I think you make a good point, but I'd also add that often its not just the crazy new maverick that is running amok and ignoring existing systems/strategies. Doing stuff 'properly' takes longer, and if you're working in a development environment you often get deadlines that can only be described as 'unrealistic'.
Its a trade off - do you sacrifice ease of maintenance in return for just getting the job done quickly? I guess it depends how long you're staying at the company:)
I think its more that people don't want portable video. Portable TVs have been around forever, and I've probably seen only two or three people ever with one of these things.
The only place portable video would be useful for me is on public transport, which I don't catch that often. I'm not going to go to the park to watch video. But I will go to the park listening to music.
Simply, you can't watch video while you're doing something else like you can with listening to music.
I think that's a bit unfair (as many others have already commented), and I agree with her points. Going to Kazaa's front page yields this as (what is to me at least) the prime function of this program: "Search for and download music, movies, games, software, images and documents."
If you're a casual computer user that doesn't read Slashdot or pay much attention to technical news, what are you going to think when you read that?
To the point that you'd pay a significant surcharge to already be at your destination, asleep in your hotel room.
Amen. I generally only travel for holidays, but I frickin' hate losing so much time in a cramped econo-seat. If I was travelling OS for business regularly, I'd go mad.
If I could get overseas in half (or less) the time for 2x as much, I'd be pretty damn tempted to pay the extra money. For me to get to LA/SF from Australia, its like a 20 hour journey (including customs, security, fingerprinting, etc) - 14 hours of which is sitting on a plane.
I wonder if they know that if they were playing a PC FPS, they'd get all those levels for free. And keep getting them for free. And that they could make their own levels. For free.
Long live PC gaming and the mapping and modding communities that keep them alive and vibrant!
As with just about every 'top' list, it doesn't tell you what it is ranking these games by. Number of units sold? Gross revenue? Most profitable?
Without even reading it, I'm going to assume its totally subjective. I'm going to spare myself reading the comments, which I assume will be "What! Why isn't [Game X] included?!" and "You jerks, [Game A] is wayyy better than [Game B]".
Subjective top x lists are pointless, unless you're a rabid fanboy prepared to soak up the opinions of basically anyone like a dry sponge. You can argue that IGN is a reputable game site that is worthy of your respect, but seriously, there is no way that they're going to anywhere near the same 100 games that I, or anyone else, probably would.
If only FireFox would support the mouse-wheel inside multi-line text boxes (like the one I'm typing text into right now).
Hmm - it works for me fine in multiline textboxes - unless you mean for moving the cursor. Like, if I end up with more-than-size-of-textbox-worth-of-text, I get the scrollbars on the textbox then can scroll up and down fine with the mouse wheel.
If only the drop-down list box for FireFox's address bar made ANY sense what-so-ever.
I think, but am not sure, that it puts the ones you visit more regularly at the top of the list. This works better for me most of the time (I generally type my URLs into the address bar rather than use bookmarks) but I can certainly see why some people would rather have the most recently used at the top.
Heh, with the exception of "Dynamic security protection", that just reads like Firefox's feature list. Tabbed browsing, 'inline' search from address bar, support for RSS feeds, transparent PNG support... revolutionary!
I love this quote from the article (under one of the images): "Scientists think that, one day, robots could fool us into believing they were human"
Man, those scientists! Always coming up with wacky, far out ideas. I can't think of anyone else that has ever suggested that, one day, robots could fool us into believing they were human.
An EXCELLENT point (oh, mod points, whereforart though so I can mod you up).
For the last 12 months, I have been investigating starting an online radio station here in Australia. Battling through the licensing has proven to be a total showstopper - I need a license from APRA, the governing body that is responsible for licensing the musical works, and a license from the copyright holder of a particular work.
Now, APRA's license is a 'blanket' license and covers all of their 'members'. When you ask what their members are, you get told that they're the major labels, and you can search their works via a web front end to their database. However, they said not all the stuff they represent is in the database - but that 'most' stuff is. What this means for artists whose music I'd want to play that isn't covered is clear - they won't get any cut of the revenue.
