Good for you, then your missing out. I agree with Blizzard, and will continue to agree with Blizzard, until MS buys their parent company, and everything becomes Xbox exlusive, then Blizzard can screw themselves.
But right now, I would elect Blizzard as God, or Cheif Designer of the Universe. They are the only game company who has come out with QUALITY games, the FIRST time. Every Blizzard patch is like a mini-expansion, rather than a bug fix caused by rushing development.
What company cold EVER hope to match Blizzards line-up of games? Blackthorne kicked much ass, RnR Racing also kicked ass, Diablo I wasted my whole highschool existance (well, that and MUDs), Warcraft was the first genre making RTS, Warcraft 2 was the best RTS until... STARCRAFT! Any game that causes Koreans to starve, must be a damn good game. Then we have Diablo II, the most anticpated game of 2000, and the only game to live up to it's hype. Then LoD, which also lived up to it's hype. Then of course Warcraft 3, which is a new genre making RTS, on that caused those silly command and conquer people to copy it's formula (to a point), and the upcoming Worlds of Warcraft look like it may just be the ONLY MMORPG that I will consider playing, which is saying alot since I HATE that genre. And from the Frozen Throne previews, it looks also like quality stuff.
My only complaint is Ghost. What a steaming pile of crap, not releasing it on PC. I don't WANT to buy an Xbox, or a PS2, or even a GC, my compy works fine for gaming, and I just spent $300 to be DoomIII compliant, and Unreal 2 capable. And now I'm supposed to fork over however much for a damn peice of propritary console crap, just to play a game... bah.
" Imagine a Barbarian who can shape-shift into a Werewolf."
Is it just me, or does this send an odd tingly down the spine?
Seriously, I have been waiting for a year for this patch. At times I've seriously doubted that it would EVER happen.
Back before Diablo II, and Lords of Destruction, my and my freinds used to joke about Blizzards inability to EVER come out with something on time, they suffered massive Vaporware Syndrome. (not as bad as 3drealms, of course). But Diablo II came out ON TIME, then LoD came out ON TIME... They got their vapor revenge with this damn patch though.
I've noticed this trend as well, and worse. Lately both of my parents have decided to get computers for the first time, and I, to repay them for the diapers, am free tech-support.
My mother is no problem, she doesn't go online, so no problems, she basically has a dedicated word / solitare machine. Nothing to go wrong except crappy printer drivers / spyware (DAMN YOU HP!)
On the other hand y father has a nice mail-order (Dell, I think) PC, with a nice, efficient copy of ME on it. The thing is his ethic tells him that everything that came installed on it, is installed on it because it is NECISSARY. And everything that boots on startup, is needed. I've never seen such a sluggish beast, at 800mhz, it runs slower than my old 333mhz win98 box, MUCH slower, it runs like my old 133 (after two hours like an 8086). (74% GDI at boot!, TWENTY startup items [like MSMoney??!], 12 items remain resident at all times!)
He uses it for the typical end-user fair, MSMoney, Outlook, and webbrowsing (thank god I got him to at least use the preinstalled netscape!). From the start he would NOT let me fix-up his computer, uninstall the 12 copies of AOL and MSN, all of the silly noises, bells, whistles, and whatnot. The reason? The local computer-radio show host said "DO NOT LET A GEEK TOUCH YOUR COMPUTER". I'm not quiote sure of the rational of this, but I've had 10 computers in my life, and NONE of them have been killed by me, and I've only fried one work computer, but that was for... ahem... reasons.
A couple months after owning this unoptimized PC, he tells me its broken. So I come over to see if I can get it to run, knowing damn well that the problem is bloat related. He has FIVE casino programs installed, TWO pr0n dialers ("how did those get there?"), gator, bonzi, some other search bar, and some really nasty program that almost made me format to kill. Not to mention the tons of icky attachments just waiting to be opened. So I cleared everything, except the pre-installed stuff for him. Then I expected him to let me MAKE IT WORK! Nope, those radio people held sway.
