Maybe my electronics is rusty, but I understood that electrons take the shortest possible route, which in this case is past 3 1 ohm resistors, or 3 ohms.
The abusive, obtuse, and broad EULA's that people click on without reading make it extremely difficult to deal with these companies. Here is one great way we should consider.
1)Make a copy of their agreement, and replace "The cool thing we say we do" with "Free pizza for the office"
2)Replace "We get to infest your machine with junk" with "We get to tar and feather you and put pictures on the internet"
3)Get together a bunch of cheese pizzas and head to their office. Get them to sign the modified agreement for delivery.
4) Proceed to tar and feather the person that signed for the pizza, and share the fantastic photos on the internet.
Remember, it's not assault, it's marketing they agreed to in the license. The beauty of it is that if they fight it, they fight their own agreement, and we can use anything they do to get them to be responsible for the *hundreds of millions of dollars* of damage they have caused to innocent people's computers.
It's fun to tell people how I was stuck for 6 months on one part. I didn't know that while I was Ford, I was supposed to get Arthur drunk and give him my satchel fluff.
That game is hilarious, and evil. Modern game design simply doesn't delight in killing you nearly as much, or stranding you with no outs without restarting the game from scratch.
Personally, what I would like is a complete rip of all the text from the game.
Software only gets changed because our needs, or our perceptions change. If a piece of software was written to perform a task, it can still do that task any number of years from now.
If you wanted to write a document, you could do it in an ancient word processor on one of the earliest home computers. Of course, you would percieve it as slow, and missing some key features, like spell checking, and WYSIWYG editing etc.
Man, I get nervous flashing my BIOS, never mind messing with my *brain*. Screw that. No amount of supposed insight, or entertainment is worth the risk to me.
Microsoft failed to create a secure operating system, and I blame them. Microsoft also failed to release enough information to developers to write code that will survive operating system patching, and again I blame Microsoft.
While I welcome any attempt to make the platform more secure, it is certainly a case of closing the barn door after the horses left.
With Microsoft's history of intentionaly breaking things for their competitors, I think it's fair to worry about what intentional abuses will be released in SP2.
The only truly surprising thing about the whole issue is that they are giving it away instead of selling it. (Windows XP Puma! only $199)
If 60% of the voting public doesn't turn out, that is a large untapped resource for a candidate to attempt to reach. It sends a message that is stronger than voting for the lesser of two evils.
The system is broken, both with soft money contributions, and the winner take all method of distributing electoral votes.
Give me a fiscaly conservative candidate that isn't owned by large corporations, and I'll rush to vote. This time around I'll be there pressing the 'anyone but Bush' button myself.
We all live with local laws dealing with the audio and visual spectrums every day. You can't just set up a loudspeaker on your roof and piss off your neighbors.
Nah, welding the hood shut sucks. I hate the fact that the only CLI I get to work with when repairing XP machines is basically crippled.
Microsoft's monopoly position has stagnated user interface design for operating systems, and is partially responisble for the inability of the average user to cope. The users do get the other half of the blame however.
The car analogy is fine, and yes users manage to do some remarkably stupid things with the computer, but no it isn't entirely their fault.
On the car, there are the basic controls on the dashboard, and the scary technician's controls under the hood. On a computer, all the controls are splashed all over the dashboard.
If you go under the hood and play around and the car stops running, you know it's your fault. If you just wiggle the turn signals and turn the stereo on and off and the car stops working, you get to make angry phone calls.
Computers need that level of UI design.
One of the most powerful things about a computer is it's ability to treat everything as a file. For the technicians, this is excellent, but that needs to be 'under the hood', it only causes trouble for the basic user.
For years the average user was only "drag the windows folder elswhere and yes to all" away from destroyng the computer's OS. Now we get users that don't know what a right-click is because they are afraid to break things.
Why can we trust computers to handle hundreds of billions of dollars in international business, but not voting?
The problem in the equation is the involvment of our government, who have failed to earn our trust in the last few decades, not the concept of electronic voting itself.
