"Until somebody shoots you and takes your gun."... which is a completely assinine argument. If a bad guy shoots someone, he already had a gun, and therefore was already dangerous. Now, if that someone was also armed, he would have a fighting chance against the criminal - not so if he WASN'T armed!
You're missing a key point: touting a weapon as "not lethal", "less than lethal", or even worse, "non-lethal" is actually rather irresponsible. A pocketknife, a police baton, a bucket of water: all these can easily kill people.
If people are given "non-lethal" weapons, weapons that can and do occasionally kill someone, the people are much more apt to use such weapons instead of taking more appropriate action, such as threatening to, as an example, prepare to use universally recognized lethal force. There is also the problem of the victims of "non-lethal" weaponry actually believing such weapons are harmless, and therefore not taking them seriously, disregarding instructions, provoking the attacker to use the "non-lethal" weapon, etc., etc.
So, if people are more apt to use "non-lethal" weapons, and use them more often, the danger inherant in these weapons will end up harming a larger number of people, as by definition, the folks did not feel justified in the use of lethal force.
I suppose I'm going to sound like an snob for saying so, but I really don't think you were part of Planescape Torment's target audience. The draw of the game was the characters and the development of the story, along with having the ability to have your actions actually have an impact.
The technological aspects of the game were very well suited to that task, and did not hinder either major facet much at all (the running back and forth between room-screens became annoying once or twice, IIRC, and/or there was one exit hotspot in a particular area that was a royal pain to find).
In summary, the best CRPGs have all been about story and substance over eye candy. Even Morrowind (*some* say it was a good CRPG, so leave me alone) left a ton of room for improvement in the eye candy department, especially when it came to the character models. If you think Planescape Torment sucked, what do you think about Darklands?:P
(P.S. Planescape Torment's music was awesome, too.)
How about "collusion" - all "five major labels" fall under the RIAA. Purchasing legislation should be illegal. What legislation? Oh, I don't know... *cough*DMCA*cough*. Payola? Wait, that's not legal! Oh, boy, oh boy.
When the big boys start using their beatin' sticks on the small guys, don't be suprised when suddenly everyone treats the big boys as evil.
Imagine a scenario where you and some of your friends sit down and write a really cool app. It works pretty well, so it gets posted online for others to enjoy, which many do. You don't charge money for it, but you and your friends maintain and update the app for whatever reasons you so desire, be they fun, recognition, etc.
Then I download your app, throw up a website, strike all references that refer back to you, your friends, or even your app's name, and then charge people ten bucks a pop to download your software.
That company is doing just that with GIMP (example), among others. I'm no lawyer, but even if that is legal, it certainly is still morally wrong. Don't present other peoples' work as your own.:P
So, with IPv6, I can just hook up my sole XP SP1 machine directly to the Internet and rest assured I won't get hit by the next automated exploit scan/attack?
With IPv6, my ISP will automagically give me as many public IPs as I want, free of charge?
With IPv6, I will suddenly have a use for more than 254 IPs (which I already have behind my router)? Oh, and I'll need more than one "directly reachable" IP?
IPv6 is a good thing, but you'll get my NAT/PAT router once you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Ever since I figured out that my Microsoft optical mouse was the reason my view shifted randomly to the sky or my feet when playing CounterStrike, I've been paying attention to my mice.
My favorite mouse of all time was Logitech's Dual Mouseman Optical, primarily because of the thumb-button placement down low below the thumb. Shift your thumb slightly, and you hit it - no need to stop gripping the mouse with the thumb.
The Razer Diamondback has many people complaining about "squeaky" buttons, myself included. In fact, all the buttons feel "cheap" - they don't have the smooth, substantial feel that the Microsoft and Logitech mice do. For the price, just get yourself one of the current MX510 mice from Logitech, and you'll have a better-built mouse.:/
I'll admit the story was very entertaining, but the gameplay blew chunks. Ahh, nothing like spending 40 minutes trying to suck enough majick out of a low-level monster to actually have a shot at beating some of the bosses... for one type of majick out of hundreds!
Good stories and good gameplay are rare things. Finding them both in the same game is a stastisical miracle.
Your example is fatally flawed. Human hair is composed of dead cells, which is why it doesn't hurt when your hair is cut.
