Maybe its just me, but I'll probably order this thing just to get the well-done scenes of the Agamemnon (err Amigo) and White Stars fighting Federation starships.
I can only hope the Agamemnon et al kick the asses of those self-rightgeous, pretentious gits of the Federation. And if they can't, hopefully the shadows show up and slice them to bits.
I really don't know what it is about my generation which whines so fucking much. The old games, for the most part, got really boring really quickly. Pac Man? Donkey Kong? Even in 1982, I thought they were pointlessly repetitive.
When you use those games as a benchmark, increasing complexity and increasing immersiveness is only a good thing. I'd much rather spend a boring Sunday being a faux-thug in GTA and driving around an enourmous simulated city than chasing some goddamn blue ghost for the five billionth time.
And its good games can touch on elements of popular culture, even the parts which appeal to silly wannabe-badasses. Games are nothing but about escapism and sometimes its good to let one's inner bitchmaker loose in the privacy of one's suburban home where no embarassment will result. Its certainly better than acting out on these things in public.
My dev group was recently approached by some gentlemen from an Indian outsourcing company. They wanted to do our new product and made a very convincing case.
When asked for a ballpark figure about cost, they stated 20-30 an hour: probably not less than 21 and probably not more than 35.
After they left, the QA manager, the Project Manager, and me, the programming manager, ran through the numbers by using our estimation of project man hours times the Indian's lowest quoted price (21/hr) vs. the costs of tech labor in Utah.
Local workers actually beat Indians in overall costs because Utahns are willing to do a great job even when paid relatively little. The margins were close, but the Americans still won by about $20,000 for the project. So with these figures in hand, our CEO will probably decide to go with local help. Not only will the locals be a bit cheaper, but we'll have the workers in the office for consulations, oversight, and better QA and none of us will have to make frequent and costly trips to Bangalore to oversee the project.
This scenario probably won't work in much (most?) of the country, but this does show that there is still room for Americans once the figures are carefully analyzed and once wages cycle downwards for a bit.
oh and I don't have to pay a fee to play online with my PS2.
how you got modded up I have no idea, but the Xbox did NOT do it, they copied it.
You're all idjits... The Dreamcast shipped with a modem built in and had many many games with online capabilities. The Dreamcast had the first Massive-Multiplayer game for consoles. The Dreamcast could even be used as a web browser.
The Dreamcast also shipped a broadband adaptor before anyone else.
The game can be solved peacefully, if you define peaceful as not killing or injuring innocent bystanders.
The main storyline mission structure is set up so that you never have to kill a non-involved bystander in any of the missions. So, if you roleplay the game as a thief with a certain sense of honor, you'll never drive on the sidewalk, never kill the people whose cars you jack, never kill prostitues, etc., then I'd define that as a peaceful solution.
If you want to be an asshole, the game lets you but doesn't make you.
It would certainly be an interesting challenge to play the game according to these strict rules of conduct and, at the finish, have the number of people killed be equal to the number of gang members killed.
A couple of weeks ago I entered my name on google and found that it accurately noted my current address, current telephone, and listed things such as my obnoxiously pretentious postings to a cyberpunk mailing list in the early 90's, advice on how to properly use cu-seeme for an early porn reflector, a couple of rather graphically violent short stories published in someone else's zine, and the random, near-libelous kvetching of an ex who thought of many interesting and practical uses for my still twitching corpse. A couple of small and slightly embarrassing appearances I made in the national media were also noted.
I really have no control over the appearance of any of the above. My name is relatively unique and therefore almost everything from google was definitely originating from me or was about me; my mailing list postings which can be definitely tracked were from my uni days when I was required to have my real name on the net account.
I'm not necessarily bothered by the presence of any of this data. I've asked that my address be removed and it seems as if it has. Any employer or potential partner, who is going to hold my ten year old musings against me, can kindly piss off and I hope they will enjoy an early demise. However, I can certainly understand how some of the article's subjects would feel a great fear and paranoia, especially when they have no control over their appearance on random petitions or various articles.