To make a long story short, lately someone charged $1k to his credit card. I asked if he purchased anything online from any odd people lately. He says no. So I go over again and check out his system, and found two points of access. For the first one I clicked the Money icon in the tray (remember it boots with windows), and WALLAH! Lo-and-behold, it's his credit card numbers, nice and unsecure. Then after a little more digging, I look beside me and see all of his credit info just chillin' on the desk.
Long story short, he had one of his freinds disreputable children over, who simply copied down the info.
This is not a very nice comment, but... WHO CARES?! Think of it as digital darwinism, the luser will get scammed, burned, and maybe learn a lesson. If not, tough. Ignorance deserves everything it gets. If you want to use something, then the onus is on you, you should KNOW WHAT YOUR DOING BEFORE YOU DO IT! This is especially true when your going to put your important info on the line.
I really don't like this silly scheme, either. Just another way to make my "Windows Experience" more annoying. Less gimmicks, more functunality. I like my secure content to be managable by ME, and displayed in anyway I so choose. My info, my OS, my computer, so bugger off.
In a corporate setting I can see the argument to an extent. Though that is why I propose that MS buys guns for all IT folk, to shoot the stupid.
Seriously though, why not use a watermark? Most people will just ignore the list feature. Also the people who have been pointing out that this info is going to be stored locally, albeit encrypted (probably), and is thus vulrenable from windows itself, have a damn good point. Why try to hack the security system, when you can just hack the (oh-so-hackable) OS.
Another flaw is (suprising also the end-users fault), that most people won't READ the border of their secure window, especially people who see it alot. Say that the secure window has a red border, with the names "Dillinger-Descartes-Chairman Mao-Manson" (the names of my cats) wrapped around it. Most people after the third time seeing this window, would automatically register the most obvious feature (RED!), and take the secondary, subtle, feature as given (pet names). This is psychologically human nature.
Vigilance is weak, how many times does the average user check the certificate of a given site? I'd venture never.
Logic and a concept of God are not mutually exclusive things. Ask Einstein.
So by your recogning. Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Zeno, and the whole classical gang has nothing to do with "modern logic"?
Just because modern scientific/relativistic/atheist views don't support God, doesn't mean that logic doesn't, or can't. Just look at Aquinas argument for the existance of god, and you see a perfect, beautiful logical constrution.
That out of the way: YOU MUST BE DREAMING! In two years Linux will probably still be a niche OS, in four, it might be a slightly better alternative OS (as in Netscape is the alternate to IE, meaning IE has 90%, and netscape 5%).
Linux has some serious flaws, which, unfortunatly, are beginning to seem inate. The thing that linux is missing is DIRECTION, there is no mass-marketing plan (marketing as in mind-share, not profit), there is no drive to get the average luser using it.
Give me ONE good reason, besides price, that the average windows person (me included) would want to use linux? What advantage is there? What advantage will there be in 2 years? The only way to make linux successful would be to make it STRUCTURED, and to make it FREINDLY. Both of which it is the antithesis of right now, and promises to be the same in the future.
My suggestions are, make some form of body to control development, and make it so market-share reflects on their possition[sic]. Meaning an EXECUTIVE. Now don't take that as meaning make Linux closed, or for-profit. To make it viable to the masses, something must be at stake, otherwise it will not move out of the developer-masterbation stage.
Also, LOOSE THE *NIX ROOTS! I don't WANT a command line. (Well *I* do, but a DOS prompt, not an archane unix interface) I want something nice, easy, and intuitive. Something I can do buisness on, without worrying overly about innards. I want ease of use, AND power. Sacraifcing ease of use for power is bad, as is visa versa. You need balance.
In otherwords, to make Linux a contender in 2 years, would require linux not to be linux anymore.
Please refute me if I'm wrong. And mind, I don't really mind linux, if someone made it nice/usable/gameable, AND powerful for my purposes, I'd use it in a heartbeat over Microsoft. But right now, MS has the superior product.
As an ex-die-hard IE user, I concur. I tried moz and netscape, both didn't match the ease of use of IE, or even the stability . Back in the day I was a die-hard netscape fan, but once they started to integrate all sorts of crap, and make it hella-complex, I just used IE. No reason not to, besides the ethical implications.
