I've read a bunch of the analyses of early Christian texts and have sort of decided that Jesus did in fact exist as a historical person, simply because his entire story is so embarrassing in so many ways that the gospel writers and interpreters had to spend tons of energy explaining things away.
Jewish prophecy that the gospel writers needed Jesus to fulfill required that he be from Bethlehem. (Micah 5:1) But he wasn't- he was from Nazereth. So suddenly you have the entire census story being added in to get Mary to Bethlehem.
He was born a bastard. Oops- my bad, virgin birth.
He was betrayed by a follower. Ugh- well, bad things happened to Judas so it's ok. (Yet the entire sacrifical act was required for human salvation, so why exactly is Judas the bad guy again?)
He got himself executed messily. Um, that's what actually saves you! Yeah!
He was to return within the lifespan of those alive at the time. (Matt 24:34 and others) Christian apologists have had to dance around this one for almost 2000 years.
If you have a choice of making up a savior out of whole cloth rather than working with a real, historical person wouldn't you design someone better?
And unless it has 6 billion players, it's going to seem empty. Critical mass is crucial- there simply have to be enough people around to feel like you're not playing alone, and to help out when you need it.
The WoW server I play on has 11k accounts on it. I can spend hours wandering around some places and *never see anyone*. With the exception of a few specific places I won't pass anyone flying around, I'll never hear a comment other than an occasional person selling something. Calls to help perform a difficult quest go totally unanswered. Folks on really low population servers are crying for transfers to places that actually have people playing.
Worse, it's simply going to take far to long to find everything. Either you give a form of rapid/instant transport (in which case you're going to have a few populated zones and an enormous expanse of nothing- imagine Snowcrash's world) or you have to move slowly in which case nobody will ever see most of the neat stuff.
I'll mention one that has been driving me nuts lately- "stuck" monsters. It's not at all uncommon to get a mob stuck into the terrain such that it is completely immune to all attacks but can hit you from almost any distance. You'll see it 30 yards away swinging a sword and a big "-500" and "DAZED" appears over your head. The only thing you can do is run away and hope that it can't kill you in time. Sometimes these guys are stuck below the terrain so that you can't even see where they are- you just aggro them by accident and suddenly your health is falling.
Then there are the "You don't have permission to loot that corpse" bug, the numerous quests that are so buggy that nobody can complete them (Like the one in the dungeon in Terrokkar that if someone fails on the attempt it requires a server reset before it will ever work again) and so forth. These are probably scripting rather than engine bugs, but still.
WoW is remarkably polished for a game its size, but it's by no means bug free.
Imagine the outcry if NPR or PBS started having 5 minute commercial breaks even after they had all those annoying fund raisers they do.
As a long time NPR listener (and donator), they *do* have commercial breaks. Lots of them. I even bought some of them to advertise a speaker on our campus. Others are bought by local companies, or people who like to mention birthdays, anniversaries or the like. They tend to be low key- speech only by the announcer, no music, no screaming and I suspect that they are edited for taste, but they are most certainly ads.
Do I like it? Of course not. But the alternatives on one side (no cash = no NPR) or the other ("Y'ALL GET DOWN TO JIM BOB'S TRUCK EMPORIUM RIGHT NOW!") are so bad that I'm happy to put up with it, even though I *also* donate money every year. Rational people know that running an enormous website or paying the electricity bill for a 50k watt transmitter costs real money and that you have to find some way to pay. If the bulk of Wikipedias find this idea distasteful they are welcome to try and find some other way of getting the money, but don't be surprised if you simply can't raise enough donations.
Persistance is a great way to do it, except that the information out of it tends to be pretty much useless. Think about what you care about- temperature/humidity and preciptiation. Frankly, I don't care so much about these if they continue the way they are right now. It's cold and clear outside right now, but I'm dressed for cold+clear. If it was rainy I'd have an umbrella, if it was really snowy I'd have driven my wife's Subaru to work.