Google is a double-edged sword and I certainly don't hold their unease against them. Life has certainly been made much easier for stalkers and your office's gossip and that is not necessarily a good thing, despite all the other extraordinary benefits of Google.
I suppose I am a bit of a hypocrite; I confess I used Google to verify that my current gf wasn't Republican, a copyright lawyer, or an escaped ax murderer. Two out of three wasn't a bad result even though the chainsaws have to be kept under lock and key at all times.
After looking at the released figures of a huge disparity between the consumer hardware and the music industry, I'm wondering why the two don't take advantage of what should be a symbiotic relationship and not an atagonistic one.
Why not make all music available for free in mp3 format in exchange for set payments from the hardware industry? The labels and artists could retain control over non-mp3 distribution and would continue to own the copyright. The amount paid by consumer electronics companies would be agreed upon industry-wide and would be more than the current amount demanded by law.
The consumer electronics division would be happy because there would be an unlimited supply of music easily available which would guarantee high sales of ipods, rios, and cd-r walkmans. The music labels will be happy because they'll have a large revenue stream independent of how their artists sell. And consumers will be ecstastic and have rather favourable opinions about all companies involved, thus leading to more sales. Strangely enough, when you treat your customers like friends instead of criminals, you usually get more sales.
Then there's additional money to be made in various value-adds. For example, Apple wants to be known as a progressive, bleeding-edge, hip company, so, in order to solidify that image, they'd pay banks like Aphex Twin to stick his new album on your iDisk account a couple of days before it hits the store. Various pointless boy bands make a similar deal with AOL or Microsoft in order to drive traffic to their online services.
And there would be new services popping up which would replace the music review sections in yr fave pop rags. I personally would pay for a site to offer recommendations and highly extensive mp3 downloads of gothic, industrial, and abstract albums.
I don't have any figures in front of me regarding civilian casualties in the Civil War, but I believe, based on the behavior of the competing armies, that the civilian death rate would have been somewhat lower than the 5000-6000 of 9/11.
The largest act of terrorism during the war was the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas when approx. 560 boys and men were killed by Quantrill's guerillas. However, he let all the females go free and unmolested (he was a gentleman, after all).
But, for the most part, the armies of both sides respected the lives of civilians. Even Sherman's army, on the march in Georgia and South Carolina, would usually tell people to get out before setting their house on fire, or would evacuate the city before burning it (Atlanta, Columbia).
The battle of Gettysburg is another good example. Even though Lee's Army of Northern Virginia occupied it and fought a battle in its environs, only one civilian was killed and the army would let civilians pass through their lines to get to safety. Sometimes the armies of either side would even post guards to keep the other soldiers from plundering a residence.
Unfortunately for all of us, the future turned out to be Quantrill (minus the respect for women) and not Lee.
The reason I said 'arty' was because the scene reminded me of some bad art house films and student projects I've seen, where the director thought she would be so very clever to have two characters sensually touching each other while verbally inserting skewers in the other wherever possible. Ya, its a cliche but the difference in tone between actions and words and the way it was shot with odd angles obviously suggested to me that the director was briefly reverting to his UCLA film school days and doing something which reminded him of an old french film he once loved before he became too much of a company hack. His effect may not have worked but I think he had intents beyond simply stimulating a few lonely fanboys.
Vulcan vs. Human interactions: The pilot had a nice twist by pitting the two races together on a governmental level where representatives of each could display their predjudice, mistrust, and fear of each other. This was perfectly believable. As insufferable as the rather pretentious and overprotective vulcans are and as impulsive and basically untrustworthy as humans are, I'm surprised the two never ended up in a war on opposite sides. Obviously the vulcan / human thing has been overdone in the past but it was always on a mano y mano level , never at the level of governments maneuvering for control of a situation.
The tribute to green (and other coloured) Orion slave girls: Remembering Christopher Pike's Talos induced vision of a visit to Rigel's slave markets was a nice touch.
