You know, I'm not sure I've ever quite got the whole desktop metaphor. I've never really seen the point in the desktop itself. Windows, taskbars, menus etc - fine, but why do we need a special window (the desktop) that is always there behind the others but only has limited space?
Most people's desktops just seem to be a rather disorganised collection of shortcuts and temporary documents and people don't seem to get the fact that really this "desktop" is just a view on a folder (I'm talking about non expert users here obviously). It would help if Windows didn't forget where your desktop icons were when you do things like change res, but even so it just seems like a dumping ground.
Why do we need to be able to launch an app from the start menu, the desktop and the quick launch bar? Personally I use the start menu as a list of all the apps I've got plus I make a sub menu of the apps I use fairly regularly. The apps I use everyday go on the quick launch bar. I suppose I could use the desktop in the same way but since I tend to maximise my editor it's handy to have stuff on the taskbar so it doesn't get obscured.
For the same reasons, while I tried 3dtop and it ran nicely, I can't see the point. Maybe if I navigated round all my folders spatially and my files stayed where I put them in that 2d or 3d space I could begin to see the point (although I'd need a digital house maid!). As it stands I find an incontinuity between the spatial desktop and the list based files/folders in a file manager.
there is a game boy (color?) emulator for the GBA which people use with flash carts because it allows them to pause the unpausable, save state, etc, even though the system itself will play those games.
Not so they can play illegally downloaded roms then?
I don't believe in warez or any other illegal downloading of files but it does somehow seem worse to have the source code you've spent the last 5 years (or whatever it is now) working on leaked than to have people downloading warez copies of your game.
I guess the distinction comes in that if you download a warez copy of a game you've only got a free copy of something you could have bought whereas in this case people have got their hands on source code that under normal circumstances would never be made available to joe public.
This leak jeapodises the security of machines running half life 2, makes the game easier to crack, allows people to cheat in multiplayer more easily, could threaten Steam (anyone know if any steam code was in the leaked stuff), jeapodises Valve's agreements with middleware manufacturers (havok etc) and any licensing plans they have for the engine... This list goes on, this is definitely worse for Valve than normal warez.
That's not strictly true. Most games for ps2 these days are released on DVD because you can load faster off them than cd on ps2. It's easy to tell whether you game is on cd or dvd, the cd's are purple on the underside whereas the dvd's are kind of silver-gold colour (like normal dvd's) with ps2 watermarks if you look hard enough.
Dunno what amplitude is on, it's not out in europe yet but frequency was on cd here.
As an aside frequency is a brilliant game and I expect amplitude will be too.
Actually Sony put a copy of YaBASIC on the demo disc that came with the ps2 in Europe (when it was first launched, dunno if they still do) and many speculated that they did so to back up their claim that the ps2 is a computer.
This "shortcut" doesn't mean the game won't be frame-rate independent. Modern console's processors run at the same clock speed regardless of territory (and anyway they could just change the define for the PAL build if that wasn't the case).
The fact that they're bothering to work out how much time passed since last frame in seconds should give you a clue that they are concerned about frame rate independence. They'll most likely be using this time in all their calculations...
As far as I know there is no law governing how old you must be to own a knife - the restriction only applies to selling to under 16 year olds.
As for your friends buck knife, he should be ok owning it but its illegal for him to carry it if it has a fixed blade longer than 3.0 inches. I remember when I was a kid we went on a school trip to france and we were all in awe of a shop window displaying all sorts of knives and even cooler throwing stars! Not a good idea to be found with one of those by a teacher much less customs...
I found this site after a bit of googling that gives your more info on our knife laws.
Did you know that it's illegal to sell sharp objects to anyone under the age of 16 in the UK? Bizarrely this includes plastic knives, I know this because I used to work on a checkout and the cash register informs you when you scan a restricted item.
So knives are restricted, just not anywhere near as much as guns are.
Where I work we have key fobs that you can just keep in your pocket which unlock the door when you get near it. Not sure how they work but I know that the arcade machines and flourescent lights near the door mess with some of the frequencies used so we had to have a bunch of the tags changed...