What I care about (for lack of a better term) is the weather delta. When will it *stop* being cold and clear? That's when I have to change my behavior- bring an umbrella for when it starts raining, ditch the jacket, etc. I almost got stuck on my way home the other night since I didn't pay attention to the forecast and assumed persistance- cold+clear turned into slick snow. The forecasters got that right, persistance didn't.
buy a computer and stick Mathematica/Maple/Matlab on it
I love HPs- durable as hell, wonderful feel and once you get used to RPN is really is much faster. My old 11-C is still going strong ~25 years after I bought it. I managed to break a 28S after about fifteen years and bought a -48 to replace it from ebay. Skip the -49 series: I bought one and it's junk compared to the older models.
But if you want serious number crunching/graphing, nothing hand-held is going to come close to what a good symbolic algebra/modeling program can do. They are much more flexible, 1000x faster and you can display the results on huge screens. Think carefully before buying a calculator loaded with bells and whistles that will be a mediocre calculator as well as a mediocre grapher/solver. (Yes, I'm looking at you, TI line)
And if you *really* want geek cred, learn a slide rule. It's not hard to do simple calculations and you'll floor people if they see you actually work one.
I think you're generalizing the European slum experience across all of humanity, and I Don't think that's accurate or fair. Weston A. Price traveled the world at the start of the modern age, and found that people who lived a traditional lifestyle had marvelous health, and people who ate "modern" foods were sickly and had lots of cavities.
Don't forget the other problems. Currently living hunter-gatherer tribes do not generally have long life expectancies, good diet or no. High infant (and maternal) mortality and early deaths due to disease or accident are common. Those folks that do make it to an advanced age are generally far more decrepid than a Westerner, provided the westerner took care of their health. And of course, a "traditional" diet isn't going to support 7 billion people- hunter-gathers need large amounts of space since it's basically a requirement to live in small groups and constantly migrate away from the bad sanitation and parasites that otherwise would kill you. (To be fair, it's not clear if modern methods can keep up 7 billion people either.)
All I'm offering is some better information - the choice to keep your teeth is up to you.:)
I think a little more research might indicate that the "White man's diet" has affected teeth since the dawn of agriculture. Yes, carbohydrates (sugars) affect teeth- that's well known. But it's been that way since the beginning of civilization, otherwise we wouldn't be finding 9000 year old dentist drills, or million-year-old skulls with dental decay. It's not just white men either- you can trace the rise in dental problems for New World natives on the increased use of maize.
Looking back to my (and my wife's) ancestors over the past 200 years, I'm doing just fine even if I need some dental work. I have lost 8 teeth, but that was by design since my jaw was too small for them all. I didn't die in childbirth like some of them, I didn't die at age 25 from the flu, smallpox or other malady (or for that matter, from stupid doctors like one distant relative), I still have all my digits unlike say, my grandpa who lost some in an accident. I've survived an infection that probably would have cost me my leg 100 years ago and might well have killed me.
Sterile food is a 20th century historical curiosity, and look at how chronic disease has taken off. Antibiotics may have diminished the danger of a bacterial infections, but new health syndromes have risen with a vengeance (cancer, heart disease, IBS, tooth decay, etc).
I think you're mixing up correlation and causation there. Yes, chronic disease has taken off- because the *acute* diseases that used to kill us don't anymore. I think we forget just how bad life used to be for most people.
Cancer and heart disease used to kill people too- the people who weren't killed by smallpox, TB, random bacterial infections and a host of other lethal diseases that we don't get anymore, not to mention the tons of people who didn't even make it out of childbirth, mother and child alike. It wasn't even that long ago- my grandmother-in-law grew up on a farm, had no prenatal care at all and managed only two grown children out of four- the other two died within days of birth. The average human lifespan in 1900 in the US was well under 50- most 40 year olds don't die of cancer/heart attacks today, and most didn't then either.
And I have to call you on tooth decay. That's *always* existed- ask George Washington (if you could) about that. He probably would have decked you- it made him miserable for his entire life. Most people without modern medical care have utterly horrible teeth by age 40. Meanwhile, I have to haul my 41-year-old butt into the dentist for a crown on a cracked tooth tomorrow- it should last the rest of my life.