I didn't think the disinfectant scene was too pr0nish... To me, it actually seemed as if the director had vague arty pretensions and thought the sensuality of the scene, mixed with the harsh dialogue, would create a lovely bit of dissonance. I think he almost succeeded in this effect.
I really liked the joy these ship-board geeks found in their technology, such as "warp 4.5!" or the sweet spot. TOS had a similar love of technology but the later series seemed to lose their joy in what could be done and what the possibilities are.
I like that the characters finally have a measure of humanity. They're occasionally noble, often shortsighted, easily amused and excited, sometimes brave, usually susceptible to blind predjudice, quarrelsome, hypocritical, and driven by baser instincts they usually dont try to understand. This is a return to the happier days of TOS when (wo)men were (wo)men and even when Kirk would give a sanctimonious speech about his / Federation ideals at the end of an episode, you could hardly forget that he spent the bulk of the episode violating almost every single one of the Federation's sacred beliefs and rules. That sort of willful inconsistency and hypocrisy is typical of almost every human who has held any sort of real power. That is how people would really act, not as the insufferable, always correct robot that was Picard / Janeway. Most leaders will always have more Shatner than Stewart in them. For example Bush's line: "We value our freedom and we value America. That's why we're going to ban any real encryption because freedom is a wonderful thing." could have just as easily been spoken by Kirk in some vague defense of the Prime Directive after he topples a planet's leader and sleeps with all the green and lavender women with iron brassieres he could grab.
Ranting aside, its nice to see the Ugly American in space again.
I think this was the best ST pilot since The Cage and the dark few first minutes of DS9. It wasn't great sci-fi but I think it'll have half a chance if the writers can resist the urge for preachiness.
Kaleidoscope predates the Appearance Manager. I can remember using it somewhat successfully on an 030 Mac under 7.1. And before that, there was an extension which gave the System 7 desktop the look of the (then) upcoming System 8. So theming on the Mac has been around since at least 1996.
BTW, these days Kaleidoscope is amazingly stable. I'm running it and PowerWindows, which gives transluscent effects to menus and windows, with no ill effects in the dozen or so regularly used apps and I have crashes no more often than what a G4 under OS 9 would normally have, i.e. every 3-4 days unless Easy CD Creator is used. Blech.
...all you have to is set Afterburner to 28mhz which produces very smooth gameplay on my Vx... almost better fps than Wolf3D on my 386 of years gone by...
It works fairly well and seems to be an exact port, down to some of the minor bugs I remember from the original. What is interesting to me is seeing how a mouse-driven interface translates to one which is pen-based. Until I became used to the zone placement, my city was looking very patchy and the roads are still somewhat uneven but that could just be a digitizer on the fritz. Its very addictive and has now replaced dopewars (high: 86 million) as the meeting distraction of choice.
I'm not a bible-thumper myself (despite a rigidly fundie upbringing) but I was wondering why Xtians would have such a rabid difficulty with the whole idea of evolution?
Wouldn't it make more sense for an infinitely creative and logical god to create a self-sustaining, self-cleaning system which is flexible enough to recode itself on the fly in response to changing conditions? Even with a belief in the soul being unique to mankind, one could assume that the soul (along with moral responsibility and all the other fun baggage religion would like to give you) would be placed in man at the point his species reached a certain level (like maybe the scene in 2001 when tools are first used by the proto-humans; God could be in the monolith at the edge of eden which would make God an alien but I digress). There is nothing in this plot which would directly contradict Genesis if the book was viewed in a metaphoric way. Even the creation of the species in Genesis seems to agree with the generally accepted flow of evolution: plants first, then aquatic animals and birds (in a stretch: dinosaurs?), then mammals and finally mankind.
So why not evolution? Xtians could always claim the big bang and / or the mysterious first spark of life was provided by God. Xtians could even claim divine guidence in evolution from their beloved Creator who, following the silly shepherd metaphor they seem to like, nutured the chosen line until the first humans emerged.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe its just me, but I'll probably order this thing just to get the well-done scenes of the Agamemnon (err Amigo) and White Stars fighting Federation starships.