Human embryos are, regardless of whatever else they are, alive.
Can't say for sure, but...
on
Why FreeBSD
·
· Score: 1
"I am having extensive problems using ReiserFS; it seems to have bugs all over the place. I'm not compiling with a buggy compiler. What is happening? How can this be stable?
You have hardware problems. Really, you do. Even if the bugs don't show up with ext2, you have hardware problems. (See FAQ question about ReiserFS running 3C hotter than ext2.) Most SuSE users use ReiserFS. Obscure bugs probably still exist; but if you find bugs as easily as using Windows, you have bad RAM, bad CPU, bad cable, bad cooling, VIA chipset with PCI quirks turned on, or other hardware or other software layer bugs. ReiserFS is stable. You can be sure that if the bugs are encountered easily and commonly with normal usage patterns, it is not us. This does not mean that the next release won't somehow break something though:-/..... Real bug reports are at the time of writing outnumbered 10 to 1 by hardware bugs that trigger error messages. We are working on making our error messages better at catching hardware bugs and identifying them as such. There is only so far we can go though in runtime consistency checking without serious speed reductions. We don't release software unless it goes through extensive testing; so if you don't think that our testing could have missed the bug, it is probably hardware."
It isn't using past events to predict the future, persay, but to predict the likelihood of the possibility of a future occurance based on past stastistics.
The difference is that you have a general idea of when the next event will occur, and perhaps even some details regarding event, but not usually such things as exact dates, locations, etc., etc.
A theoretical example: if there has been an average of one mugging per month in a given neighborhood over the last year, what are the odds of there being approximately six muggings over the next six months if conditions do not change?:)
So, the USA has been feeding people feet-first into running wood chippers? Tying people up, blindfilding them, then throwing them off buildings? Throwing a bunch of women into a small room so they can be raped whenever someone feels like it?
As for the nonsense regarding law-abiding Iraqis wanting the USA gone, you're wrong again. I've a brother who served in Iraq - they essentially get heros' welcomes whenever they meet people when on patrol. This is a far cry different from people simply waving or staying out of their way - seems folks recognize that without the USA there, some fanatical Islamic hardliner and his zealots will take over. In fact, that's exactly what the "insurgents" are trying to do... except they aren't insurgents. They're carted in from the surrounding countries and usually end up targetting Iraqis. Read that again: the terrorists are blowing up Iraqis. Check the Iraqi death toll - over 10,000. Guess who ISN'T using precision-guided weapons? Yup, your friends with the car bombs, which again, are usually parked next to a mosque filled with Iraqi civilians, or a police station filled with Iraqi policemen.
As for anyone in the current administration being a war criminal, consider this: the USA has had the right (some would say the duty) to attack Iraq again as soon as Saddam broke the peace treaty he signed when the USA kicked his butt out of Kuwait. He'd been breaking his agreements for almost a decade, attacking US planes patrolling the area he wasn't allowed to keep forces in, etc. The USA was 100% justified in attacking Iraq by any first-world standard you care to use, even if their given reason seems to have turned out to be a falsehood/lie/slip-up/mistake/whatever.
It's not bogus. It's on the same level as murders, drunk drivers, invasions of enemy armies, etc. As far as the "end user" is concerned, they're all random and all practably as preventable as any other item in the list.
That's like saying that stastistics don't apply to burglary because someone meant to rob someone else. Or mugging. Or assault. Or any other crime. Whoops, setting off a bomb in the middle of London is a crime!:P
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but didn't John Romero bring us Dai "I can't leave without my buddy Superfly" katana? One of the most heavily scripted pieces of boring software ever written?
I suffered through Deus Ex 2. I couldn't finish Daikatana.
Almost ALL modern games are approximately two years old on release day. The key here is that the two year birthday for this game is happening soon, vs. the other games that will miss the PS3's launch window.
I just wish that, since they already have it running on PCs to some extent, they'd also release it for the PC. I don't own any consoles, nor do I plan to.
This is the ATi card you got off eBay from a shifty-looking guy to stick in your homebrew system you made from parts rescued from beneath the cat, put together while eating a PB&J for lunch?