Though, proving that this isn't just laziness, I just d/led Phoenix/Firebird and am loving it, especially with mouse-gestures. Too the point of not being comfy with IE6 anymore. But since (I think it was Netscape 2.6) whenever IE was by far the best, and I still have IE as default, because it is FASTER for opening local pages.
The same argument, to be ON-TOPIC!, applys for my choice of OS, win98se isn't broken, so no need for XP, Linux, or any other OS. I have a feeling that the same will go for Longhorn, nothing new that I really need. Don't give a crap about user-freindly, don't give a crap about DRM, only want to play UT2k3, and look at pr0n. Maybe use photoshop and fruityloops, but thats it. Maybe when Foghorn Leghorn comes out XP-pro will drop in price enough to make it worth while.
Fleh to the Sims. The fist game, was okay, the wave of expansions were semi-okay. But now it is just sick. There is no innovation to the series, there really (since Hot Date) has been no game-play elements added. Which kinda makes me mad, there hasn't been a graphical update, a game play update, or any form of update.
There is NO POINT to playing it. I was addicted to it for awhile, forked over much money, almost flunked several classes (non-elective, nasty ones), and populated several neighborhoods. Then I realized, I could just go out and get a life, a girl freind, and a job to buy REAL stuff, and never have to worry about sad clowns. It's a sad social statement that this is THE GAME, we really are obsessed with petty materialism, and trite social drama.
Another point; I really liked the 3rd party scene around the game, but for EVERY of the zillion expansions new stuff, basically the same as the old stuff, came out that REQUIRED the new expansion. The new stuff used the exact same system as the old stuff, and used easly creatable scripts, but was still incompatible. Wouldn't have made me mad if there was 1 or 2 expansions... but 12?!
Also, the game doesn't work some of the time, which would be okay, BUT YOU CAN'T FIX IT! I had it running on my old Athlon 1.1g, with a Voodoo2 2000 (ick!), but when I swapped my video card it stopped working, period. Reinstalled, still no dice. Uninstalled, manually removed all of it's reg left-overs, and hunted for EVERY remaining 3dfx file on my PC, still didn't work. FORMATTED, still didn't work. Installed EA's patch, still didn't work. So I tried to get EA techsupport to help out, never heard back from them. Tried again, more insistantly, still no support.
The solution? Sold them to EB, bought Max Payne. Perfect. Got a life, passed my psych labs, got a girl, became happy.
I'd recomend SimCity 4 though. Or Civ. Morrowind is great, too, great time sink.
Though Star-con 1 had the most lasting effect. My old neighbor (when I was a wee pup) had it, and wouldn't let me play, since I was too young to use his fathers computer. He acted like he was king you-know of number 2 mountain about it too, 1337 before it was cool.
That is the moment I got into computers and gaming. I forced my parents to get me something more robust than a C-64, so I got a 286, and star-con 1. I finally became the master of kill people with my Ur-Quan Dreadnaught. Thus was the beginning of the geekish equivalent of keeping up with the joneses.
Starcon2 was very cool too, though. I remember loosing many a night, and almost breaking my monitor when getting spammed by probes.
That and the damn Mycon, and their bloody Deep Children, always rumbling about the silly Non. Too much like Lovecraft's Mygo, if you ask me.
Yes it was a cheesy, now unheard of, adventure game. But at the time it really creeped me out. I still think it had the most sureal atmosphere of any game, even. Especially "Mother", and her "ISOLENT MEAT! YOU LACK STRUCTURE" speech.
Though a close runner up is the first Diablo, any game that large a time-sink must have some influence.
I must agree. Awhile ago I started up a Philosophical webzine, and as part of the site I included a forum/rantspace. Before I used to write copious amounts everyday, about a notebook full every other month (yes, I like to write on paper!), after I started posting my every proto rant for instant disemination, I realized that I lost the ability to actually write a 5 page article for fun, since I lost the formal development time for whatever I was writing.
