Does the Firefox browser have Java in it out of the box?
No, otherwise the package would be like 30 MB, not 8 MB as it is now. People who don't want Java are not interested in downloading 20 extra megs. It includes me.
Now making the Java install less of a pain is another matter, to which I agree.
My question is, does IE have Java out of the box ? The answer is "no" if I recall correctly...
The word astronauts come from the greek : astro (stars), nautike (navigation). So astronaut litteraly means star navigator, and mouse-tronaut would mean mouse navigator, which lacks some sense here.
I'd rather have said astro-mouse (star mouse) instead. Or if anyone has the greek word for mouse...
The appeal of anime goes beyond the fight scenes and robots. It's about human beings and how we live today. Something you'll never see, even in a metaphor like Eva, in Hollywood.
Right right, I do not deny the quality of Animes (I enjoy them myself). But don't fall in this Hollywood=>crap business please, it is total non-sense. There are plenty of hollywood movies dealing with the human condition, society and psychology, as soon as you notice that Hollywood is not only {Daredevil, Starwars, Terminator, etc}.
Here are a few hits if you want interesting, deep hollywood movies: - American Beauty - Donnie Darko - The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola's latest excellent Lost in Translation is more japanese than hollywoodian, but still worth watching of course) - Apocalypse Now - 2001, A Space Odyssey etc.
That totally unknown actor was paid by the RIAA to be "caught" for piracy (or act as such), so that they can frighten everybody around ("See, we can catch ya if you do it !").
Pretty lame actually.
They really have some work to do before this watermarking stuff gets as interesting as the footage (read William Gibson's Pattern Recognition for intel on this topic).
Bullshit. They invented the entire FPS genre. Right, but it does not mean they have to stay with that very same gameplay for the rest of the studio's life, does it ? Actually is does sound like it is their plan.
To me, Peter Molyneux's Bullfrog and Lionhead have been much more inventive than ID Software. This does not mean ID games suck, it just mean ID takes no risk and innovates only in technology, not game design.
About the only way to keep RP alive in a game is to have an RP-devoted server, and litterally make players apply for a character in it (like some of the old MUD's did), which unfortunately, no MMORPGs that I know of have ever done.
For business reasons yes, of course. But I see what you mean.
In my opinion, the only way to have RP is to reward it, just as most games currently reward hack and slash for instance. Then either you want an RP-only game, and you just make sure the game is not interesting unless you do RP (i.e. progress only occurs through RP, not monster bashing or simple quests), or you want to mix all kind of players and you allow differents (well balanced!) paths of evolution, through study, combat, RP, etc.
Now the point is that rewarding players for fighting is much easier than rewarding them for RP, so that's why no MMORPG does that yet. And since players dont complain (or not too much), why change (publisher's POV) ?
I really don't expect much from WoW. Blizzard is a great game company, and I'm still a big Starcraft lover. They make nifty, well polished games, but WoW sounds just so unoriginal. Yes, the design is quite cool, and so are the races, and the spells... But does it really sound an RPG ? No. Can you expect to have a really interesting roleplay with orcs and humans and the other races available ? I don't think so, and it does not seem to be the point. Does it bring MMORPG to new grounds ? No. Is it gonna be a hit ? Probably.
Reading the latest big report on the games seems to bring two main conclusions : (1) the gameplay is still open and under discussion, (2) the gameplay is plain unoriginal. They are building a well thought game upon the existing basis, but there is really no risk taken whatsoever, nothing that could really make it the next generation MMORPG.
As an amateur MMORPG game designer myself, I have found that there are an incredibly large amount of possibilities in that genre, but as always most commercial products stay in the same area, ever perfecting one type of game without risking to discover new ones. Too bad Blizzard did not dare to try though, they'd probably have done it the right way.
For my part, I'm waiting for Ryzom, not because it has a much more original gameplay than WoW, not because of its gorgeous graphical design (probably the best out there for an MMORPG), but becauses it dared to leave the traditional fantasy field to explore a new, fresh and tribal universe that is simply fascinating. The objective is more to carry the player into a dream-like original place than put him in front of monsters to fight.
There are no notes on the MPlayer site stating that someone asked for the source code.
Yes there is:
This is stealing GPL code into a proprietary product! Kiss Technology failed to answer our inquiry for their source files (which they are obligated to provide), so this news entry is posted.
