The PS2 bat is swappable with slightly more difficulty then swapping a cell phone battery. I opened my up to clean it from a juice spill and ht ebatter has a simple connector. Aftermarket bats should hit the market eventually. The manual give sinstructions on how to swap so I assume sony will sell bats too.
I personally think we are maybe 10 years away from finding an impenetrable body armor solution.
I think the required time is closer to infinity then 10 years. Bullet proof vestes of all sorts are only good against small arms fire. Rifles have too much kinetic energy to disapate and a lot of little trickst with the bullet can make them piercing. It's a race, defence vs offence but defence has been losing for a long long time since it's easier to impart energy into somethign then disapate it.
body of water and ripple off the impact of a bullet
Likely a reference to gel armours. Your discription is vague but generallt thats how all vests work. Disapate kinetic energy over a larger area to reduce damage.
My wonders are, how much will it cost when it does come out. Sadly instead of attempting to assist military and LEO's, the makers will let greed get in the way.
Vests are more useful for cops then soldiers. Since it's a given the otherside has rifles not small arms. Soldiers just need light protection incase of small arms fire or to provide a small prayer when shot with a rifle.
I didn't exception myself from that statement. I am more then happy to follow or lead but following takes less energy. I've made a lot of selfish decision and a lot fo stupid decisions. I am under no delusion that I am better then everyone else. I just have the perception that everybody is just as bad as me. Without some form of structure we'd self destruct.
Label Whore: Someone who is into fashion in an almost unhealthy manner. Designer labels. ie. What he wears daily is more expensive then what most of my friends drive. Prada, Versace, etc...
With Wall-Mart throwing their support behind HD DVD, it certainly strengthens HD DVD's position; but these (even lower-cost) players won't hit the market for 4-5 months yet. If a consumer can get an HD DVD player for less than 1/2 the cost of a Blu-ray player, HD DVD starts to look like the winner.
Did ya miss the part where everyone involved in that rumor came out to deny it?
I am not happy to pay taxes for the wars of agression and imperial domination carried out by Bush and his brown nosers Blair, Harper and Howard.
Umm.. Harper may drink deeply from the chocolate starfish of dubya but we didn't send any troops to Iraq. Right now if Harper wishes to stay a government head he'd best avoid even giving a slight hint that sometimes in the distant future he may send even a ham sandwich to iraq. I am a conservative myself but there is no way we want to step into that quagmire and the smartest decision the liberals made was to say no.
From my 27 years as a human being I can surely tell you most humans volunteer to be stupid selfish bastards followers. letting them run without restrictions will eventually cause them to spontaneously form a government. It's simply the nature of the herd to want to follow. So lets say a libertarian revolution were to happen. about 5s after the last pro-gov guy converts / is shot the libertarians will spontaneous form a government and will likely be just as repressive as the one they replaced if not more so. You'll go around saying "this action does not sufficiently contribute to my liberty. please go over there to receive some mandatory freedom."
So you mean to tell me that there aren't any people living in "rather primitive and generally not too nice conditions" with the full benefit of centralized government?!? In fact, one can very easily make the argument that, historically, the societies that have the highest standards of living are precisely those that have the least amount of government involvment.
Secondly, if government is such a wonderful mechanism to achieve everything that we want, then why is it always mandatory? There is nothing in the ideology of libertarianism that states that people can't form voluntary alliances. You can't say the same for those people who don't want the government's "help".
The mongol governments had only 3 involvements with ti's governed.
1- kill them 2- rape them 3- steal from them
Inefficient things like roads or schools they never bothered with. Was that what you were referring to?
Rome demanded a lot more, was rome a poorer place to reside? How about modern Canada or Europe?
I do believe a place is good or bad generally independently of the government involvement.
The problem with these armchair analysts was that they were focusing on the wrong things. For instance, they should have focused on perceived market direction from the third parties (EA made almost zero Dreamcast games). Nearly every third party when interviewed said they expected the PS2 to win.
The irony is the third parties expected the PS3 to win. It's hasn't "lost" yet but the Wii sprinted out of the gates while the the PS3 and Xbox trotted. I personally will likely get a wii if there is a game that appeals to me. I have a PS3 and bought it almost exclusively for MG4 and FFXIII. No 360 because I have a PC for PC games (oblivion) and nothing else strongly appeals to me yet.
