"I just hired the hitman to kill my wife for cash, I didn't do it. Don't blame me!"
Different situation. In the case of hiring a hitman, you are knowingly solciting a crime, along with conspiracy to commit murder, and probably breaking a couple of other laws that I don't know. In the case of the company hiring a marketing firm to do email marketing, they may not have any reason to expect that the marketing will not be done in accordance with the law. Moreover, the action that they are soliciting, email marketing, is technically legal (remember, you CAN-SPAM). Unless they are specifically asking the marketing firm to circumvent this portion of the law, they are probably in the clear. Then again, IANAL (is anyone on/.?) so they there might be a way to twist this around and get a judgement.
Latin Americans *hate* standing water, they think it's very unclean.
This isn't that far off base. Standing water is a great breeding ground for mosquitos, and as we all know mosquitos tend to carry such wonderful things as malaria with them. So, it may be a cultural thing that simply developed as a self-defense mechanism.
Standing Water attracts mosquitos. Mosquitos carry malaria. Malaria kills people, or makes the very sick. Ergo, don't create pools of standing water.
On the other hand it could just be one of those cultural flukes that have no valid base in reality, kinda like Americans and tits on TV.
I've played through the Far Cry demo, and saw many of the pretty effects, though I wasn't able to go all the way up, but it was still very nice; and I only have a GForce4 Ti4600. I bought it when it was top of the line, and have gotten a lot of good milage out of it. Moreover, I don't see any need to upgrade on the horizon. HL2 and Doom 3 will run just fine on my current card, granted I won't get all of the pretty DX9 effects, but I don't really care. The only reason to have problems with upgrading constantly is if you plan on running every game at the highest graphics settings at a high resolution. Yes, its nice to do, but you really don't get that much more out of it (online FPS's aside).
Prince of Persia:Sands of Time was a great arcade type game. One of the things it had going for it was that, this was all that was expected of it. A good action title, with just enough plot to hold all of the sword fighting together. The re-play value on it, however, is not really there. I played it for a week or two, beat it, and loaned it to a friend. I haven't missed it, and will probably sell it to GameStop once I get it back. Had there been anything more to it, I might not have been as willing to give it up. Even if it was just a matter of re-playing the game to get a better ending, but there wasn't even that. Granted, that extra endings still wouldn't have extended the game's life much.
Truth is, there are some good games without a dynamic plot, but they usually are just arcade type games. On RPG's, stategy games, and to a lesser extent simulation games, a strict story line begins to chafe really quickly. Even a basic branching plot line adds a lot to the game.
Of course, one should always keep in mind that all the studio is concerned about is making money. Ubisoft made their money on me (actually, my friends, the game was a gift), so they succeeded. But they also lost a sale to my friend, as I was able to loan it to him quickly. Also, I have a few other friends who might borrow it from me instead of buying it as well, so it may get worse. In the end its a balance, if the game is good it will get bought. If its too short though sales could be lost to borrowing and re-selling. But, on the other hand, if it costs too much to make, to get those extra sales, its not worth doing.
I think the bottom would work best for me, mostly because I hate having to scroll left to right, and an add on the right ot left hand side would probably create the need to do so. If its on the top, then its right there where you are going to notice it constantly. If its on the bottom, it would seem, to me, to be less noticable. As it is, I think most of us are trained to scroll down for more information, whereas the right to left scroll is less ingrained.
It's a bit before my time, so I'm asking. Did the motion picture industry face the same thing early on?
Yes, where do you think movie ratings came from? They aren't government mandated. One of the few positive things to come out of the MPAA was movie ratings.
The only thing I would say needs to be added to this study is a pre-study control. One of the things that studies, which damn video games, tend to ignore is the whole chicken-egg problem. More specifically, does playing violent video games make a child more violent; or, do children who are more prone to violence tend to play violent video games? Its a rather important question, and is rarely mentioned in the studies. As it is, I have know children who are generally non-violent, but get a kick out of splattering a persons brains against a wall, in a game. I have also known children who are violent and play violent video games. I think that a lot of it comes down to the individual, is the child violent by nature, or not? If they are, then they probably shouldn't be playing such games, as it might make them worse. On the other hand, for those children who are not violent normally, a violent video game can be a great way to work out agression. I think that this is something that needs to be determined by the parents. Of couse, too many parents are not willing to put in the time this requires to figure out, so we get the knee-jerk reactions of government.
