From this statement, I would guess that you are a programmer. The point of VB, and where it should stay, is for us IT guys who don't want to get a CS degree to write little one-off apps to make supporting Windows systems eaiser. VB.Net is nice and easy to work with when I just want to get something done, and I don't care enough about it to buy a professionally written aplication. The reason I don't use C# or J# or one of the other.Net languages is that I have a bit of a history with BASIC. And, quite frankly, VB is easy to pick up and use.
Yes, using VB.Net to write a full blown application suite would be like using a hand-saw to cut down a Giant Sequia; it will work, but it's not necessarilly the best choice. On the other hand, for little one-off apps, C++ or Java is like using a chainsaw to remove a sappling, overkill.
if you have a computer that doesn't have a newer (say, less than 1 year old) graphics card then you are just as likely to play it on a 360 than not play WOW on your computer (which in many cases WON'T play WOW)
Huh? WoW played just fine on 4 year hardware for me. Until just recently I was playing WoW on a 2.26Ghz Intel (533FSB) with 1GB RAM and a GeForce4 Ti4600 video card. The computer was built about 4 years ago, and ran WoW without a problem. Yes, I couldn't run it with the graphics maxed out, that was ok, even with the stepped down graphics the game looks good. The only change now, was that I bought a 6600GT so that I could try out Battlefield 2.
My wife was playing it on even worse hardware for a while. 1Ghz Pentuim3, 512MB RAM, and a GeForce3. This was about the lowest end you could still play on, as walking into Ironforge was really laggy. Outside the cities though, it was OK for PvE stuff. And that computer was about 7 years old (ok, the graphics card was slightly more recent of an upgrade).
So, no you don't need top notch hardware to play WoW on a PC. Just turn the graphics down a bit.
One question which has always been an obsticle to me for the OSS switch: what do I replace Exchange and Outlook with? With it will be the question of what do I reaplace Active Directory with? The second part seems fairly obvious, OpenLDAP. I just have not seen the answer to the first part. The replacement has to integrate with OpenLDAP (or another reasonable alternative), so that all of my user information is in one place. I need to be able to assign desktop policies per group and per user, including printer policies and share permissions (samba server would at least cover this part). I need both personal and shared calendars, with automatic reminders and the ability to set up meetings and send out meeting requests, which automatically add the meeting to the user's personal calendar.
Essentially, I need Exchange and Outlook, with the full feature set. And, to top it off, I don't want to be editing text files from here to eternity (I'm sorry to those who love this sort of thing, but this is a pain to administer). I would love to see a good answer, as I would honestly give it a go on my home server, but I keep ending up with Postfix and a bunch of hacks to get there, and a nightmare in administration.
Pretty much, though my users run ESRI's ArcDesktop. Which is Windows only, so #3 applies. Also, why would I want to create an extra layer of failure with WINE? ArcDesktop is unstable enough all by itself.
When my shop has a bunch of extra Spark Laptops lying around that I would have to upgrade to XP, I'll take that as a valid rebuttal. Until then, I've got a bunch of Dell equipment which runs XP just fine, and would have gods know what problems switching to Linux. Yes, the driver issue is the fault of the hardware manufacturers. It's still a problem.
As for 64-bit, can someone give me a good reason to have this on a machine who's primary purpose is to be an over-glorified typewritter? On a developer machine I can see it, but on an office machine, it's overkill.
Ok, I didn't RTFA, but from what I gather this is all about an office suite, which is based on a server and accessed via a web browser. This is happening in Office 12. MS is releasing a web based version, and even willing to host it for companies, for a fee. Sometime in the next few weeks we are going to try it out in beta at my office. Personally, I don't see a need for it, but our Network Engineer has a hard-on for flashy new things, especially MS ones. Fortunatly, I'll probably be able to kill this before it gets too far in my office, but I can see where some places may embrace it for the ease of management.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how can you have more than 100% profit?
Yes, you're missing something. Profit is calculated based on costs. Profit is determined by dividing the difference of the selling price and the manufacture cost by the manufacture cost. i.e.:
Product Sells for $10, costs $1 to manufacture
($10 - $1)/$1 * 100% = 900% profit.
You are allowed to copy music only because of the AHRA. There is no similar law allowing the copying of movies.
