You may be onto something. I have never had cable, and I have broadband with Time Warner (used to be something else, but they got bought out). The bill is about thirty bucks and I do not pay for cable, but almost every day around 00:30-01:30, I lose connection for sometimes an hour at a time.
Why would you want one? We have watches working off the constant motion of our body/arm/wrist/whatever. Mine takes a few days before it winds down. I think that anyone that stays immobile for that long will not be doing so great in respect of body heat, either.
You definitely have a point about laptops. I use mine mostly with the trackpad, but when I can, I plug in the mouse. And if people are buying laptops as desktop replacements, they probably will also buy a mouse to use while gaming, drawing, or even working with Office. Can you click and drag reliably with a trackpad? I know I can not. And I have lately grown used to six mouse buttons while programming. Cutting, pasting, reformatting, compiling without running - I have bound all these, and unless I'm in emacs, I use them all the time.
Honestly, I do not remember everything. I do not mean that I forgot it in the year since, but that I was already forgetting it by the time I got in the harbor - it took about two hours to paddle back and I was really beat up.
The one for Poseidon involved washing all the blood so that it fell in the ocean as opposed to the kayak. That one I performed fully, before I realized that I was not quite awake (falling in while doing it helped me awake, that's for damn sure). I know that I messed up with Athena, because I did not recognize her, and called her by the wrong name, but that she forgave me... Damn, I'm kind of ashamed of actually typing this, but I actually did perform everything that I remembered.
I've had one hallucination, without any grief or drugs. I think stress is enough.
I was kayaking nears rocks, surfing very high waves, lost my kayak, and spent 15 minutes in the surf, hitting rocks multiple times. I got out, retrieved my kayak, launched, and paddled to a place where I could relax... then I had a pretty long and elaborate hallucination.
It involved three-four deities (Tangra, Athena, Poseidon and the Lady) and the appropriate sacrifices I should perform for my pretty damn miraculous survival. I'm an atheist, and I cannot help but think that this is how religions get started.
That article is just stupid. Because an iPhone buzzes and blinks as you shake it, and because the Wii interface detects your waving your hands, the days of the mouse are numbered?! Riiiiight.
There is nothing that comes close to the mouse when you need to point very precisely somewhere, while retaining the ability to quickly issue a number of distinct commands... without too much effort. For some applications, touch sensitive screens, motion detectors, facial recognition, etc... may be better. Guess what, joysticks and light guns also have their uses. But at least as far as I know, there isn't a device that threatens the mouse as of today.
At home, I still use my "made in UK" IBM keyboard from '93, and I still have my first Logitech three button mouse, which I moved to my laptop once I switched to a Razer Diamondback for gaming.
But once I got used to the Diamondback at home, I switched my work mouse as well. The extra buttons are handy for cut/paste/search/switch-two-words/reformat-block... Also, the Diamondback can be used at MUCH higher sensitivity, probably because of the higher resolution it supports. The Mouseman was great, but I would not go back.
It's a personal preference. I loved the original Call of Duty. I played on the highest difficulty, no healing packs, and restarted the level if I died. Killing those tanks on the church level meant something, and so did surviving the Russian levels. I enjoyed that game like no other FPS, and it stayed on my PCs for years. I think that the PC I got last August is the first one that does not have it installed.
I tried the sequel, and it offered NO FUCKING WAY to play the way I liked it. You are grazed by a bullet, or struck by a whole burst as you dash from cover to cover, and IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. I never finished a level, and would not dream of buying anything from that franchise.
You hit the nail on the head, but you must understand than the people who make the decisions for a developer of ANY size are NOT interested in "making a living". They was to make as much money as possible, and thus have absolutely no interest in catering to the original fans.