I just hope the multiplayer is better implimented in DS2 than it was in DS1. My group tried playing this one at a LAN party, and the lack of thought in MP really showed. The entire method of scaling the game for more players seemed to revolve around giving the enemies a ton of hit points. So you'd end up hacking at a single enemy like it was a damned redwood tree. It eventually got so bad that the fighters of our group would set thier character to attack an enemy, and then go out to the kitchen to get sodas. We even had one person take a break by having his character follow another character. The nearest person would just reach over occasionally to hit the "take a healing potion" button. And (insert diety here) forbid that you were stupid enough to be a mage, you would sit there blasting off the most powerful spells in the game repeatedly, chugging mana potion after mana potion, and be lucky to drop an enemy before you ran out, or the enemy got a hold of you and killed you.
In all, the multiplayer just didn't seem very polished. It eventually broke down into everyone being a fighter type, with just enough magic to cast a heal spell now and again. And far too long chopping at the same damned enemy. Some of the elements in the game were great, and I really wanted to like it, but I just couldn't get past the obvious problems.
This is why I don't block Google ads; they're only text and don't overwhelm you as you read. As for everything else: blocked. Blame the clown who thought a 500k, 50 frame animated gif that only uses bright colors and takes over the entire screen was a good idea.
Same here, I see nothing wrong with text based ads on Google's site. Hosting isn't free, and using ad content is one way to recover some of those costs. However, the advertisers need to understand that there are limits to acceptable behavior. Pop-ups/unders are unacceptable, bright flashing banners are unacceptable, and large swf or animated gif's are unacceptable. Present your product, and a bit of information on it, then let me decide to pursue more information about it, don't try and ram it down my optic nerve. I think advertisers are going to have to learn this lesson eventually, the tools to block thier ads, entirely, exist. And, they are starting to gain main-stream usage. Eventually, either the advertisers are going to have to back off and allow people to have a plesant web experience, with some subtle ads; or, the advertisers are going to try to go so over the top that people resort to blocking every ad on the web. Right now, I am hoping for the former, but am preparing for the latter.
you are a evil man.... I'm guessing that you kick Network executives' puppies, and steal candy from the babies of Radio Station owners...
No, actually I steal network executives puppies, and kick Radio Station owner's babies. Puppies have redeeming qualities.
ok that might be over the top sarcasim.. but you saying "Granted, there are those that question the morallity of doing so..." is the same as giving credibility to the insane guy on the corner with the "the end is near" baner and spewing profamnity at everyone...
anyone that "questions the morality" of blocking or skipping advertising on your own property... I.E. your computer, is a nutbag that needs to be beaten severly with a clue-by-four.
Truth is, I don't block all ads, in fact slashdot is one of the few sites who's ads I don't block. Why, because they aren't the annoying flashing ads. Also, I like/. enough that I am willing to give them a few click-thrus to help support the site.
On the question of morality, I will admit that I see the other side's point, the ads are usually what support a site. Running a site isn't free, so if they want to try and recoup some of the costs by having ads, I don't mind so much. However, pop-ups/unders are an abusive form of advertisment, any site allowing such advertising on its site immediatly gets its ad content blocked. Also, those annoying banner ads that flash bright red and yellow are in the same category. Granted some sites, which have not shown any such ads, get caught by some of my filters. These I just consider colateral damage.
Try installing AdBlock for Mozilla. Its a great way to get rid of the rest of the advertising crap on the web. Granted, there are those that question the morallity of doing so, but then we each have to make those decisions on our own.
however, using this targets precisely the wrong segment of online users: the people who know enough to block them in the first place.
I'm not so certain this is as true as it used to be. With things like the google bar having built in pop-up blocking, and people like myself getting others to switch to Mozilla/Firefox, I think pop-up blocking is getting to be a pretty common feature. Heck, even my girlfriend, who is only slightly more tech savvy than the average person has a pop-up blocker installed. Sure, the new type of pop-up (if it works as advertised) may be annoying and just piss people like you and me off to no end; but, it might start getting those people who are less informed to start impulse buying again. They won't see it as a new annoying technology, which gets around the pop-up blocker in their google/yahoo/whatever bar, they'll just see an ad and be affected by it, as per usual expectations.
anybody wanna give odds on how long before some overzealous kid DDOSes their site?
Not long, I'd wager. Though some days, I really wish some gun nuts would just DDOS the executives who pay the people to do this sort of thing. Ah well, probably shouldn't say that, the coporate masters of the US might come after me.
Ya, I've seen some really bad camping on Rail Gun. That has to be the worst set up map of the defaults. It forces the Axis through too small of a pinch point. OTOH, I've also seen that sort of thing going on, have one axis slip out, grab the tug and have it back before the allies realize its gone. Of course, the allies failed to keep the track switch down, but that seems pretty common when a good ass raping of the axis is happening. Because of that, I usually will spend my time around the switch when I'm on a camping allied team. I'm usually an engy, and have a bad habit of setting up mines all over the area around the switch, (god, I love mines!) so it usually stays down. This why I made the comment about spawn camping being counter productive, some times the enemy can sneak around you.
