value can be dismissed as an "edit and recompile" type of error, there is absolutly no excuse for a developer's lazyness for botching exception handling.
If the developer wants to handle error checking later, the proper procedure is to place a "TODO" marker into a pseudo-error handling routine so that he can return to it later (after solving the rest of the problem.) Failing to do even that indicates that the developer hasn't even solved the basic problem in the first place.
The only problem is that the system makes it much harder than it should be to learn. While I'm not speaking in all cases, what you will read is a fairly common instance of how a school is like for those who are in a typical public school. I'll start off with elementry school: - In my experience, elementry school places its focus on unnecessairy drawings to make reports look "pretty". Making pretty drwings takes away from time that can be spent on making actual content. - Elementry school is also restrictive. In the Science fair at grade 5-6, the tasks at my school were assigned from a set of laminated task sheets (in orde to cut down on volcanos.) My assigned task was to make an optimal chocolate bar wrapper. Not only that, but one of the marking fields was "creativity", which isn't really possible with assigned tasks. - Based on what I could tell, it seems that the schools want to teach students to be artistic. This does not work, as I have *ZERO* art skills (and as you know, doubling efforts in art will double the quality. Twice of nothing is still nothing.) - You can't learn high school material in the early stages of elementry school. One of my parents tried to teach me algebra, but I could barely understand how it works. That made me forget about it for a while until I matured enough to absorb the material (at which point I jumped ahead by finishing the algebra book, only to be forced to wait again until I got access to the next level of math). - Heard of GCF (Greatest Common Factor)? I learned a procedure to do it by looking at a diagram showing how it is done. However, I never understood that I managed to learn it incorrectly until highschool, whn I r4eceived a better textbook. (Most likely, it was caused by one of my learning disabilities at the time - by comprehension skills were not up to speed at the time.)
Junior High school is "slightly better": - You actually begin to learn the structure of how English should be written, such as "subject" and "object". This, however, should be taught a bit earlier (and I never remembered seeing anything like that in Grade 6 - I only remember punctuation at that phase.) - You begin to learn positive and negative integers. In direct contradiction that negative numbers don't exist in Grades 1-6. - You get a bus pass to travel to and from school, which can be used for whatever travel you wish. But is it really that helpful?
And now high school: - You get a choice of courses of what you want to learn, provided that scheduling is possible and tat the courses are available. - My fild of expertise, Computer Prograaming/Science, was not easily available. The only thing I saw were VB programming, Delphi programming, and one OAC that looked like a computer-related course but was more orientated around presentation (and I was encouraged by my parents to take that for the sole purpose of entering University.) - Outside of High school, you can learn allyou want in your field. However, you will reach a plateau as you do not yet have access to more advanced materials (e.g. Software Engineering if you are persuing programming). - For secondary support fields (e.g. Math, Science and other stuff), you need to return the textbooks after completing the course. Whatever you studied will fade within the next year, as you cannot refresh your knowledge in the course.
I'd love to learn by myself, but I did not have the necessairy tools or resources to advance further than what was available. My only way to proceed was to finish minimum requirements to get a high school diploma (meaning I skipped the OACs and cut out my access to University) and enroll in a college course related to my field of interest.
I feel that the time spent in high school is more like a speed bump to slow things down. Very little of it was actually required in my field, including the English courses. Only the college level
I suspect most would rather spend time reading and learning about a "4-star" game than a "1-star" one.
Most people would, but the significant amount of 4-star reviews makes them bland. As a result, 1-star reviews are more interesting to read because it shows either the game being entirly substandard, or shows that the reviewer has a negative preconception of the game itself.
For example, one review site rated Serious Sam: The First Encounter as 5/5-Stars, while also setting Serious Sam: The Second Encounter as 2/5 Stars - impling that the first game is better than the second. You can't find a more inconsistant review site than that.
Some review site or magazine that starts doing what you suggest (and you're absolutely right, they should) will stand out as a sore thumb and as a company that routinely gives low scores.
A review site that does give out low scores and relies on purchasing games to review them will also begin to include statements such as "waste of $50 dollars" in their reviews. As a result, the reviews of bad games on that site will be drawn lower. If publishers cannot reach standards set in the 1993-1998 era, then I cannot provide any rating above 5/10.