You might be better off with private games with friends until you can get basic skills down. Then play public games to improve your timing and intuition. I started off really bad and over time (2 games a day, 6 on weekends) I got better. I peaked at 17th US west for 2v2 in warcraft 3. I've gone down hill since but it doesn't take a lot of games. The normal course of mild video game addiction will get you prepped for online play. You just have to want to get better and have someone help you. I got tutored by a friend who was #3 for 2v2 at the end of a certain season. He's the guy you refer to, 20 hours a day type. Incidentally he lives in his mums basement too. He's actually the complete opposite of what you would think such a person would be. He owns that house, a NSX, is 6'1 built, a label whore, and so metro you'd think he was gay. He's just highly competitive. Everything he does is to win. From his paint ball hobby to his hockey nights to bidding for job contracts.
IF you play ladder on war 3 you'll find that you have to play the game as it was meant since the resource maps aren't ladder maps. I know those money maps annoyed me. Resource control is a huge part of a RTS. I have a friend who loves money maps. He is phenomenally skilled at micro but one normal maps my wars of attrition grind him into dust sometimes. On money maps we're pretty lop sided in his favor for wins but on normal maps it's 50:50.
So it's going to be crap online then? People don't like getting beaten. They partcicularly don't like getting beaten outright by players who, in the grand scheme of things, are only slightly better than themselves. Trying to make that happen more will just make multiplayer starcraft rubbish. Here's hoping they do a map editor to rival War3's, we can then have enjoyable custom maps at least.
Are you new to online play in general? If your significantly behind in the skill curve then you can either play similiarly skilled friends or play and lose a lot to gain more skill. It's true of all games. Blizzard RTS's tend to focus on "skill" over "strategy" but I think the gridation of skill is a lot smoother then you think.
It's apparent you want skill to matter less. A person who masters a few keys skills will win over those without them. Preserving units with low health, the ability to focus fire and good special ability targetting are skills that you need. If your missing this control you will lose to someone with that control 100% of the time. Once you master those skills you would then move from Noob to Newb. A noob is one is is persistantly bad who does not improve with practice because they beligerantly cling to the way they think it should be player. A newb is simply someone who need practice. If you think the system is insurmountable then you are a noob.
The amount of skill needed is fairly low but if you can't grasp the basics nothing can help you. Now once you grasp these basics then it's all strategy. For instance I have a perfect record against my cousin. I'm 73 : 0 against him in war 3. The difference isn't micro. I have decent micro skills but nothing special. He has awe inspiring micro. He clicks and manage so many groups at a time that I cannot win battle with even numbers of troops. If we are even I would lose and frequently lose skrimishes during a game. However I have much better big picture strategey and despite losing a few battle I win the war through better resource management, expansion/expansion denial, ability mix, and recon.
Now what I'd really like to see is multi-monitor support that would give me a 2D map on my second monitor instead of the little minimap in the corner. SupCom kinda fired my imagination as to how useful that can be in an RTS. I rather suspect, however, that such a feature won't be seen because of the focus of competitive play and the lack of a second screen for many players.
I doubt it. Blizzard tends to aim low with their specs and the zoom would be resource intensive. Also it would make players with less powerful computers have a distinct disatvantage because they could not zoom as quickly or as efficiently. War 3 both had a fixed aspect ratios specifically to give people the same view regaurdless of Monitor resolution. I could be wrong.
It's probably because a famous musician and painter have revenue streams other then the sale of their work and photographers usually get paid without necessarily having to sell their photos. Musicians have concerts. photographers can do weddings, portraits, nudes and sell on internet, and magazines and news papers. Painters can be commissioned by cities to make murals and so on. A writer can just sell his book. His book is likely to take a long time as well. A song can be written in a day, A photography session rarely spans more then a day, and a painter can do one up in a week. Novels take a year or more.
Why buy Quake 2, what amounts to a expansion pack for quake 1 with a better 3D graphics engine.
Why buy Supreme Commander, what amounts to a expansion pack for TA with a better 3D graphics engine.
Why buy FFXII, what amounts to a expansion pack for FFX with a better 3D graphics engine.
Why buy Halo 3, what amounts to a expansion pack for Halo with a better 3D graphics engine.
Why buy Grand Turismo 4, what amounts to a expansion pack for Grand turismo 2 with a better 3D graphics engine.
Why buy Far cry, what amounts to a expansion pack for Doom 2 with a better 3D graphics engine.
Your argument is weak to silly. Do you honestly think it'll be exactly SC with a new veneer? If you break it all down you are just buying a new story, a new set of graphics, and a new package every time you buy any sequel.