After the fan on my nVidia GeForce 4400 started balking (not that big a deal), I removed all the nVidia drivers and slapped in an ATi 9800 Pro w/128MB. The most trouble I've ever had is the occasional bad texture on the newest games, something that has always been promptly remedied by a new Catalyst release. Yes, ATi's Achille's Heel has always been their drivers, but they are now quite good, at least for Windows.
nVidia was trying to pull an Intel on us back before ATi knocked nVidia's socks off with the 9700. ATi's hardware has been generally superior to nVidia's, but until the 9700, had always been crippled by crappy drivers.
As for me, with my GeForce4, I always had to keep an array of driver versions around so that I could reinstall specific versions to work with specific games. A hassle, yes, but I'm an "enthusiast". Now, I'm currently keeping known-good ATi drivers around, but have never yet had to install an old release to be able to play an older game without corrupted graphics, etc.
Each company makes good cards. Let's keep them both in business so the trend continues.:P
I assume you're referring to the US/UK and Iraq. Pull out now, without a stable government and adaquately trained police and military personnel in adequate numbers? Are you insane? Absent the rule of law, a power vacuum will always be filled by the most vicious, evil persons - because they generally kill everyone else.
Nope, nope - the real solution is to allow a democratically established government to mature and supporting law enforcement arms to strengthen, and while we wait, get the bastards that planned and supported the illegal, murderous acts on civilians.
The difference is that other deaths are caused despite people's best efforts - people don't want to have heart attacks or die in traffic accidents.
But people do die in traffic accidents. In fact, when averaged out over any significant timeframe, "terrorist" attacks become stastistical noise. If someone is frightened by terrorists, they should be unable to go out near the street.
Interesting. Still, most power plants do not have a convenient way to "store" energy. On top of that, what happens when the first unfortunate person runs out of "gas" a few miles from town? It's somewhat difficult to pick up a few gallons of electricity.;) (It would also likely either be hideously expensive to buy a temporary replacement battery and/or very heavy. Admittedly, hydrogen tanks aren't exactly empty milk jugs, either...)
Are we more safe because they spent longer searching me than nearly everybody else on the plane? I'm gonna go with a no.
Here's another affirmation of the ineffectiveness of the situation, but from the other angle. I was in the military during '01 and '02, and went to PSAB (in Saudi Arabia) a couple months after 9/11. Anyhow, I packed a big duffel and a small gym bag, the former was checked and the latter was carried. I went through the Oklahoma City airport security, through the Air Base's security, and back through security in Boston (IIRC), only to THEN have someone tell me "I think I see a knife in your bag."
I'd been carrying a ~7-inch boot knife in an outer pocket of my carry-on bag on flights that spanned half the globe (aka, full of jet fuel) which was not concealed in any way except for simply being in a pocket of a duffel filled with socks, books, munchies, and a few electronic gizmos. It still took them close to 10 additional minutes to decide to physically search the bag and an additional 5 beyond that to actually find it (after they'd emptied all pockets except the one it was in).
Feeling safer yet? As for me, I say just do nothing, let people arm themselves if they want to shoulder the responsibility and liability, and go on about your daily life. You might be hit by a car, or you might be blown up by a terrorist. Odds are the car will get you many times over before the terrorist even has a chance.
It still won't work - the electric grid maintains a set amount of capacity at any given time. It CANNOT store electricity for use at peak-use hours, therefore when everyone gets home at 6:02pm and plugs in their cars... we still have brownout conditions. I believe you're overlooking the sheer number of vehicles out there on the road, and the huge amount of energy (currently in the form of petrochemicals) they use to go about your business.
Now, we could build up the grid to the point that it could handle those spikes... but as electricity cannot be effectively stored in significant "quantities", all that extra capacity is wasted. I know I can't afford a pebble-bed reactor...
One problem: try storing electricity for any significant period of time. I, too, like the idea of a single energy conversion (fossil fuel|nuclear -> electricity -> locomotion), but there's just no way we can currently handle the load of everyone "filling up" their electric cars at 3-5pm in their applicable time zones every day.
Hydrogen is an energy storage medium, which is actually very flexible.
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"Until somebody shoots you and takes your gun." ... which is a completely assinine argument. If a bad guy shoots someone, he already had a gun, and therefore was already dangerous. Now, if that someone was also armed, he would have a fighting chance against the criminal - not so if he WASN'T armed!