One-two man shops can afford to make niche games for their rabid fans. I'm a big fan of Dominions (Illwinter - two guys), Geneforge (Spiderweb - one guy), Mount and Blade (man and wife) I love their games, buy every new release, and get exactly what I expect. But these guys are not getting rich, nor really trying to. Their graphics are at least five years behind the curve, their engines are worse than what I could built in an year, and their games are not selling enough to support more than a few people.
A company that can produce a AAA title needs dozens of millions. They cannot afford to go for anything but the lowest common denominator. And most of such games fail. Serves them right. The one-two men shops release games faithful to the franchise, and are assured a welcoming audiance... of a few thousands at best. I have no idea how new people get hooked up.
Actually here is how you should get hooked up: (I'm linking to demos)
Dominions A insanely complex, turn based, fantasy strategy. Crappy graphics, retarded AI. Awesome multiplayer, if you are willing to play a game that can take a few months to resolve itself, and if your self-esteem take accept that each game produces one winner out of up to sixty players. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwinter/DOM3/DOM3_page.html
Geneforge/Exile/Avernum Old style RPGs with an extremely involved story, very detailed multiple endings - the kind you can replay a dozen times if you can imagine a dozen characters with different morals. http://www.spidweb.com/geneforge3/index.html
Mount and Blade First person slasher. The one and only mounted combat simulator that reaches for the right feel. As someone who has used a saber from a horse, and trying to shoot a bow, I can tell you it does an incredible job. It is ngreat at modeling hand to hand combat and archery on foot as well, but that's been done. http://www.taleworlds.com/mb_download.html
Sure, you can try playing nice, and you may manage to get people to hate you less. But playing nice also involves being less greedy, so you will be letting them have more money while they still hate you.
Which is why there is a very effective and history proven way to get less people to hate you - kill them off. It is easy when you are (still) the strongest, and when you are (more and more) empowered by self-righteousness and patriotism. Oh, and not forget the sense of historical inevitability. I always wondered what happened to the heap of self-justifying propaganda we had amassed back in the Warsaw Pact. I guess it got translated into English.
# PC-CD products: $13.00 USD # PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox, or Xbox 360 products: $20.00 USD # Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, or Sony PSP products: $15.00 USD # Sony PlayStation products: $15.00 USD # Nintendo Gameboy, Gameboy Color, or Gameboy Advanced products: $15.00 USD # Jewel Case Classics products: $7.50 USD # Manual (Documentation) replacement: $5.00 USD
More than I expected, but less than it could have been.
There's Spiderweb software, who makes RPGs. Incredible story, multiple paths and approaches to problems - where being a power hungry, racist, ruthless and selfish bastard actually works, and gives you an ending that not only makes sense, but is pleasing to that kind of character.
No DRM to speak off, not even a CD requirement. But the games' tech is solidly early nineties. Still, Spiderweb's games are incredibly engrossing, and every time I play through the end of one of the series, I wish the next sequel were already out.
If you like turn based PRG and great stories, and do not mind graphics that make Baldur's Gate look fancy, check it out.
What the Hell are you smoking? Cell-phones in Bulgaria have Cyrilics by default. I would be amazed to learn that Russian cellphones don't. Furthermore, text messages are widely used in China. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that these messages are in Chinese.
Yes, it is true that many European languages are adapting to Latin and ASCII. Hell, even people from countries that are still holding will transcribe their language with Latin letters. But at least in Bulgaria it is considered bad form, and many websites will automatically remove posts that use Latin transcription.
Convenience is important, and one of the next generations will probably stick the last nail in the coffin of Greek, Cyrilics, etc. alphabets. But the problem is hardly a technological one.
Damn right! Which is why they are getting ripped off by games like Dawn of War, which have stolen pretty much everything but the graphics (I guess they could not do bright and cartoony well enough)
Do these people have any shame?! Timing the release of Dawn of War II to profit from the buzz around Starcraft II!
Easy. I'm one. I do not say 'God damn it', or 'Go to Hell', but I use 'demons take you/it'.