Wrong, but thank you for playing. Fair use is embodied in USC Title 17 sect. 107[1]. Title 17 is where copyrights are defined. Title 17 refeers to all copyrightable works, therefore, it follows that sect. 107 applies to all copyrighted works.
The sticky point is that Title 17 sect. 107 never actually mentions personal backups specifically. However, the fourth part of the test provided in the law: (4)the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Would generally seem to allow a personal backup, as this will not have an effect on the "potential market" for a work. Also, since a personal backup is a noncommercial use, the onus will be on the plantiff to show that this personal use does, in fact, damage their potential market.
As always: I am not a lawyer, but I play one on Slashdot.
You mentioned one of the reasons I don't see my shop going over to Linux any time soon: ArcGIS. Yes, the server apps have UNIX variants, but ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Workstation are still stuck on Windows, and I don't see that ESRI is going to have any interest in porting them. Right now, if you want to do GIS applications, you usually go with ESRI's products; and, your shop is not going to be big enough to convince them to go through the trouble of porting it. As for running it in WINE, it might work, I never checked; then you have the fun of getting all of the extensions to run in WINE as well. Add to that the tight integration with Access for shape file storage and the ability to output data to Visio, and you're really just running a windows PC on a Linux emulator, get over it and use Windows.
Realistically, you don't need a tool like Dreamweaver to mock things up. For the website I created for my wedding, my wife created mockups using MSWord. I then figured out how to make everything work on the page in the way she wanted. The web page and all associated script files were created using notepad. I now use Crimson to do this sort of thing, because I like syntax highlighting and auto-indenting.
For mockups you don't need a web design tool, just something to drag and drop stuff onto and type stuff into. Granted, the down side to this is that the person doing the mockup has no clue about the limitations of a web site, and may do wierd stuff that is nearly impossible to get right. So, some communication during the actual coding process is required. e.g. No, you can't use $special_font on the web page, unless we make it a graphic, and then it will not be highlightable (is that a word?) as text.
Funny, the last time I walked into a game store, I was looking over the titles and kept thinking, "crap, crap, huh, what's this?" pick up box, read back, "oh, crap. There are very few titles currently out, or comming out that I really want. I was really looking forward to Rainbow Six: Lockdown, until I played the demo. Rainbow Six has been a series where they tried to ground it in reality, to some extent they succeeded. The Lockdown demo felt way too much like a console shooter, which is to say that it sucked.
This isn't to say that it's all bad, just mostly. I am waiting for Moonpod to finish up War Angels and Mr.Robot, both of which will probably be purchased right after release. But I have had a lot of trouble finding games which I would say I was interested in recently.
I'm also hoping that NTP wins this one. One of the best ways to get a bad law changed is to enforce it. If the big boys who own our government are forced to start dealing with the consequnces of the laws thay have bought, they will eventually pay to get those laws changed.
I ended up getting the 6600GT, I wasn't going to dump more than $150 on a video card upgrade at this point (and I did this back around Christmas). Though, one factor I was looking at was the possibility of doing the mobo/processor thing slowly. i.e. Buy a mobo with both PCIe and AGP slots, which would support the rest of my current hardware; then, probably move to faster RAM eventually. After that, the processor could follow. At which point, I will probably be getting ready to do the video card again, and can move to PCIe seemlessly. This sort of path would make the 7800GS a worthwhile card, as you would ramp up to using it fully, and could postpone the next video card cycle a bit further. But, I agree, my system would probably hold the 7800GS back, as things currently stand.
A couple years back I invested quite a bit of money in a high-end gaming rig. At the time, I bought a GF4ti4600, which was about the top end (4800 was not announced yet). Since then, I've not had much need to upgrade. The processor is a 2.26Ghz P4 on the 533FSB, 1GB DDR RAM (I forget the RAM speed off the top of my head). Even now, with the system 3ish years old, most of the upgrades for it would be incrimental. Yes, I could move to a faster FSB and faster RAM, but it wouldn't be enough of a performance gain to justify the cost. I'm also willing to play at less than maximum resolution.