You're missing a key point: touting a weapon as "not lethal", "less than lethal", or even worse, "non-lethal" is actually rather irresponsible. A pocketknife, a police baton, a bucket of water: all these can easily kill people.
If people are given "non-lethal" weapons, weapons that can and do occasionally kill someone, the people are much more apt to use such weapons instead of taking more appropriate action, such as threatening to, as an example, prepare to use universally recognized lethal force. There is also the problem of the victims of "non-lethal" weaponry actually believing such weapons are harmless, and therefore not taking them seriously, disregarding instructions, provoking the attacker to use the "non-lethal" weapon, etc., etc.
So, if people are more apt to use "non-lethal" weapons, and use them more often, the danger inherant in these weapons will end up harming a larger number of people, as by definition, the folks did not feel justified in the use of lethal force.
I suppose I'm going to sound like an snob for saying so, but I really don't think you were part of Planescape Torment's target audience. The draw of the game was the characters and the development of the story, along with having the ability to have your actions actually have an impact.
:P
The technological aspects of the game were very well suited to that task, and did not hinder either major facet much at all (the running back and forth between room-screens became annoying once or twice, IIRC, and/or there was one exit hotspot in a particular area that was a royal pain to find).
In summary, the best CRPGs have all been about story and substance over eye candy. Even Morrowind (*some* say it was a good CRPG, so leave me alone) left a ton of room for improvement in the eye candy department, especially when it came to the character models. If you think Planescape Torment sucked, what do you think about Darklands?
(P.S. Planescape Torment's music was awesome, too.)
How about "collusion" - all "five major labels" fall under the RIAA. Purchasing legislation should be illegal. What legislation? Oh, I don't know... *cough*DMCA*cough*. Payola? Wait, that's not legal! Oh, boy, oh boy.
When the big boys start using their beatin' sticks on the small guys, don't be suprised when suddenly everyone treats the big boys as evil.
Imagine a scenario where you and some of your friends sit down and write a really cool app. It works pretty well, so it gets posted online for others to enjoy, which many do. You don't charge money for it, but you and your friends maintain and update the app for whatever reasons you so desire, be they fun, recognition, etc.
:P
Then I download your app, throw up a website, strike all references that refer back to you, your friends, or even your app's name, and then charge people ten bucks a pop to download your software.
That company is doing just that with GIMP (example), among others. I'm no lawyer, but even if that is legal, it certainly is still morally wrong. Don't present other peoples' work as your own.
So, with IPv6, I can just hook up my sole XP SP1 machine directly to the Internet and rest assured I won't get hit by the next automated exploit scan/attack?
With IPv6, my ISP will automagically give me as many public IPs as I want, free of charge?
With IPv6, I will suddenly have a use for more than 254 IPs (which I already have behind my router)? Oh, and I'll need more than one "directly reachable" IP?
IPv6 is a good thing, but you'll get my NAT/PAT router once you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Ever since I figured out that my Microsoft optical mouse was the reason my view shifted randomly to the sky or my feet when playing CounterStrike, I've been paying attention to my mice.
:/
My favorite mouse of all time was Logitech's Dual Mouseman Optical, primarily because of the thumb-button placement down low below the thumb. Shift your thumb slightly, and you hit it - no need to stop gripping the mouse with the thumb.
The Razer Diamondback has many people complaining about "squeaky" buttons, myself included. In fact, all the buttons feel "cheap" - they don't have the smooth, substantial feel that the Microsoft and Logitech mice do. For the price, just get yourself one of the current MX510 mice from Logitech, and you'll have a better-built mouse.
FF8 was my least favorite of the series.
I'll admit the story was very entertaining, but the gameplay blew chunks. Ahh, nothing like spending 40 minutes trying to suck enough majick out of a low-level monster to actually have a shot at beating some of the bosses... for one type of majick out of hundreds!
Good stories and good gameplay are rare things. Finding them both in the same game is a stastisical miracle.
Your example is fatally flawed. Human hair is composed of dead cells, which is why it doesn't hurt when your hair is cut.
Human embryos are, regardless of whatever else they are, alive.