That does not mean that I believe any more in demons than I believe in gods. But in my language, the quasi-religious swearwords are the mild ones. When we get really angry, we reach for imaginative sexual imagery.
My gaming PC has XP Pro and boots in 17 seconds. NOT Embedded, Pro. I have disabled a few services, and I am fooling around with IP settings (the PC starts with a fixed address, talks to my main PC, and only later gets the settings that allow it to get on the Internet)
Right. And any computer will get it right in 50% of the cases. Don't you see the problem with that? The answer cannot be a simple yes/no, nor even an integer from N to M.
Lazy Larry skipped a number. It's been a while, so I do not remember which. Probably four, as I am drawing a blank for the plot. Yes, I'm that pathetic, I remember Lazy Larry's plots:-)
> For those of us old enough to remember, officer Frank > Serpico (of movie fame) exposed their corruption in > he 70's and was gunned down by officers for it.
There is such a thing as too old to remember:-) Didn't Serpico work in New York City?
Of course, most, if not all, large organizations are subject to corruption. And I do not know about you, but I would rather have the LAPD in charge, corrupt as it may be, as opposed to a number of criminal gangs in a shifting equilibrium.
The displacement is just 2.5 liter, and as you guessed it, it's turbo'd. There are modifications to the intercooler and turbo, as well something you may consider cheating: the ability to select between three different modes that change the air/fuel ratio, the throttle mapping, even the assumed octane number. I am a lot more of a computer geek than a car geek. I spent a lot more time (but not money) playing with the chip, sensors, mappings, limit conditions and fuel ratios than with the true hardware mods.
The result is that my car can switch on the fly between fuel efficiency and performance. Also, with a fuel change (to 95+), a cold reset (so it forgets the months it's been running on crappy CA gas), and a switch to the third mode... lets say it does well enough to make me forget the money I burned and the warranty I voided:-)
And the 38mpg is my absolute best - almost no city driving involved, and no traffic on the I5. In the city, I have a HARD time approaching 20mpg, with super conservative shifting. On the other hand, Vegas and back with three passengers and one tank of gas is not a problem.
(Yeah, the cold reset requirement is a disgrace that needs fixing. I'll get to it one day)
I have a 460hp (modded) car that got 38mpg on a LA-San Diego round trip. At the same time, it gets about 2mpg at full throttle and top speed. There is nothing wrong with modern engines, but if you have a ton of power and habitually use it, you will pay in fuel.
And do not forget, modern cars are heavier because of safety requirements, noise reduction materials, power everything, air conditioners, etc...
Mostly, neither have I, recently. The last time I bought SCSI drives was when the 15K were released. Still, all three of my PCs have SCSI drives in them. They last forever, and transfer them from PC to PC. XP floored me by autodetecting them.:-)
By the way, in one of the PCs, one of the drives whines like a jet turbine on take off. But it's a mirror, so I am waiting for it to kneel over.
Serial ports are not obsolete. I work at a company with quite a few million dollars worth of CNC machine tools, robotic cells, and assembly lines, and all of the equipment is controlled or updated through DB9 or DB25 serial ports. Yes, the modern stuff comes with RJ45 (Ethernet) ports. But the serial is always there, and as usually there is one PC per building controlling all the equipment, it's always the serial that gets used.
Furthermore, all the scanning equipment, and all the heavy duty label printers use serial ports. Once again, we could buy USB ones, but we do not want to change anything that we do not have to. So we keep buying RS232 scanners, modems, printers, you name it.
At least two of the plants next to ours are doing the same thing. Manufacturing in the US is hurting. Changing for the sake of changing is not happening where I can see it.
You underestimate the Mayans. The few days in between is the time the black hole takes to gather enough mass to speed up the process. It will be tiny first, and will grow slowly. Amazing how the Mayans got it right. I would not know where to start.