Once I get broadband access and a erver with sufficient storage space, a small portion will be dedicated to review games. In those reviews, I will include the "waste of money" statements as I call them as I see them. If the producer complaines of a 50- rating, the next option is to be called as they are. In this instance, I will have another person to look for mistakes in the review and make the necessairy corrections (up or down. Usually, it would be down as further playing tends to uncover more repetitiveness or problems).
Futher complaints will result in the third and final option - the game is crap because I said it's crap.
The end result is you end up getting a lot of weapons that are of no help, and losing them right away since there is not enough room to maneuver.
Given the firepower of the base weapon, the extra addons aren't as much help as they could be.
However, the addons don't have to hit within the 30-degree arc - I find that on mission 2 and later, enemies have increased firing strengths meaning that you need all the firing spread you can get.
Personally I'd suggest making things a little smaller, and have fewer ships firing all over the place at the start of the game, giving you a chance to work on your skills.
Actually, there is a slightly better option.
When any attached component takes a hit (0.1, may have been updated in 0.11), it should only whatever else was attached to it as opposed to the entire array. This could make the game easier than the author originally intended, and therefore could need compensation as well (e.g. reduce rate for bonus, or have bullets tunnel through your components.)
2. Documentation I really wonder why the author took this one. Generally speaking the most popular and successfull OSS packages have briljant documentation.
In my experience, I have found that a significant portion of the OSS software that I needed to use was a bit more complex than it could have been. When I needed to look up help on a command using the "man" command, I come up against one of several possibilities:
1. The manual page is there, and provides the needed information. Problem is solved. 2. The manual page is not there, but the documentation is visible within the program directory (or some other known location). Problem gets solved anyway. 3. The manual page is there, and provides the needed information. However, some text is superflous causing the info to be buried under other descriptions. Problem is solved after time is spent hunting. 4. The manual page is there, but under a name different from the progranm or in a location that is not otherwise expected. 5. The manual page is there, and does not provide the needed information. Either the feature is missing, or the command is undocumeneted. 6. The manual page is there, contains the needed information, but it is incorrect. 7. The manual page is not there at all.
While I have seen the equivalent for items 4-7 appear for the Win32/Propriatary software as well, it seems to occurr less often (but is generally more severe when they do appear). Granted, it could be that I selected the wrong OSS software pacakges and conincidently selected the right Windows packages, but minor documentation problems across several programs appear to be worse than a really bad documentation with one - especially when you are trying to get used to the software or operating system in question.
5.Religious blindness I really wonder where the author wants to go with this accusation.
Religious blindness would probably refer to the VI vs. Emacs style of debates. (Can't comment too much, since I didn't RTFA.)
Reason your games look better at 100? You used the monitor/LCD/your eye to blur fast moving things.
The framerates for videogames are not the same as those used in movies. Games, as you know, have their framerate affected by various factors, such as the number of polygons shown on the screen, background tasks that are running at the same time, and so on. If you have an FPS around 40, then you will have choppy aninmation because the number shown is really an average over the past second or so.
BTW, Project IGI has fairly good graphics - even though it uses a Framerate cap of 30 FPS. The only reason that it still looks good at such a low framerate is because it is steady value that does not flail around various values between adjecent frames.
Simple solution: Decrease your detail level or Resolution.
Have you played a semi-modern First Person shooter at 640x480 on a 19" monitor? At this configuration, you *WILL* notice staircase effects found on contrasting edges, even on a flyby animation running at a steady 75 FPS. When you increase the resolution, the staircasing is still present but is harder to notice.
Usually, I either choose a resolution that is relativly high for the game (which some games aren't designed to do - objects on the screen require squinting at 1-inch away), or max out any detail setting available (including FSAA). This is the only way to confortably look at a game without having my eyes get snagged on an "edge" instead of an enemy.
Decreasing detail levels from the default isn't any better for improving framerate. By switching the display from what is intended to a more blurry state, you will get distracted by the extremely-low quality of the images.
Well, the first time I tried it, I hit the wrong button and the frogs went spinning like on a centrifuge, and I got caught and tossed into the ocean. Game over.
Never liked that bit about guessing which button is correct, but it is possible to correct that mistake by pressing the other button. There may be a time limit on how quickly you press the second button, but I never encountered it.
BTW, I know from experience that hitting Escape to end a game permaturly and to load a previous one should be done sparengly. I have personally experienced cases where I would have reloaded a saved game just because I had one health point left, only to realize that I could pick up the unguarded healthpack just around the corner. (Then again, I have also experienced cases where I was running across large combat areas with only a few health points left.)