Actually, they buy their OS's off the shelf. (VxWorks for the rovers, for example)
That said, you could get software written to this level of perfection if you wanted. It's easy- follow the space shuttle's team's example. You have a stable team of mature developers who work reasonable hours. You test the hell out of the software to the point a single bug in a test is reason to redo the software. You run the software on four identical computers and make sure they all agree.
Then you hire another entire team to write code that does the same thing, but otherwise has no contact with the first team. That software runs on a fifth computer that takes over if something happens to the other four.
I think back to my growing up days and the dumbass things we used to do and say. It's part of growing up- you do stupid things until you figure out how to stop doing them. (Adults get to make more expensive stupid mistakes)
But back then only our friends&family knew about it. I wiped out on my bike really badly once; I went home and Mom took me to the doctor and dentist to patch me up. These days someone would have filmed it and stuck it up on Youtube with a funny audio track. I said stupid things growing up, but only my friends knew about it- they weren't blogged all over creation.
Luckily, it's an intelligence amplifier too- you do something really great and a million people hear about it, not just 4-5. Too bad there's so little of the latter. (Or perhaps it is good- I think I'll go browse FARK for more utter stupidity stories now...)
Again, Hitler was not an atheist although not a Christian
That's very iffy. It's not entirely clear what Hitler was- a lot of the Nazi stuff is drenched in religious symbolism (See the "Gott Mit Uns" belt buckle, for example) and there are a number of letters from high ranking Nazis talking about how good of a Catholic Hitler was. He probably regarded being seen as semi-Christian as useful, but wasn't a real believer.
However, none of this matters since we have to ask it the crimes Hitler, Stalin or Mao committed were *because* they were atheists. Stalin didn't exterminate the kulaks because they were religious and he wasn't and he wasn't trying to convert them to atheism. He killed them because it helped consolidate his hold on power. Ditto Mao, Pol Pot and the other Communist genocidal leaders- there was no "Convert to atheism or die" mantra, unlike the great religious wars such as the Crusades or horrors like the Inquisition. (Although it could be argued that the Inquisition had as much to do with gathering up worldly assets as it did with religion.)
Add to that Emmitt played with one of the best blocking fullbacks of the day, Moose Johnston. He had an all-star lineup around him-Hall of Fame QB, HOF receiver, outstanding O-line and Moose. I'm an Eagles fan and I hated every one of these guys with a passion while still realizing just how good they were.
Who did Barry have? Umm, I honestly can't think of anyone else noteworthy. Swap the two between teams and Sanders owns *every* rushing record in the world, Emmitt would have gone down in the "very good but not HOF" category, although I give him props for being a true team player- he was a damn good pass rush blocker as well.
We have Cingular now. We started with SunCom, went to AT&T then to Cingular, all without ever changing anything on our end.
They just let us know that they are going to raise our rates ahead of cancelling our plan and shutting off the TDMA network we've been using until now. I'm a bit annoyed- we actually get better reception than almost anyone in our neighborhood and I can't replace the plan. It was a "totally unlimited calls for $60/mo" deal that I've never seen anywhere since. TDMA phones are tanks too- we've had exactly two in the past five years and they've taken a huge beating without breaking. (We replaced the first since buying a Nokia 3560 off of eBay was cheaper than replacing the failing battery.)
Ah, progress. I'm going to get to pay more for crappier reception.
I've gotten into playing WoW over the past few months. I'm by no means hardcore- I haven't even joined a guild and my best char is only a 54, but I can see the huge time sink it can be. It's waaaay too easy to forget it's midnight and that I have to get the kids up tomorrow and go to work. It's pointless activity- kill pixilated critters to get a better entry in a database somewhere and I could spend the time doing something useful.
On the flip side, I don't play at work or when the kids are awake. I look at what I'd be doing instead after the kids are in bed. I've basically stopped watching all TV, an even more useless time sink. I don't read as much, but I have a very small pile of books left to read right now- I need some of my authors to write faster:^) I still go out with friends when I get the chance. (Rare, due to kidlets.) It's cheap given the time spent- going out for a few drinks with friends will be way more than $15 for a night. But it's still the majority of my leisure time, and I've caught "wife aggro" occasionally.