I can only hope the Agamemnon et al kick the asses of those self-rightgeous, pretentious gits of the Federation. And if they can't, hopefully the shadows show up and slice them to bits.
I really don't know what it is about my generation which whines so fucking much. The old games, for the most part, got really boring really quickly. Pac Man? Donkey Kong? Even in 1982, I thought they were pointlessly repetitive.
When you use those games as a benchmark, increasing complexity and increasing immersiveness is only a good thing. I'd much rather spend a boring Sunday being a faux-thug in GTA and driving around an enourmous simulated city than chasing some goddamn blue ghost for the five billionth time.
And its good games can touch on elements of popular culture, even the parts which appeal to silly wannabe-badasses. Games are nothing but about escapism and sometimes its good to let one's inner bitchmaker loose in the privacy of one's suburban home where no embarassment will result. Its certainly better than acting out on these things in public.
Sun also acquired a license.
Anyone know what was the third company?
My dev group was recently approached by some gentlemen from an Indian outsourcing company. They wanted to do our new product and made a very convincing case.
When asked for a ballpark figure about cost, they stated 20-30 an hour: probably not less than 21 and probably not more than 35.
After they left, the QA manager, the Project Manager, and me, the programming manager, ran through the numbers by using our estimation of project man hours times the Indian's lowest quoted price (21/hr) vs. the costs of tech labor in Utah.
Local workers actually beat Indians in overall costs because Utahns are willing to do a great job even when paid relatively little. The margins were close, but the Americans still won by about $20,000 for the project. So with these figures in hand, our CEO will probably decide to go with local help. Not only will the locals be a bit cheaper, but we'll have the workers in the office for consulations, oversight, and better QA and none of us will have to make frequent and costly trips to Bangalore to oversee the project.
This scenario probably won't work in much (most?) of the country, but this does show that there is still room for Americans once the figures are carefully analyzed and once wages cycle downwards for a bit.
You're all idjits... The Dreamcast shipped with a modem built in and had many many games with online capabilities. The Dreamcast had the first Massive-Multiplayer game for consoles. The Dreamcast could even be used as a web browser.
The Dreamcast also shipped a broadband adaptor before anyone else.
The game can be solved peacefully, if you define peaceful as not killing or injuring innocent bystanders.
The main storyline mission structure is set up so that you never have to kill a non-involved bystander in any of the missions. So, if you roleplay the game as a thief with a certain sense of honor, you'll never drive on the sidewalk, never kill the people whose cars you jack, never kill prostitues, etc., then I'd define that as a peaceful solution.
If you want to be an asshole, the game lets you but doesn't make you.
It would certainly be an interesting challenge to play the game according to these strict rules of conduct and, at the finish, have the number of people killed be equal to the number of gang members killed.
A couple of weeks ago I entered my name on google and found that it accurately noted my current address, current telephone, and listed things such as my obnoxiously pretentious postings to a cyberpunk mailing list in the early 90's, advice on how to properly use cu-seeme for an early porn reflector, a couple of rather graphically violent short stories published in someone else's zine, and the random, near-libelous kvetching of an ex who thought of many interesting and practical uses for my still twitching corpse. A couple of small and slightly embarrassing appearances I made in the national media were also noted.
I really have no control over the appearance of any of the above. My name is relatively unique and therefore almost everything from google was definitely originating from me or was about me; my mailing list postings which can be definitely tracked were from my uni days when I was required to have my real name on the net account.
I'm not necessarily bothered by the presence of any of this data. I've asked that my address be removed and it seems as if it has. Any employer or potential partner, who is going to hold my ten year old musings against me, can kindly piss off and I hope they will enjoy an early demise. However, I can certainly understand how some of the article's subjects would feel a great fear and paranoia, especially when they have no control over their appearance on random petitions or various articles.