We also tried to have a blog for the front page, then links to the more in-depth content from each entry. About a month later we had no new REAL content, just a whole series of brief semi-developed paragraphs. After a staff meeting the blog and forum was removed, and a month later people started actually writing well-though out content.
IMHO its the same difference between letters and email. On requires thought, and actually fleshing out ideas, the other better facilitates spur of the moment crap.
Good "classic" sci-fi and good idealogical content: Man in the High Castle. It's the only book he ever won an award for. Though I personally like the semi-autobiographical "VALIS", since it is one of the best fictionalized volumes of self exploration, with brief insites into mysticism and gnosticism.
In a word; Yes. Different engines, different 'plots', different types of game play.
Unreal II is a typical (read wolfenstein clone) FPS, no multi, just run and shoot according to the usual FPS plot, with some stupid AI allies thrown in for fun. Not spectacular, but a nice change from all the stupid CS clones (damn you CLANCY!!!)
UT2k3, Just like UT, with a dumbe sniper rifle. Pure multiplayer, no real story, no nothing, just blowing up real people. Also uses the wimp engine.
I could play UT2k3 on my 1.1g Athlon (320 PC-133, Radeon 8xxx) with a decent FPS, with "High" textures/physics. Unreal II is a resource hog, I need to buy a new M/B, proc, and real RAM to play. I think Epic is in cohoots[sic] with Id, unreal II is made solely to get us to pimp out our boxes for Doom III. Less whining about sys resources when everybody already maxed out their boxes, also less feeling of "underwhelm" when compaired to the last player FPS.
Um... I think your greatly exagerating the impact of a silly ad. So how much has Mozilla usership spiked from the X10 pop-unders?
I'm sorry, but a minor annoyance is not warrent enough for most people to do something major like switch browsers, OSs, or anything else that requires learning something new, though redundant.
Life will tick on, and no one will really care, except the rabid.
I only use moz for email, and checking a couple sites. I installed it awhile ago because of the/. moz cult, and kinda liked it for a week. Then I realized that it had nice features (and a crapload of bloat), but I wasn't l337 enough to use it. Also I *HATE* it's bookmarking system, and greatly dislike it's preference menu, which refuses to scale to my resolution or font options.
In some ways it's convinient, in some its obnoxious. But I find the IE and the instinct is much more convienient to me, since I can manage my bookmarks, and don't have to trasnfer all of my forms.
Also my ninja pop-up closing skillz helps me own in twitch gaming.
As much as I hate to quote Americas favorite ex-first-lady; "It takes a whole village to raise a child." (which I think she was quoting from someone else)
This is a very true quote. It is society as whole's responcibility to do whatever they can to look out for the children. This means EVERYONE has to look out for EVERYONE ELSE's children, for the good of society. Children are the future, not just the genetic future of the parents, but the future of all of America.
So, as a member of American society, Amazon, and all other entities (private or no) are obligated to do what they can to protect children.
IMNSHO those who feel that the protection of children lie ONLY on the parents, are guilty of some of the greatest egotism possible.
So, how many people on/. have actually personally heard of someone recently buying an OC proc from a vender? No friend-of-a-friend stuff either, I mean directly, straight from the sucke... horses mouth?
I have heard of such things, and got suckered on my first 808* PC (and 8086 who thought it was an 8088! [incedentily sold to my parents as a 286] w00t!). I think one of my nongeek friends bought an overclocked 300mhz, but wasn't quite sure if it was a board issue or a proc issue making it run like crap. But I haven't heard of anything like this happening recently.
Good point, never though to list the possible foils to the numbers... Such as flaws in reporting, due either poor incidence reports, or bad social mojo, like China now discloseing that they didn't quite report ALL of their cases, only one hospital.
But this is a problem when deriving statistics from anything, you can never know the whole truth, especially if your using someone else's numbers. The further one is from the source of the numbers, the higher number of confounding variables there will be.
Perhaps you miss my point, Herr AC, I'm not lauding the benefits of the US, I'm just saying that developed countries have better medical treatment. Not sure on Canada though, mayhap they just got caught with their proverbial pants down.