Like that one scene in Willy Beamish where you're rescuing the frogs from the kitchen. That was annoying. I only ever got past it because I got sick of trying to figure things out and just wanted to watch Willy die.
That scene was designed to be a puzzle. The major differences indicating that you did not need to reload was the fact that you were grabbed after completing a primary objective - rescuing your frog. Failing that objective meant that you left the area too early (e.g. didn't free the frogs), or that you got pinned by the cook.
Besides, most players would want to see comments on how that damned child stopped me from eating the delicious frog-sufflee (which didn't appear, but other plotline information came instead).
On the other hand, I do certain games (Civ, Railroad Tycoon, and other strategy games) allow players to exercise political thoughts.
They also let the player relax in the event a nuclear war should occurr - those nuclear missiles only have a range of 16 tiles, which is less than a quarter of the globe.:)
You mean I can't attack the annoying puny little country that just attacked my level 25 city without congress's permission?
I would consider that to be a bug with the game rather than a political issue. In most democratic-style of governments, people would have no problem allowing for retaliation against an attack from an enemy, even if there is some political resistance.
In the case with Civilization II, the senate always forces a peace treaty when a rival nation wants one, regardless of the circumstances. This is unrealistic in two means: first off, it ignores the reputation of the AI players (because AIs don't have that attribute - only human players). Secondly, it allows unprovoked attacks followed by an attempt at negotiation to force a treaty, repeated ad infinitum (same applies if an opponent has a Great Wall or United Nations.) The only way to counter attack is to dmaage your own rep (possibly causing a revolution as well).
Still, it was a better simulation than Civ I - where you could avoid forced peace declarations by not accepting an audience with the emmisary.
Prove it. I call bullshit. The 'poor quality' argument is a favorite of the "HEY EVERYONE, I DON'T OWN A TV, LET ME TELL YOU WHY" crowd.
The 'poor quality' argument is a favorite mainly because those people are only able to see poor-quality programs at the times they can actually watch TV. For example, when a busy white-collar worker sits back and relaxes to watch TV at Friday 8pm, there might not have a good choice of available programs (or those programs might not be enjoyable for that person.)
The poor quality argument is no longer valid once there are capabilities of recording TV at arbitrary times. However, most people either don't know how to record specific channels (via programmed VCR, since the manual gets lost), or don't have something similar to a TiVo. Even so, the selection of programs is still limited by the choice of channels you receive with your TV (worst case is analog antenna - limiting to whatever is broadcast in the local region and has significant signal degredation.)
Just because there is also plenty of unadulterated SHIT out there doesn't mean the quality of all programming is down.
That's nice logic, but it cannot change the fact that the plenty of unadulterated shit gives an impression that the quality of all programs drops. Nowadays, impressions of poor quality programming is the greatest barrier to accepting TV, especially when it is being trumped the widespread availablility of Internet access.
Right now, there are only a few shows available on TV (analog broadcast - the least expensive but most restrictive) that I would want to watch - mainly "This Hour Has 22 Minutes". The only problem is that other family members want to watch other TV shows that are on at the same time as my desired shows - "Joan of Acadia", and "*-ian Idol". Spending $200 on a PVR or something doesn't seem cost-effective when I'm just going for one or two confirmed shows.
I'm not an accountant or tax lawyer, but I don't think a government can tax trade not being done in its native currency
A government can tax any transfer of goods that it desires, even if the exchange involves only goods rather than actual currency.
For example, the LETS system does not directly use a currency but is still taxable. (Of course, I wouldn't recommend its implementation - it assumes the local area is a zero-sum economy, which doesn't work when it relies on importing supplies. The villages in the arctic Tundra are a good example. It's fix is to fallback on regular currency, but in that case, there's no point in using the system either.)
(i.e. the U.S. can't charge tax at time of sale if I were to go to Toronto and buy a bottle of soda; on larger purchases, like a computer, they might be able to at the border/Customs, but I'm not sure).
That's a completely different issue. In that case, the US can't charge tax since it doesn't have any economical interest in the forign purchase. While some countries will attempt to tax you anyway, they are not technically supposed to.
As soon as it is brought over the border, it is taxable since it is being imported into a country.
Re:If you are already laid off how can you be fire
on
Train Your Own Replacement
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Once you are notified that you are being laid off for no cause, how can you be fired for cause.