I never did play on the IHOP servers, something about the name scared me. I don't mind panzers in the game, but the last thing I want is an all out panzer-fest. I usually play on HW restricted servers for that reason. Too many panzers and the game just gets stupid. Though, playing in low-g might be fun.
I think that the design of the game can make a huge difference. Myself, I play Wolfenstien: Enemy Territory (ET for short). In ET there are usually one or two spawn points per team, and often, only one of those tends to get used at a time. So, one might think that spawn camping would be epidemic. And, I do often see players trying to do it, they grab a panzerfaust or flame thorwer, and wait for the enemy to spawn. Problem is, there is a 3 second spawn shield (invincibility basically). Now, if the camper does things right, he watches the players spawn (which happens in groups in ET, each team has a spawn timer, and all respawn at the same time), waits for the shield to disappear above their heads, and fires. Usually netting himself 2 or 3 kills. The problem he has now is, unless he is hiding in a damn good spot (not likely) the next time the enemy spawns, he is going to get his ass handed to him. Afterall, 3 seconds is plenty of time to orient, and kill a camper, especially if you whip out a panzer of your own.
In all, I have been on both ends of being camped in ET, and I don't care one way or the other. If the server rules say no camping, I don't. If the server rules don't say anything about it, then I have no problem balsting a few of them as they come out, and then get the heck out of there. But, in all, I find that, unless the teams are really unbalanced, spawn camping is worthless at best, and counter-productive at worst.
As for the original topic, cheesing, I woud say, go for it. Again, from my experiences in ET, one trick ponies are not a big threat. Sure, every once in a while I will hear a panzer wind up and I'll get splattered all over then scenerey. But, often enough I can down the panzer before he fires, or make him kill himself and sometimes a few teamates (gotta love dying and seeing the enemy have two or three teamkills, I'll gladly be killed to take three of four of them with me). Of course, you end up getting tons of people complaining about panzer n00bs, but that's just silly. Don't waste your time typing, get back in there and kill that guy, the weapons are balanced enough that even a good panzer player is in trouble after he fires. The only thing that scares me are those few people that are really good with a panzer. You can usually pick them out, they are the ones killing two or three people with a rocket, and know where to set up. But, even still, a coordinated rush, with people spaced out will still kill him.
Cheesing isn't a problem, for anyone but the unskilled newbie. Spend a little bit of time, and thought on it, and you'll usually find that the cheeser has a gaping hole in his strategy.
Knowing what it is is the esay part.
on
D&D Is 30
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· Score: 1
Knowing what THAC0 stands for is the easy part. The hard part is being able to calculate the to-hit roll quickly in your head. Sadly, I can still do that to this day. Then again, considering that I was the human calculator for my gaming group for a couple years, this maybe isn't so suprising.
Personally, I have been getting real close to blacklisting Comcast's entire IP range from connecting to my mail server. As it is, I already manage to block most spam traffic to my home server, just by having a few IP ranges blacklisted. I tend to blacklist an ISP's range is they fail to respond to a notification I sent to them about spam from their system, with 48 hours. For the most part, its not worth it to me to receive mail from such ISP's. Plus, I've almost never had an ISP, which I receive valid mail from, be the source of spam on my server. To this end, I have blocked most of asia, and several large ISP's elsewhere throughout the world.
Comcast, unfortunatly, is a little different. I actually have one friend who is with them, and blacklisting their entire range might create a problem. Instead I have sent several emails to their abuse email, and have heard nothing back. And I still get a spam or two from them each week. Granted, its for an email address that has never existed on my server, so it just ends up in the undeliverable folder, but I still would rather not have someone trying to spam me from their network.
The problem with online voting, and allowing people to check on thier voting history, is that it destroys the amnominity of voting. And without that, free elections are very much in jepordy. First off, go with the easy one, buying votes. This now becomes a very easy process, offer people a sum of money for their vote, granted this can be done today, but there is no way for the buyer to know that he got the vote he wanted. With the system you propose, the voter's history can be checked by the buyer, just get the voter to show you his history.
Next, consider the uses for this information, should our government reach a state where it is corrupt enough to rig elections. If they don't like the way you voted, you might get investigated for being a terrorist. You still have a history of voting the wrong way, well then, its time to throw you in jail for a while, you terrorist. You get out, and still won't vote right? Well, Winston, its time the Inner Party loaned you a pair of shoes and took you for a swim.
Granted the above example is a bit extreme, but it is still quite possible, and has historical precidents. People like Stalin exist in every country, all they need is the right time and place to reak havoc on a country. Or, for a better example, spend some time reading about the Stasi in Communist East Germany, lots of fun there.