Relic: Homeworld and Dawn of War feel like what your get when you cross breed SC with bungies Myth. Everything is upgradable like in SC but tactical options are less diverse. You just have a whole bunch of units almost identical on all sides. It's got a lot more character then say TA or a lot of the also rans but I don't' think relic did much then make a dent gui and a fun game. Less revolution, more bastard offshoot.
If a hero rush gets ya I don't think that would have been the only thing that would have frustrated you. Hero rushing is a trade off for building him up since peons are worth little. If you can't fend it off then your relative skill level is very very low. Also the strat is often just to see what your base is like to recon for future tactics. Perhaps they see you are noob and just crush you right there.
Fighting against software piracy may be understandable, but this goes deeper. The original Xbox when modified becomes an extremely powerful home media center. I still use my old (hacked) Xbox on regular basis for watching movies/music/etc and only rarely play games on it.
You should be able to modify hardware that you have purchased to extend its functionality. MS ethically (IMHO) should ban people caught pirating software or cheating but not ban solely based upon the presence of modified hardware.
So instead of just doing what is reasonable and possible, you would like them to tackle a virtually intractable problem. ID'ing what is a good mod and a bad one.
By forcing western values on the rest of the world we are in effect violating them ourselves by not giving other cultures a choice.
Cultures aren't some delicate flower than can be crushed when a more popular once rolls around. It's a dynamic thing. Cultures aren't equal and aren't universally valuable. They are secondary traits of large groups of people. They will naturally mutate and hcange over time, drawing bits of neigboring cultures and dominant cultures into themselves. Those that are dying should problably die. Some cultures are more productive, more robust, more attractive and it's up to those who exist within that culture to ensure it survives. Culture aren't human beings. They are body of ideas. They should have no rights.
Oddly big tabacco also jumped into the frey. A mandatory released set of documents outline how Phillip Morris bank rolled several of the decenting voices in the "anti global warming" camp. Namely Frederick Seitz and some other shills with PHD's. Apparently the whole strategy was part of a project to lower confidence in main stream science so they later introduce doubt about Tabacco research using the same mechanism.
Slashdot Mirror
The PS2 bat is swappable with slightly more difficulty then swapping a cell phone battery. I opened my up to clean it from a juice spill and ht ebatter has a simple connector. Aftermarket bats should hit the market eventually. The manual give sinstructions on how to swap so I assume sony will sell bats too.
I personally think we are maybe 10 years away from finding an impenetrable body armor solution.
I think the required time is closer to infinity then 10 years. Bullet proof vestes of all sorts are only good against small arms fire. Rifles have too much kinetic energy to disapate and a lot of little trickst with the bullet can make them piercing. It's a race, defence vs offence but defence has been losing for a long long time since it's easier to impart energy into somethign then disapate it.
body of water and ripple off the impact of a bullet
Likely a reference to gel armours. Your discription is vague but generallt thats how all vests work. Disapate kinetic energy over a larger area to reduce damage.
My wonders are, how much will it cost when it does come out. Sadly instead of attempting to assist military and LEO's, the makers will let greed get in the way.
Vests are more useful for cops then soldiers. Since it's a given the otherside has rifles not small arms. Soldiers just need light protection incase of small arms fire or to provide a small prayer when shot with a rifle.
I didn't exception myself from that statement. I am more then happy to follow or lead but following takes less energy. I've made a lot of selfish decision and a lot fo stupid decisions. I am under no delusion that I am better then everyone else. I just have the perception that everybody is just as bad as me. Without some form of structure we'd self destruct.
Label Whore: Someone who is into fashion in an almost unhealthy manner. Designer labels. ie. What he wears daily is more expensive then what most of my friends drive. Prada, Versace, etc...
With Wall-Mart throwing their support behind HD DVD, it certainly strengthens HD DVD's position; but these (even lower-cost) players won't hit the market for 4-5 months yet. If a consumer can get an HD DVD player for less than 1/2 the cost of a Blu-ray player, HD DVD starts to look like the winner.
Did ya miss the part where everyone involved in that rumor came out to deny it?
Isn't HD-DVD the Microsoft-backed format? If I'm chosing between evils, DRM or otherwise, I'll take Sony over Microsoft any day.
Poorly implemented vs insidiously poorly implemented... Yeah I'd choose incompetent Sony over Machiavellian incompetent MS.
I am not happy to pay taxes for the wars of agression and imperial domination carried out by Bush and his brown nosers Blair, Harper and Howard.
Umm.. Harper may drink deeply from the chocolate starfish of dubya but we didn't send any troops to Iraq. Right now if Harper wishes to stay a government head he'd best avoid even giving a slight hint that sometimes in the distant future he may send even a ham sandwich to iraq. I am a conservative myself but there is no way we want to step into that quagmire and the smartest decision the liberals made was to say no.