Recently, I wanted to try BF2, but could not because it requires a full DX9 card, which the GF4 line is not. My problem was, that I only have an AGP slot. And I'm not willing to do the whole mobo/proc upgrade for one game. It's nice to see that Nvidia is still willing to support those of use who don't want to replace everything constantly. When I build myself a new machine, I always try to build-in an upgrade path, so that I can streach my investment out over a longer period.
E.T. wasn't that bad. The biggest problem I had with it was the transition out of the holes back onto the outside. Falling back into the same hole over and over did get annoying. However, I did, also, manage to beat E.T. many times. And, to some extent, enjoyed the game.
I agree that swinging into the hole in the cliff on Raiders was a PITA (crap, caught the parachute again!). And, once inside getting down to and digging up the ark was also fairly difficult. The main problem I had with that game though was that when you did dig up the ark, the game went to the same type of end screen you got when you died. It just sort of ended, not much to indicate that you had completed the game. Still, that game ate many hours of my young life.
It does work, but it is not quite the same as the IE version. The long and short of it is that OWA uses ActiveX if the browser allows it, if not it uses a java implementation, which works but is not quite as slick as the ActiveX version. However, with WPF this will probably go away.
Sony's media can hold more than 8.4GB of data. I have no idea why any videogame would ever require more than 8.4GB of data, but if it really did, you could always - gasp - split it onto two discs.
Riiiight, and I'm never going to fill the 10MB hard-drive in my 8088. Games get bigger and, usually, better. And while shuffling disks works ok when you only have a few disks; eventually, you will reach a point where it becomes a royal pain in the ass. Go back about 10-15 years and you'll see what I mean. When I got King's Quest V the damn thing came on 10 1.44MB floppies. Installing it was annoying. I was only too happy to get a CD-ROM drive to stop that sillyness. Evenatully our games will outgrow DVD's. Yes, a lot of the reason will be graphics, that's ok. We'll probably also see a lot more voice acting and content stuffed in there too. As it is, I'm starting to see games come on 2-3 DVD's pretty regularly. This is still below the threashold of absolute annoyance, but it's getting close. By the time it hits 5 disks a game, give me something new.
Of course, the obvious point here is that neither Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD offer a substantial enough improvement to matter. So, it will probably be neither of these which supplant DVD's, but it will happen.
Wow, and I thought the D&D is evil stuff died with the 1980's. Well, I guess, as they say, everything goes in cycles. So, when do we get the next book about D&D's evils by a clueless mother who can't accept that he son killed himself? Said book to be filled with half-truths, urban legends and outright lies, which would be par for the course.
To me, this was one of those "no duh!" moments in Mythbusters. I realize that they have to do them, given that a lot of people would never actually belive it if they didn't see it on TV. Have you ever considered what you use to clean a toliet? Last time I did it, the product cointained bleach and a number of other equally nasty chemicals. So, you basically have a hard, non-pourus, surface which is regularly cleaned with chemicals, which are known to kill damn near everything. And now you tell me it's a fairly bacteria free environment? No shit Sherlock. On top of that, it's just my skin which usually contacts the seat, not the shit itself; while the skin is bad enough, as long as I maintain some decent level of hygene, there's nothing much to be worried about.
I would love to see this compared to a common food preperation area. I know for a fact that my counter tops have fairly regular contact with either raw meat or the juices of said meat. I do clean up after cooking, but usually not with bleach or the like every time. Of course, the food which is getting prepared is usually cooked after that, so I'm not very worried about it.
The idea of completely deregulated utilities has never actually been tried in the US, and for a good reason, it would be a mess. Consider, for a moment, what that would actually mean. First off, most of the current utilities were built with some government help, usually not direct funding, but assistance with securing right-of-ways for lines. Beyond that, most municipalities will not allow a new company to start stringing lines. To be 100% deregulated we would have to allow anyone, who wants to, to start stringing lines. Along with that, to even the playing field, governments would have to equally help all companies secure right-of-ways. The result would be a nightmare. We would have lines of god knows what quality strung everywhere.
In the end, keeping the number of lines down to a minimum is worth the trade off of the sector having to be regulated.
1 - You're nitpicking. All I'm saying is it doesn't rise to the standard of proving guilt. That's the point.
Well enough, I just didn't want to end up with the requirement being little more than gut insticnt. A warrant is a constitutional requirement for search and seizure.