Am I addicted? I'm probably skirting the edges of that, and it makes me nervous.
Wow- I actually agree with most of this
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Quantum Leaps in RPGs
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Fallout and Planetscape Torment absolutely deserve #1 and #2, although I'd personally reverse them. They are the two best *R* *P* Gs out there- you get to play an actual character who you learn to care about, not just a bundle of stats that has to kill 945 kobolds to get the next level. You get to make real choices that determine outcomes, and you don't have to simply kill everything in your path to win. I note both of them are placed in worlds quite different than the usual Tolkein-derived Elf-and-Orc fest
Deus Ex and Oblivion are close: it should be System Shock 2 and Morrowind instead, but I can see why they chose the ones they did
The only significant omission IMHO is Wizardry. There are so many firsts in that game it's scary- I think most people forget how lame 99% of all Apple games were.
My first year grad school roommate bought a computer by mail back in the days when this was not very common, nor cheap. It was a blazing 386SX-25 IIRC, nicely tricked out from some no-name box assembler you could find in the back of PC Shopper. He paid the bill via CC and everything was fine, until he got a bill for $0.01 two months later. He ignored it at first- it had to be a mistake. A month later, he got a "Please pay, bill is overdue" for $0.01. He called the company on their toll-free line and asked them "WTF?". They told him he was underbilled and to please pay the $0.01 ASAP. He asked if they really wanted to go through all the machinery for a single penny. They told him again that he had been underbilled and he needed to pay ASAP.
He sent them a penny in the mail. Let's see; printing and mailing costs for two letters + a ten minute toll-free long distance call to recover $0.01. That's a win.
He blew something like $500 for the math coprocessor a few months later. Bought it somewhere else...
Why software sucks in one sentance
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Why Software Sucks
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"Because you're not willing to pay for what it would cost not to suck"
Seriously, that's basically it. It's perfectly possible to write software that doesn't suck- people do it all the time. (See pretty much anything written by JPL, for example)
But it costs. It costs for the good management&development team to decide exactly what the spec will be. It costs for good, experienced programmers to write solid, mantainable code. It costs for QA and UI people to go over everything with a fine tooth comb. It costs time to get it all right, and you're not going to get every wiz-bang feature because that would cost even more.
99.9% of users simply aren't willing to pay for that. The few that are live in niches where an accident is simply not acceptable. (See JPL, above, and even then they aren't perfect: see Spirit for an example) The rest of us settle for the likes of Windows and Office- lots of features, mostly works, ok UI simply because the perfect option would have a 1/10 the features and cost 10x as much.
While it's great that modern engines allow lots of neat tricks, you end up limiting games to just those tricks which may not be the best for your game.
Case in point: the Thief series. 1+2 had a specialized engine (Dark, IIRC) that didn't focus so much on graphics, but allowed huge, sprawling levels and wonderful sound cues. 3 used some variant of the Unreal engine, and suddenly you were stuck with *tiny* levels and loading zones. No more sneaking across the rooftops of an entire city to enter a huge, sprawling fortress- instead, you were stuck warping through five zones for a building smaller than the first level of Thief 1. I played through Thief 1+2 multiple times: I never made it past the first few levels of 3- the engine limitations just plain destroyed the fun for me.
It didn't even look all that good- the increased realism (especially in shadows) just pointed out how bad it was compared to real life. At least with 1+2 I could ignore the graphics since I knew they were cheesy.
This, "PVP" mode where humans are pitted against Orc's and Gnomes against Taurans is to be abhorred.
I couldn't agree more: the endless fighting is awful. Luckily, once the humans, dwarves and elves are annhilated we will have no more conflict. The gnomes we'll save for use as footballs and bar stools.
I have to agree here. I bought The Ship the other day. This is a game that would *never* make it into stores, yet is one of the most innovative FP(S/B/S/P)*es I've seen. Hopefully others out there will have fun innovating- although i don't own a console stuff like XBox live gives great little games a chance to actually make it in the marketplace.
Slashdot Mirror
Jewish prophecy that the gospel writers needed Jesus to fulfill required that he be from Bethlehem. (Micah 5:1) But he wasn't- he was from Nazereth. So suddenly you have the entire census story being added in to get Mary to Bethlehem.