I'm sorry but the "all music sucks today" argument is really total non-sense. I do agree that most of the commercial radio compete hard on the same level of lameness, but this does not mean there is no radio worth listening to. Here in Switzerland, we have a national radio that sounds really independent (trashy, fun, weird) and plays quite listenable songs.
This being said, radio is not the only way to listen to music, and hearing crappy music on the radio doesn't mean that all contemporary music sucks. Download stuff (legally if possible), check magazines or websites, and you will certainly find stuff you like.
I am somewhat nostalgic of classic rock groups (Pink Floyd, ah..), but I can still enjoy the new genius of our generation (Radiohead, Beck, Cornelius, Air and the likes).
It's just a matter of agreeing to switch off that crappy radio station and check out new stuff.
If my math is correct that's a 2333.3 kbps download speed!
There are many countries where this is a reality right at this moment... South Korea, Japan and Sweden are three that I can think of...
In Switzerland, they just upgraded the 512kbps cable connection to 2000kbps and they reduced the price you had to pay for it ! In other words, you have a connection that is 4 times faster than before and you pay less. Sounds a fair bargain to me.
So yes, this is reality in more countries than one might first think.
What's the point of OSS ? Making better software ? No.
Having a free OS can ensure that you have full access to the system, and that you know how to interface your program with it, or maybe improve it somehow.
Even if it is (were, actually, since I have not tested it yet) not as featureful as the original proprietary OS, it does not mean it is completely inferior. Have you ever worked on a TI-92+ ? I have. It sucks.
The pseudo-shell is really more pseudo than shell, the programming language is a joke, etc. Sure, it works. Sure, there are cool (proprietary) apps with it. But it does not mean it cannot be improved (possibly keeping the compatibility to still access those cool closed apps). Examples of improvements would be a better shell (the screenshots seem to show one), a more powerful filesystem (allow directories into directories, w00t), completion (available through a wrapper, but it's not that good), etc.
There is room for improvement. So them'em play with the system and release it Freely, it can only get better !
I'm the lead game designer for an amateur french MMORPG set in a new universe. It is called Milcis. Now apart from the apparent self-advertising look of this post, I have to say this is a very interesting concern we have discussed from early on. We now have developped a game design device called the "triplette", which is a set of three "variables" (Power, Discovery, Invention). Basically, the goal of the triplette is to allow the player to rate the respect they have for other players.
You may say this is open grounds for cheaters. This is, and this is why we had to think a lot about the way the player can use it and cheat. The Slashdot moderation system is obviously a good example of a quite good rewarding system.
Any player can gain triplette either by achieving quests, or by recieving points by other players. It is a pyramidal system that should hopefully balance itself. I won't dive too deep into the rules unless someone is really interested though.. Then the interesting thing is the usage of the triplette. It is needed to improve one's magical abilities.
So in Milcis, players can still play hack'n slash, get a huge strength and be the big barbarian we all know (actually, the permadeath makes it harder for PK, but it's not the point here). On the other hand, social players are rewarded with magic abilities (offensive or defensive depending on the magic).
I just wanted to show that, whereas this is not necessarily new to MUD players, there are some MMORPGs (even amateur ones) taking this path of rewarding social behavior and tiding it to the very core of the gameplay and the background. I hope professional developpers will ultimately try this idea too, since it seems like a major requirement to prevent MMORPGs from encouraging hack'n slashers and dumb power-leveling.
have you every tried to install and set up subversion? Yes, it's just easy (and there are packages for every major distro out there).
plus, after years and years of development, it's still point-oh-something and specifically states they can only guarentee that your repository can be read with x number of versions after the version that created it. WTF ? SVN is going beta any time soon (and 1.0 soon after that). There is no such restriction as far as I know, where did you get that ?? I have my home directory under SVN, and a lot of repositories, including one with over 300 Mo of data (binary, text, sources, etc). Never lost one single bit.
Don't misinform people on this great project, please, it deserves attention !
This is a good movie, but it's not the ending -- and the movie -- we wanted or were waiting for.
We have all been elaborating Matrix Revolutions plot in our heads (and websites) ever since we saw Reloaded. The real movie is not based on our personal plot, and this is the main source of disappointment, no matter how good or bad is the movie itself.
What whould you say if your provider (let's assume he provides you with your email address as well) decides to prevent you from sending email to people who have another provider ?