That's not even the painful thing - the REALLY painful thing is to get a license for each album I want, I need to get permission from the copyright holder. I picked a couple of albums at random and sent off a few emails and made a few phone calls (after going through a hassle of reading the back of the CD trying to find which of the many-mentioned companies was actually the copyright holder). I got exactly no emails back and no phone calls returned.
At this point, I gave up.
Running a legitimate online radio station in Australia appears to be, at the very least, an extremely difficult, time consuming procedure - because its ridiculously difficult to get permission to use their copyrighted works.
I think you should reread my post - it totally delivered on the scary part for me. Probably because I played it 'properly' - dark room, surround sound, nothing else in the room, hardest difficulty, not save/reload whoring.
I would argue that the vast majority of FPS players simply don't have the patience or energy (or interest in horror games) to play it like that.
I'm not sure if I'm reading it right, but according to this study (linked in someone's comment above in this thread, "Production photovoltaic module payback is significantly less than its expected lifetime."
Reading the summary and seeing a comment like "Maybe it was Counter-Strike. Maybe Unreal Tournament. Something happened to the genre between Quake III and Doom 3, and Id somehow didn't take it into account" made my eyes glaze over and almost started moving to the next article. I got sick of defending Doom 3 from people who didn't "get it" before the game had even come out.
First of all, the comment above is ridiculous - saying Doom 3 is anything like Quake 3, CS, or UT is just an inherently flawed statement. The only thing they have in common is that they're first person shooters. Doom 3 is clearly exclusively a single player game, and ALL those other games are (for all intents and purposes) multiplayer games.
The rest of the article was just about the fact that he got bored fighting zombies. Zoid pointed out the same thing in his comment. Sure, I can see that. But Doom 3 was always a horror game. Everything id said on the way to release was that it was a horror game. It was about being scared. I don't really have much sympathy for those that bought it expecting anything else, just like I have no sympathy for every other gamer that buys a game without excercising any critical judgement about it (ie, the majority) - Battlefield 2 is another example of this, a horribly busted game that people have bought by the hundreds of thousands.
Anyway, these articles are everywhere and (imo) they're always the same - they're all people complaining because they didn't appreciate the game for what it was - a pure horror game. I played the whole thing with the lights out in a small room with surround sound set up (fortunately my sister had just moved out so I was able to steal her room and use it exclusively for a Doom room the entire game). I spent the whole time jumping out of my chair. Sure, I've killed enough zombies in my time as well, but it was about BEING SCARED.
... the OFLC (Office of Film and Literature Classification) has just changed the classification markings system for games and movies - they now both use the same markings and have the same rating systems (though video games don't have a 'restricted' rating yet, which means anything harsher than an MA15+ gets refused classification - but that's a whole different kettle of fish).
Part of the reason for doing this was to make it more obvious for parents when buying games for their kids that they might not be suitable. I guess its for those stupid parents that don't actually excercise critical thinking when they pick up a box of Deathstalker V: The Bloodening. Now they can clearly see its got a red sticker on it and will (theoretically) be more inclined to realise that it is Bad For Kids, because they remember that the red sticker is for grown-ups, because they saw it at the movies.
I think its a good idea and hopefully those parents that would otherwise blindly buy their kids unsuitable titles will think about it a little bit more.
I watched the first episode and was immediately not grabbed. My flatmate watched it with me and decided more or less instantly that he didn't like it, and went back to this PC to play WoW before it was even half way through, constantly remarking that he couldn't believe I was still watching it.
My attitude was, "surely it has to get better". I gave it a chance, if it had even picked up a little bit I'd be going to see the movie and no doubt spending money on it - but it didn't. At least I didn't just watch five minutes of it and then ditch it! I gave it a pretty reasonable chance and can explain in pretty good detail why I didn't like it and for what reasons.
But the thing that struck me as the most improbable was the "loot" they stole or smuggled. OK the meds were probably pricey but COWS and energy bars!? What the fuck is that all about.
haha, yeh, that was something else that I forgot. I remember watching that episode wondering what they were talking about, and it gets to the end - and they're RUSTLING CATTLE!@#!
After reading the overwhelmingly positive ejaculations about this series on Slashdot and a few other places, I thought I'd check it out. It was described as a 'space western' in one thread I read and that was the phrase that stuck in my mind.