Hong Kong ain't a country, BTW, it is a provence of China, which I would call Developing. Mayhap the whole Developed/Non was a bad choice of classification, perhaps Medically Apt would have been better.
I'm sick of this 4% number, anyone with a calculator and an internet connection can do the math...
Goto http://www.who.int/csr/sarscountry/2003_04_10/en/ and look at the numbers...
2781 cases, 111 deaths... 111/2781= 3% mortality rate... Though this is wrong, since this is not including people who are sick, but not recovered or dead... For this we take the 1337 (r0x0r!) number of recovered cases, and do the same high school level math; which is 8%. Much worse than 4% (though I managed to suprise myself, expecting lower)
Further breaking it down, because most of these cases are from developing countries:
Canada 10% China 4% Hong Kong 3% Malasia 33% (I death, skewed) Singapore 7% Thailand 28% Vietnam 6%
Please notice that DEVELOPED countries have no deaths, besides Canada. Canada has had 97 cases and 10 deaths, while the US has had 154 cases and no deaths. UK 5/0; Germany 6/0; France 4/0. Actually among developed nations the mortality rate is only 3%, and is 0% ignoring Canada. (271 cases, 10 Canadian deaths.)
So as an America, I'm not worried, but would be if I was in East Asia, or Canada.
[note, please check my math... Not my strong point]
Ask all of the arab-americans stuck in prison right now, for no real reason.
Not to jump off of the PC-bandwagon here, but when I talk of freedom I'm not talking about EQUALITY, I don't quite view them on an equal level. Equality is all nice and fine, in concept, but does not equal freedom. It just means that you have the right to be screwed as much as the next man. Great.
We got rid of interment camps, now we just have universal survalience[sic] instead. Now we don't even want the public to talk about those "damn arabs" that we keep locked away. Put away in the dead of night, without probable cause, representation, or even visibility (to family/society as a whole).
I'm sorry, but the possibility of 'gettin' disapeared' means that there is a police state.
Um... Yes, COMPARITIVELY we are more free (right now) than most of the world. There are three problems with this though. First is the mater of degrees... Yes, right now we are freer than China, or Soviet Russia used to be, but not as free as Swizerland or the Netherlands. That leaves a whole lot of room for oppression. It sounds as if your stating, 'as long as we're not at the maximum level of opression, we are okay.' This is flawed.
Just because we're not a FULL police state now, doesn't mean that they (not 'They' or 'Them', mind) are not working on it. Just because life in nice right now, does not mean that there is a promise that it can't go down hill, fast. Also, perhaps we're in a transition state, right now, the down slope of the great roller-coaster of police-statehood.]
Taking the 'compairitive' thing further: How are we compaired to pre-9/11 america? The mid '90's? The 70's? The 1840's? 1776? I would put us on par with the mid 50's, with McCarthy running around blabbering about Communist conspiracies. "Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the international terrorist conspiracy? Eh, Mr. Muhammed ibn whatnot?" Seems like a dialogue that could happen now, and your average complacent american wouldn't bat an eye.
I'll admit it isn't bad, now. It will get worse. And hopefully it will pass away, like the grim memory of McCarthyism.
Though I am going to agree with several posters, ditch the unenlightened patriotism, America isn't perfect, America probably isn't even the best. And saying so is honest, and since when was honesty a sin?
Please note that I never said that people need to get rid of ALL their privacy, only a fraction of it...
Mind you I DO think that TIA, CAPPS, and such are taking it to far, even if they are only useing info that you gave away willingly.
Slashdot Mirror
Good for you, then your missing out. I agree with Blizzard, and will continue to agree with Blizzard, until MS buys their parent company, and everything becomes Xbox exlusive, then Blizzard can screw themselves.
But right now, I would elect Blizzard as God, or Cheif Designer of the Universe. They are the only game company who has come out with QUALITY games, the FIRST time. Every Blizzard patch is like a mini-expansion, rather than a bug fix caused by rushing development.
