Titan Quest is the only game I've found with the same gameplay style as Diablo 2. And, I have to say, it is really a better game than Diablo 2, partially because you can always undo skill choices, and partially because the class choices are so much more interesting when you pick a blend of two. The graphics are as good as you would expect for a game that came out 7 years after Diablo 2, so this is obviously a huge reason to play it also.
As far as content, it still has as much magic as Diablo, but the theme is ancient Grecian/Egyptian mysticism, so that may be better than demons from hell.
They appear to be using "the Internet" as a scapegoat
Except that "they" should be the author of the article.
According to the article, the Catholic Church hasn't said anything negative about the internet. They just said that the internet has allowed people faster access to occult information. The leap to saying that "internet is evil" was made when the author wrote the title of the article.
If you look at what the Catholic Church has actually been saying about the internet recently, you'd see an entirely different picture. They are currently making a big push to embrace technology at all levels, and especially telling priests to promote use of the internet for social networking through facebook and twitter.
It's not unsafe, however without a grounded metal chassis, it will radiate a great deal of RF interference. You could not sell them assembled in this form because they would never pass FCC rules for RFI
Not only do you need to worry about the interference caused by the computer, but the shielding around the computer also protects it from RF interference also.
I've run my system without a case several times and haven't had any problems, but there's probably little RF traffic where I live. If you put several of these in a room together, I would almost expect random crashes.
After yesterday's story about an anti-laser, this seems to be an anti-GPS.
Traditional GPS system: The computer is good at taking a start and end point, and finding the most efficient path from one to the other. But, it is poor at precise control actions (steering wheel, accelerator, etc), and poor at making quick decisions in dangerous situations. So, it relies on a human operator to do these tasks. Communication from the computer to the human is the most effective possible: a combination of audio and video.
Anti-GPS system: Humans are week at finding efficient paths through a network of roads, because there is just too much data to consider. Yet, the human is given this task. The computer is poor at precise control tasks, but is assigned to handle it anyway. The communication from the human to the computer is the least effective possible: brain waves generate weak electrical fields outside the cranium which are translated to a language of left and right commands.
Some day, quadriplegics will be able drive cars through brain waves. But, they'll just tell the computer where they want to go, and let the computer handle the routing. There is no reason for the human in such situations to actually control the steering.
It was my first thought as well. TFA addresses it though:
"The idea is for this not to feel like a punishment, but an intervention to help them develop better habits and get to school," said Miller Sylvan, regional director for AIM Truancy Solutions.
Clearly, it won't help a student that doesn't want help. But for students who have trouble remembering where they are supposed to be, it may be just what they need.
Scientist: We have an amazing toy! It does weird stuff, but nothing useful. In fact it's so weird, we don't even know what's happening. Who knows, once we figure it out, we might find that it is similar to radiation therapy used today to combat cancer.
Reporter: The scientists believe that someday it could be used in our fight against cancer
Editor: hmm... it's not really that big of a story. The only thing that makes it interesting enough to print is the bit about cancer.
I'm not really sure how this should work. Should everyone be allowed to upload "Tux Racer"? Should it be limited only to the original author? Should the person that ports it over be allowed to add ads for revenue for his work in porting the game?
I doubt that either Apple or MS want to ban free software. But allowing anyone to port open source over and upload it for profit (ads) just seems dangerous, legally.
Every time I fill out one of those "let us track how often you shop here" shopping saver cards, I always use "Rusty Shackelford" for my name, as a tribute to Dale.
I also use "1060 West Addison Street, Chicago, IL 60613" as my address, as a tribute to the Blue Brothers
It was promised in IE 7, then pulled at the last moment. They said it would be in IE 8.
IE 8 came out, and it wasn't included. They said it would be in IE 9
Finally, it looks like most SVG features will finally be available. Half of that document is about SVG. It's a shame that SMIL isn't included, but considering it's MS, and especially considering it's something free from MS, you have to have low expectations.
Yes, I realized this after hitting submit, but I actually wasn't as far off as you might think.