2 - You can't always wait around for a judge. And sometimes for secrecy reasons it easier not to. It's that simple. In regular times - go with a judge, in emergencies maybe not.
You're right, you can't always wait for a judge. You can, however, ask one to authorize your actions after the fact. This is a large part of what the FISA court does. If the FBI/NSA/etc. need to setup a wiretap with secrecy and speed, the law allows for that; however, within 72 hours of doing so they have to take it before the FISA court and get them to sign off on it. It's not exactly a cumbersome process, the agnecy can get the wiretap going and send a lacky over to the FISA court to review it. The FISA court is essentially secret. They do have to report to congress (checks and balances at work), but case information is kept secret.
As for the congressional oversight in this case, even some of the congress members who were informed have complained about it. For example: Democratic Senator John D Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has written to Vice President Dick Cheney complaining that the briefings are inadequate. He said that "given the security restrictions associated with this information, and my inability to consult staff or counsel on my own, I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities."[1]
This was a rather blatant attempt to circumvent judicial oversight, which has long been required for wiretaps. There was no reason for it, other than to avoid having requests turned down.
the Bill of Rights says you need "probable cause" which is a lower standard than "until proven guilty".
No, what the Constitution says is: Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Which is below the "until proven guilty" requirement, but still higher than the "probable cause" level. In order for the government to do some sort of search and seizure, they have to get a warrant. Now, this has been construed to allow an officer to do something if there is an imminent threat or obvious violation; however, I think you would have a hard time arguing that making a call outside the US constitutes an imminent threat. Beyond that, we also have the FISA court which is allowed to retroactively issue warrants. Why do we need warrantless wiretaps? Why is the executive branch so keen to hide its activities from the judical branch? Our government is the one place where I am willing to agree with the statement: If you have nothing to fear you have nothing to hide.
does calling a terrorist and then making international calls give probable cause to listen in on what you say? I'd say yes.
I'm glad you think so, but I'd much rather it was a judge making that decision, even if retroactivly in a FISA court. Serioiusly, if the government has a good reason to wiretap you, a judge isn't going to stop them. He will, however, provide some level of oversight so the system isn't abused. Is it perfect? No, but it's a far sight better than some unaccountable group making decisions on its own.
In case any reader has missed it at this point, I don't mind the NSA/FBI/police doing wiretaps on people, what I mind is them doing wiretaps on people without any oversight. This is the reason behind the idea of "seperation of powers", hopefully you won't get all three branches of the government working together to create a tyranny. I would also argue that this is why the framers set up a system with strong state rights and a weak federal government, the more spread out power is, the harder it is to abuse. Of course, that system died with the civil war, but I digress. While it is necessary to try to stop terrorists, can we at least make sure that it is done with more than one branch of the government watching, preferrably all three?
Where's the RPG where you can have some casual sex? Blowing a dozen goons away goes without saying, but getting laid even once just doesn't happen in a normal game.
While it's not quite casual sex, in Fable:The Lost Chapters on the PC, you could have sex with your wife. The sex "scene" was just a black screen with your partner making moaning noises. However, the game did keep track of how many times you had sex as one of your Hero Stats. Of course, the requirement for marriage to have sex sort of broke the evil side of the game a bit. If I'm evil, I don't think I'm going to necessarilly marry a woman to have sex with her, consent is also debatable, but I would be willing to let that one go.
On top of that, it was actually a pretty good game, like many action-RPG's it got a little repedative but no worse that you would normally expect.
I expect that sex will slowly creep into mainstream gaming as something that occurs, but will probably show up much as it does in daytime television. The couple starts getting hot and heavy, fade to black, fade in to people who have obviously just had sex.
No, the fact that you don't want to run anti-cheating software for an online game makes it a good bet you are a cheater. I can understand not wanting to support a company which goes after people who reverse engineer their software, and if that was all you had brought up, I could see your point, but the crack about the anti-cheating software has no place in that, hence the assumption.
Given the vast number of cheats, and cheaters using them, for games which don't impliment something I don't see how you can logically defend the idea that not wanting to run an anti-cheat system is an ethical choice. Anti-cheat systems make online games playable.
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i don't see a point in vb.