What company cold EVER hope to match Blizzards line-up of games? Blackthorne kicked much ass, RnR Racing also kicked ass, Diablo I wasted my whole highschool existance (well, that and MUDs), Warcraft was the first genre making RTS, Warcraft 2 was the best RTS until... STARCRAFT! Any game that causes Koreans to starve, must be a damn good game. Then we have Diablo II, the most anticpated game of 2000, and the only game to live up to it's hype. Then LoD, which also lived up to it's hype. Then of course Warcraft 3, which is a new genre making RTS, on that caused those silly command and conquer people to copy it's formula (to a point), and the upcoming Worlds of Warcraft look like it may just be the ONLY MMORPG that I will consider playing, which is saying alot since I HATE that genre. And from the Frozen Throne previews, it looks also like quality stuff.
My only complaint is Ghost. What a steaming pile of crap, not releasing it on PC. I don't WANT to buy an Xbox, or a PS2, or even a GC, my compy works fine for gaming, and I just spent $300 to be DoomIII compliant, and Unreal 2 capable. And now I'm supposed to fork over however much for a damn peice of propritary console crap, just to play a game... bah.
I'm rambleing, just woke up, got sake hangover... I'll shut up.
" Imagine a Barbarian who can shape-shift into a Werewolf."
Is it just me, or does this send an odd tingly down the spine?
Seriously, I have been waiting for a year for this patch. At times I've seriously doubted that it would EVER happen.
Back before Diablo II, and Lords of Destruction, my and my freinds used to joke about Blizzards inability to EVER come out with something on time, they suffered massive Vaporware Syndrome. (not as bad as 3drealms, of course). But Diablo II came out ON TIME, then LoD came out ON TIME... They got their vapor revenge with this damn patch though.
If I had mod points...
I've noticed this trend as well, and worse. Lately both of my parents have decided to get computers for the first time, and I, to repay them for the diapers, am free tech-support.
My mother is no problem, she doesn't go online, so no problems, she basically has a dedicated word / solitare machine. Nothing to go wrong except crappy printer drivers / spyware (DAMN YOU HP!)
On the other hand y father has a nice mail-order (Dell, I think) PC, with a nice, efficient copy of ME on it. The thing is his ethic tells him that everything that came installed on it, is installed on it because it is NECISSARY. And everything that boots on startup, is needed. I've never seen such a sluggish beast, at 800mhz, it runs slower than my old 333mhz win98 box, MUCH slower, it runs like my old 133 (after two hours like an 8086). (74% GDI at boot!, TWENTY startup items [like MSMoney??!], 12 items remain resident at all times!)
He uses it for the typical end-user fair, MSMoney, Outlook, and webbrowsing (thank god I got him to at least use the preinstalled netscape!). From the start he would NOT let me fix-up his computer, uninstall the 12 copies of AOL and MSN, all of the silly noises, bells, whistles, and whatnot. The reason? The local computer-radio show host said "DO NOT LET A GEEK TOUCH YOUR COMPUTER". I'm not quiote sure of the rational of this, but I've had 10 computers in my life, and NONE of them have been killed by me, and I've only fried one work computer, but that was for... ahem... reasons.
A couple months after owning this unoptimized PC, he tells me its broken. So I come over to see if I can get it to run, knowing damn well that the problem is bloat related. He has FIVE casino programs installed, TWO pr0n dialers ("how did those get there?"), gator, bonzi, some other search bar, and some really nasty program that almost made me format to kill. Not to mention the tons of icky attachments just waiting to be opened. So I cleared everything, except the pre-installed stuff for him. Then I expected him to let me MAKE IT WORK! Nope, those radio people held sway.
To make a long story short, lately someone charged $1k to his credit card. I asked if he purchased anything online from any odd people lately. He says no. So I go over again and check out his system, and found two points of access. For the first one I clicked the Money icon in the tray (remember it boots with windows), and WALLAH! Lo-and-behold, it's his credit card numbers, nice and unsecure. Then after a little more digging, I look beside me and see all of his credit info just chillin' on the desk.
Long story short, he had one of his freinds disreputable children over, who simply copied down the info.
The moral of the story? SECURITY IS A MINDSET.