From my 27 years as a human being I can surely tell you most humans volunteer to be stupid selfish bastards followers. letting them run without restrictions will eventually cause them to spontaneously form a government. It's simply the nature of the herd to want to follow. So lets say a libertarian revolution were to happen. about 5s after the last pro-gov guy converts / is shot the libertarians will spontaneous form a government and will likely be just as repressive as the one they replaced if not more so. You'll go around saying "this action does not sufficiently contribute to my liberty. please go over there to receive some mandatory freedom."
So you mean to tell me that there aren't any people living in "rather primitive and generally not too nice conditions" with the full benefit of centralized government?!? In fact, one can very easily make the argument that, historically, the societies that have the highest standards of living are precisely those that have the least amount of government involvment.
Secondly, if government is such a wonderful mechanism to achieve everything that we want, then why is it always mandatory? There is nothing in the ideology of libertarianism that states that people can't form voluntary alliances. You can't say the same for those people who don't want the government's "help".
The mongol governments had only 3 involvements with ti's governed.
1- kill them
2- rape them
3- steal from them
Inefficient things like roads or schools they never bothered with. Was that what you were referring to?
Rome demanded a lot more, was rome a poorer place to reside? How about modern Canada or Europe?
I do believe a place is good or bad generally independently of the government involvement.
Walmart or Sony isn't going to kick down my door and throw me in prison.
Wait a few years and SonyMusic/RIAA/MPAA TM might be able to.
The problem with these armchair analysts was that they were focusing on the wrong things. For instance, they should have focused on perceived market direction from the third parties (EA made almost zero Dreamcast games). Nearly every third party when interviewed said they expected the PS2 to win.
The irony is the third parties expected the PS3 to win. It's hasn't "lost" yet but the Wii sprinted out of the gates while the the PS3 and Xbox trotted. I personally will likely get a wii if there is a game that appeals to me. I have a PS3 and bought it almost exclusively for MG4 and FFXIII. No 360 because I have a PC for PC games (oblivion) and nothing else strongly appeals to me yet.
Blizzard tend to get closer to the mark then a lot of companies do.
You might be better off with private games with friends until you can get basic skills down. Then play public games to improve your timing and intuition. I started off really bad and over time (2 games a day, 6 on weekends) I got better. I peaked at 17th US west for 2v2 in warcraft 3. I've gone down hill since but it doesn't take a lot of games. The normal course of mild video game addiction will get you prepped for online play. You just have to want to get better and have someone help you. I got tutored by a friend who was #3 for 2v2 at the end of a certain season. He's the guy you refer to, 20 hours a day type. Incidentally he lives in his mums basement too. He's actually the complete opposite of what you would think such a person would be. He owns that house, a NSX, is 6'1 built, a label whore, and so metro you'd think he was gay. He's just highly competitive. Everything he does is to win. From his paint ball hobby to his hockey nights to bidding for job contracts.
IF you play ladder on war 3 you'll find that you have to play the game as it was meant since the resource maps aren't ladder maps. I know those money maps annoyed me. Resource control is a huge part of a RTS. I have a friend who loves money maps. He is phenomenally skilled at micro but one normal maps my wars of attrition grind him into dust sometimes. On money maps we're pretty lop sided in his favor for wins but on normal maps it's 50:50.
So it's going to be crap online then? People don't like getting beaten. They partcicularly don't like getting beaten outright by players who, in the grand scheme of things, are only slightly better than themselves. Trying to make that happen more will just make multiplayer starcraft rubbish. Here's hoping they do a map editor to rival War3's, we can then have enjoyable custom maps at least.
Are you new to online play in general? If your significantly behind in the skill curve then you can either play similiarly skilled friends or play and lose a lot to gain more skill. It's true of all games. Blizzard RTS's tend to focus on "skill" over "strategy" but I think the gridation of skill is a lot smoother then you think.
It's apparent you want skill to matter less. A person who masters a few keys skills will win over those without them. Preserving units with low health, the ability to focus fire and good special ability targetting are skills that you need. If your missing this control you will lose to someone with that control 100% of the time. Once you master those skills you would then move from Noob to Newb. A noob is one is is persistantly bad who does not improve with practice because they beligerantly cling to the way they think it should be player. A newb is simply someone who need practice. If you think the system is insurmountable then you are a noob.