Google is a double-edged sword and I certainly don't hold their unease against them. Life has certainly been made much easier for stalkers and your office's gossip and that is not necessarily a good thing, despite all the other extraordinary benefits of Google.
I suppose I am a bit of a hypocrite; I confess I used Google to verify that my current gf wasn't Republican, a copyright lawyer, or an escaped ax murderer. Two out of three wasn't a bad result even though the chainsaws have to be kept under lock and key at all times.
After looking at the released figures of a huge disparity between the consumer hardware and the music industry, I'm wondering why the two don't take advantage of what should be a symbiotic relationship and not an atagonistic one.
Why not make all music available for free in mp3 format in exchange for set payments from the hardware industry? The labels and artists could retain control over non-mp3 distribution and would continue to own the copyright. The amount paid by consumer electronics companies would be agreed upon industry-wide and would be more than the current amount demanded by law.
The consumer electronics division would be happy because there would be an unlimited supply of music easily available which would guarantee high sales of ipods, rios, and cd-r walkmans. The music labels will be happy because they'll have a large revenue stream independent of how their artists sell. And consumers will be ecstastic and have rather favourable opinions about all companies involved, thus leading to more sales. Strangely enough, when you treat your customers like friends instead of criminals, you usually get more sales.
Then there's additional money to be made in various value-adds. For example, Apple wants to be known as a progressive, bleeding-edge, hip company, so, in order to solidify that image, they'd pay banks like Aphex Twin to stick his new album on your iDisk account a couple of days before it hits the store. Various pointless boy bands make a similar deal with AOL or Microsoft in order to drive traffic to their online services.
And there would be new services popping up which would replace the music review sections in yr fave pop rags. I personally would pay for a site to offer recommendations and highly extensive mp3 downloads of gothic, industrial, and abstract albums.
I don't have any figures in front of me regarding civilian casualties in the Civil War, but I believe, based on the behavior of the competing armies, that the civilian death rate would have been somewhat lower than the 5000-6000 of 9/11.
The largest act of terrorism during the war was the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas when approx. 560 boys and men were killed by Quantrill's guerillas. However, he let all the females go free and unmolested (he was a gentleman, after all).
But, for the most part, the armies of both sides respected the lives of civilians. Even Sherman's army, on the march in Georgia and South Carolina, would usually tell people to get out before setting their house on fire, or would evacuate the city before burning it (Atlanta, Columbia).
The battle of Gettysburg is another good example. Even though Lee's Army of Northern Virginia occupied it and fought a battle in its environs, only one civilian was killed and the army would let civilians pass through their lines to get to safety. Sometimes the armies of either side would even post guards to keep the other soldiers from plundering a residence.
Unfortunately for all of us, the future turned out to be Quantrill (minus the respect for women) and not Lee.
The reason I said 'arty' was because the scene reminded me of some bad art house films and student projects I've seen, where the director thought she would be so very clever to have two characters sensually touching each other while verbally inserting skewers in the other wherever possible. Ya, its a cliche but the difference in tone between actions and words and the way it was shot with odd angles obviously suggested to me that the director was briefly reverting to his UCLA film school days and doing something which reminded him of an old french film he once loved before he became too much of a company hack. His effect may not have worked but I think he had intents beyond simply stimulating a few lonely fanboys.
Here's what I liked:
Vulcan vs. Human interactions: The pilot had a nice twist by pitting the two races together on a governmental level where representatives of each could display their predjudice, mistrust, and fear of each other. This was perfectly believable. As insufferable as the rather pretentious and overprotective vulcans are and as impulsive and basically untrustworthy as humans are, I'm surprised the two never ended up in a war on opposite sides. Obviously the vulcan / human thing has been overdone in the past but it was always on a mano y mano level , never at the level of governments maneuvering for control of a situation.
The tribute to green (and other coloured) Orion slave girls: Remembering Christopher Pike's Talos induced vision of a visit to Rigel's slave markets was a nice touch.