We need to have anonymous voting, without it, there is just too much danger of abuse. Whereas, if voting is anonymous and leaves a good paper audit trail, its much harder to subvert. Am I against electronic voting? No, but the electronic part should be nothing more than an over-glorified printer, with the ballots tossed in a locked box, similar to what we have now. And somehow, I bet, we will still get people whining that the ballot was too confusing.
That's wierd, I had the exact opposite experience. The paddles we had lasted for the entire time we had our 2600. Granted that we didn't use them as much as your girlfriend, but Warlords and Breakout we still favorites. The Joysticks on the other hand were absolute crap. We'd kill another one every couple of months; granted, my brother and I had nothing better to do in the afternoons than play with the Atari, and I had a Yar's Revenge addiction. We eventually found that the main failure had to do with the silver button on the board in the joysticks, which controlled movement. And that by using a knife or other small impliment we could reshape the button somewhat and get more life out of the joystick, but even that eventually didn't work after a while. In all, the controllers for the Atari were pretty good for the time, but the didn't stand up to heavy use/abuse.
You know, if people didn't go out and by new mobos every six months because they're substituting for diminished manhoods, then they wouldn't be trashing their old mobos every six months. This race to get the biggest and fasted CPU and GPU on the block is much more dangerous than the lead in a mobo that's being used past its planned obsolescence date.
I think this just depends on what you do with the old mobo. Perhaps I am alone in this, but I rarely throw away working electronics. I can usually either find some use for them, or find someone who wants them. My last computer was given to my girlfriend who doesn't feel the need to upgrade as often as I do. I have given coutless parts to friends and family, because I had replaced them, and they could use them. About the only thing I have considered throwing away is my old 486, which I haven't been able to find a good home for. I haven't brought myself to do it yet, mostly because I am a pack-rat, that and the fact that it was still working perfectly the last time I fired it up (though I did put newer hard drive in it, to get it there). Even that, I would rather give to someone who will use it than put it in a land-fill. I've considered a school, but I think its too old for even them.
I guess my point is, it isn't the upgrade cycle that is causing the problem, its the idiots who throw out perfectly good hardware. Sure, it won't run the latest games well, but it might do well for someone's over-glorified typewriter.
Yes, but those don't threaten the corporate masters of the US. Nor do they endager the continued existance of the US government. They only rape, murder, and steal from the proles, and who cares about them?
First off, storing volitile gases in tanks outside of the house is a common, and noramlly safe practice. Granted, when the fire swept through Oak Hills here in Southern California last year, there were some big booms, but that is a very rare occurance. Second, hydrogen is safer to store than propane is. Hydrogen, when release from a tank, tends to spread out, or mostly up, too fast to create a good explosion, unless you are storing the hydrogen mixed with oxygen, and I doubt that they would be that dumb. Overall, I'd much rather have a huge tank of hydrogen outside my house, than a huge tank of propane. And (insert diety here) forbid that I would end up driving around sitting on a very volitile liquid for hours on end, oh wait, I do, and its considered safe.
Funny, I got U7 up and running on my girlfriend's computer with a minimum of fuss. Used DOSBox, and the CPU is only a 1Ghz P3. Granted, with the system you are running, it may not run fast enough, as I recall my g/f's CPU was pretty much pegged, in order to get U7 running at a good speed, so it may just be time for you to upgrade, to get those old games running right.
Re:What old DOS games did you play that were easy?
on
Is DOS Gaming Dead?
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· Score: 1
Damn, I had finally fogotten about all those hours spent, just trying to find a few loose kilobytes of memory. I think, for a lot of people, like myself, DOS gaming has taken on a bit of that nostolgic aspect, in that, we remember the hours of fun spent playing games like Priviteer, and have forgotten the hours of frustration of staring at MEM for that last K or two of memory. Though, if nothing else, you tended to learn a lot about how to get the most out of DOS by doing that.
I feel like a parrot here, but DOSBox really is great for this sort of thing, just make sure you tweak the cycles. Also, it helps to have task manager up while doing this, if you get to the point that your processor is pegged out, raising the cycles in DOSBox is not going to help anymore, and may work backwards. If you get to that point and still aren't running fast enough, then you are stuck, as your processor isn't fast enough to do the emulation. Though, if you still have an old box running, and don't mind it taking up space, then that should be fine.
As for getting a hold of the old games, if you already have a legal copy of them, then there shouldn't be a problem with downloading a copy of them. Try The Underdogs, they have a pretty extensive archive of older games, and I have been able to resurrect a few of my old games from them, my disks having long since died. Cheers, and happy retro gaming.