The amount of skill needed is fairly low but if you can't grasp the basics nothing can help you. Now once you grasp these basics then it's all strategy. For instance I have a perfect record against my cousin. I'm 73 : 0 against him in war 3. The difference isn't micro. I have decent micro skills but nothing special. He has awe inspiring micro. He clicks and manage so many groups at a time that I cannot win battle with even numbers of troops. If we are even I would lose and frequently lose skrimishes during a game. However I have much better big picture strategey and despite losing a few battle I win the war through better resource management, expansion/expansion denial, ability mix, and recon.
Now what I'd really like to see is multi-monitor support that would give me a 2D map on my second monitor instead of the little minimap in the corner. SupCom kinda fired my imagination as to how useful that can be in an RTS. I rather suspect, however, that such a feature won't be seen because of the focus of competitive play and the lack of a second screen for many players.
I doubt it. Blizzard tends to aim low with their specs and the zoom would be resource intensive. Also it would make players with less powerful computers have a distinct disatvantage because they could not zoom as quickly or as efficiently. War 3 both had a fixed aspect ratios specifically to give people the same view regaurdless of Monitor resolution. I could be wrong.
It's probably because a famous musician and painter have revenue streams other then the sale of their work and photographers usually get paid without necessarily having to sell their photos. Musicians have concerts. photographers can do weddings, portraits, nudes and sell on internet, and magazines and news papers. Painters can be commissioned by cities to make murals and so on. A writer can just sell his book. His book is likely to take a long time as well. A song can be written in a day, A photography session rarely spans more then a day, and a painter can do one up in a week. Novels take a year or more.
The trick is they don't live in the US of A.
Why buy Quake 2, what amounts to a expansion pack for quake 1 with a better 3D graphics engine.
Why buy Supreme Commander, what amounts to a expansion pack for TA with a better 3D graphics engine.
Why buy FFXII, what amounts to a expansion pack for FFX with a better 3D graphics engine.
Why buy Halo 3, what amounts to a expansion pack for Halo with a better 3D graphics engine.
Why buy Grand Turismo 4, what amounts to a expansion pack for Grand turismo 2 with a better 3D graphics engine.
Why buy Far cry, what amounts to a expansion pack for Doom 2 with a better 3D graphics engine.
Your argument is weak to silly. Do you honestly think it'll be exactly SC with a new veneer? If you break it all down you are just buying a new story, a new set of graphics, and a new package every time you buy any sequel.
Relic: Homeworld and Dawn of War feel like what your get when you cross breed SC with bungies Myth. Everything is upgradable like in SC but tactical options are less diverse. You just have a whole bunch of units almost identical on all sides. It's got a lot more character then say TA or a lot of the also rans but I don't' think relic did much then make a dent gui and a fun game. Less revolution, more bastard offshoot.
If a hero rush gets ya I don't think that would have been the only thing that would have frustrated you. Hero rushing is a trade off for building him up since peons are worth little. If you can't fend it off then your relative skill level is very very low. Also the strat is often just to see what your base is like to recon for future tactics. Perhaps they see you are noob and just crush you right there.
Fighting against software piracy may be understandable, but this goes deeper. The original Xbox when modified becomes an extremely powerful home media center. I still use my old (hacked) Xbox on regular basis for watching movies/music/etc and only rarely play games on it.
You should be able to modify hardware that you have purchased to extend its functionality. MS ethically (IMHO) should ban people caught pirating software or cheating but not ban solely based upon the presence of modified hardware.
So instead of just doing what is reasonable and possible, you would like them to tackle a virtually intractable problem. ID'ing what is a good mod and a bad one.
By forcing western values on the rest of the world we are in effect violating them ourselves by not giving other cultures a choice.
Cultures aren't some delicate flower than can be crushed when a more popular once rolls around. It's a dynamic thing. Cultures aren't equal and aren't universally valuable. They are secondary traits of large groups of people. They will naturally mutate and hcange over time, drawing bits of neigboring cultures and dominant cultures into themselves. Those that are dying should problably die. Some cultures are more productive, more robust, more attractive and it's up to those who exist within that culture to ensure it survives. Culture aren't human beings. They are body of ideas. They should have no rights.
To be pendantic :
Christian bible Roughly - 1600 years
Sources texts - Vary widely
Oddly big tabacco also jumped into the frey. A mandatory released set of documents outline how Phillip Morris bank rolled several of the decenting voices in the "anti global warming" camp. Namely Frederick Seitz and some other shills with PHD's. Apparently the whole strategy was part of a project to lower confidence in main stream science so they later introduce doubt about Tabacco research using the same mechanism.