Being laid-off without cause generally requires a two weeks notice, or a payment for two weeks of work (although this does differ depending on your location, among other factors.) It is generally considered your work terminates on this date if the notification route is chosen.
When you perform a bad act after receiving the notice of termination, you can still get fired immediatly before your two weeks are up. This can be extremely rare, but is possible if you do something really bad.
This doesn't apply on the two-week payment route - in that case you are already dismissed and have no power in the company. Anything you do after receiving payment would get you fired would be burning your bridges and make it harder for you to get a future job.
Never in gaming history EVER has a series gone such a HUGE distance from lofty coolness, replay ability and just a generally an awesome game, Deus Ex, to a piece of crap like DXIW.
Red Alert 1 -> Red Alert 2.
While Red Alert isn't as great as it could be, and while Red Alert 2 is quite popular, those two games are a great example among a significant group of people of a game turning sour.
If they had simply used the same game engine and made more maps for the original, more of the loyal Deus Ex fans would have pleased,
You can't sell a game just by adding new maps to the original package. There is only one game that did this successfully - Doom. The later games that did this as well resorted to Expansion packs which are now more-or-less harder to find than the original itself (along with whatever "essential" content was included in that pack.)
Also, the engine used for Deus Ex: Invisible War was still the Unreal engine. The only difference is that it was a later version that supports more than just the plain PC platform.
And you know what, everything that comes out with the Deus name on it will be crap.
The same can be said about BlueShift. That installment in Half-Life was a fairly unfufilling expansion pack that only contained a marginal amount of new content - new maps only. However bad it may be, BlueShift does not mean that Opposing Forces will remain just as bad. (The same is not true for Half-Life - if you don't like the base game, you won't like it's expansions.)
Your statement can also be stretched over to Dune II and Warcraft I: Since you can only select one unit at a time in these two games, later RTS games will suffer from the same feature.
I'm honestly a bit perplexed that so many people would start slamming Clan Wars without knowing more than the barest of facts about it.
I'm sure you know about reputation.
When a software company is known to produce high-quality products, they are generally considerd to be good companies. If, however, a software company releases products that don't meet expectations, a bad reputation is formes. This results in an irrational dismissal of any games from that company, regardless of what merits can appear.
As an example, take a look at two old games: "Outpost", and "Outpost 2: Divided Destiny", both from Sierra. The massive failure from Outpost (caused by improper and incomplete implementation) caused the second one in the series to fail. If the first one wasn't terrible, Outpost 2 would have made much more sales than it did.
As for why people are blasting Clan Wars, it's most likely cuased by a reputation formed from DXIW failing to meet expectations. DXIW, in your eyes, does nothing wrong in the textbook sense - but the removal of certain immersive aspects prevented the game from meeting the user's requirements in one way or another. The most vocal part of the game's audicene claims (among other things) that the game placed too much focus on X-Box development, resulting in certain immersive features being removed because they could not confortably work on an X-Box controller.
The negative reactions on a future product are usually based around recent development patterns, and indicate a fear that their favourite game won't be as good as it could be. It's best to take these rational comments as a warning on how a game should not be developed, as they usually contain information on what to look out for.
Not to mention the crazy decision to force people to use a toggle-crouch, despite the fact that the majority of PC gamers prefer hold-crouch.
Hold-Crouch is preferred for situations where the crouch action is "instantaneous" - either you are crouched or you are not. In these cases, you don't mind holding down the extra finger in order to move around while crouching to enter and leave the line of fire. This appears in games like Half-Life or other conventional FPSs.
Toggle-Crouch is better in games where crouching takes time, when there is a disadvantage appearing when you pop out of crouch (e.g. sudden but short loss of accurracy, or snapping out of scope), or when you are crouched for a significant portion of the game waiting for approaching enemies. This appears in games similar to the Rainbow Six series, but such games sometimes use hold-crouch instead.
What's even better than either of those two systems? Having both available.
but in canada it is not piracy, it is legal to download songs.
Doesn't matter.
If you knowlingly place anything in a publicly shared folder, then you are distributing it. This is no different than burning copies of music to the CD and giving them to friends. They are either both piracy or both legitimate, with no regards to different mediums of distribution (and as mentioned in the The "Blank CD-R Tax" FAQ, the levy does not legalize copies made for use other than the person making the copy.)
the judge's main beef was the copyright law didn't have anything in there to prosecute users who had files in their shared folder,
The "Blank CD-R Tax" only legalizes specific copying methods. Anything outside the scope of that levy does not legaize the act of copying, and is therefore covered by standard copyright law (which has been adjusted within the past decade to allow recovering for more than actual damages for copyright violations.)