Slashdot Mirror
"I just hired the hitman to kill my wife for cash, I didn't do it. Don't blame me!"
/.?) so they there might be a way to twist this around and get a judgement.
Different situation. In the case of hiring a hitman, you are knowingly solciting a crime, along with conspiracy to commit murder, and probably breaking a couple of other laws that I don't know. In the case of the company hiring a marketing firm to do email marketing, they may not have any reason to expect that the marketing will not be done in accordance with the law. Moreover, the action that they are soliciting, email marketing, is technically legal (remember, you CAN-SPAM). Unless they are specifically asking the marketing firm to circumvent this portion of the law, they are probably in the clear. Then again, IANAL (is anyone on
PPS: Does anyone know why the CATS prize had (and Ansari X-Prize has) time limits?
Have you ever worked with engineers that don't have a deadline? Even the one's who do can't deliver before the project is several months overdue.
Latin Americans *hate* standing water, they think it's very unclean.
This isn't that far off base. Standing water is a great breeding ground for mosquitos, and as we all know mosquitos tend to carry such wonderful things as malaria with them. So, it may be a cultural thing that simply developed as a self-defense mechanism.
Standing Water attracts mosquitos. Mosquitos carry malaria. Malaria kills people, or makes the very sick. Ergo, don't create pools of standing water.
On the other hand it could just be one of those cultural flukes that have no valid base in reality, kinda like Americans and tits on TV.
I've played through the Far Cry demo, and saw many of the pretty effects, though I wasn't able to go all the way up, but it was still very nice; and I only have a GForce4 Ti4600. I bought it when it was top of the line, and have gotten a lot of good milage out of it. Moreover, I don't see any need to upgrade on the horizon. HL2 and Doom 3 will run just fine on my current card, granted I won't get all of the pretty DX9 effects, but I don't really care. The only reason to have problems with upgrading constantly is if you plan on running every game at the highest graphics settings at a high resolution. Yes, its nice to do, but you really don't get that much more out of it (online FPS's aside).
Prince of Persia:Sands of Time was a great arcade type game. One of the things it had going for it was that, this was all that was expected of it. A good action title, with just enough plot to hold all of the sword fighting together. The re-play value on it, however, is not really there. I played it for a week or two, beat it, and loaned it to a friend. I haven't missed it, and will probably sell it to GameStop once I get it back. Had there been anything more to it, I might not have been as willing to give it up. Even if it was just a matter of re-playing the game to get a better ending, but there wasn't even that. Granted, that extra endings still wouldn't have extended the game's life much.
Truth is, there are some good games without a dynamic plot, but they usually are just arcade type games. On RPG's, stategy games, and to a lesser extent simulation games, a strict story line begins to chafe really quickly. Even a basic branching plot line adds a lot to the game.
Of course, one should always keep in mind that all the studio is concerned about is making money. Ubisoft made their money on me (actually, my friends, the game was a gift), so they succeeded. But they also lost a sale to my friend, as I was able to loan it to him quickly. Also, I have a few other friends who might borrow it from me instead of buying it as well, so it may get worse. In the end its a balance, if the game is good it will get bought. If its too short though sales could be lost to borrowing and re-selling. But, on the other hand, if it costs too much to make, to get those extra sales, its not worth doing.
I think the bottom would work best for me, mostly because I hate having to scroll left to right, and an add on the right ot left hand side would probably create the need to do so. If its on the top, then its right there where you are going to notice it constantly. If its on the bottom, it would seem, to me, to be less noticable. As it is, I think most of us are trained to scroll down for more information, whereas the right to left scroll is less ingrained.
It's a bit before my time, so I'm asking. Did the motion picture industry face the same thing early on?
Yes, where do you think movie ratings came from? They aren't government mandated. One of the few positive things to come out of the MPAA was movie ratings.
The only thing I would say needs to be added to this study is a pre-study control. One of the things that studies, which damn video games, tend to ignore is the whole chicken-egg problem. More specifically, does playing violent video games make a child more violent; or, do children who are more prone to violence tend to play violent video games? Its a rather important question, and is rarely mentioned in the studies. As it is, I have know children who are generally non-violent, but get a kick out of splattering a persons brains against a wall, in a game. I have also known children who are violent and play violent video games. I think that a lot of it comes down to the individual, is the child violent by nature, or not? If they are, then they probably shouldn't be playing such games, as it might make them worse. On the other hand, for those children who are not violent normally, a violent video game can be a great way to work out agression. I think that this is something that needs to be determined by the parents. Of couse, too many parents are not willing to put in the time this requires to figure out, so we get the knee-jerk reactions of government.