I didn't think the disinfectant scene was too pr0nish... To me, it actually seemed as if the director had vague arty pretensions and thought the sensuality of the scene, mixed with the harsh dialogue, would create a lovely bit of dissonance. I think he almost succeeded in this effect.
I really liked the joy these ship-board geeks found in their technology, such as "warp 4.5!" or the sweet spot. TOS had a similar love of technology but the later series seemed to lose their joy in what could be done and what the possibilities are.
I like that the characters finally have a measure of humanity. They're occasionally noble, often shortsighted, easily amused and excited, sometimes brave, usually susceptible to blind predjudice, quarrelsome, hypocritical, and driven by baser instincts they usually dont try to understand. This is a return to the happier days of TOS when (wo)men were (wo)men and even when Kirk would give a sanctimonious speech about his / Federation ideals at the end of an episode, you could hardly forget that he spent the bulk of the episode violating almost every single one of the Federation's sacred beliefs and rules. That sort of willful inconsistency and hypocrisy is typical of almost every human who has held any sort of real power. That is how people would really act, not as the insufferable, always correct robot that was Picard / Janeway. Most leaders will always have more Shatner than Stewart in them. For example Bush's line: "We value our freedom and we value America. That's why we're going to ban any real encryption because freedom is a wonderful thing." could have just as easily been spoken by Kirk in some vague defense of the Prime Directive after he topples a planet's leader and sleeps with all the green and lavender women with iron brassieres he could grab.
Ranting aside, its nice to see the Ugly American in space again.
I think this was the best ST pilot since The Cage and the dark few first minutes of DS9. It wasn't great sci-fi but I think it'll have half a chance if the writers can resist the urge for preachiness.
Kaleidoscope predates the Appearance Manager. I can remember using it somewhat successfully on an 030 Mac under 7.1. And before that, there was an extension which gave the System 7 desktop the look of the (then) upcoming System 8. So theming on the Mac has been around since at least 1996.
BTW, these days Kaleidoscope is amazingly stable. I'm running it and PowerWindows, which gives transluscent effects to menus and windows, with no ill effects in the dozen or so regularly used apps and I have crashes no more often than what a G4 under OS 9 would normally have, i.e. every 3-4 days unless Easy CD Creator is used. Blech.
...all you have to is set Afterburner to 28mhz which produces very smooth gameplay on my Vx... almost better fps than Wolf3D on my 386 of years gone by...
It works fairly well and seems to be an exact port, down to some of the minor bugs I remember from the original. What is interesting to me is seeing how a mouse-driven interface translates to one which is pen-based. Until I became used to the zone placement, my city was looking very patchy and the roads are still somewhat uneven but that could just be a digitizer on the fritz. Its very addictive and has now replaced dopewars (high: 86 million) as the meeting distraction of choice.
I'm not a bible-thumper myself (despite a rigidly fundie upbringing) but I was wondering why Xtians would have such a rabid difficulty with the whole idea of evolution?
Wouldn't it make more sense for an infinitely creative and logical god to create a self-sustaining, self-cleaning system which is flexible enough to recode itself on the fly in response to changing conditions? Even with a belief in the soul being unique to mankind, one could assume that the soul (along with moral responsibility and all the other fun baggage religion would like to give you) would be placed in man at the point his species reached a certain level (like maybe the scene in 2001 when tools are first used by the proto-humans; God could be in the monolith at the edge of eden which would make God an alien but I digress). There is nothing in this plot which would directly contradict Genesis if the book was viewed in a metaphoric way. Even the creation of the species in Genesis seems to agree with the generally accepted flow of evolution: plants first, then aquatic animals and birds (in a stretch: dinosaurs?), then mammals and finally mankind.
So why not evolution? Xtians could always claim the big bang and / or the mysterious first spark of life was provided by God. Xtians could even claim divine guidence in evolution from their beloved Creator who, following the silly shepherd metaphor they seem to like, nutured the chosen line until the first humans emerged.