He was born a bastard. Oops- my bad, virgin birth.
He was betrayed by a follower. Ugh- well, bad things happened to Judas so it's ok. (Yet the entire sacrifical act was required for human salvation, so why exactly is Judas the bad guy again?)
He got himself executed messily. Um, that's what actually saves you! Yeah!
He was to return within the lifespan of those alive at the time. (Matt 24:34 and others) Christian apologists have had to dance around this one for almost 2000 years.
If you have a choice of making up a savior out of whole cloth rather than working with a real, historical person wouldn't you design someone better?
Pffft, noob- I've been hearing that for *10* years, and I still believe it!
The WoW server I play on has 11k accounts on it. I can spend hours wandering around some places and *never see anyone*. With the exception of a few specific places I won't pass anyone flying around, I'll never hear a comment other than an occasional person selling something. Calls to help perform a difficult quest go totally unanswered. Folks on really low population servers are crying for transfers to places that actually have people playing.
Worse, it's simply going to take far to long to find everything. Either you give a form of rapid/instant transport (in which case you're going to have a few populated zones and an enormous expanse of nothing- imagine Snowcrash's world) or you have to move slowly in which case nobody will ever see most of the neat stuff.
Then there are the "You don't have permission to loot that corpse" bug, the numerous quests that are so buggy that nobody can complete them (Like the one in the dungeon in Terrokkar that if someone fails on the attempt it requires a server reset before it will ever work again) and so forth. These are probably scripting rather than engine bugs, but still.
WoW is remarkably polished for a game its size, but it's by no means bug free.
As a long time NPR listener (and donator), they *do* have commercial breaks. Lots of them. I even bought some of them to advertise a speaker on our campus. Others are bought by local companies, or people who like to mention birthdays, anniversaries or the like. They tend to be low key- speech only by the announcer, no music, no screaming and I suspect that they are edited for taste, but they are most certainly ads.
Do I like it? Of course not. But the alternatives on one side (no cash = no NPR) or the other ("Y'ALL GET DOWN TO JIM BOB'S TRUCK EMPORIUM RIGHT NOW!") are so bad that I'm happy to put up with it, even though I *also* donate money every year. Rational people know that running an enormous website or paying the electricity bill for a 50k watt transmitter costs real money and that you have to find some way to pay. If the bulk of Wikipedias find this idea distasteful they are welcome to try and find some other way of getting the money, but don't be surprised if you simply can't raise enough donations.
What I care about (for lack of a better term) is the weather delta. When will it *stop* being cold and clear? That's when I have to change my behavior- bring an umbrella for when it starts raining, ditch the jacket, etc. I almost got stuck on my way home the other night since I didn't pay attention to the forecast and assumed persistance- cold+clear turned into slick snow. The forecasters got that right, persistance didn't.
I love HPs- durable as hell, wonderful feel and once you get used to RPN is really is much faster. My old 11-C is still going strong ~25 years after I bought it. I managed to break a 28S after about fifteen years and bought a -48 to replace it from ebay. Skip the -49 series: I bought one and it's junk compared to the older models.
But if you want serious number crunching/graphing, nothing hand-held is going to come close to what a good symbolic algebra/modeling program can do. They are much more flexible, 1000x faster and you can display the results on huge screens. Think carefully before buying a calculator loaded with bells and whistles that will be a mediocre calculator as well as a mediocre grapher/solver. (Yes, I'm looking at you, TI line)
And if you *really* want geek cred, learn a slide rule. It's not hard to do simple calculations and you'll floor people if they see you actually work one.
Don't forget the other problems. Currently living hunter-gatherer tribes do not generally have long life expectancies, good diet or no. High infant (and maternal) mortality and early deaths due to disease or accident are common. Those folks that do make it to an advanced age are generally far more decrepid than a Westerner, provided the westerner took care of their health. And of course, a "traditional" diet isn't going to support 7 billion people- hunter-gathers need large amounts of space since it's basically a requirement to live in small groups and constantly migrate away from the bad sanitation and parasites that otherwise would kill you. (To be fair, it's not clear if modern methods can keep up 7 billion people either.)