I just hope the multiplayer is better implimented in DS2 than it was in DS1. My group tried playing this one at a LAN party, and the lack of thought in MP really showed. The entire method of scaling the game for more players seemed to revolve around giving the enemies a ton of hit points. So you'd end up hacking at a single enemy like it was a damned redwood tree. It eventually got so bad that the fighters of our group would set thier character to attack an enemy, and then go out to the kitchen to get sodas. We even had one person take a break by having his character follow another character. The nearest person would just reach over occasionally to hit the "take a healing potion" button. And (insert diety here) forbid that you were stupid enough to be a mage, you would sit there blasting off the most powerful spells in the game repeatedly, chugging mana potion after mana potion, and be lucky to drop an enemy before you ran out, or the enemy got a hold of you and killed you.
In all, the multiplayer just didn't seem very polished. It eventually broke down into everyone being a fighter type, with just enough magic to cast a heal spell now and again. And far too long chopping at the same damned enemy. Some of the elements in the game were great, and I really wanted to like it, but I just couldn't get past the obvious problems.
This is why I don't block Google ads; they're only text and don't overwhelm you as you read. As for everything else: blocked. Blame the clown who thought a 500k, 50 frame animated gif that only uses bright colors and takes over the entire screen was a good idea.
Same here, I see nothing wrong with text based ads on Google's site. Hosting isn't free, and using ad content is one way to recover some of those costs. However, the advertisers need to understand that there are limits to acceptable behavior. Pop-ups/unders are unacceptable, bright flashing banners are unacceptable, and large swf or animated gif's are unacceptable. Present your product, and a bit of information on it, then let me decide to pursue more information about it, don't try and ram it down my optic nerve. I think advertisers are going to have to learn this lesson eventually, the tools to block thier ads, entirely, exist. And, they are starting to gain main-stream usage. Eventually, either the advertisers are going to have to back off and allow people to have a plesant web experience, with some subtle ads; or, the advertisers are going to try to go so over the top that people resort to blocking every ad on the web. Right now, I am hoping for the former, but am preparing for the latter.
you are a evil man.... I'm guessing that you kick Network executives' puppies, and steal candy from the babies of Radio Station owners...
/. enough that I am willing to give them a few click-thrus to help support the site.
No, actually I steal network executives puppies, and kick Radio Station owner's babies. Puppies have redeeming qualities.
ok that might be over the top sarcasim.. but you saying "Granted, there are those that question the morallity of doing so..." is the same as giving credibility to the insane guy on the corner with the "the end is near" baner and spewing profamnity at everyone...
anyone that "questions the morality" of blocking or skipping advertising on your own property... I.E. your computer, is a nutbag that needs to be beaten severly with a clue-by-four.
Truth is, I don't block all ads, in fact slashdot is one of the few sites who's ads I don't block. Why, because they aren't the annoying flashing ads. Also, I like
On the question of morality, I will admit that I see the other side's point, the ads are usually what support a site. Running a site isn't free, so if they want to try and recoup some of the costs by having ads, I don't mind so much. However, pop-ups/unders are an abusive form of advertisment, any site allowing such advertising on its site immediatly gets its ad content blocked. Also, those annoying banner ads that flash bright red and yellow are in the same category. Granted some sites, which have not shown any such ads, get caught by some of my filters. These I just consider colateral damage.
Try installing AdBlock for Mozilla. Its a great way to get rid of the rest of the advertising crap on the web. Granted, there are those that question the morallity of doing so, but then we each have to make those decisions on our own.
however, using this targets precisely the wrong segment of online users: the people who know enough to block them in the first place.
I'm not so certain this is as true as it used to be. With things like the google bar having built in pop-up blocking, and people like myself getting others to switch to Mozilla/Firefox, I think pop-up blocking is getting to be a pretty common feature. Heck, even my girlfriend, who is only slightly more tech savvy than the average person has a pop-up blocker installed. Sure, the new type of pop-up (if it works as advertised) may be annoying and just piss people like you and me off to no end; but, it might start getting those people who are less informed to start impulse buying again. They won't see it as a new annoying technology, which gets around the pop-up blocker in their google/yahoo/whatever bar, they'll just see an ad and be affected by it, as per usual expectations.
anybody wanna give odds on how long before some overzealous kid DDOSes their site?
Not long, I'd wager. Though some days, I really wish some gun nuts would just DDOS the executives who pay the people to do this sort of thing. Ah well, probably shouldn't say that, the coporate masters of the US might come after me.