.Net languages is that I have a bit of a history with BASIC. And, quite frankly, VB is easy to pick up and use.
From this statement, I would guess that you are a programmer. The point of VB, and where it should stay, is for us IT guys who don't want to get a CS degree to write little one-off apps to make supporting Windows systems eaiser. VB.Net is nice and easy to work with when I just want to get something done, and I don't care enough about it to buy a professionally written aplication. The reason I don't use C# or J# or one of the other
Yes, using VB.Net to write a full blown application suite would be like using a hand-saw to cut down a Giant Sequia; it will work, but it's not necessarilly the best choice. On the other hand, for little one-off apps, C++ or Java is like using a chainsaw to remove a sappling, overkill.
if you have a computer that doesn't have a newer (say, less than 1 year old) graphics card then you are just as likely to play it on a 360 than not play WOW on your computer (which in many cases WON'T play WOW)
Huh? WoW played just fine on 4 year hardware for me. Until just recently I was playing WoW on a 2.26Ghz Intel (533FSB) with 1GB RAM and a GeForce4 Ti4600 video card. The computer was built about 4 years ago, and ran WoW without a problem. Yes, I couldn't run it with the graphics maxed out, that was ok, even with the stepped down graphics the game looks good. The only change now, was that I bought a 6600GT so that I could try out Battlefield 2.
My wife was playing it on even worse hardware for a while. 1Ghz Pentuim3, 512MB RAM, and a GeForce3. This was about the lowest end you could still play on, as walking into Ironforge was really laggy. Outside the cities though, it was OK for PvE stuff. And that computer was about 7 years old (ok, the graphics card was slightly more recent of an upgrade).
So, no you don't need top notch hardware to play WoW on a PC. Just turn the graphics down a bit.
One question which has always been an obsticle to me for the OSS switch: what do I replace Exchange and Outlook with? With it will be the question of what do I reaplace Active Directory with? The second part seems fairly obvious, OpenLDAP. I just have not seen the answer to the first part. The replacement has to integrate with OpenLDAP (or another reasonable alternative), so that all of my user information is in one place. I need to be able to assign desktop policies per group and per user, including printer policies and share permissions (samba server would at least cover this part). I need both personal and shared calendars, with automatic reminders and the ability to set up meetings and send out meeting requests, which automatically add the meeting to the user's personal calendar.
Essentially, I need Exchange and Outlook, with the full feature set. And, to top it off, I don't want to be editing text files from here to eternity (I'm sorry to those who love this sort of thing, but this is a pain to administer). I would love to see a good answer, as I would honestly give it a go on my home server, but I keep ending up with Postfix and a bunch of hacks to get there, and a nightmare in administration.
Pretty much, though my users run ESRI's ArcDesktop. Which is Windows only, so #3 applies. Also, why would I want to create an extra layer of failure with WINE? ArcDesktop is unstable enough all by itself.
When my shop has a bunch of extra Spark Laptops lying around that I would have to upgrade to XP, I'll take that as a valid rebuttal. Until then, I've got a bunch of Dell equipment which runs XP just fine, and would have gods know what problems switching to Linux. Yes, the driver issue is the fault of the hardware manufacturers. It's still a problem.
As for 64-bit, can someone give me a good reason to have this on a machine who's primary purpose is to be an over-glorified typewritter? On a developer machine I can see it, but on an office machine, it's overkill.
Ok, I didn't RTFA, but from what I gather this is all about an office suite, which is based on a server and accessed via a web browser. This is happening in Office 12. MS is releasing a web based version, and even willing to host it for companies, for a fee. Sometime in the next few weeks we are going to try it out in beta at my office. Personally, I don't see a need for it, but our Network Engineer has a hard-on for flashy new things, especially MS ones. Fortunatly, I'll probably be able to kill this before it gets too far in my office, but I can see where some places may embrace it for the ease of management.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how can you have more than 100% profit?
Yes, you're missing something. Profit is calculated based on costs. Profit is determined by dividing the difference of the selling price and the manufacture cost by the manufacture cost. i.e.:
Product Sells for $10, costs $1 to manufacture
($10 - $1)/$1 * 100% = 900% profit.
You are allowed to copy music only because of the AHRA. There is no similar law allowing the copying of movies.