The Mars Exploration Rovers and several satellites use triple junction gallium arsenide on germanium cells, and germanium-on-insulator substrates are seen as a potential replacement for silicon on miniaturized chips, according to wikipedia. =)
The tiles each contained 496 programmable transistors built from ten-nanometre-thick germanium wires, and were touted as a "world first" in complexity and function.
There are a lot of semiconductor types made with Germanium. GaAs is usually the most common. It is already an established method of making small transistors, although no one has managed to bring the costs down to the same as silicon.
You would think that an article that talks about some new technology would actually state what they were building upon, and what they changed to improve the process.
Bush and his people thought that they could make porn go away if they opposed the.xxx TLD. Obama thinks a kill switch is a keen idea. Put down the button and step away from the controls. That's right. Let the smart people run the Internet, m'kay?
There were many governments that opposed the.xxx, and that is why ICANN canceled it after originally giving it the green light. Bush's name has been associated with it the most, though, because his religious persuasions are publicly known, so everyone is quick to assume his motivations.
I can't understand how the porn industry would want the new TLD at all. It opens doors for censorship, and gives an edge to new sites over established ones.
I don't want the government involved, but I don't want ICANN opening a bazillion new TLDs either. Anyone who wants to operate a small site already needs to acquire the.net,.org,.com,.us, and.biz versions. The more TLDs exist, the greater the cost for running a single site for one year.
In her trial, Gilbert vaccinated 11 healthy volunteers and then infected them, along with 11 non-vaccinated volunteers, with the Wisconsin strain of the H3N2 influenza A virus, which was first isolated in 2005.
"Fewer of the people who were vaccinated got flu than the people who weren't vaccinated," said Gilbert.
Can you guess where I'm going with this?..... Small.... sample.... size....
Here's a hint: Yesterday, the NFC won the coin toss for the super bowl. That makes 14 years in a row that the NFC has won the coin toss. Does that prove that the coin toss is not random?
Oh dear. It'll cost the oil and coal lobby at least that much in "campaign contributions" to make this problem go away.
The average energy company out there is involved in multiple energy sources, both traditional and alternative. Finding a company that sticks to just oil or coal is pretty rare.
I'm assuming by your comment that you have hatred towards the energy companies because they continue to use earth resources. If so, then you should look at this as a $50 million bonus to those exact same companies. It was their lobbying and campaign contributions that convinced the government to give away our money.
As someone who has no investment in energy companies, and someone that uses less than the national average of energy, I think this is just a waste of my money. Let the big energy consumers pay for the research that energy companies do into alternate fuels. It shouldn't come from my taxes.
Last.fm is hardly relevant today, because of grooveshark.
Grooveshark is like last.fm, except that you can play any list of songs you want in any order that you want, and you can rewind/fast forward as you wish. Oh, and it lets you play music all day long (there is no limit to number of minutes you can be connected).
I'm surprised that the RIAA hasn't come down like a ton of bricks on Grooveshark yet. It is different from limewire and napster-classic in just two ways:
The music you stream cannot easily be downloaded for storage for offline play.
Anything that looks like Pink Floyd is removed. That's the only band that Grooveshark admins fear.
Not to be sexist, but does it really matter? Is there some reason that having a larger percentage of women contributors would make Wikipedia a better place? If not, there's no reason to go out of the way to increase the contributions from women, especially if it degrades the quality of Wikipedia in the process.
Even if there was a reason that they wanted more level amounts between men and women, it would be impossible to know if they had achieved it. How many donations come in from gender-neutral organizations? How many donations that come from a man's name are actually donations from a couple?
From what I've seen, in most marriages, one person manages the finances for the house, so assuming gender based upon the name on the paypal account makes very little sense.
I think that people that worry about this are either not married themselves, or their own marriage has financial issues.
On the other hand, once the "geekdom" of the 20th century has become the mainstream of the 21st, undoubtedly new subcultures will crop up on the fringe. Maybe you can call that "the new geekdom" if you like, but you'd be clutching at straws. It will be it's own thing, and maybe it'll catch on one day too.
You're on the right track, but it's really simpler than this.