When I heard the phrase 'space western', I imagined that it was a bit more metaphorical - like, it was the Space Rush days and everyone was getting out into space, it was rough and tumble, and all that jazz.
However, I was (somewhat unpleasantly) surprised to see that it was simply that - a western, set in space. That was pretty much it.
I didn't dig the main character; I thought he was bland and boring. I hated the swearing in Chinese; after watching Deadwood I find just about everything else is completely boring if its sanitised for a G rating. The sexual tension between the main character and the 'companion' is like, straight out of a highschool TV series, dude. The only common thread throughout the whole story was the doctor and his sister, which didn't progress enough to keep me interested. Token lesbian scene was a bit lame, too.
Special effects were nice and some of the scripts were vaguely entertaining; the character of Jane (Jayne?) was the only one that I really WANTED to keep seeing.
Anyway, I'm sure this comment won't see the light of day as it seems everyone else on Slashdot digs it, but that's my 2c.
Is this the first time they've done a release with MD5s? I'm not sure, but I seem to remember all the last releases they've included MD5s. Now it looks like they're just releasing SHA1 hashes.
Be nice if they included both, but I guess the time is nigh to move to SHA, or something.
I think a lot more would drop out because they are lazy, or because they get a job and find working is more interesting or challenging (and makes them money, which can be exchanged for goods and services and beer).
Its been eleven years since I started doing my degree - and I'm still doing it. Hopefully only another semester to go. I started uni with no idea about what the hell it was or what I wanted to do. My first semester I ended up doing seven subjects, which was too much, especially because Doom had just came out and I spent all my time at the labs playing that instead.
After the first semester, I was already over uni. I'd started doing biology, and decided I didn't like it. 2nd semester, I did four subjects from various disciplines and didn't hate it as much, but the next year I got a job. Did that for 10 months, went back to uni for 6 months, then get a much more interesting job. Since then I've been on and off doing it part time.
I have always enjoyed working more than studying. I've been lucky enough to get some cool jobs (eg, working in a games company) so it was hands down more interesting than uni - I'd learn more in a week at work about software design, computer networking, business, etc, than I would in a semester at uni.
... that whenever a post like this appears, the number of people polled appears in the summary?
If its "60% of the US believes in aliens" and only 200 people were polled, I'm obviously not going to read the article. It'd be stupid and a waste of my time. If it was something like, 100,000,000 people, then I'd probably be vaguely interested.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you make a good point, but I'd also add that often its not just the crazy new maverick that is running amok and ignoring existing systems/strategies. Doing stuff 'properly' takes longer, and if you're working in a development environment you often get deadlines that can only be described as 'unrealistic'.
:)
Its a trade off - do you sacrifice ease of maintenance in return for just getting the job done quickly? I guess it depends how long you're staying at the company
I think its more that people don't want portable video. Portable TVs have been around forever, and I've probably seen only two or three people ever with one of these things.
The only place portable video would be useful for me is on public transport, which I don't catch that often. I'm not going to go to the park to watch video. But I will go to the park listening to music.
Simply, you can't watch video while you're doing something else like you can with listening to music.
I think that's a bit unfair (as many others have already commented), and I agree with her points. Going to Kazaa's front page yields this as (what is to me at least) the prime function of this program: "Search for and download music, movies, games, software, images and documents."
If you're a casual computer user that doesn't read Slashdot or pay much attention to technical news, what are you going to think when you read that?
If I could get overseas in half (or less) the time for 2x as much, I'd be pretty damn tempted to pay the extra money. For me to get to LA/SF from Australia, its like a 20 hour journey (including customs, security, fingerprinting, etc) - 14 hours of which is sitting on a plane.
I wonder if they know that if they were playing a PC FPS, they'd get all those levels for free. And keep getting them for free. And that they could make their own levels. For free.
Long live PC gaming and the mapping and modding communities that keep them alive and vibrant!
As with just about every 'top' list, it doesn't tell you what it is ranking these games by. Number of units sold? Gross revenue? Most profitable?
Without even reading it, I'm going to assume its totally subjective. I'm going to spare myself reading the comments, which I assume will be "What! Why isn't [Game X] included?!" and "You jerks, [Game A] is wayyy better than [Game B]".