Now programs will keep all their important information in a new file type called an 'Ini' file. This file will be easily modified with most text editors and will get rid of the single failure point of the windows registry.
Rule 0: Don't run your system on a crappy power supply to begin with, and it won't spike your drive.
Why people will spend hundreds of bucks on a custom system, and then feel compelled to run the shittiest 20 dollar "model 300w" power supply is completely beyond me.
The problem is not that the world is full of greedy people who all want to steal your product. The problem is basic economics.
You make a product that can be duplicated on a massive scale for close to zero cost. Simple supply and demand tells us that as the supply of your product increased, it's cost decreases.
After a week, your product is worthless. Changing laws will not change this basic fact. It is up to *you* to find a new business model.
This game was pretty amazing for it's time. It was designed as a 3-D game, but produced (just) before the standardization in graphics card technology.
It's use of game engine cinematics was a pretty new concept at the time, and very well done.
Gameplay itself was a blast, and the online community that grew from the game was small but robust. Some folks even adapted the old Car Wars rules so you could play division duels balanced with a pricelist.
The original soundtrack was stunning, and I still listen to it to this day. The project was called Bullmark, and was led by Arion Salazar. He used to have the tracks up on his website, but they don't appear to be there anymore.
Sadly, Activision pretty much killed the franchise with poor support, and a half baked sequel.
In my opinion there have only been two car combat games of this caliber, the other was the original Autoduel by Origin Systems back in The Day(tm).
I have high hopes for the massively multiplayer one being constructed by Netdevil, which has some ties to Destination Games, the new project by Richard Garriot. Time will tell.
I don't care if the software is the best thing since nethack, if the agreement is as painful as Win XP, I'm not touching it with a ten foot cattle prod.
Hydrogen peroxide as propellent needs to be very pure, and is pretty nasty stuff. The methods to produce the pure stuff are more expensive than average, and are patented and controlled by only one or two companies if I recall correctly.
Linkage as follows:
How Stuff Works article on peroxide rockets http://www.howstuffworks.com/question159. htm
The idea is not that things can't be organized that way, but that isn't the default, simple, unbreakable way that it's done.
Using the car analogy, all the controls and adjustments for computers are splashed all over the dashboard, instead of hidden in a spooky place away from the guy just driving it.
If you go under the hood of your car and screw things up, you know who is at fault, and you can't really break the thing without doing something as obvious as driving into a brick wall.
There is no reason that computers can't be as simple to operate, and nearly unbreakable for the average user, and still be as powerful tool in the hands of an expert. Ditching the 'everything is a file', or at least hiding the truth from Joe User would be a step in the right direction.
The hierarchal method of organization is not the primary trouble. Even for novice users the concept of files and folders for their data is relatively simple and intuitive.
The problem lies with the "everything is a file" concept. This idea is powerful but archaic. Very few average users need to directly manipulate files on their system *other* than the stuff they created in their applications.
By calling everything a file, when the user looks for their stuff, it's needle in a haystack time.
To the average user there are only three types of files..
1) Programs (executables to you and I) 2) My stuff 3) Other crap that makes the computer run.
Make the default file system work like that, and people won't lose so many files. Leave the 'everything is a file' method in expert mode.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe my electronics is rusty, but I understood that electrons take the shortest possible route, which in this case is past 3 1 ohm resistors, or 3 ohms.
=Z
The abusive, obtuse, and broad EULA's that people click on without reading make it extremely difficult to deal with these companies. Here is one great way we should consider.
1)Make a copy of their agreement, and replace "The cool thing we say we do" with "Free pizza for the office"
2)Replace "We get to infest your machine with junk" with "We get to tar and feather you and put pictures on the internet"
3)Get together a bunch of cheese pizzas and head to their office. Get them to sign the modified agreement for delivery.
4) Proceed to tar and feather the person that signed for the pizza, and share the fantastic photos on the internet.