Wrong, but thank you for playing. Fair use is embodied in USC Title 17 sect. 107[1]. Title 17 is where copyrights are defined. Title 17 refeers to all copyrightable works, therefore, it follows that sect. 107 applies to all copyrighted works.
The sticky point is that Title 17 sect. 107 never actually mentions personal backups specifically. However, the fourth part of the test provided in the law:
(4)the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Would generally seem to allow a personal backup, as this will not have an effect on the "potential market" for a work. Also, since a personal backup is a noncommercial use, the onus will be on the plantiff to show that this personal use does, in fact, damage their potential market.
As always: I am not a lawyer, but I play one on Slashdot.
You mentioned one of the reasons I don't see my shop going over to Linux any time soon: ArcGIS. Yes, the server apps have UNIX variants, but ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Workstation are still stuck on Windows, and I don't see that ESRI is going to have any interest in porting them. Right now, if you want to do GIS applications, you usually go with ESRI's products; and, your shop is not going to be big enough to convince them to go through the trouble of porting it. As for running it in WINE, it might work, I never checked; then you have the fun of getting all of the extensions to run in WINE as well. Add to that the tight integration with Access for shape file storage and the ability to output data to Visio, and you're really just running a windows PC on a Linux emulator, get over it and use Windows.
Realistically, you don't need a tool like Dreamweaver to mock things up. For the website I created for my wedding, my wife created mockups using MSWord. I then figured out how to make everything work on the page in the way she wanted. The web page and all associated script files were created using notepad. I now use Crimson to do this sort of thing, because I like syntax highlighting and auto-indenting.
For mockups you don't need a web design tool, just something to drag and drop stuff onto and type stuff into. Granted, the down side to this is that the person doing the mockup has no clue about the limitations of a web site, and may do wierd stuff that is nearly impossible to get right. So, some communication during the actual coding process is required. e.g. No, you can't use $special_font on the web page, unless we make it a graphic, and then it will not be highlightable (is that a word?) as text.
Funny, the last time I walked into a game store, I was looking over the titles and kept thinking, "crap, crap, huh, what's this?" pick up box, read back, "oh, crap. There are very few titles currently out, or comming out that I really want. I was really looking forward to Rainbow Six: Lockdown, until I played the demo. Rainbow Six has been a series where they tried to ground it in reality, to some extent they succeeded. The Lockdown demo felt way too much like a console shooter, which is to say that it sucked. This isn't to say that it's all bad, just mostly. I am waiting for Moonpod to finish up War Angels and Mr.Robot, both of which will probably be purchased right after release. But I have had a lot of trouble finding games which I would say I was interested in recently.
I'm also hoping that NTP wins this one. One of the best ways to get a bad law changed is to enforce it. If the big boys who own our government are forced to start dealing with the consequnces of the laws thay have bought, they will eventually pay to get those laws changed.
I ended up getting the 6600GT, I wasn't going to dump more than $150 on a video card upgrade at this point (and I did this back around Christmas). Though, one factor I was looking at was the possibility of doing the mobo/processor thing slowly. i.e. Buy a mobo with both PCIe and AGP slots, which would support the rest of my current hardware; then, probably move to faster RAM eventually. After that, the processor could follow. At which point, I will probably be getting ready to do the video card again, and can move to PCIe seemlessly. This sort of path would make the 7800GS a worthwhile card, as you would ramp up to using it fully, and could postpone the next video card cycle a bit further. But, I agree, my system would probably hold the 7800GS back, as things currently stand.
A couple years back I invested quite a bit of money in a high-end gaming rig. At the time, I bought a GF4ti4600, which was about the top end (4800 was not announced yet). Since then, I've not had much need to upgrade. The processor is a 2.26Ghz P4 on the 533FSB, 1GB DDR RAM (I forget the RAM speed off the top of my head). Even now, with the system 3ish years old, most of the upgrades for it would be incrimental. Yes, I could move to a faster FSB and faster RAM, but it wouldn't be enough of a performance gain to justify the cost. I'm also willing to play at less than maximum resolution.