"I am having extensive problems using ReiserFS; it seems to have bugs all over the place. I'm not compiling with a buggy compiler. What is happening? How can this be stable? :-/..... Real bug reports are at the time of writing outnumbered 10 to 1 by hardware bugs that trigger error messages. We are working on making our error messages better at catching hardware bugs and identifying them as such. There is only so far we can go though in runtime consistency checking without serious speed reductions. We don't release software unless it goes through extensive testing; so if you don't think that our testing could have missed the bug, it is probably hardware."
You have hardware problems. Really, you do. Even if the bugs don't show up with ext2, you have hardware problems. (See FAQ question about ReiserFS running 3C hotter than ext2.) Most SuSE users use ReiserFS. Obscure bugs probably still exist; but if you find bugs as easily as using Windows, you have bad RAM, bad CPU, bad cable, bad cooling, VIA chipset with PCI quirks turned on, or other hardware or other software layer bugs. ReiserFS is stable. You can be sure that if the bugs are encountered easily and commonly with normal usage patterns, it is not us. This does not mean that the next release won't somehow break something though
Referenced in the FAQ.
Sure, but what of the prime factors of 9,007,199,254,740,881?
It isn't using past events to predict the future, persay, but to predict the likelihood of the possibility of a future occurance based on past stastistics.
:)
The difference is that you have a general idea of when the next event will occur, and perhaps even some details regarding event, but not usually such things as exact dates, locations, etc., etc.
A theoretical example: if there has been an average of one mugging per month in a given neighborhood over the last year, what are the odds of there being approximately six muggings over the next six months if conditions do not change?
So, the USA has been feeding people feet-first into running wood chippers? Tying people up, blindfilding them, then throwing them off buildings? Throwing a bunch of women into a small room so they can be raped whenever someone feels like it?
... except they aren't insurgents. They're carted in from the surrounding countries and usually end up targetting Iraqis. Read that again: the terrorists are blowing up Iraqis. Check the Iraqi death toll - over 10,000. Guess who ISN'T using precision-guided weapons? Yup, your friends with the car bombs, which again, are usually parked next to a mosque filled with Iraqi civilians, or a police station filled with Iraqi policemen.
As for the nonsense regarding law-abiding Iraqis wanting the USA gone, you're wrong again. I've a brother who served in Iraq - they essentially get heros' welcomes whenever they meet people when on patrol. This is a far cry different from people simply waving or staying out of their way - seems folks recognize that without the USA there, some fanatical Islamic hardliner and his zealots will take over. In fact, that's exactly what the "insurgents" are trying to do
As for anyone in the current administration being a war criminal, consider this: the USA has had the right (some would say the duty) to attack Iraq again as soon as Saddam broke the peace treaty he signed when the USA kicked his butt out of Kuwait. He'd been breaking his agreements for almost a decade, attacking US planes patrolling the area he wasn't allowed to keep forces in, etc. The USA was 100% justified in attacking Iraq by any first-world standard you care to use, even if their given reason seems to have turned out to be a falsehood/lie/slip-up/mistake/whatever.
Your perception of reality is HORRIBLY distorted.
It's not bogus. It's on the same level as murders, drunk drivers, invasions of enemy armies, etc. As far as the "end user" is concerned, they're all random and all practably as preventable as any other item in the list.
:P
That's like saying that stastistics don't apply to burglary because someone meant to rob someone else. Or mugging. Or assault. Or any other crime. Whoops, setting off a bomb in the middle of London is a crime!
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but didn't John Romero bring us Dai "I can't leave without my buddy Superfly" katana? One of the most heavily scripted pieces of boring software ever written?
I suffered through Deus Ex 2. I couldn't finish Daikatana.
Almost ALL modern games are approximately two years old on release day. The key here is that the two year birthday for this game is happening soon, vs. the other games that will miss the PS3's launch window.
I just wish that, since they already have it running on PCs to some extent, they'd also release it for the PC. I don't own any consoles, nor do I plan to.
This is the ATi card you got off eBay from a shifty-looking guy to stick in your homebrew system you made from parts rescued from beneath the cat, put together while eating a PB&J for lunch?