Slashdot Mirror
You may be onto something. I have never had cable, and I have broadband with Time Warner (used to be something else, but they got bought out). The bill is about thirty bucks and I do not pay for cable, but almost every day around 00:30-01:30, I lose connection for sometimes an hour at a time.
Why would you want one? We have watches working off the constant motion of our body/arm/wrist/whatever. Mine takes a few days before it winds down. I think that anyone that stays immobile for that long will not be doing so great in respect of body heat, either.
You definitely have a point about laptops. I use mine mostly with the trackpad, but when I can, I plug in the mouse. And if people are buying laptops as desktop replacements, they probably will also buy a mouse to use while gaming, drawing, or even working with Office. Can you click and drag reliably with a trackpad? I know I can not. And I have lately grown used to six mouse buttons while programming. Cutting, pasting, reformatting, compiling without running - I have bound all these, and unless I'm in emacs, I use them all the time.
Honestly, I do not remember everything. I do not mean that I forgot it in the year since, but that I was already forgetting it by the time I got in the harbor - it took about two hours to paddle back and I was really beat up.
The one for Poseidon involved washing all the blood so that it fell in the ocean as opposed to the kayak. That one I performed fully, before I realized that I was not quite awake (falling in while doing it helped me awake, that's for damn sure). I know that I messed up with Athena, because I did not recognize her, and called her by the wrong name, but that she forgave me... Damn, I'm kind of ashamed of actually typing this, but I actually did perform everything that I remembered.
I've had one hallucination, without any grief or drugs. I think stress is enough.
I was kayaking nears rocks, surfing very high waves, lost my kayak, and spent 15 minutes in the surf, hitting rocks multiple times. I got out, retrieved my kayak, launched, and paddled to a place where I could relax... then I had a pretty long and elaborate hallucination.
It involved three-four deities (Tangra, Athena, Poseidon and the Lady) and the appropriate sacrifices I should perform for my pretty damn miraculous survival. I'm an atheist, and I cannot help but think that this is how religions get started.
That article is just stupid. Because an iPhone buzzes and blinks as you shake it, and because the Wii interface detects your waving your hands, the days of the mouse are numbered?! Riiiiight.
There is nothing that comes close to the mouse when you need to point very precisely somewhere, while retaining the ability to quickly issue a number of distinct commands... without too much effort. For some applications, touch sensitive screens, motion detectors, facial recognition, etc... may be better. Guess what, joysticks and light guns also have their uses. But at least as far as I know, there isn't a device that threatens the mouse as of today.
At home, I still use my "made in UK" IBM keyboard from '93, and I still have my first Logitech three button mouse, which I moved to my laptop once I switched to a Razer Diamondback for gaming.
But once I got used to the Diamondback at home, I switched my work mouse as well. The extra buttons are handy for cut/paste/search/switch-two-words/reformat-block... Also, the Diamondback can be used at MUCH higher sensitivity, probably because of the higher resolution it supports. The Mouseman was great, but I would not go back.
It's a personal preference. I loved the original Call of Duty. I played on the highest difficulty, no healing packs, and restarted the level if I died. Killing those tanks on the church level meant something, and so did surviving the Russian levels. I enjoyed that game like no other FPS, and it stayed on my PCs for years. I think that the PC I got last August is the first one that does not have it installed.
I tried the sequel, and it offered NO FUCKING WAY to play the way I liked it. You are grazed by a bullet, or struck by a whole burst as you dash from cover to cover, and IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. I never finished a level, and would not dream of buying anything from that franchise.
You hit the nail on the head, but you must understand than the people who make the decisions for a developer of ANY size are NOT interested in "making a living". They was to make as much money as possible, and thus have absolutely no interest in catering to the original fans.
One-two man shops can afford to make niche games for their rabid fans. I'm a big fan of Dominions (Illwinter - two guys), Geneforge (Spiderweb - one guy), Mount and Blade (man and wife) I love their games, buy every new release, and get exactly what I expect. But these guys are not getting rich, nor really trying to. Their graphics are at least five years behind the curve, their engines are worse than what I could built in an year, and their games are not selling enough to support more than a few people.