Since these are detected whenever we go in or out the door the company have a very clear idea of the hours we work and interestingly enough also of our toilet habits since they're the other side of the door!
Thanks for the explanation, I couldn't work out what the original article was on about.
I'm still a bit confused though. When you're working out the colour towards the edge of the face surely you should start pulling in the colour from the next face (and it's texture) rather than parts of the texture for the current face that are outside the u,v's for that face - this is FullScreen AA after all. I guess I just don't understand multisampling FSAA.
PS2 definately has the edge on the current market because of its early release.
Is it really true that ps2 has the edge because of its early release? I think a major contributor to ps2's success (with both publishers and consumers - which obviously feed each other) has been reputation. Sony built a huge brand with playstation and people bought into that when the new machine came out. Think back to the dreamcast launch, no one was interested in it because they trusted Sony to blow Sega out of the water with PS2, with a combination of hype and brand loyalty Sony managed to convince customers to wait for the PS2 to come along before upgrading. Once the PS2 was out and people could finally see that it isn't that much more powerful than Dreamcast, it was too late - people weren't buying DC's so publishers weren't keen to support the platform, people see more games on PS2 so they buy that... What's to stop Sony doing this again with PS3?
The best hope for Nintendo is probably to continue to try to garner more third party support and shake that cutesy "toy" image, it needs some GTA's to break into the (older) mass market. As for when to release the console - yes slightly earlier might be better but only if they can give people a reason to buy. If people see Nintendo as a format that doesn't get many games or they buy the inevitable hype of the PS3 and XBox2 being much more powerful then they won't invest in the platform. Sega suffered tremendously with image problems compared to Sony; which machine would you buy, the next iteration of the most popular games machine available (Playstation) or the machine from a company who has a history of failed machines (Sega CD, 32X, Saturn)?
I agree, I live in the UK and everyone I know uses SMS all the time. Kids especially but even my Mum text's me fairly regularly. People use it when phone conversations would be inappropriate (lectures etc), for planning to meet up, changing arrangements at the last minute, chatting people up, gossiping, the list goes on...
I resented the tap tapping of text messages for a long time (I still can't understand it when I see a group of people sat in the pub essentially ignoring one another while they text their mates) but I use it a fair bit now. My usage is nothing compared to teenagers and girls of all ages though, it's their primary means of communications these days.
As for this IM thing, not only does it seem redundant over here since everyone has phones that they can use anywhere, there's also a chronically low broadband take up and there's no way people are going to leave their pc's connected over modem the whole time - too expensive...
The most bizarre thing was that they removed all the sponsership for cool spot in europe because 7-up isn't/wasn't advertised by cool spot over here and they didn't want to confuse the market.
We ended up with a pretty cool platformer with an unexplainable (to those that didn't know about American 7-up advertising) bonus section where you are suddenly transported to the inside of what appears to be a large green bottle of fizzy drink. I assume there where 7-up logos on that bottle in the American version?
As an aside 7-up was advertised by a guy called Fido Dido over here who spawned his own unrelated game...
Some interesting points and it really is a shame that everyone bought the ps2 hype and avoided dreamcast as a result. I remember telling a friend of a friend how cool the dreamcast was a few months after its release and he wouldn't listen to a word of it, just insisted that the ps2 would wipe the floor with it - even though he'd never seem a dc.
Still, the ps2 is more powerful than the dc (albeit not to the extent that everyone at first thought) and to compare the ps2 to the xbox using DOA2 as a yardstick is pretty unfair. DOA2 was a straight port from the dc (in fact the dc version looked a little better cos of the AA) and was rushed out in the first couple of months of ps2's life, a fairer comparison might be between GT3 and Project Gotham (xbos still wins but by a consderably smaller margin).
As for super mario 64 not being well received, I've never heard such rubbish, it was the first truly brilliant adaptation of a conventional genre into 3d and is still widely regarded as the worlds best 3d platformer (yes better than mario sunshine which I admit was a disappointement).