Subjective top x lists are pointless, unless you're a rabid fanboy prepared to soak up the opinions of basically anyone like a dry sponge. You can argue that IGN is a reputable game site that is worthy of your respect, but seriously, there is no way that they're going to anywhere near the same 100 games that I, or anyone else, probably would.
I think I heard somewhere that freedom costs a buck oh five. Although I think that was US currency.
I think, but am not sure, that it puts the ones you visit more regularly at the top of the list. This works better for me most of the time (I generally type my URLs into the address bar rather than use bookmarks) but I can certainly see why some people would rather have the most recently used at the top.
Heh, with the exception of "Dynamic security protection", that just reads like Firefox's feature list. Tabbed browsing, 'inline' search from address bar, support for RSS feeds, transparent PNG support... revolutionary!
I love this quote from the article (under one of the images): "Scientists think that, one day, robots could fool us into believing they were human"
Man, those scientists! Always coming up with wacky, far out ideas. I can't think of anyone else that has ever suggested that, one day, robots could fool us into believing they were human.
SARAH CONNOR?!
That AliensTC mod was one of the best damn gaming experiences I ever had.
An EXCELLENT point (oh, mod points, whereforart though so I can mod you up).
For the last 12 months, I have been investigating starting an online radio station here in Australia. Battling through the licensing has proven to be a total showstopper - I need a license from APRA, the governing body that is responsible for licensing the musical works, and a license from the copyright holder of a particular work.
Now, APRA's license is a 'blanket' license and covers all of their 'members'. When you ask what their members are, you get told that they're the major labels, and you can search their works via a web front end to their database. However, they said not all the stuff they represent is in the database - but that 'most' stuff is. What this means for artists whose music I'd want to play that isn't covered is clear - they won't get any cut of the revenue.
That's not even the painful thing - the REALLY painful thing is to get a license for each album I want, I need to get permission from the copyright holder. I picked a couple of albums at random and sent off a few emails and made a few phone calls (after going through a hassle of reading the back of the CD trying to find which of the many-mentioned companies was actually the copyright holder). I got exactly no emails back and no phone calls returned.
At this point, I gave up.
Running a legitimate online radio station in Australia appears to be, at the very least, an extremely difficult, time consuming procedure - because its ridiculously difficult to get permission to use their copyrighted works.
I think you should reread my post - it totally delivered on the scary part for me. Probably because I played it 'properly' - dark room, surround sound, nothing else in the room, hardest difficulty, not save/reload whoring.
I would argue that the vast majority of FPS players simply don't have the patience or energy (or interest in horror games) to play it like that.
I'm not sure if I'm reading it right, but according to this study (linked in someone's comment above in this thread, "Production photovoltaic module payback is significantly less than its expected lifetime."
Reading the summary and seeing a comment like "Maybe it was Counter-Strike. Maybe Unreal Tournament. Something happened to the genre between Quake III and Doom 3, and Id somehow didn't take it into account" made my eyes glaze over and almost started moving to the next article. I got sick of defending Doom 3 from people who didn't "get it" before the game had even come out.
First of all, the comment above is ridiculous - saying Doom 3 is anything like Quake 3, CS, or UT is just an inherently flawed statement. The only thing they have in common is that they're first person shooters. Doom 3 is clearly exclusively a single player game, and ALL those other games are (for all intents and purposes) multiplayer games.
The rest of the article was just about the fact that he got bored fighting zombies. Zoid pointed out the same thing in his comment. Sure, I can see that. But Doom 3 was always a horror game. Everything id said on the way to release was that it was a horror game. It was about being scared. I don't really have much sympathy for those that bought it expecting anything else, just like I have no sympathy for every other gamer that buys a game without excercising any critical judgement about it (ie, the majority) - Battlefield 2 is another example of this, a horribly busted game that people have bought by the hundreds of thousands.
Anyway, these articles are everywhere and (imo) they're always the same - they're all people complaining because they didn't appreciate the game for what it was - a pure horror game. I played the whole thing with the lights out in a small room with surround sound set up (fortunately my sister had just moved out so I was able to steal her room and use it exclusively for a Doom room the entire game). I spent the whole time jumping out of my chair. Sure, I've killed enough zombies in my time as well, but it was about BEING SCARED.