I have family all around the world, all of them using MSN simply because it's the one thing that is already installed when you buy your computer. Then it's the same with their friends, and they indeed end up locked up in MSN Mess(enger).
Now I do not use MSN, for ethical and technical reasons (I do not work under w$). Is it normal that Microsoft controls whether I can talk with my family or not ? I do not agree on that. And making it understood to the rest of the family is not an easy task, because they won't leave MSN so easily...
What you said is true : they pay for the bandwidth, etc. The real problem is the fact that this is a closed protocol. Had it been open, and would it allow other people to act as servers, we would have open servers (or could make our own) that are not controlled by m$. That's the point.
Proprietary stuff restricts the user. It might be normal for them to do so for economical reasons. Then it is not normal for users to use proprietary solutions that can control them. Having people relying on proprietary programs and protocol is dangerous and soon problematic.
So, in both Gnome and KDE 3.1 I can click on an icon and.... nothing. The cursor doesn't change to an hourglass or anything, so I click again thinking I just didn't doubleclick fast enough. Of course, this opens two instances of the program.
That was fixed weeks ago, the solution is simply to upgrade your computer.
Good for you you can afford the Photoshop (+Illustrator?) license.
I can't.
And for most non-graphical artists, TheGimp is not only completely sufficient, but also quite powerful. And, of course, Free Software, which is a good enough reason for me to use it over proprietary alternatives.
- Reliance : if you can have reliable services (constant file disponibility, etc) - Quality : high bitrate, good encoding - Extra services : Album covers, lyrics, bonuses, videos; "If you liked X, why don't you check Y" links between different types of music and bands - Wide range of music : propose almost all the existing music, from indie bands to classical music, including live shows, etc - Artist friendly : show you are not Evil, people will like it and support you - No DRM or alike: hard, but I certainly won't ever buy music if the format is closed or "DRM-controlled" etc.
The Internet has the technical potential to be The Ultimate Media network distribution. People could promote their bands with it, etc.
We just need people to work on a clean, honest distribution schema and create such a company. This is not gonna be the easy part.
BUT please don't do that unless you really want the album, otherwise it's a shameful waste of bandwidth, and let's not ruin this great record company just because we want to look like 1337 shell geeks.
Slashdot Mirror
inter(pla)net.
Does the Firefox browser have Java in it out of the box?
...
No, otherwise the package would be like 30 MB, not 8 MB as it is now. People who don't want Java are not interested in downloading 20 extra megs. It includes me.
Now making the Java install less of a pain is another matter, to which I agree.
My question is, does IE have Java out of the box ? The answer is "no" if I recall correctly
The word astronauts come from the greek : astro (stars), nautike (navigation). So astronaut litteraly means star navigator, and mouse-tronaut would mean mouse navigator, which lacks some sense here.
...
I'd rather have said astro-mouse (star mouse) instead. Or if anyone has the greek word for mouse
The appeal of anime goes beyond the fight scenes and robots.
:
It's about human beings and how we live today.
Something you'll never see, even in a metaphor like Eva, in Hollywood.
Right right, I do not deny the quality of Animes (I enjoy them myself). But don't fall in this Hollywood=>crap business please, it is total non-sense. There are plenty of hollywood movies dealing with the human condition, society and psychology, as soon as you notice that Hollywood is not only {Daredevil, Starwars, Terminator, etc}.
Here are a few hits if you want interesting, deep hollywood movies
- American Beauty
- Donnie Darko
- The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola's latest excellent Lost in Translation is more japanese than hollywoodian, but still worth watching of course)
- Apocalypse Now
- 2001, A Space Odyssey
etc.
* Pretending you're a programmer when the hot secretary comes around.
I think you skipped a "not" in this sentence, didn't you ?
That totally unknown actor was paid by the RIAA to be "caught" for piracy (or act as such), so that they can frighten everybody around ("See, we can catch ya if you do it !").
Pretty lame actually.
They really have some work to do before this watermarking stuff gets as interesting as the footage (read William Gibson's Pattern Recognition for intel on this topic).
Bullshit. They invented the entire FPS genre.
Right, but it does not mean they have to stay with that very same gameplay for the rest of the studio's life, does it ? Actually is does sound like it is their plan.