OK, so the submission makes it sound like none of us have heard of Krawtchouk because of cold war mentality alone but if you RTA you'll find that it attributes his anonymity to both the Soviet Unions treatment of him and his fellow scientists at the time as well as the the cold war mentality later...
The Ukrainian mathematician was, then, a victim of protracted amnesia on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Was he also a victim of the Cold War mentality? Until the end of the 1980s, Western mathematicians rarely cited his works. They named another polynomial, which Krawtchouk discovered, after a German mathematician.
The broken sword games were surprising in that they were good (and reasonably recent) graphic adventures that weren't made lucas arts. There's a new one of them coming out too, but it looks like it's moved away from the traditional point and click interface to direct control over the characters....
Looks interesting, unfortunately I'm having trouble with it.
The game runs ok, but no "liquid" ever appears. The idg0.log file says it can't find some doom95 sprites, I though it only used the hellraiser ones that came with it?
The post you replied to was pointing out that the GC is not just a kids machine because nintendo have allowed gore-fests like the resi evil games to be published (wouldn't have seen this back in the day when the blood had to be taken out of mortal kombat and sf2 on the snes!). If you reckon resi evil is a kids game then exactly what "adult" games do xbox and ps2 have that make you think they're for an older market?
To continue with the offtopic pad discussion, I agree, the controls are clunky in resident evil. It feels really weird on GC cos you can use the analogue stick but it still does turn and point, really messes with your head having digital controls on an analogue stick! The GC's tiny dpad doesn't help either. Unfortunately, because of the fixed cameras inherent in the resident evil design, they HAVE to stick with this control method. If you pushed the stick the direction you wanted to go then when the camera flicked to a reverse angle you'd suddenly find yourself going back the way you came!
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You know, I'm not sure I've ever quite got the whole desktop metaphor. I've never really seen the point in the desktop itself. Windows, taskbars, menus etc - fine, but why do we need a special window (the desktop) that is always there behind the others but only has limited space?
Most people's desktops just seem to be a rather disorganised collection of shortcuts and temporary documents and people don't seem to get the fact that really this "desktop" is just a view on a folder (I'm talking about non expert users here obviously). It would help if Windows didn't forget where your desktop icons were when you do things like change res, but even so it just seems like a dumping ground.
Why do we need to be able to launch an app from the start menu, the desktop and the quick launch bar? Personally I use the start menu as a list of all the apps I've got plus I make a sub menu of the apps I use fairly regularly. The apps I use everyday go on the quick launch bar. I suppose I could use the desktop in the same way but since I tend to maximise my editor it's handy to have stuff on the taskbar so it doesn't get obscured.
For the same reasons, while I tried 3dtop and it ran nicely, I can't see the point. Maybe if I navigated round all my folders spatially and my files stayed where I put them in that 2d or 3d space I could begin to see the point (although I'd need a digital house maid!). As it stands I find an incontinuity between the spatial desktop and the list based files/folders in a file manager.
Am I missing something?
there is a game boy (color?) emulator for the GBA which people use with flash carts because it allows them to pause the unpausable, save state, etc, even though the system itself will play those games.
Not so they can play illegally downloaded roms then?
I don't believe in warez or any other illegal downloading of files but it does somehow seem worse to have the source code you've spent the last 5 years (or whatever it is now) working on leaked than to have people downloading warez copies of your game.
I guess the distinction comes in that if you download a warez copy of a game you've only got a free copy of something you could have bought whereas in this case people have got their hands on source code that under normal circumstances would never be made available to joe public.
This leak jeapodises the security of machines running half life 2, makes the game easier to crack, allows people to cheat in multiplayer more easily, could threaten Steam (anyone know if any steam code was in the leaked stuff), jeapodises Valve's agreements with middleware manufacturers (havok etc) and any licensing plans they have for the engine... This list goes on, this is definitely worse for Valve than normal warez.