... the OFLC (Office of Film and Literature Classification) has just changed the classification markings system for games and movies - they now both use the same markings and have the same rating systems (though video games don't have a 'restricted' rating yet, which means anything harsher than an MA15+ gets refused classification - but that's a whole different kettle of fish).
Part of the reason for doing this was to make it more obvious for parents when buying games for their kids that they might not be suitable. I guess its for those stupid parents that don't actually excercise critical thinking when they pick up a box of Deathstalker V: The Bloodening. Now they can clearly see its got a red sticker on it and will (theoretically) be more inclined to realise that it is Bad For Kids, because they remember that the red sticker is for grown-ups, because they saw it at the movies.
I think its a good idea and hopefully those parents that would otherwise blindly buy their kids unsuitable titles will think about it a little bit more.
I watched the first episode and was immediately not grabbed. My flatmate watched it with me and decided more or less instantly that he didn't like it, and went back to this PC to play WoW before it was even half way through, constantly remarking that he couldn't believe I was still watching it.
My attitude was, "surely it has to get better". I gave it a chance, if it had even picked up a little bit I'd be going to see the movie and no doubt spending money on it - but it didn't. At least I didn't just watch five minutes of it and then ditch it! I gave it a pretty reasonable chance and can explain in pretty good detail why I didn't like it and for what reasons.
After reading the overwhelmingly positive ejaculations about this series on Slashdot and a few other places, I thought I'd check it out. It was described as a 'space western' in one thread I read and that was the phrase that stuck in my mind.
When I heard the phrase 'space western', I imagined that it was a bit more metaphorical - like, it was the Space Rush days and everyone was getting out into space, it was rough and tumble, and all that jazz.
However, I was (somewhat unpleasantly) surprised to see that it was simply that - a western, set in space. That was pretty much it.
I didn't dig the main character; I thought he was bland and boring. I hated the swearing in Chinese; after watching Deadwood I find just about everything else is completely boring if its sanitised for a G rating. The sexual tension between the main character and the 'companion' is like, straight out of a highschool TV series, dude. The only common thread throughout the whole story was the doctor and his sister, which didn't progress enough to keep me interested. Token lesbian scene was a bit lame, too.
Special effects were nice and some of the scripts were vaguely entertaining; the character of Jane (Jayne?) was the only one that I really WANTED to keep seeing.
Anyway, I'm sure this comment won't see the light of day as it seems everyone else on Slashdot digs it, but that's my 2c.
That's a problem?!
I see it and go, "great, more awesome free services that I don't have to pay for and all I have to put up with are a couple of ads on my screen!"
Is this the first time they've done a release with MD5s? I'm not sure, but I seem to remember all the last releases they've included MD5s. Now it looks like they're just releasing SHA1 hashes.
Be nice if they included both, but I guess the time is nigh to move to SHA, or something.
I think a lot more would drop out because they are lazy, or because they get a job and find working is more interesting or challenging (and makes them money, which can be exchanged for goods and services and beer).
Its been eleven years since I started doing my degree - and I'm still doing it. Hopefully only another semester to go. I started uni with no idea about what the hell it was or what I wanted to do. My first semester I ended up doing seven subjects, which was too much, especially because Doom had just came out and I spent all my time at the labs playing that instead.
After the first semester, I was already over uni. I'd started doing biology, and decided I didn't like it. 2nd semester, I did four subjects from various disciplines and didn't hate it as much, but the next year I got a job. Did that for 10 months, went back to uni for 6 months, then get a much more interesting job. Since then I've been on and off doing it part time.
I have always enjoyed working more than studying. I've been lucky enough to get some cool jobs (eg, working in a games company) so it was hands down more interesting than uni - I'd learn more in a week at work about software design, computer networking, business, etc, than I would in a semester at uni.
Is it just me, or are the DVD ISO filenames the same as the (first two) filenames for the CDROM ISOs?
... that whenever a post like this appears, the number of people polled appears in the summary?
If its "60% of the US believes in aliens" and only 200 people were polled, I'm obviously not going to read the article. It'd be stupid and a waste of my time. If it was something like, 100,000,000 people, then I'd probably be vaguely interested.