Geek Culture is not a static thing. Part of its definition includes being at least 'x' far from 'mainstream', but not further than 'y'. Obviously 'x', 'y', and 'mainstream' are different to everyone, but most important is that 'mainstream' is always changing. As it changes, different spots may move in and out of the "geek band", but there will always be something within it.
For example, watch Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric get their geek on as they discuss what the internet is:
Except that things that can hurt people are. For reasons I can't comprehend there's an awful lot of stuff that's connected to the internet which could result in casualties if it was attacked.
Let's assume for a second that your premise is correct. There exists a certain piece of data that would threaten national security. Now answer these questions:
If you shut down the internet in the U.S., can you guarantee that the sensitive data won't be sent through phone lines, not controlled by any of the current ISPs?
If you can prevent the data from traveling through phone lines also, is this blackout enough if it is in just one country?
If blocking internet traffic in just one country is enough, how much time do you need to decide to throw the kill switch? Once you find out that the information exists, isn't it going to be too late?
What about snail mail? Or hand delivery?
When something like important to our productivity as the internet is removed, a large percentage of people will revolt. Is this less dangerous than the original threat?
Since we can't stop transmission of information with a kill switch, let's assume that it's true purpose is an emergency shutoff to prevent a dangerous firewall breach. I would only press an internet kill switch is if it would stop a nuclear war. Let's say for a second that the nukes in the U.S are connected to the internet. I know this isn't likely, but let's just pretend our senators believe it.
Now, if the nukes in the U.S. can be launched via the internet, and we believe that terrorists may some day find the launch codes on wikileaks, then the ability to "turn off the internet" may seem to make sense. But, that is going to be nearly impossible to do, and if just one ISP doesn't go fully dark fast enough, then the whole plan is for not. Why not just put the kill switch onto the transmission lines into the nuclear silos? Wouldn't that make more sense?
I'm not sure how any of this is news. It seems to just be an ad for the OpenDNS service.
The company provides a ton of different services dealing with filtering traffic based on the address. They have one service that blocks commonly misspelled DNS names. They also allow a company to create black or white lists for traffic, for any reason that they want.
The two statistics they list are not related. Obviously phishing for banking information is more successful when you are register a domain name similar to a site whose main purpose is allowing transactions with money (paypal). White and Black lists are bound to be filled with well known websites, of which facebook is definitely in the top ten. The article says that Facebook is the second-most whitelisted site, and doesn't give the first, but I'll bet it's Google.
I'm not sure about plans for mass genocide to solve environmental issues, but here's a story about a couple that murdered their children and then committed suicide themselves to help solve global warming.
Their 2-yr old toddler died instantly, but the 7-month old baby survived. She was in a pool of blood before she was found, but was taken to the hospital. The bullet was removed from her chest, and she survived. Yay nature!
I'm sure Al Gore will start up a pay-as-you-go Mongol Horde you can join if you really care about the environment any day now. Kill your neighbors, save a tree!
Al Gore has suggested approaches that are much more sensible. You can either:
1) Bury your car
2) Send him money to offset your carbon footprint
Sure, the guy has made millions off America's guilt, but I'm sure he has our best interests at heart.
I remember when www.diablo3.com was bought by Blizzard.
The guy that owned it was a huge diablo 2 fan, and he built the blog to track all news about an upcoming sequel. Blizzard didn't want to announce any plans yet for their upcoming game, but they wanted to announce that they were going to start working on a "new game". Since the guy was such a fan, he sold them the site, and honored their request to not announce that Blizzard was going to make an announcement about announcing a game. Really, I am not making this up.
Around that same time, Blizzard trademarked a ton of other names, to hide which game they were going to announce. I could swear that "World of Starcraft" was one of them.
My guess is that WoS is already in pre-production over at Blizzard. When they saw the trailer for this mod, they freaked out. Not using a trademark means that they will lose it, yet they don't want to give any spoilers for what their next project may be.
All I know is that when the Bing commercials first started hitting TV, they created a new buzzword: "Search Overload". It was identified as search engine's inability to detect the context of queries.