Ya, I've seen some really bad camping on Rail Gun. That has to be the worst set up map of the defaults. It forces the Axis through too small of a pinch point. OTOH, I've also seen that sort of thing going on, have one axis slip out, grab the tug and have it back before the allies realize its gone. Of course, the allies failed to keep the track switch down, but that seems pretty common when a good ass raping of the axis is happening. Because of that, I usually will spend my time around the switch when I'm on a camping allied team. I'm usually an engy, and have a bad habit of setting up mines all over the area around the switch, (god, I love mines!) so it usually stays down. This why I made the comment about spawn camping being counter productive, some times the enemy can sneak around you.
I never did play on the IHOP servers, something about the name scared me. I don't mind panzers in the game, but the last thing I want is an all out panzer-fest. I usually play on HW restricted servers for that reason. Too many panzers and the game just gets stupid. Though, playing in low-g might be fun.
I think that the design of the game can make a huge difference. Myself, I play Wolfenstien: Enemy Territory (ET for short). In ET there are usually one or two spawn points per team, and often, only one of those tends to get used at a time. So, one might think that spawn camping would be epidemic. And, I do often see players trying to do it, they grab a panzerfaust or flame thorwer, and wait for the enemy to spawn. Problem is, there is a 3 second spawn shield (invincibility basically). Now, if the camper does things right, he watches the players spawn (which happens in groups in ET, each team has a spawn timer, and all respawn at the same time), waits for the shield to disappear above their heads, and fires. Usually netting himself 2 or 3 kills. The problem he has now is, unless he is hiding in a damn good spot (not likely) the next time the enemy spawns, he is going to get his ass handed to him. Afterall, 3 seconds is plenty of time to orient, and kill a camper, especially if you whip out a panzer of your own.
In all, I have been on both ends of being camped in ET, and I don't care one way or the other. If the server rules say no camping, I don't. If the server rules don't say anything about it, then I have no problem balsting a few of them as they come out, and then get the heck out of there. But, in all, I find that, unless the teams are really unbalanced, spawn camping is worthless at best, and counter-productive at worst.
As for the original topic, cheesing, I woud say, go for it. Again, from my experiences in ET, one trick ponies are not a big threat. Sure, every once in a while I will hear a panzer wind up and I'll get splattered all over then scenerey. But, often enough I can down the panzer before he fires, or make him kill himself and sometimes a few teamates (gotta love dying and seeing the enemy have two or three teamkills, I'll gladly be killed to take three of four of them with me). Of course, you end up getting tons of people complaining about panzer n00bs, but that's just silly. Don't waste your time typing, get back in there and kill that guy, the weapons are balanced enough that even a good panzer player is in trouble after he fires. The only thing that scares me are those few people that are really good with a panzer. You can usually pick them out, they are the ones killing two or three people with a rocket, and know where to set up. But, even still, a coordinated rush, with people spaced out will still kill him.
Cheesing isn't a problem, for anyone but the unskilled newbie. Spend a little bit of time, and thought on it, and you'll usually find that the cheeser has a gaping hole in his strategy.
Knowing what THAC0 stands for is the easy part. The hard part is being able to calculate the to-hit roll quickly in your head. Sadly, I can still do that to this day. Then again, considering that I was the human calculator for my gaming group for a couple years, this maybe isn't so suprising.
Personally, I have been getting real close to blacklisting Comcast's entire IP range from connecting to my mail server. As it is, I already manage to block most spam traffic to my home server, just by having a few IP ranges blacklisted. I tend to blacklist an ISP's range is they fail to respond to a notification I sent to them about spam from their system, with 48 hours. For the most part, its not worth it to me to receive mail from such ISP's. Plus, I've almost never had an ISP, which I receive valid mail from, be the source of spam on my server. To this end, I have blocked most of asia, and several large ISP's elsewhere throughout the world.
Comcast, unfortunatly, is a little different. I actually have one friend who is with them, and blacklisting their entire range might create a problem. Instead I have sent several emails to their abuse email, and have heard nothing back. And I still get a spam or two from them each week. Granted, its for an email address that has never existed on my server, so it just ends up in the undeliverable folder, but I still would rather not have someone trying to spam me from their network.
The problem with online voting, and allowing people to check on thier voting history, is that it destroys the amnominity of voting. And without that, free elections are very much in jepordy. First off, go with the easy one, buying votes. This now becomes a very easy process, offer people a sum of money for their vote, granted this can be done today, but there is no way for the buyer to know that he got the vote he wanted. With the system you propose, the voter's history can be checked by the buyer, just get the voter to show you his history.
Next, consider the uses for this information, should our government reach a state where it is corrupt enough to rig elections. If they don't like the way you voted, you might get investigated for being a terrorist. You still have a history of voting the wrong way, well then, its time to throw you in jail for a while, you terrorist. You get out, and still won't vote right? Well, Winston, its time the Inner Party loaned you a pair of shoes and took you for a swim.