Recently, I wanted to try BF2, but could not because it requires a full DX9 card, which the GF4 line is not. My problem was, that I only have an AGP slot. And I'm not willing to do the whole mobo/proc upgrade for one game. It's nice to see that Nvidia is still willing to support those of use who don't want to replace everything constantly. When I build myself a new machine, I always try to build-in an upgrade path, so that I can streach my investment out over a longer period.
E.T. wasn't that bad. The biggest problem I had with it was the transition out of the holes back onto the outside. Falling back into the same hole over and over did get annoying. However, I did, also, manage to beat E.T. many times. And, to some extent, enjoyed the game.
I agree that swinging into the hole in the cliff on Raiders was a PITA (crap, caught the parachute again!). And, once inside getting down to and digging up the ark was also fairly difficult. The main problem I had with that game though was that when you did dig up the ark, the game went to the same type of end screen you got when you died. It just sort of ended, not much to indicate that you had completed the game. Still, that game ate many hours of my young life.
It does work, but it is not quite the same as the IE version. The long and short of it is that OWA uses ActiveX if the browser allows it, if not it uses a java implementation, which works but is not quite as slick as the ActiveX version. However, with WPF this will probably go away.
Sony's media can hold more than 8.4GB of data. I have no idea why any videogame would ever require more than 8.4GB of data, but if it really did, you could always - gasp - split it onto two discs.
Riiiight, and I'm never going to fill the 10MB hard-drive in my 8088. Games get bigger and, usually, better. And while shuffling disks works ok when you only have a few disks; eventually, you will reach a point where it becomes a royal pain in the ass. Go back about 10-15 years and you'll see what I mean. When I got King's Quest V the damn thing came on 10 1.44MB floppies. Installing it was annoying. I was only too happy to get a CD-ROM drive to stop that sillyness. Evenatully our games will outgrow DVD's. Yes, a lot of the reason will be graphics, that's ok. We'll probably also see a lot more voice acting and content stuffed in there too. As it is, I'm starting to see games come on 2-3 DVD's pretty regularly. This is still below the threashold of absolute annoyance, but it's getting close. By the time it hits 5 disks a game, give me something new.
Of course, the obvious point here is that neither Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD offer a substantial enough improvement to matter. So, it will probably be neither of these which supplant DVD's, but it will happen.
Wow, and I thought the D&D is evil stuff died with the 1980's. Well, I guess, as they say, everything goes in cycles. So, when do we get the next book about D&D's evils by a clueless mother who can't accept that he son killed himself? Said book to be filled with half-truths, urban legends and outright lies, which would be par for the course.
Question: What do you call people using the rythm method?
Answer: Parents.
Anyway, remember the findings of Mythbusters?
To me, this was one of those "no duh!" moments in Mythbusters. I realize that they have to do them, given that a lot of people would never actually belive it if they didn't see it on TV. Have you ever considered what you use to clean a toliet? Last time I did it, the product cointained bleach and a number of other equally nasty chemicals. So, you basically have a hard, non-pourus, surface which is regularly cleaned with chemicals, which are known to kill damn near everything. And now you tell me it's a fairly bacteria free environment? No shit Sherlock. On top of that, it's just my skin which usually contacts the seat, not the shit itself; while the skin is bad enough, as long as I maintain some decent level of hygene, there's nothing much to be worried about.
I would love to see this compared to a common food preperation area. I know for a fact that my counter tops have fairly regular contact with either raw meat or the juices of said meat. I do clean up after cooking, but usually not with bleach or the like every time. Of course, the food which is getting prepared is usually cooked after that, so I'm not very worried about it.
The idea of completely deregulated utilities has never actually been tried in the US, and for a good reason, it would be a mess. Consider, for a moment, what that would actually mean. First off, most of the current utilities were built with some government help, usually not direct funding, but assistance with securing right-of-ways for lines. Beyond that, most municipalities will not allow a new company to start stringing lines. To be 100% deregulated we would have to allow anyone, who wants to, to start stringing lines. Along with that, to even the playing field, governments would have to equally help all companies secure right-of-ways. The result would be a nightmare. We would have lines of god knows what quality strung everywhere.
In the end, keeping the number of lines down to a minimum is worth the trade off of the sector having to be regulated.
1 - You're nitpicking. All I'm saying is it doesn't rise to the standard of proving guilt. That's the point.