This is not a very nice comment, but... WHO CARES?! Think of it as digital darwinism, the luser will get scammed, burned, and maybe learn a lesson. If not, tough. Ignorance deserves everything it gets. If you want to use something, then the onus is on you, you should KNOW WHAT YOUR DOING BEFORE YOU DO IT! This is especially true when your going to put your important info on the line.
I really don't like this silly scheme, either. Just another way to make my "Windows Experience" more annoying. Less gimmicks, more functunality. I like my secure content to be managable by ME, and displayed in anyway I so choose. My info, my OS, my computer, so bugger off.
In a corporate setting I can see the argument to an extent. Though that is why I propose that MS buys guns for all IT folk, to shoot the stupid.
Seriously though, why not use a watermark? Most people will just ignore the list feature. Also the people who have been pointing out that this info is going to be stored locally, albeit encrypted (probably), and is thus vulrenable from windows itself, have a damn good point. Why try to hack the security system, when you can just hack the (oh-so-hackable) OS.
Another flaw is (suprising also the end-users fault), that most people won't READ the border of their secure window, especially people who see it alot. Say that the secure window has a red border, with the names "Dillinger-Descartes-Chairman Mao-Manson" (the names of my cats) wrapped around it. Most people after the third time seeing this window, would automatically register the most obvious feature (RED!), and take the secondary, subtle, feature as given (pet names). This is psychologically human nature.
Vigilance is weak, how many times does the average user check the certificate of a given site? I'd venture never.
Logic and a concept of God are not mutually exclusive things. Ask Einstein.
So by your recogning. Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Zeno, and the whole classical gang has nothing to do with "modern logic"?
Just because modern scientific/relativistic/atheist views don't support God, doesn't mean that logic doesn't, or can't. Just look at Aquinas argument for the existance of god, and you see a perfect, beautiful logical constrution.
THIS IS NOT FLAMEBAIT...
That out of the way: YOU MUST BE DREAMING! In two years Linux will probably still be a niche OS, in four, it might be a slightly better alternative OS (as in Netscape is the alternate to IE, meaning IE has 90%, and netscape 5%).
Linux has some serious flaws, which, unfortunatly, are beginning to seem inate. The thing that linux is missing is DIRECTION, there is no mass-marketing plan (marketing as in mind-share, not profit), there is no drive to get the average luser using it.
Give me ONE good reason, besides price, that the average windows person (me included) would want to use linux? What advantage is there? What advantage will there be in 2 years? The only way to make linux successful would be to make it STRUCTURED, and to make it FREINDLY. Both of which it is the antithesis of right now, and promises to be the same in the future.
My suggestions are, make some form of body to control development, and make it so market-share reflects on their possition[sic]. Meaning an EXECUTIVE. Now don't take that as meaning make Linux closed, or for-profit. To make it viable to the masses, something must be at stake, otherwise it will not move out of the developer-masterbation stage.
Also, LOOSE THE *NIX ROOTS! I don't WANT a command line. (Well *I* do, but a DOS prompt, not an archane unix interface) I want something nice, easy, and intuitive. Something I can do buisness on, without worrying overly about innards. I want ease of use, AND power. Sacraifcing ease of use for power is bad, as is visa versa. You need balance.
In otherwords, to make Linux a contender in 2 years, would require linux not to be linux anymore.
Please refute me if I'm wrong. And mind, I don't really mind linux, if someone made it nice/usable/gameable, AND powerful for my purposes, I'd use it in a heartbeat over Microsoft. But right now, MS has the superior product.
As an ex-die-hard IE user, I concur. I tried moz and netscape, both didn't match the ease of use of IE, or even the stability . Back in the day I was a die-hard netscape fan, but once they started to integrate all sorts of crap, and make it hella-complex, I just used IE. No reason not to, besides the ethical implications.
Though, proving that this isn't just laziness, I just d/led Phoenix/Firebird and am loving it, especially with mouse-gestures. Too the point of not being comfy with IE6 anymore. But since (I think it was Netscape 2.6) whenever IE was by far the best, and I still have IE as default, because it is FASTER for opening local pages.