#2: You have one 100GB partition and you get a power spike. Now you have to wait for the fsck to finish before you can troubleshoot the damage.
I'm not sure what kind of damage an unclean unmounting of a filesystem does, but the worst thing that I've gotten under NTFS is unreferenced space allocated as used appearing only on my system drive. This only counts filesystem errors - instances where data was not saved correctly because of the forcful dismount are not counted.
FAT, FAT32, EXT2 and other non-journaling filesystems are a different story. I usually get lost clusters in these cases, but received slightly more serious filesystem errors such as files being crosslinked (as a new file gets created, it overwrites data midway through another file.)
Slashdot Mirror
Want to know how quickly spyware accumulates on a shared family computer? You'll find out very quickly as soon as you discover your family clicks on every flashy thing.
This is also nothing compared to public computers used in cyber cafes. Unless the owner knows how to lock down their computers (some probably don't), you can expect multiple keyloggers to be grabbing passwords from the users.
While I should agree that the writing speed should always be at the speed of the burner, I seem to be in a unique case with my Lite-ON LTR-31223S 32x12x40x. When I attempt to write at the maximum speed of 32x, the attempt is denied (over max. speed) and throttled down to 20x. That rate causes the burner to slowly decelerate the CD as it is writing (and causing the CD to speed back up as it reaches somethreshold.) I'm not offhandedly sure what the optimal setting is, but I think it is around 12 or 8X.
It could be that I'm using cheap CDRs, but similar stories appear often enough that the "writing slower is better" is the one of the more common pieces of advice.
In my experience, CDs seem to degrade more quickly from other factors - mainly scratches. I have one commercial CD that has a strange scratch that penetrated both the label and data layers. A few more CDs had major scratches that caused portions to be unreadable (fixed after using a repair kit.)
CDRs aren't good either - I bought a 100-pack a few years ago, and still has plenty left. Just recently, I noticed that if I hold it up to my monitor, I can still see distinct text through the CD, whether it is a used portion or not. In addition, a light rub or something similar managed to pull off some of the silver and damaged a music track (analog music, thankfully.)
Because of the problems with CDs, I'm a little more liberal in making backups.
In any case, conventional memory requirements was beginning to be a little rediculous even after Windows 95 was released. Games were beginning to require 590K of memory for full functionality (or sometimes any) and it was almost always an extremely tight fit. There wasn't any excuse either since the target market for those games required at least a 386 to remain playable. (e.g. Master of Magic - could only get it running on a modern computer without sound. Haven't checked with VDMsound.)
The difference between having a seperate key for your house and car and remembering a variety of passwords is that one of them is owned by you, and that the other is remembered by you.
It is much easier to have something than it is to remember something, especially when it is normally a random composition. In most cases, a lot of people do not have anything similar to a password manager than as opposed to a standard keyring. As a result, they either have to write it down on a random piece of paper (which is much more easily lost than a keyring) or use a password that is much simpler than it should be (e.g. "11111111").
The problem is memorizing too many passwords -- every single web forum requires a password of 'X' characters long, with at least one capital letter , one number, etc. In practice, you cannot remember the password for every single account on the web, along for the username associated with it.
If there was just a few passwords that had to be remembered, than I'd be fine with it. Instead, I have to remember multiple passwords for the same network (login passwords and mail passwords weren't synced), along with passwords for my dial-up ISP, password for Slashdot, a password for Forumplanet, a password for New York "Free registration Required" Times, a password to login to my personal computer, and a password for every other website I have to visit. An average person can only remember so many passwords before they just give up and stick with something very simple.
Honestly, it looked a bit more like a monk, especially with the red lighting.
Whatever that person is, you should be able to find an atomic health at the same level (near the ceiling - find a switch to activate it.) You can also destroy the hanged body to reveal another atomic health. Sort of like a 2-in-1 deal.
If the developer wants to handle error checking later, the proper procedure is to place a "TODO" marker into a pseudo-error handling routine so that he can return to it later (after solving the rest of the problem.) Failing to do even that indicates that the developer hasn't even solved the basic problem in the first place.
I agree entirely.