That's not strictly true. Most games for ps2 these days are released on DVD because you can load faster off them than cd on ps2. It's easy to tell whether you game is on cd or dvd, the cd's are purple on the underside whereas the dvd's are kind of silver-gold colour (like normal dvd's) with ps2 watermarks if you look hard enough.
Dunno what amplitude is on, it's not out in europe yet but frequency was on cd here.
As an aside frequency is a brilliant game and I expect amplitude will be too.
The game is on the DVD
Right! Kind of...
Actually Sony put a copy of YaBASIC on the demo disc that came with the ps2 in Europe (when it was first launched, dunno if they still do) and many speculated that they did so to back up their claim that the ps2 is a computer.
This "shortcut" doesn't mean the game won't be frame-rate independent. Modern console's processors run at the same clock speed regardless of territory (and anyway they could just change the define for the PAL build if that wasn't the case).
The fact that they're bothering to work out how much time passed since last frame in seconds should give you a clue that they are concerned about frame rate independence. They'll most likely be using this time in all their calculations...
As far as I know there is no law governing how old you must be to own a knife - the restriction only applies to selling to under 16 year olds.
As for your friends buck knife, he should be ok owning it but its illegal for him to carry it if it has a fixed blade longer than 3.0 inches. I remember when I was a kid we went on a school trip to france and we were all in awe of a shop window displaying all sorts of knives and even cooler throwing stars! Not a good idea to be found with one of those by a teacher much less customs...
I found this site after a bit of googling that gives your more info on our knife laws.
Did you know that it's illegal to sell sharp objects to anyone under the age of 16 in the UK? Bizarrely this includes plastic knives, I know this because I used to work on a checkout and the cash register informs you when you scan a restricted item.
So knives are restricted, just not anywhere near as much as guns are.
Where I work we have key fobs that you can just keep in your pocket which unlock the door when you get near it. Not sure how they work but I know that the arcade machines and flourescent lights near the door mess with some of the frequencies used so we had to have a bunch of the tags changed...
Since these are detected whenever we go in or out the door the company have a very clear idea of the hours we work and interestingly enough also of our toilet habits since they're the other side of the door!
Thanks for the explanation, I couldn't work out what the original article was on about.
I'm still a bit confused though. When you're working out the colour towards the edge of the face surely you should start pulling in the colour from the next face (and it's texture) rather than parts of the texture for the current face that are outside the u,v's for that face - this is FullScreen AA after all. I guess I just don't understand multisampling FSAA.
Because it's very cool to actually see your hardrive seeking.
How you can call the machine that played host to Super Mario 64, Goldeneye and Ocarina of Time a piece of shit is completely beyond me...
What's going on with slashdots subscriptions services these days?
PS2 definately has the edge on the current market because of its early release.
Is it really true that ps2 has the edge because of its early release? I think a major contributor to ps2's success (with both publishers and consumers - which obviously feed each other) has been reputation. Sony built a huge brand with playstation and people bought into that when the new machine came out. Think back to the dreamcast launch, no one was interested in it because they trusted Sony to blow Sega out of the water with PS2, with a combination of hype and brand loyalty Sony managed to convince customers to wait for the PS2 to come along before upgrading. Once the PS2 was out and people could finally see that it isn't that much more powerful than Dreamcast, it was too late - people weren't buying DC's so publishers weren't keen to support the platform, people see more games on PS2 so they buy that... What's to stop Sony doing this again with PS3?
The best hope for Nintendo is probably to continue to try to garner more third party support and shake that cutesy "toy" image, it needs some GTA's to break into the (older) mass market. As for when to release the console - yes slightly earlier might be better but only if they can give people a reason to buy. If people see Nintendo as a format that doesn't get many games or they buy the inevitable hype of the PS3 and XBox2 being much more powerful then they won't invest in the platform. Sega suffered tremendously with image problems compared to Sony; which machine would you buy, the next iteration of the most popular games machine available (Playstation) or the machine from a company who has a history of failed machines (Sega CD, 32X, Saturn)?