My computer is in the same room as my tv, so I went over to bing.com and typed in the query "Search Overload". The first result was a webpage for the Talking Heads' album Overload. Further down the page was a "search" button. I tried the same query in Google, and it brought up an article about Microsoft's advertising campaign.
The ironic result from Bing's search is merely circumstantial evidence, but it is enough to keep me from ever turning to it again.
Slashdot Mirror
Translation: You can begin panicking now!
+1
Titan Quest is the only game I've found with the same gameplay style as Diablo 2. And, I have to say, it is really a better game than Diablo 2, partially because you can always undo skill choices, and partially because the class choices are so much more interesting when you pick a blend of two. The graphics are as good as you would expect for a game that came out 7 years after Diablo 2, so this is obviously a huge reason to play it also.
As far as content, it still has as much magic as Diablo, but the theme is ancient Grecian/Egyptian mysticism, so that may be better than demons from hell.
They appear to be using "the Internet" as a scapegoat
Except that "they" should be the author of the article.
According to the article, the Catholic Church hasn't said anything negative about the internet. They just said that the internet has allowed people faster access to occult information. The leap to saying that "internet is evil" was made when the author wrote the title of the article.
If you look at what the Catholic Church has actually been saying about the internet recently, you'd see an entirely different picture. They are currently making a big push to embrace technology at all levels, and especially telling priests to promote use of the internet for social networking through facebook and twitter.
http://www.tweetcatholic.com/
It's not unsafe, however without a grounded metal chassis, it will radiate a great deal of RF interference. You could not sell them assembled in this form because they would never pass FCC rules for RFI
Not only do you need to worry about the interference caused by the computer, but the shielding around the computer also protects it from RF interference also.
I've run my system without a case several times and haven't had any problems, but there's probably little RF traffic where I live. If you put several of these in a room together, I would almost expect random crashes.
After yesterday's story about an anti-laser, this seems to be an anti-GPS.
Traditional GPS system: The computer is good at taking a start and end point, and finding the most efficient path from one to the other. But, it is poor at precise control actions (steering wheel, accelerator, etc), and poor at making quick decisions in dangerous situations. So, it relies on a human operator to do these tasks. Communication from the computer to the human is the most effective possible: a combination of audio and video.
Anti-GPS system: Humans are week at finding efficient paths through a network of roads, because there is just too much data to consider. Yet, the human is given this task. The computer is poor at precise control tasks, but is assigned to handle it anyway. The communication from the human to the computer is the least effective possible: brain waves generate weak electrical fields outside the cranium which are translated to a language of left and right commands.
Some day, quadriplegics will be able drive cars through brain waves. But, they'll just tell the computer where they want to go, and let the computer handle the routing. There is no reason for the human in such situations to actually control the steering.
It was my first thought as well. TFA addresses it though:
Clearly, it won't help a student that doesn't want help. But for students who have trouble remembering where they are supposed to be, it may be just what they need.
Scientist: We have an amazing toy! It does weird stuff, but nothing useful. In fact it's so weird, we don't even know what's happening. Who knows, once we figure it out, we might find that it is similar to radiation therapy used today to combat cancer.
Reporter: The scientists believe that someday it could be used in our fight against cancer
Editor: hmm... it's not really that big of a story. The only thing that makes it interesting enough to print is the bit about cancer.
Final printed version: It CURES cancer!
And don't forget that VLC was removed from the iPhone app store for the same reasons.
I'm not really sure how this should work. Should everyone be allowed to upload "Tux Racer"? Should it be limited only to the original author? Should the person that ports it over be allowed to add ads for revenue for his work in porting the game?
I doubt that either Apple or MS want to ban free software. But allowing anyone to port open source over and upload it for profit (ads) just seems dangerous, legally.
Every time I fill out one of those "let us track how often you shop here" shopping saver cards, I always use "Rusty Shackelford" for my name, as a tribute to Dale.
I also use "1060 West Addison Street, Chicago, IL 60613" as my address, as a tribute to the Blue Brothers
Full list IE9RC features
All that I care about is SVG.