The only problem is that the system makes it much harder than it should be to learn. While I'm not speaking in all cases, what you will read is a fairly common instance of how a school is like for those who are in a typical public school. I'll start off with elementry school:
- In my experience, elementry school places its focus on unnecessairy drawings to make reports look "pretty". Making pretty drwings takes away from time that can be spent on making actual content.
- Elementry school is also restrictive. In the Science fair at grade 5-6, the tasks at my school were assigned from a set of laminated task sheets (in orde to cut down on volcanos.) My assigned task was to make an optimal chocolate bar wrapper. Not only that, but one of the marking fields was "creativity", which isn't really possible with assigned tasks.
- Based on what I could tell, it seems that the schools want to teach students to be artistic. This does not work, as I have *ZERO* art skills (and as you know, doubling efforts in art will double the quality. Twice of nothing is still nothing.)
- You can't learn high school material in the early stages of elementry school. One of my parents tried to teach me algebra, but I could barely understand how it works. That made me forget about it for a while until I matured enough to absorb the material (at which point I jumped ahead by finishing the algebra book, only to be forced to wait again until I got access to the next level of math).
- Heard of GCF (Greatest Common Factor)? I learned a procedure to do it by looking at a diagram showing how it is done. However, I never understood that I managed to learn it incorrectly until highschool, whn I r4eceived a better textbook. (Most likely, it was caused by one of my learning disabilities at the time - by comprehension skills were not up to speed at the time.)
Junior High school is "slightly better":
- You actually begin to learn the structure of how English should be written, such as "subject" and "object". This, however, should be taught a bit earlier (and I never remembered seeing anything like that in Grade 6 - I only remember punctuation at that phase.)
- You begin to learn positive and negative integers. In direct contradiction that negative numbers don't exist in Grades 1-6.
- You get a bus pass to travel to and from school, which can be used for whatever travel you wish. But is it really that helpful?
And now high school:
- You get a choice of courses of what you want to learn, provided that scheduling is possible and tat the courses are available.
- My fild of expertise, Computer Prograaming/Science, was not easily available. The only thing I saw were VB programming, Delphi programming, and one OAC that looked like a computer-related course but was more orientated around presentation (and I was encouraged by my parents to take that for the sole purpose of entering University.)
- Outside of High school, you can learn allyou want in your field. However, you will reach a plateau as you do not yet have access to more advanced materials (e.g. Software Engineering if you are persuing programming).
- For secondary support fields (e.g. Math, Science and other stuff), you need to return the textbooks after completing the course. Whatever you studied will fade within the next year, as you cannot refresh your knowledge in the course.
I'd love to learn by myself, but I did not have the necessairy tools or resources to advance further than what was available. My only way to proceed was to finish minimum requirements to get a high school diploma (meaning I skipped the OACs and cut out my access to University) and enroll in a college course related to my field of interest.
I feel that the time spent in high school is more like a speed bump to slow things down. Very little of it was actually required in my field, including the English courses. Only the college level
For example, one review site rated Serious Sam: The First Encounter as 5/5-Stars, while also setting Serious Sam: The Second Encounter as 2/5 Stars - impling that the first game is better than the second. You can't find a more inconsistant review site than that.
Once I get broadband access and a erver with sufficient storage space, a small portion will be dedicated to review games. In those reviews, I will include the "waste of money" statements as I call them as I see them. If the producer complaines of a 50- rating, the next option is to be called as they are. In this instance, I will have another person to look for mistakes in the review and make the necessairy corrections (up or down. Usually, it would be down as further playing tends to uncover more repetitiveness or problems).
Futher complaints will result in the third and final option - the game is crap because I said it's crap.
However, the addons don't have to hit within the 30-degree arc - I find that on mission 2 and later, enemies have increased firing strengths meaning that you need all the firing spread you can get.
Actually, there is a slightly better option.
When any attached component takes a hit (0.1, may have been updated in 0.11), it should only whatever else was attached to it as opposed to the entire array. This could make the game easier than the author originally intended, and therefore could need compensation as well (e.g. reduce rate for bonus, or have bullets tunnel through your components.)
In my experience, I have found that a significant portion of the OSS software that I needed to use was a bit more complex than it could have been. When I needed to look up help on a command using the "man" command, I come up against one of several possibilities:
1. The manual page is there, and provides the needed information. Problem is solved.
2. The manual page is not there, but the documentation is visible within the program directory (or some other known location). Problem gets solved anyway.