Well enough, I just didn't want to end up with the requirement being little more than gut insticnt. A warrant is a constitutional requirement for search and seizure.
2 - You can't always wait around for a judge. And sometimes for secrecy reasons it easier not to. It's that simple. In regular times - go with a judge, in emergencies maybe not.
You're right, you can't always wait for a judge. You can, however, ask one to authorize your actions after the fact. This is a large part of what the FISA court does. If the FBI/NSA/etc. need to setup a wiretap with secrecy and speed, the law allows for that; however, within 72 hours of doing so they have to take it before the FISA court and get them to sign off on it. It's not exactly a cumbersome process, the agnecy can get the wiretap going and send a lacky over to the FISA court to review it. The FISA court is essentially secret. They do have to report to congress (checks and balances at work), but case information is kept secret.
As for the congressional oversight in this case, even some of the congress members who were informed have complained about it. For example:
Democratic Senator John D Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has written to Vice President Dick Cheney complaining that the briefings are inadequate. He said that "given the security restrictions associated with this information, and my inability to consult staff or counsel on my own, I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities."[1]
This was a rather blatant attempt to circumvent judicial oversight, which has long been required for wiretaps. There was no reason for it, other than to avoid having requests turned down.
the Bill of Rights says you need "probable cause" which is a lower standard than "until proven guilty".
No, what the Constitution says is:
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Which is below the "until proven guilty" requirement, but still higher than the "probable cause" level. In order for the government to do some sort of search and seizure, they have to get a warrant. Now, this has been construed to allow an officer to do something if there is an imminent threat or obvious violation; however, I think you would have a hard time arguing that making a call outside the US constitutes an imminent threat. Beyond that, we also have the FISA court which is allowed to retroactively issue warrants. Why do we need warrantless wiretaps? Why is the executive branch so keen to hide its activities from the judical branch? Our government is the one place where I am willing to agree with the statement: If you have nothing to fear you have nothing to hide.
does calling a terrorist and then making international calls give probable cause to listen in on what you say? I'd say yes.
I'm glad you think so, but I'd much rather it was a judge making that decision, even if retroactivly in a FISA court. Serioiusly, if the government has a good reason to wiretap you, a judge isn't going to stop them. He will, however, provide some level of oversight so the system isn't abused. Is it perfect? No, but it's a far sight better than some unaccountable group making decisions on its own.
In case any reader has missed it at this point, I don't mind the NSA/FBI/police doing wiretaps on people, what I mind is them doing wiretaps on people without any oversight. This is the reason behind the idea of "seperation of powers", hopefully you won't get all three branches of the government working together to create a tyranny. I would also argue that this is why the framers set up a system with strong state rights and a weak federal government, the more spread out power is, the harder it is to abuse. Of course, that system died with the civil war, but I digress. While it is necessary to try to stop terrorists, can we at least make sure that it is done with more than one branch of the government watching, preferrably all three?
Where's the RPG where you can have some casual sex? Blowing a dozen goons away goes without saying, but getting laid even once just doesn't happen in a normal game.
While it's not quite casual sex, in Fable:The Lost Chapters on the PC, you could have sex with your wife. The sex "scene" was just a black screen with your partner making moaning noises. However, the game did keep track of how many times you had sex as one of your Hero Stats. Of course, the requirement for marriage to have sex sort of broke the evil side of the game a bit. If I'm evil, I don't think I'm going to necessarilly marry a woman to have sex with her, consent is also debatable, but I would be willing to let that one go.
On top of that, it was actually a pretty good game, like many action-RPG's it got a little repedative but no worse that you would normally expect.
I expect that sex will slowly creep into mainstream gaming as something that occurs, but will probably show up much as it does in daytime television. The couple starts getting hot and heavy, fade to black, fade in to people who have obviously just had sex.
No, the fact that you don't want to run anti-cheating software for an online game makes it a good bet you are a cheater. I can understand not wanting to support a company which goes after people who reverse engineer their software, and if that was all you had brought up, I could see your point, but the crack about the anti-cheating software has no place in that, hence the assumption.
Given the vast number of cheats, and cheaters using them, for games which don't impliment something I don't see how you can logically defend the idea that not wanting to run an anti-cheat system is an ethical choice. Anti-cheat systems make online games playable.