It was promised in IE 7, then pulled at the last moment. They said it would be in IE 8.
IE 8 came out, and it wasn't included. They said it would be in IE 9
Finally, it looks like most SVG features will finally be available. Half of that document is about SVG. It's a shame that SMIL isn't included, but considering it's MS, and especially considering it's something free from MS, you have to have low expectations.
Yes, I realized this after hitting submit, but I actually wasn't as far off as you might think.
The Mars Exploration Rovers and several satellites use triple junction gallium arsenide on germanium cells, and germanium-on-insulator substrates are seen as a potential replacement for silicon on miniaturized chips, according to wikipedia. =)
From TFA:
There are a lot of semiconductor types made with Germanium. GaAs is usually the most common. It is already an established method of making small transistors, although no one has managed to bring the costs down to the same as silicon.
You would think that an article that talks about some new technology would actually state what they were building upon, and what they changed to improve the process.
Bush and his people thought that they could make porn go away if they opposed the .xxx TLD. Obama thinks a kill switch is a keen idea. Put down the button and step away from the controls. That's right. Let the smart people run the Internet, m'kay?
There were many governments that opposed the .xxx, and that is why ICANN canceled it after originally giving it the green light. Bush's name has been associated with it the most, though, because his religious persuasions are publicly known, so everyone is quick to assume his motivations.
I can't understand how the porn industry would want the new TLD at all. It opens doors for censorship, and gives an edge to new sites over established ones.
I don't want the government involved, but I don't want ICANN opening a bazillion new TLDs either. Anyone who wants to operate a small site already needs to acquire the .net, .org, .com, .us, and .biz versions. The more TLDs exist, the greater the cost for running a single site for one year.
Can you guess where I'm going with this? ..... Small.... sample.... size....
Here's a hint: Yesterday, the NFC won the coin toss for the super bowl. That makes 14 years in a row that the NFC has won the coin toss. Does that prove that the coin toss is not random?
Oh dear. It'll cost the oil and coal lobby at least that much in "campaign contributions" to make this problem go away.
The average energy company out there is involved in multiple energy sources, both traditional and alternative. Finding a company that sticks to just oil or coal is pretty rare.
I'm assuming by your comment that you have hatred towards the energy companies because they continue to use earth resources. If so, then you should look at this as a $50 million bonus to those exact same companies. It was their lobbying and campaign contributions that convinced the government to give away our money.
As someone who has no investment in energy companies, and someone that uses less than the national average of energy, I think this is just a waste of my money. Let the big energy consumers pay for the research that energy companies do into alternate fuels. It shouldn't come from my taxes.
Last.fm is hardly relevant today, because of grooveshark.
Grooveshark is like last.fm, except that you can play any list of songs you want in any order that you want, and you can rewind/fast forward as you wish. Oh, and it lets you play music all day long (there is no limit to number of minutes you can be connected).
I'm surprised that the RIAA hasn't come down like a ton of bricks on Grooveshark yet. It is different from limewire and napster-classic in just two ways:
Not to be sexist, but does it really matter? Is there some reason that having a larger percentage of women contributors would make Wikipedia a better place? If not, there's no reason to go out of the way to increase the contributions from women, especially if it degrades the quality of Wikipedia in the process.
Even if there was a reason that they wanted more level amounts between men and women, it would be impossible to know if they had achieved it. How many donations come in from gender-neutral organizations? How many donations that come from a man's name are actually donations from a couple?
From what I've seen, in most marriages, one person manages the finances for the house, so assuming gender based upon the name on the paypal account makes very little sense.
I think that people that worry about this are either not married themselves, or their own marriage has financial issues.
WTF is the damn difference? What BS is this statement trying to make? Am I supposed to feel better about the pending 'Kill Switch'?
Technically, there is a difference.
It means that an internet outage could be averted by a preemptive phone outage!
On the other hand, once the "geekdom" of the 20th century has become the mainstream of the 21st, undoubtedly new subcultures will crop up on the fringe. Maybe you can call that "the new geekdom" if you like, but you'd be clutching at straws. It will be it's own thing, and maybe it'll catch on one day too.