A company that can produce a AAA title needs dozens of millions. They cannot afford to go for anything but the lowest common denominator. And most of such games fail. Serves them right. The one-two men shops release games faithful to the franchise, and are assured a welcoming audiance... of a few thousands at best. I have no idea how new people get hooked up.
Actually here is how you should get hooked up: (I'm linking to demos)
Dominions A insanely complex, turn based, fantasy strategy. Crappy graphics, retarded AI. Awesome multiplayer, if you are willing to play a game that can take a few months to resolve itself, and if your self-esteem take accept that each game produces one winner out of up to sixty players. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwinter/DOM3/DOM3_page.html
Geneforge/Exile/Avernum Old style RPGs with an extremely involved story, very detailed multiple endings - the kind you can replay a dozen times if you can imagine a dozen characters with different morals. http://www.spidweb.com/geneforge3/index.html
Mount and Blade First person slasher. The one and only mounted combat simulator that reaches for the right feel. As someone who has used a saber from a horse, and trying to shoot a bow, I can tell you it does an incredible job. It is ngreat at modeling hand to hand combat and archery on foot as well, but that's been done. http://www.taleworlds.com/mb_download.html
Sure, you can try playing nice, and you may manage to get people to hate you less. But playing nice also involves being less greedy, so you will be letting them have more money while they still hate you.
Which is why there is a very effective and history proven way to get less people to hate you - kill them off. It is easy when you are (still) the strongest, and when you are (more and more) empowered by self-righteousness and patriotism. Oh, and not forget the sense of historical inevitability. I always wondered what happened to the heap of self-justifying propaganda we had amassed back in the Warsaw Pact. I guess it got translated into English.
EA replacement costs:
# PC-CD products: $13.00 USD
# PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox, or Xbox 360 products: $20.00 USD
# Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, or Sony PSP products: $15.00 USD
# Sony PlayStation products: $15.00 USD
# Nintendo Gameboy, Gameboy Color, or Gameboy Advanced products: $15.00 USD
# Jewel Case Classics products: $7.50 USD
# Manual (Documentation) replacement: $5.00 USD
More than I expected, but less than it could have been.
There's Spiderweb software, who makes RPGs. Incredible story, multiple paths and approaches to problems - where being a power hungry, racist, ruthless and selfish bastard actually works, and gives you an ending that not only makes sense, but is pleasing to that kind of character.
No DRM to speak off, not even a CD requirement. But the games' tech is solidly early nineties. Still, Spiderweb's games are incredibly engrossing, and every time I play through the end of one of the series, I wish the next sequel were already out.
If you like turn based PRG and great stories, and do not mind graphics that make Baldur's Gate look fancy, check it out.
What the Hell are you smoking? Cell-phones in Bulgaria have Cyrilics by default. I would be amazed to learn that Russian cellphones don't. Furthermore, text messages are widely used in China. If I had to make a guess, I'd say that these messages are in Chinese.
Yes, it is true that many European languages are adapting to Latin and ASCII. Hell, even people from countries that are still holding will transcribe their language with Latin letters. But at least in Bulgaria it is considered bad form, and many websites will automatically remove posts that use Latin transcription.
Convenience is important, and one of the next generations will probably stick the last nail in the coffin of Greek, Cyrilics, etc. alphabets. But the problem is hardly a technological one.
Damn right! Which is why they are getting ripped off by games like Dawn of War, which have stolen pretty much everything but the graphics (I guess they could not do bright and cartoony well enough)
Do these people have any shame?! Timing the release of Dawn of War II to profit from the buzz around Starcraft II!
I have not played Laser Squad Nemesis for years. I'm off to check how far it has gotten. Thanks for reminding me.
Easy. I'm one. I do not say 'God damn it', or 'Go to Hell', but I use 'demons take you/it'.