All I'm offering is some better information - the choice to keep your teeth is up to you. :)
I think a little more research might indicate that the "White man's diet" has affected teeth since the dawn of agriculture. Yes, carbohydrates (sugars) affect teeth- that's well known. But it's been that way since the beginning of civilization, otherwise we wouldn't be finding 9000 year old dentist drills, or million-year-old skulls with dental decay. It's not just white men either- you can trace the rise in dental problems for New World natives on the increased use of maize.
Looking back to my (and my wife's) ancestors over the past 200 years, I'm doing just fine even if I need some dental work. I have lost 8 teeth, but that was by design since my jaw was too small for them all. I didn't die in childbirth like some of them, I didn't die at age 25 from the flu, smallpox or other malady (or for that matter, from stupid doctors like one distant relative), I still have all my digits unlike say, my grandpa who lost some in an accident. I've survived an infection that probably would have cost me my leg 100 years ago and might well have killed me.
I'll take the tradeoff
I think you're mixing up correlation and causation there. Yes, chronic disease has taken off- because the *acute* diseases that used to kill us don't anymore. I think we forget just how bad life used to be for most people.
Cancer and heart disease used to kill people too- the people who weren't killed by smallpox, TB, random bacterial infections and a host of other lethal diseases that we don't get anymore, not to mention the tons of people who didn't even make it out of childbirth, mother and child alike. It wasn't even that long ago- my grandmother-in-law grew up on a farm, had no prenatal care at all and managed only two grown children out of four- the other two died within days of birth. The average human lifespan in 1900 in the US was well under 50- most 40 year olds don't die of cancer/heart attacks today, and most didn't then either.
And I have to call you on tooth decay. That's *always* existed- ask George Washington (if you could) about that. He probably would have decked you- it made him miserable for his entire life. Most people without modern medical care have utterly horrible teeth by age 40. Meanwhile, I have to haul my 41-year-old butt into the dentist for a crown on a cracked tooth tomorrow- it should last the rest of my life.
That said, you could get software written to this level of perfection if you wanted. It's easy- follow the space shuttle's team's example. You have a stable team of mature developers who work reasonable hours. You test the hell out of the software to the point a single bug in a test is reason to redo the software. You run the software on four identical computers and make sure they all agree.
Then you hire another entire team to write code that does the same thing, but otherwise has no contact with the first team. That software runs on a fifth computer that takes over if something happens to the other four.
Willing to pay for that?
But back then only our friends&family knew about it. I wiped out on my bike really badly once; I went home and Mom took me to the doctor and dentist to patch me up. These days someone would have filmed it and stuck it up on Youtube with a funny audio track. I said stupid things growing up, but only my friends knew about it- they weren't blogged all over creation.
Luckily, it's an intelligence amplifier too- you do something really great and a million people hear about it, not just 4-5. Too bad there's so little of the latter. (Or perhaps it is good- I think I'll go browse FARK for more utter stupidity stories now...)
That's very iffy. It's not entirely clear what Hitler was- a lot of the Nazi stuff is drenched in religious symbolism (See the "Gott Mit Uns" belt buckle, for example) and there are a number of letters from high ranking Nazis talking about how good of a Catholic Hitler was. He probably regarded being seen as semi-Christian as useful, but wasn't a real believer.
However, none of this matters since we have to ask it the crimes Hitler, Stalin or Mao committed were *because* they were atheists. Stalin didn't exterminate the kulaks because they were religious and he wasn't and he wasn't trying to convert them to atheism. He killed them because it helped consolidate his hold on power. Ditto Mao, Pol Pot and the other Communist genocidal leaders- there was no "Convert to atheism or die" mantra, unlike the great religious wars such as the Crusades or horrors like the Inquisition. (Although it could be argued that the Inquisition had as much to do with gathering up worldly assets as it did with religion.)
Who did Barry have? Umm, I honestly can't think of anyone else noteworthy. Swap the two between teams and Sanders owns *every* rushing record in the world, Emmitt would have gone down in the "very good but not HOF" category, although I give him props for being a true team player- he was a damn good pass rush blocker as well.