To me, Peter Molyneux's Bullfrog and Lionhead have been much more inventive than ID Software. This does not mean ID games suck, it just mean ID takes no risk and innovates only in technology, not game design.
About the only way to keep RP alive in a game is to have an RP-devoted server, and litterally make players apply for a character in it (like some of the old MUD's did), which unfortunately, no MMORPGs that I know of have ever done.
For business reasons yes, of course.
But I see what you mean.
In my opinion, the only way to have RP is to reward it, just as most games currently reward hack and slash for instance. Then either you want an RP-only game, and you just make sure the game is not interesting unless you do RP (i.e. progress only occurs through RP, not monster bashing or simple quests), or you want to mix all kind of players and you allow differents (well balanced!) paths of evolution, through study, combat, RP, etc.
Now the point is that rewarding players for fighting is much easier than rewarding them for RP, so that's why no MMORPG does that yet. And since players dont complain (or not too much), why change (publisher's POV) ?
I really don't expect much from WoW. Blizzard is a great game company, and I'm still a big Starcraft lover. They make nifty, well polished games, but WoW sounds just so unoriginal. Yes, the design is quite cool, and so are the races, and the spells ... But does it really sound an RPG ? No. Can you expect to have a really interesting roleplay with orcs and humans and the other races available ? I don't think so, and it does not seem to be the point. Does it bring MMORPG to new grounds ? No. Is it gonna be a hit ? Probably.
Reading the latest big report on the games seems to bring two main conclusions : (1) the gameplay is still open and under discussion, (2) the gameplay is plain unoriginal. They are building a well thought game upon the existing basis, but there is really no risk taken whatsoever, nothing that could really make it the next generation MMORPG.
As an amateur MMORPG game designer myself, I have found that there are an incredibly large amount of possibilities in that genre, but as always most commercial products stay in the same area, ever perfecting one type of game without risking to discover new ones. Too bad Blizzard did not dare to try though, they'd probably have done it the right way.
For my part, I'm waiting for Ryzom, not because it has a much more original gameplay than WoW, not because of its gorgeous graphical design (probably the best out there for an MMORPG), but becauses it dared to leave the traditional fantasy field to explore a new, fresh and tribal universe that is simply fascinating. The objective is more to carry the player into a dream-like original place than put him in front of monsters to fight.
Yes there is
I'm sorry but the "all music sucks today" argument is really total non-sense. I do agree that most of the commercial radio compete hard on the same level of lameness, but this does not mean there is no radio worth listening to. Here in Switzerland, we have a national radio that sounds really independent (trashy, fun, weird) and plays quite listenable songs.
This being said, radio is not the only way to listen to music, and hearing crappy music on the radio doesn't mean that all contemporary music sucks. Download stuff (legally if possible), check magazines or websites, and you will certainly find stuff you like.
I am somewhat nostalgic of classic rock groups (Pink Floyd, ah..), but I can still enjoy the new genius of our generation (Radiohead, Beck, Cornelius, Air and the likes).
It's just a matter of agreeing to switch off that crappy radio station and check out new stuff.
PSX is ofcourse PSten, since X is roman for 10.
And 10 is 2 in binary. Therefore, PSX==PS2. Neat.
Or did I miss something ?
In Switzerland, they just upgraded the 512kbps cable connection to 2000kbps and they reduced the price you had to pay for it ! In other words, you have a connection that is 4 times faster than before and you pay less. Sounds a fair bargain to me.
So yes, this is reality in more countries than one might first think.
What's the point of OSS ? Making better software ?
No.
Having a free OS can ensure that you have full access to the system, and that you know how to interface your program with it, or maybe improve it somehow.
Even if it is (were, actually, since I have not tested it yet) not as featureful as the original proprietary OS, it does not mean it is completely inferior. Have you ever worked on a TI-92+ ? I have. It sucks.
The pseudo-shell is really more pseudo than shell, the programming language is a joke, etc. Sure, it works. Sure, there are cool (proprietary) apps with it. But it does not mean it cannot be improved (possibly keeping the compatibility to still access those cool closed apps). Examples of improvements would be a better shell (the screenshots seem to show one), a more powerful filesystem (allow directories into directories, w00t), completion (available through a wrapper, but it's not that good), etc.
There is room for improvement. So them'em play with the system and release it Freely, it can only get better !