Granted the above example is a bit extreme, but it is still quite possible, and has historical precidents. People like Stalin exist in every country, all they need is the right time and place to reak havoc on a country. Or, for a better example, spend some time reading about the Stasi in Communist East Germany, lots of fun there.
We need to have anonymous voting, without it, there is just too much danger of abuse. Whereas, if voting is anonymous and leaves a good paper audit trail, its much harder to subvert. Am I against electronic voting? No, but the electronic part should be nothing more than an over-glorified printer, with the ballots tossed in a locked box, similar to what we have now. And somehow, I bet, we will still get people whining that the ballot was too confusing.
That's wierd, I had the exact opposite experience. The paddles we had lasted for the entire time we had our 2600. Granted that we didn't use them as much as your girlfriend, but Warlords and Breakout we still favorites. The Joysticks on the other hand were absolute crap. We'd kill another one every couple of months; granted, my brother and I had nothing better to do in the afternoons than play with the Atari, and I had a Yar's Revenge addiction. We eventually found that the main failure had to do with the silver button on the board in the joysticks, which controlled movement. And that by using a knife or other small impliment we could reshape the button somewhat and get more life out of the joystick, but even that eventually didn't work after a while. In all, the controllers for the Atari were pretty good for the time, but the didn't stand up to heavy use/abuse.
You know, if people didn't go out and by new mobos every six months because they're substituting for diminished manhoods, then they wouldn't be trashing their old mobos every six months. This race to get the biggest and fasted CPU and GPU on the block is much more dangerous than the lead in a mobo that's being used past its planned obsolescence date.
I think this just depends on what you do with the old mobo. Perhaps I am alone in this, but I rarely throw away working electronics. I can usually either find some use for them, or find someone who wants them. My last computer was given to my girlfriend who doesn't feel the need to upgrade as often as I do. I have given coutless parts to friends and family, because I had replaced them, and they could use them. About the only thing I have considered throwing away is my old 486, which I haven't been able to find a good home for. I haven't brought myself to do it yet, mostly because I am a pack-rat, that and the fact that it was still working perfectly the last time I fired it up (though I did put newer hard drive in it, to get it there). Even that, I would rather give to someone who will use it than put it in a land-fill. I've considered a school, but I think its too old for even them.
I guess my point is, it isn't the upgrade cycle that is causing the problem, its the idiots who throw out perfectly good hardware. Sure, it won't run the latest games well, but it might do well for someone's over-glorified typewriter.
Yes, but those don't threaten the corporate masters of the US. Nor do they endager the continued existance of the US government. They only rape, murder, and steal from the proles, and who cares about them?
First off, storing volitile gases in tanks outside of the house is a common, and noramlly safe practice. Granted, when the fire swept through Oak Hills here in Southern California last year, there were some big booms, but that is a very rare occurance. Second, hydrogen is safer to store than propane is. Hydrogen, when release from a tank, tends to spread out, or mostly up, too fast to create a good explosion, unless you are storing the hydrogen mixed with oxygen, and I doubt that they would be that dumb. Overall, I'd much rather have a huge tank of hydrogen outside my house, than a huge tank of propane. And (insert diety here) forbid that I would end up driving around sitting on a very volitile liquid for hours on end, oh wait, I do, and its considered safe.
Funny, I got U7 up and running on my girlfriend's computer with a minimum of fuss. Used DOSBox, and the CPU is only a 1Ghz P3. Granted, with the system you are running, it may not run fast enough, as I recall my g/f's CPU was pretty much pegged, in order to get U7 running at a good speed, so it may just be time for you to upgrade, to get those old games running right.
Damn, I had finally fogotten about all those hours spent, just trying to find a few loose kilobytes of memory. I think, for a lot of people, like myself, DOS gaming has taken on a bit of that nostolgic aspect, in that, we remember the hours of fun spent playing games like Priviteer, and have forgotten the hours of frustration of staring at MEM for that last K or two of memory. Though, if nothing else, you tended to learn a lot about how to get the most out of DOS by doing that.
I feel like a parrot here, but DOSBox really is great for this sort of thing, just make sure you tweak the cycles. Also, it helps to have task manager up while doing this, if you get to the point that your processor is pegged out, raising the cycles in DOSBox is not going to help anymore, and may work backwards. If you get to that point and still aren't running fast enough, then you are stuck, as your processor isn't fast enough to do the emulation. Though, if you still have an old box running, and don't mind it taking up space, then that should be fine.
As for getting a hold of the old games, if you already have a legal copy of them, then there shouldn't be a problem with downloading a copy of them. Try The Underdogs, they have a pretty extensive archive of older games, and I have been able to resurrect a few of my old games from them, my disks having long since died. Cheers, and happy retro gaming.