:P
After the fan on my nVidia GeForce 4400 started balking (not that big a deal), I removed all the nVidia drivers and slapped in an ATi 9800 Pro w/128MB. The most trouble I've ever had is the occasional bad texture on the newest games, something that has always been promptly remedied by a new Catalyst release. Yes, ATi's Achille's Heel has always been their drivers, but they are now quite good, at least for Windows.
nVidia was trying to pull an Intel on us back before ATi knocked nVidia's socks off with the 9700. ATi's hardware has been generally superior to nVidia's, but until the 9700, had always been crippled by crappy drivers.
As for me, with my GeForce4, I always had to keep an array of driver versions around so that I could reinstall specific versions to work with specific games. A hassle, yes, but I'm an "enthusiast". Now, I'm currently keeping known-good ATi drivers around, but have never yet had to install an old release to be able to play an older game without corrupted graphics, etc.
Each company makes good cards. Let's keep them both in business so the trend continues.
... the goatse guy was a terrorist!?
I assume you're referring to the US/UK and Iraq. Pull out now, without a stable government and adaquately trained police and military personnel in adequate numbers? Are you insane? Absent the rule of law, a power vacuum will always be filled by the most vicious, evil persons - because they generally kill everyone else.
Nope, nope - the real solution is to allow a democratically established government to mature and supporting law enforcement arms to strengthen, and while we wait, get the bastards that planned and supported the illegal, murderous acts on civilians.
The difference is that other deaths are caused despite people's best efforts - people don't want to have heart attacks or die in traffic accidents.
But people do die in traffic accidents. In fact, when averaged out over any significant timeframe, "terrorist" attacks become stastistical noise. If someone is frightened by terrorists, they should be unable to go out near the street.
Interesting. Still, most power plants do not have a convenient way to "store" energy. On top of that, what happens when the first unfortunate person runs out of "gas" a few miles from town? It's somewhat difficult to pick up a few gallons of electricity. ;) (It would also likely either be hideously expensive to buy a temporary replacement battery and/or very heavy. Admittedly, hydrogen tanks aren't exactly empty milk jugs, either...)
Are we more safe because they spent longer searching me than nearly everybody else on the plane? I'm gonna go with a no.
Here's another affirmation of the ineffectiveness of the situation, but from the other angle. I was in the military during '01 and '02, and went to PSAB (in Saudi Arabia) a couple months after 9/11. Anyhow, I packed a big duffel and a small gym bag, the former was checked and the latter was carried. I went through the Oklahoma City airport security, through the Air Base's security, and back through security in Boston (IIRC), only to THEN have someone tell me "I think I see a knife in your bag."
I'd been carrying a ~7-inch boot knife in an outer pocket of my carry-on bag on flights that spanned half the globe (aka, full of jet fuel) which was not concealed in any way except for simply being in a pocket of a duffel filled with socks, books, munchies, and a few electronic gizmos. It still took them close to 10 additional minutes to decide to physically search the bag and an additional 5 beyond that to actually find it (after they'd emptied all pockets except the one it was in).
Feeling safer yet? As for me, I say just do nothing, let people arm themselves if they want to shoulder the responsibility and liability, and go on about your daily life. You might be hit by a car, or you might be blown up by a terrorist. Odds are the car will get you many times over before the terrorist even has a chance.
It still won't work - the electric grid maintains a set amount of capacity at any given time. It CANNOT store electricity for use at peak-use hours, therefore when everyone gets home at 6:02pm and plugs in their cars... we still have brownout conditions. I believe you're overlooking the sheer number of vehicles out there on the road, and the huge amount of energy (currently in the form of petrochemicals) they use to go about your business.
Now, we could build up the grid to the point that it could handle those spikes... but as electricity cannot be effectively stored in significant "quantities", all that extra capacity is wasted. I know I can't afford a pebble-bed reactor...
BTW, electric locomotives use regenerative brakes since day one.
... because we all know freight trains get stuck in stop-and-go traffic, too. ;)
One problem: try storing electricity for any significant period of time. I, too, like the idea of a single energy conversion (fossil fuel|nuclear -> electricity -> locomotion), but there's just no way we can currently handle the load of everyone "filling up" their electric cars at 3-5pm in their applicable time zones every day.
Hydrogen is an energy storage medium, which is actually very flexible.