I'm the lead game designer for an amateur french MMORPG set in a new universe. It is called Milcis. Now apart from the apparent self-advertising look of this post, I have to say this is a very interesting concern we have discussed from early on. We now have developped a game design device called the "triplette", which is a set of three "variables" (Power, Discovery, Invention). Basically, the goal of the triplette is to allow the player to rate the respect they have for other players.
..
You may say this is open grounds for cheaters. This is, and this is why we had to think a lot about the way the player can use it and cheat. The Slashdot moderation system is obviously a good example of a quite good rewarding system.
Any player can gain triplette either by achieving quests, or by recieving points by other players. It is a pyramidal system that should hopefully balance itself. I won't dive too deep into the rules unless someone is really interested though
Then the interesting thing is the usage of the triplette. It is needed to improve one's magical abilities.
So in Milcis, players can still play hack'n slash, get a huge strength and be the big barbarian we all know (actually, the permadeath makes it harder for PK, but it's not the point here). On the other hand, social players are rewarded with magic abilities (offensive or defensive depending on the magic).
I just wanted to show that, whereas this is not necessarily new to MUD players, there are some MMORPGs (even amateur ones) taking this path of rewarding social behavior and tiding it to the very core of the gameplay and the background. I hope professional developpers will ultimately try this idea too, since it seems like a major requirement to prevent MMORPGs from encouraging hack'n slashers and dumb power-leveling.
have you every tried to install and set up subversion?
Yes, it's just easy (and there are packages for every major distro out there).
plus, after years and years of development, it's still point-oh-something and specifically states they can only guarentee that your repository can be read with x number of versions after the version that created it.
WTF ?
SVN is going beta any time soon (and 1.0 soon after that). There is no such restriction as far as I know, where did you get that ??
I have my home directory under SVN, and a lot of repositories, including one with over 300 Mo of data (binary, text, sources, etc). Never lost one single bit.
Don't misinform people on this great project, please, it deserves attention !
This is a good movie, but it's not the ending -- and the movie -- we wanted or were waiting for.
We have all been elaborating Matrix Revolutions plot in our heads (and websites) ever since we saw Reloaded. The real movie is not based on our personal plot, and this is the main source of disappointment, no matter how good or bad is the movie itself.
What whould you say if your provider (let's assume he provides you with your email address as well) decides to prevent you from sending email to people who have another provider ?
I have family all around the world, all of them using MSN simply because it's the one thing that is already installed when you buy your computer. Then it's the same with their friends, and they indeed end up locked up in MSN Mess(enger).
Now I do not use MSN, for ethical and technical reasons (I do not work under w$). Is it normal that Microsoft controls whether I can talk with my family or not ? I do not agree on that. And making it understood to the rest of the family is not an easy task, because they won't leave MSN so easily...
What you said is true : they pay for the bandwidth, etc. The real problem is the fact that this is a closed protocol. Had it been open, and would it allow other people to act as servers, we would have open servers (or could make our own) that are not controlled by m$. That's the point.
Proprietary stuff restricts the user. It might be normal for them to do so for economical reasons. Then it is not normal for users to use proprietary solutions that can control them. Having people relying on proprietary programs and protocol is dangerous and soon problematic.
That's as simple as that.
... an X-Box ?
That was fixed weeks ago, the solution is simply to upgrade your computer.
Hope it helps !
Good for you you can afford the Photoshop (+Illustrator?) license.
I can't.
And for most non-graphical artists, TheGimp is not only completely sufficient, but also quite powerful. And, of course, Free Software, which is a good enough reason for me to use it over proprietary alternatives.
Hum indeed, sorry, that was a nice piece of engrish, originally "disponibilite" in french. Read availability.
- Reliance : if you can have reliable services (constant file disponibility, etc)
- Quality : high bitrate, good encoding
- Extra services : Album covers, lyrics, bonuses, videos; "If you liked X, why don't you check Y" links between different types of music and bands
- Wide range of music : propose almost all the existing music, from indie bands to classical music, including live shows, etc
- Artist friendly : show you are not Evil, people will like it and support you
- No DRM or alike: hard, but I certainly won't ever buy music if the format is closed or "DRM-controlled"
etc.
The Internet has the technical potential to be The Ultimate Media network distribution. People could promote their bands with it, etc.
We just need people to work on a clean, honest distribution schema and create such a company. This is not gonna be the easy part.