3. The manual page is there, and provides the needed information. However, some text is superflous causing the info to be buried under other descriptions. Problem is solved after time is spent hunting.
4. The manual page is there, but under a name different from the progranm or in a location that is not otherwise expected.
5. The manual page is there, and does not provide the needed information. Either the feature is missing, or the command is undocumeneted.
6. The manual page is there, contains the needed information, but it is incorrect.
7. The manual page is not there at all.
While I have seen the equivalent for items 4-7 appear for the Win32/Propriatary software as well, it seems to occurr less often (but is generally more severe when they do appear). Granted, it could be that I selected the wrong OSS software pacakges and conincidently selected the right Windows packages, but minor documentation problems across several programs appear to be worse than a really bad documentation with one - especially when you are trying to get used to the software or operating system in question.
Religious blindness would probably refer to the VI vs. Emacs style of debates. (Can't comment too much, since I didn't RTFA.)
BTW, Project IGI has fairly good graphics - even though it uses a Framerate cap of 30 FPS. The only reason that it still looks good at such a low framerate is because it is steady value that does not flail around various values between adjecent frames.
Have you played a semi-modern First Person shooter at 640x480 on a 19" monitor? At this configuration, you *WILL* notice staircase effects found on contrasting edges, even on a flyby animation running at a steady 75 FPS. When you increase the resolution, the staircasing is still present but is harder to notice.
Usually, I either choose a resolution that is relativly high for the game (which some games aren't designed to do - objects on the screen require squinting at 1-inch away), or max out any detail setting available (including FSAA). This is the only way to confortably look at a game without having my eyes get snagged on an "edge" instead of an enemy.
Decreasing detail levels from the default isn't any better for improving framerate. By switching the display from what is intended to a more blurry state, you will get distracted by the extremely-low quality of the images.
BTW, I know from experience that hitting Escape to end a game permaturly and to load a previous one should be done sparengly. I have personally experienced cases where I would have reloaded a saved game just because I had one health point left, only to realize that I could pick up the unguarded healthpack just around the corner. (Then again, I have also experienced cases where I was running across large combat areas with only a few health points left.)
Besides, most players would want to see comments on how that damned child stopped me from eating the delicious frog-sufflee (which didn't appear, but other plotline information came instead).
I would consider that to be a bug with the game rather than a political issue. In most democratic-style of governments, people would have no problem allowing for retaliation against an attack from an enemy, even if there is some political resistance.
In the case with Civilization II, the senate always forces a peace treaty when a rival nation wants one, regardless of the circumstances. This is unrealistic in two means: first off, it ignores the reputation of the AI players (because AIs don't have that attribute - only human players). Secondly, it allows unprovoked attacks followed by an attempt at negotiation to force a treaty, repeated ad infinitum (same applies if an opponent has a Great Wall or United Nations.) The only way to counter attack is to dmaage your own rep (possibly causing a revolution as well).
Still, it was a better simulation than Civ I - where you could avoid forced peace declarations by not accepting an audience with the emmisary.
The poor quality argument is no longer valid once there are capabilities of recording TV at arbitrary times. However, most people either don't know how to record specific channels (via programmed VCR, since the manual gets lost), or don't have something similar to a TiVo. Even so, the selection of programs is still limited by the choice of channels you receive with your TV (worst case is analog antenna - limiting to whatever is broadcast in the local region and has significant signal degredation.)
That's nice logic, but it cannot change the fact that the plenty of unadulterated shit gives an impression that the quality of all programs drops. Nowadays, impressions of poor quality programming is the greatest barrier to accepting TV, especially when it is being trumped the widespread availablility of Internet access.
Right now, there are only a few shows available on TV (analog broadcast - the least expensive but most restrictive) that I would want to watch - mainly "This Hour Has 22 Minutes". The only problem is that other family members want to watch other TV shows that are on at the same time as my desired shows - "Joan of Acadia", and "*-ian Idol". Spending $200 on a PVR or something doesn't seem cost-effective when I'm just going for one or two confirmed shows.
For example, the LETS system does not directly use a currency but is still taxable. (Of course, I wouldn't recommend its implementation - it assumes the local area is a zero-sum economy, which doesn't work when it relies on importing supplies. The villages in the arctic Tundra are a good example. It's fix is to fallback on regular currency, but in that case, there's no point in using the system either.)