You're on the right track, but it's really simpler than this.
Geek Culture is not a static thing. Part of its definition includes being at least 'x' far from 'mainstream', but not further than 'y'. Obviously 'x', 'y', and 'mainstream' are different to everyone, but most important is that 'mainstream' is always changing. As it changes, different spots may move in and out of the "geek band", but there will always be something within it.
For example, watch Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric get their geek on as they discuss what the internet is:
Today Show, Jan. 1994
Except that things that can hurt people are. For reasons I can't comprehend there's an awful lot of stuff that's connected to the internet which could result in casualties if it was attacked.
Let's assume for a second that your premise is correct. There exists a certain piece of data that would threaten national security. Now answer these questions:
Since we can't stop transmission of information with a kill switch, let's assume that it's true purpose is an emergency shutoff to prevent a dangerous firewall breach. I would only press an internet kill switch is if it would stop a nuclear war. Let's say for a second that the nukes in the U.S are connected to the internet. I know this isn't likely, but let's just pretend our senators believe it.
Now, if the nukes in the U.S. can be launched via the internet, and we believe that terrorists may some day find the launch codes on wikileaks, then the ability to "turn off the internet" may seem to make sense. But, that is going to be nearly impossible to do, and if just one ISP doesn't go fully dark fast enough, then the whole plan is for not. Why not just put the kill switch onto the transmission lines into the nuclear silos? Wouldn't that make more sense?
I'm not sure how any of this is news. It seems to just be an ad for the OpenDNS service.
The company provides a ton of different services dealing with filtering traffic based on the address. They have one service that blocks commonly misspelled DNS names. They also allow a company to create black or white lists for traffic, for any reason that they want.
The two statistics they list are not related. Obviously phishing for banking information is more successful when you are register a domain name similar to a site whose main purpose is allowing transactions with money (paypal). White and Black lists are bound to be filled with well known websites, of which facebook is definitely in the top ten. The article says that Facebook is the second-most whitelisted site, and doesn't give the first, but I'll bet it's Google.
Citation needed
I'm not sure about plans for mass genocide to solve environmental issues, but here's a story about a couple that murdered their children and then committed suicide themselves to help solve global warming.
Their 2-yr old toddler died instantly, but the 7-month old baby survived. She was in a pool of blood before she was found, but was taken to the hospital. The bullet was removed from her chest, and she survived. Yay nature!
I'm sure Al Gore will start up a pay-as-you-go Mongol Horde you can join if you really care about the environment any day now. Kill your neighbors, save a tree!
Al Gore has suggested approaches that are much more sensible. You can either:
1) Bury your car
2) Send him money to offset your carbon footprint
Sure, the guy has made millions off America's guilt, but I'm sure he has our best interests at heart.
I remember when www.diablo3.com was bought by Blizzard.
The guy that owned it was a huge diablo 2 fan, and he built the blog to track all news about an upcoming sequel. Blizzard didn't want to announce any plans yet for their upcoming game, but they wanted to announce that they were going to start working on a "new game". Since the guy was such a fan, he sold them the site, and honored their request to not announce that Blizzard was going to make an announcement about announcing a game. Really, I am not making this up.
Around that same time, Blizzard trademarked a ton of other names, to hide which game they were going to announce. I could swear that "World of Starcraft" was one of them.
My guess is that WoS is already in pre-production over at Blizzard. When they saw the trailer for this mod, they freaked out. Not using a trademark means that they will lose it, yet they don't want to give any spoilers for what their next project may be.
All I know is that when the Bing commercials first started hitting TV, they created a new buzzword: "Search Overload". It was identified as search engine's inability to detect the context of queries.
My computer is in the same room as my tv, so I went over to bing.com and typed in the query "Search Overload". The first result was a webpage for the Talking Heads' album Overload. Further down the page was a "search" button. I tried the same query in Google, and it brought up an article about Microsoft's advertising campaign.
The ironic result from Bing's search is merely circumstantial evidence, but it is enough to keep me from ever turning to it again.