I agree, I live in the UK and everyone I know uses SMS all the time. Kids especially but even my Mum text's me fairly regularly. People use it when phone conversations would be inappropriate (lectures etc), for planning to meet up, changing arrangements at the last minute, chatting people up, gossiping, the list goes on...
I resented the tap tapping of text messages for a long time (I still can't understand it when I see a group of people sat in the pub essentially ignoring one another while they text their mates) but I use it a fair bit now. My usage is nothing compared to teenagers and girls of all ages though, it's their primary means of communications these days.
As for this IM thing, not only does it seem redundant over here since everyone has phones that they can use anywhere, there's also a chronically low broadband take up and there's no way people are going to leave their pc's connected over modem the whole time - too expensive...
The most bizarre thing was that they removed all the sponsership for cool spot in europe because 7-up isn't/wasn't advertised by cool spot over here and they didn't want to confuse the market.
We ended up with a pretty cool platformer with an unexplainable (to those that didn't know about American 7-up advertising) bonus section where you are suddenly transported to the inside of what appears to be a large green bottle of fizzy drink. I assume there where 7-up logos on that bottle in the American version?
As an aside 7-up was advertised by a guy called Fido Dido over here who spawned his own unrelated game...
Some interesting points and it really is a shame that everyone bought the ps2 hype and avoided dreamcast as a result. I remember telling a friend of a friend how cool the dreamcast was a few months after its release and he wouldn't listen to a word of it, just insisted that the ps2 would wipe the floor with it - even though he'd never seem a dc.
Still, the ps2 is more powerful than the dc (albeit not to the extent that everyone at first thought) and to compare the ps2 to the xbox using DOA2 as a yardstick is pretty unfair. DOA2 was a straight port from the dc (in fact the dc version looked a little better cos of the AA) and was rushed out in the first couple of months of ps2's life, a fairer comparison might be between GT3 and Project Gotham (xbos still wins but by a consderably smaller margin).
As for super mario 64 not being well received, I've never heard such rubbish, it was the first truly brilliant adaptation of a conventional genre into 3d and is still widely regarded as the worlds best 3d platformer (yes better than mario sunshine which I admit was a disappointement).
OK, so the submission makes it sound like none of us have heard of Krawtchouk because of cold war mentality alone but if you RTA you'll find that it attributes his anonymity to both the Soviet Unions treatment of him and his fellow scientists at the time as well as the the cold war mentality later...
The Ukrainian mathematician was, then, a victim of protracted amnesia on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Was he also a victim of the Cold War mentality? Until the end of the 1980s, Western mathematicians rarely cited his works. They named another polynomial, which Krawtchouk discovered, after a German mathematician.
The broken sword games were surprising in that they were good (and reasonably recent) graphic adventures that weren't made lucas arts. There's a new one of them coming out too, but it looks like it's moved away from the traditional point and click interface to direct control over the characters....
That's discrimination that is
Read the post and the article properly:
"Galileo is generally thought not to have dropped cannonballs from the Leaning Tower of Pisa" (experiment rank 2)
Although he did do the *other* experiment in the top ten, the one with the inclined plane (experiment rank 8)
"Young's double slit experiment was also a thought experiment" (experiment rank 1)
Although he did do the *other* experiment in the top ten the small obstacle in the path of a light-beam (experiment rank 5)
Defaults to right button to use gestures but I soon reconfigured to use the middle one....
Looks interesting, unfortunately I'm having trouble with it.
The game runs ok, but no "liquid" ever appears. The idg0.log file says it can't find some doom95 sprites, I though it only used the hellraiser ones that came with it?
To continue with the offtopic pad discussion, I agree, the controls are clunky in resident evil. It feels really weird on GC cos you can use the analogue stick but it still does turn and point, really messes with your head having digital controls on an analogue stick! The GC's tiny dpad doesn't help either. Unfortunately, because of the fixed cameras inherent in the resident evil design, they HAVE to stick with this control method. If you pushed the stick the direction you wanted to go then when the camera flicked to a reverse angle you'd suddenly find yourself going back the way you came!