Remember, it's not assault, it's marketing they agreed to in the license. The beauty of it is that if they fight it, they fight their own agreement, and we can use anything they do to get them to be responsible for the *hundreds of millions of dollars* of damage they have caused to innocent people's computers.
-Z
I would just like to say that the pun with perennial is bloody awful, and I love it.
-Z
It's fun to tell people how I was stuck for 6 months on one part. I didn't know that while I was Ford, I was supposed to get Arthur drunk and give him my satchel fluff.
That game is hilarious, and evil. Modern game design simply doesn't delight in killing you nearly as much, or stranding you with no outs without restarting the game from scratch.
Personally, what I would like is a complete rip of all the text from the game.
-Z
Software only gets changed because our needs, or our perceptions change. If a piece of software was written to perform a task, it can still do that task any number of years from now.
If you wanted to write a document, you could do it in an ancient word processor on one of the earliest home computers. Of course, you would percieve it as slow, and missing some key features, like spell checking, and WYSIWYG editing etc.
Simple things work longer. Keep it simple.
-Z
Man, I get nervous flashing my BIOS, never mind messing with my *brain*. Screw that. No amount of supposed insight, or entertainment is worth the risk to me.
-Z
Microsoft failed to create a secure operating system, and I blame them. Microsoft also failed to release enough information to developers to write code that will survive operating system patching, and again I blame Microsoft.
While I welcome any attempt to make the platform more secure, it is certainly a case of closing the barn door after the horses left.
With Microsoft's history of intentionaly breaking things for their competitors, I think it's fair to worry about what intentional abuses will be released in SP2.
The only truly surprising thing about the whole issue is that they are giving it away instead of selling it. (Windows XP Puma! only $199)
-Z
If 60% of the voting public doesn't turn out, that is a large untapped resource for a candidate to attempt to reach. It sends a message that is stronger than voting for the lesser of two evils.
The system is broken, both with soft money contributions, and the winner take all method of distributing electoral votes.
Give me a fiscaly conservative candidate that isn't owned by large corporations, and I'll rush to vote. This time around I'll be there pressing the 'anyone but Bush' button myself.
-Z
We all live with local laws dealing with the audio and visual spectrums every day. You can't just set up a loudspeaker on your roof and piss off your neighbors.
Why is radio so much more difficult to deal with?
-Z
Put a side quest in the new game where you, as a Haitian enter 'Kill all the Honkies!' mode.
Hilarity ensues.
-Z
Nah, welding the hood shut sucks. I hate the fact that the only CLI I get to work with when repairing XP machines is basically crippled.
Microsoft's monopoly position has stagnated user interface design for operating systems, and is partially responisble for the inability of the average user to cope. The users do get the other half of the blame however.
-Z
The car analogy is fine, and yes users manage to do some remarkably stupid things with the computer, but no it isn't entirely their fault.
On the car, there are the basic controls on the dashboard, and the scary technician's controls under the hood. On a computer, all the controls are splashed all over the dashboard.
If you go under the hood and play around and the car stops running, you know it's your fault. If you just wiggle the turn signals and turn the stereo on and off and the car stops working, you get to make angry phone calls.
Computers need that level of UI design.
One of the most powerful things about a computer is it's ability to treat everything as a file. For the technicians, this is excellent, but that needs to be 'under the hood', it only causes trouble for the basic user.
For years the average user was only "drag the windows folder elswhere and yes to all" away from destroyng the computer's OS. Now we get users that don't know what a right-click is because they are afraid to break things.
Not entirely their fault.
-Z
For anonymous financial transactions, may I recommend cash?
As for e-voting,a balance between proper verification and protection of privacy must be found. The current closed systems provide neither.
I'm convinced that it will work eventually however.
-Z
Why can we trust computers to handle hundreds of billions of dollars in international business, but not voting?
The problem in the equation is the involvment of our government, who have failed to earn our trust in the last few decades, not the concept of electronic voting itself.
-Z
What a fantastic innovation!...