That does not mean that I believe any more in demons than I believe in gods. But in my language, the quasi-religious swearwords are the mild ones. When we get really angry, we reach for imaginative sexual imagery.
My gaming PC has XP Pro and boots in 17 seconds. NOT Embedded, Pro. I have disabled a few services, and I am fooling around with IP settings (the PC starts with a fixed address, talks to my main PC, and only later gets the settings that allow it to get on the Internet)
Right. And any computer will get it right in 50% of the cases. Don't you see the problem with that? The answer cannot be a simple yes/no, nor even an integer from N to M.
Lazy Larry skipped a number. It's been a while, so I do not remember which. :-)
Probably four, as I am drawing a blank for the plot. Yes, I'm that pathetic,
I remember Lazy Larry's plots
> For those of us old enough to remember, officer Frank
:-)
> Serpico (of movie fame) exposed their corruption in
> he 70's and was gunned down by officers for it.
There is such a thing as too old to remember
Didn't Serpico work in New York City?
Of course, most, if not all, large organizations are
subject to corruption. And I do not know about you,
but I would rather have the LAPD in charge, corrupt
as it may be, as opposed to a number of criminal gangs
in a shifting equilibrium.
The displacement is just 2.5 liter, and as you guessed it, it's turbo'd. There are modifications to the intercooler and turbo, as well something you may consider cheating: the ability to select between three different modes that change the air/fuel ratio, the throttle mapping, even the assumed octane number. I am a lot more of a computer geek than a car geek. I spent a lot more time (but not money) playing with the chip, sensors, mappings, limit conditions and fuel ratios than with the true hardware mods.
:-)
The result is that my car can switch on the fly between fuel efficiency and performance. Also, with a fuel change (to 95+), a cold reset (so it forgets the months it's been running on crappy CA gas), and a switch to the third mode... lets say it does well enough to make me forget the money I burned and the warranty I voided
And the 38mpg is my absolute best - almost no city driving involved, and no traffic on the I5. In the city, I have a HARD time approaching 20mpg, with super conservative shifting. On the other hand, Vegas and back with three passengers and one tank of gas is not a problem.
(Yeah, the cold reset requirement is a disgrace that needs fixing. I'll get to it one day)
I have a 460hp (modded) car that got 38mpg on a LA-San Diego round trip. At the same time, it gets about 2mpg at full throttle and top speed. There is nothing wrong with modern engines, but if you have a ton of power and habitually use it, you will pay in fuel.
And do not forget, modern cars are heavier because of safety requirements, noise reduction materials, power everything, air conditioners, etc...
Mostly, neither have I, recently. The last time I bought SCSI drives was when the 15K were :-)
released. Still, all three of my PCs have SCSI drives in them. They last forever, and
transfer them from PC to PC. XP floored me by autodetecting them.
By the way, in one of the PCs, one of the drives whines like a jet turbine on take off.
But it's a mirror, so I am waiting for it to kneel over.
Serial ports are not obsolete. I work at a company with quite a few million dollars
worth of CNC machine tools, robotic cells, and assembly lines, and all of the equipment
is controlled or updated through DB9 or DB25 serial ports. Yes, the modern stuff comes
with RJ45 (Ethernet) ports. But the serial is always there, and as usually there is one PC
per building controlling all the equipment, it's always the serial that gets used.
Furthermore, all the scanning equipment, and all the heavy duty label printers use
serial ports. Once again, we could buy USB ones, but we do not want to change anything
that we do not have to. So we keep buying RS232 scanners, modems, printers, you name it.
At least two of the plants next to ours are doing the same thing. Manufacturing in the
US is hurting. Changing for the sake of changing is not happening where I can see it.
You underestimate the Mayans. The few days in between is the time
the black hole takes to gather enough mass to speed up the process.
It will be tiny first, and will grow slowly. Amazing how the Mayans
got it right. I would not know where to start.