That's a completely different issue. In that case, the US can't charge tax since it doesn't have any economical interest in the forign purchase. While some countries will attempt to tax you anyway, they are not technically supposed to.
As soon as it is brought over the border, it is taxable since it is being imported into a country.
Being laid-off without cause generally requires a two weeks notice, or a payment for two weeks of work (although this does differ depending on your location, among other factors.) It is generally considered your work terminates on this date if the notification route is chosen.
When you perform a bad act after receiving the notice of termination, you can still get fired immediatly before your two weeks are up. This can be extremely rare, but is possible if you do something really bad.
This doesn't apply on the two-week payment route - in that case you are already dismissed and have no power in the company. Anything you do after receiving payment would get you fired would be burning your bridges and make it harder for you to get a future job.
Red Alert 1 -> Red Alert 2.
While Red Alert isn't as great as it could be, and while Red Alert 2 is quite popular, those two games are a great example among a significant group of people of a game turning sour.
You can't sell a game just by adding new maps to the original package. There is only one game that did this successfully - Doom. The later games that did this as well resorted to Expansion packs which are now more-or-less harder to find than the original itself (along with whatever "essential" content was included in that pack.)
Also, the engine used for Deus Ex: Invisible War was still the Unreal engine. The only difference is that it was a later version that supports more than just the plain PC platform.
The same can be said about BlueShift. That installment in Half-Life was a fairly unfufilling expansion pack that only contained a marginal amount of new content - new maps only. However bad it may be, BlueShift does not mean that Opposing Forces will remain just as bad. (The same is not true for Half-Life - if you don't like the base game, you won't like it's expansions.)
Your statement can also be stretched over to Dune II and Warcraft I: Since you can only select one unit at a time in these two games, later RTS games will suffer from the same feature.
When a software company is known to produce high-quality products, they are generally considerd to be good companies. If, however, a software company releases products that don't meet expectations, a bad reputation is formes. This results in an irrational dismissal of any games from that company, regardless of what merits can appear.
As an example, take a look at two old games: "Outpost", and "Outpost 2: Divided Destiny", both from Sierra. The massive failure from Outpost (caused by improper and incomplete implementation) caused the second one in the series to fail. If the first one wasn't terrible, Outpost 2 would have made much more sales than it did.
As for why people are blasting Clan Wars, it's most likely cuased by a reputation formed from DXIW failing to meet expectations. DXIW, in your eyes, does nothing wrong in the textbook sense - but the removal of certain immersive aspects prevented the game from meeting the user's requirements in one way or another. The most vocal part of the game's audicene claims (among other things) that the game placed too much focus on X-Box development, resulting in certain immersive features being removed because they could not confortably work on an X-Box controller.
The negative reactions on a future product are usually based around recent development patterns, and indicate a fear that their favourite game won't be as good as it could be. It's best to take these rational comments as a warning on how a game should not be developed, as they usually contain information on what to look out for.
Toggle-Crouch is better in games where crouching takes time, when there is a disadvantage appearing when you pop out of crouch (e.g. sudden but short loss of accurracy, or snapping out of scope), or when you are crouched for a significant portion of the game waiting for approaching enemies. This appears in games similar to the Rainbow Six series, but such games sometimes use hold-crouch instead.
What's even better than either of those two systems? Having both available.
If you knowlingly place anything in a publicly shared folder, then you are distributing it. This is no different than burning copies of music to the CD and giving them to friends. They are either both piracy or both legitimate, with no regards to different mediums of distribution (and as mentioned in the The "Blank CD-R Tax" FAQ, the levy does not legalize copies made for use other than the person making the copy.)
The "Blank CD-R Tax" only legalizes specific copying methods. Anything outside the scope of that levy does not legaize the act of copying, and is therefore covered by standard copyright law (which has been adjusted within the past decade to allow recovering for more than actual damages for copyright violations.)
I'm not sure what kind of damage an unclean unmounting of a filesystem does, but the worst thing that I've gotten under NTFS is unreferenced space allocated as used appearing only on my system drive. This only counts filesystem errors - instances where data was not saved correctly because of the forcful dismount are not counted.
FAT, FAT32, EXT2 and other non-journaling filesystems are a different story. I usually get lost clusters in these cases, but received slightly more serious filesystem errors such as files being crosslinked (as a new file gets created, it overwrites data midway through another file.)