Now programs will keep all their important information in a new file type called an 'Ini' file. This file will be easily modified with most text editors and will get rid of the single failure point of the windows registry.
(snicker)
-Z
This of course means that if you get it on with your lady friend outside, you can have green nookie just like Capt. Kirk.
-Z
Rule 0: Don't run your system on a crappy power supply to begin with, and it won't spike your drive.
Why people will spend hundreds of bucks on a custom system, and then feel compelled to run the shittiest 20 dollar "model 300w" power supply is completely beyond me.
-Z
Dear RIAA,
The problem is not that the world is full of greedy people who all want to steal your product. The problem is basic economics.
You make a product that can be duplicated on a massive scale for close to zero cost. Simple supply and demand tells us that as the supply of your product increased, it's cost decreases.
After a week, your product is worthless. Changing laws will not change this basic fact. It is up to *you* to find a new business model.
-Z
I'd have to say that Gwen Stefani has the market cornered on No Doubt perfect nipples.
-Z
This game was pretty amazing for it's time. It was designed as a 3-D game, but produced (just) before the standardization in graphics card technology.
It's use of game engine cinematics was a pretty new concept at the time, and very well done.
Gameplay itself was a blast, and the online community that grew from the game was small but robust. Some folks even adapted the old Car Wars rules so you could play division duels balanced with a pricelist.
The original soundtrack was stunning, and I still listen to it to this day. The project was called Bullmark, and was led by Arion Salazar. He used to have the tracks up on his website, but they don't appear to be there anymore.
Sadly, Activision pretty much killed the franchise with poor support, and a half baked sequel.
In my opinion there have only been two car combat games of this caliber, the other was the original Autoduel by Origin Systems back in The Day(tm).
I have high hopes for the massively multiplayer one being constructed by Netdevil, which has some ties to Destination Games, the new project by Richard Garriot. Time will tell.
-Zaphod
I don't care if the software is the best thing since nethack, if the agreement is as painful as Win XP, I'm not touching it with a ten foot cattle prod.
-Zaphod
Streetfighter? Sorry, gamepads are fsking awful for most fighting games.
Even if you throw away the fact that I hate thumbads, using one thumb for the six buttons you need to play competitive streetfigher is the worst.
I'll take my keyboard, and wreck house on SF Alpha 3. I just have to remember not to use Zangief, 'cause the 360 moves are impossible.
-Z
Hydrogen peroxide as propellent needs to be very pure, and is pretty nasty stuff. The methods to produce the pure stuff are more expensive than average, and are patented and controlled by only one or two companies if I recall correctly.
. htm
h tml
Linkage as follows:
How Stuff Works article on peroxide rockets
http://www.howstuffworks.com/question159
Peroxide FAQ
http://webhome.idirect.com/~earlcp/FAQs/FAQ.
-Z
The idea is not that things can't be organized that way, but that isn't the default, simple, unbreakable way that it's done.
Using the car analogy, all the controls and adjustments for computers are splashed all over the dashboard, instead of hidden in a spooky place away from the guy just driving it.
If you go under the hood of your car and screw things up, you know who is at fault, and you can't really break the thing without doing something as obvious as driving into a brick wall.
There is no reason that computers can't be as simple to operate, and nearly unbreakable for the average user, and still be as powerful tool in the hands of an expert. Ditching the 'everything is a file', or at least hiding the truth from Joe User would be a step in the right direction.
-Z
The hierarchal method of organization is not the primary trouble. Even for novice users the concept of files and folders for their data is relatively simple and intuitive.
The problem lies with the "everything is a file" concept. This idea is powerful but archaic. Very few average users need to directly manipulate files on their system *other* than the stuff they created in their applications.
By calling everything a file, when the user looks for their stuff, it's needle in a haystack time.
To the average user there are only three types of files..
1) Programs (executables to you and I)
2) My stuff
3) Other crap that makes the computer run.
Make the default file system work like that, and people won't lose so many files. Leave the 'everything is a file' method in expert mode.
-Z