They just let us know that they are going to raise our rates ahead of cancelling our plan and shutting off the TDMA network we've been using until now. I'm a bit annoyed- we actually get better reception than almost anyone in our neighborhood and I can't replace the plan. It was a "totally unlimited calls for $60/mo" deal that I've never seen anywhere since. TDMA phones are tanks too- we've had exactly two in the past five years and they've taken a huge beating without breaking. (We replaced the first since buying a Nokia 3560 off of eBay was cheaper than replacing the failing battery.)
Ah, progress. I'm going to get to pay more for crappier reception.
IAAC- it's perfectly accurate. Alpha particles are helium nuclei, aka helium atoms without electrons. 2 protons, 2 neutrons, +2 charge.
Of course not. They're all too busy posting photos of themselves kissing other girls on Myspace and stripping for their boyfriend on cam.
On the flip side, I don't play at work or when the kids are awake. I look at what I'd be doing instead after the kids are in bed. I've basically stopped watching all TV, an even more useless time sink. I don't read as much, but I have a very small pile of books left to read right now- I need some of my authors to write faster :^) I still go out with friends when I get the chance. (Rare, due to kidlets.) It's cheap given the time spent- going out for a few drinks with friends will be way more than $15 for a night. But it's still the majority of my leisure time, and I've caught "wife aggro" occasionally.
Am I addicted? I'm probably skirting the edges of that, and it makes me nervous.
Deus Ex and Oblivion are close: it should be System Shock 2 and Morrowind instead, but I can see why they chose the ones they did
The only significant omission IMHO is Wizardry. There are so many firsts in that game it's scary- I think most people forget how lame 99% of all Apple games were.
He sent them a penny in the mail. Let's see; printing and mailing costs for two letters + a ten minute toll-free long distance call to recover $0.01. That's a win.
He blew something like $500 for the math coprocessor a few months later. Bought it somewhere else...
Seriously, that's basically it. It's perfectly possible to write software that doesn't suck- people do it all the time. (See pretty much anything written by JPL, for example)
But it costs. It costs for the good management&development team to decide exactly what the spec will be. It costs for good, experienced programmers to write solid, mantainable code. It costs for QA and UI people to go over everything with a fine tooth comb. It costs time to get it all right, and you're not going to get every wiz-bang feature because that would cost even more.
99.9% of users simply aren't willing to pay for that. The few that are live in niches where an accident is simply not acceptable. (See JPL, above, and even then they aren't perfect: see Spirit for an example) The rest of us settle for the likes of Windows and Office- lots of features, mostly works, ok UI simply because the perfect option would have a 1/10 the features and cost 10x as much.
Case in point: the Thief series. 1+2 had a specialized engine (Dark, IIRC) that didn't focus so much on graphics, but allowed huge, sprawling levels and wonderful sound cues. 3 used some variant of the Unreal engine, and suddenly you were stuck with *tiny* levels and loading zones. No more sneaking across the rooftops of an entire city to enter a huge, sprawling fortress- instead, you were stuck warping through five zones for a building smaller than the first level of Thief 1. I played through Thief 1+2 multiple times: I never made it past the first few levels of 3- the engine limitations just plain destroyed the fun for me.
It didn't even look all that good- the increased realism (especially in shadows) just pointed out how bad it was compared to real life. At least with 1+2 I could ignore the graphics since I knew they were cheesy.
Incidentally, if Perl had its day 3-5 years ago, and Ruby 2-4 years ago, what do you think are the cutting edge programming languages of today?
Visual Age COBOL Get with the times man- everything old is new again.
<introspection>WoW e-peen contests? Geez, I'm a grown guy with a wife and kids. What have I sunk to...</introspection>
This, "PVP" mode where humans are pitted against Orc's and Gnomes against Taurans is to be abhorred. I couldn't agree more: the endless fighting is awful. Luckily, once the humans, dwarves and elves are annhilated we will have no more conflict. The gnomes we'll save for use as footballs and bar stools.
*Shooter/Bludgeoner/Stabber/Poisoner