The same argument, to be ON-TOPIC!, applys for my choice of OS, win98se isn't broken, so no need for XP, Linux, or any other OS. I have a feeling that the same will go for Longhorn, nothing new that I really need. Don't give a crap about user-freindly, don't give a crap about DRM, only want to play UT2k3, and look at pr0n. Maybe use photoshop and fruityloops, but thats it. Maybe when Foghorn Leghorn comes out XP-pro will drop in price enough to make it worth while.
Fleh to the Sims. The fist game, was okay, the wave of expansions were semi-okay. But now it is just sick. There is no innovation to the series, there really (since Hot Date) has been no game-play elements added. Which kinda makes me mad, there hasn't been a graphical update, a game play update, or any form of update.
There is NO POINT to playing it. I was addicted to it for awhile, forked over much money, almost flunked several classes (non-elective, nasty ones), and populated several neighborhoods. Then I realized, I could just go out and get a life, a girl freind, and a job to buy REAL stuff, and never have to worry about sad clowns. It's a sad social statement that this is THE GAME, we really are obsessed with petty materialism, and trite social drama.
Another point; I really liked the 3rd party scene around the game, but for EVERY of the zillion expansions new stuff, basically the same as the old stuff, came out that REQUIRED the new expansion. The new stuff used the exact same system as the old stuff, and used easly creatable scripts, but was still incompatible. Wouldn't have made me mad if there was 1 or 2 expansions... but 12?!
Also, the game doesn't work some of the time, which would be okay, BUT YOU CAN'T FIX IT! I had it running on my old Athlon 1.1g, with a Voodoo2 2000 (ick!), but when I swapped my video card it stopped working, period. Reinstalled, still no dice. Uninstalled, manually removed all of it's reg left-overs, and hunted for EVERY remaining 3dfx file on my PC, still didn't work. FORMATTED, still didn't work. Installed EA's patch, still didn't work. So I tried to get EA techsupport to help out, never heard back from them. Tried again, more insistantly, still no support.
The solution? Sold them to EB, bought Max Payne. Perfect. Got a life, passed my psych labs, got a girl, became happy.
I'd recomend SimCity 4 though. Or Civ. Morrowind is great, too, great time sink.
Thirded, read sig.
Though Star-con 1 had the most lasting effect. My old neighbor (when I was a wee pup) had it, and wouldn't let me play, since I was too young to use his fathers computer. He acted like he was king you-know of number 2 mountain about it too, 1337 before it was cool.
That is the moment I got into computers and gaming. I forced my parents to get me something more robust than a C-64, so I got a 286, and star-con 1. I finally became the master of kill people with my Ur-Quan Dreadnaught. Thus was the beginning of the geekish equivalent of keeping up with the joneses.
Starcon2 was very cool too, though. I remember loosing many a night, and almost breaking my monitor when getting spammed by probes.
That and the damn Mycon, and their bloody Deep Children, always rumbling about the silly Non. Too much like Lovecraft's Mygo, if you ask me.
Yes it was a cheesy, now unheard of, adventure game. But at the time it really creeped me out. I still think it had the most sureal atmosphere of any game, even. Especially "Mother", and her "ISOLENT MEAT! YOU LACK STRUCTURE" speech.
Though a close runner up is the first Diablo, any game that large a time-sink must have some influence.
I must agree. Awhile ago I started up a Philosophical webzine, and as part of the site I included a forum/rantspace. Before I used to write copious amounts everyday, about a notebook full every other month (yes, I like to write on paper!), after I started posting my every proto rant for instant disemination, I realized that I lost the ability to actually write a 5 page article for fun, since I lost the formal development time for whatever I was writing.
We also tried to have a blog for the front page, then links to the more in-depth content from each entry. About a month later we had no new REAL content, just a whole series of brief semi-developed paragraphs. After a staff meeting the blog and forum was removed, and a month later people started actually writing well-though out content.
IMHO its the same difference between letters and email. On requires thought, and actually fleshing out ideas, the other better facilitates spur of the moment crap.
Good "classic" sci-fi and good idealogical content: Man in the High Castle. It's the only book he ever won an award for. Though I personally like the semi-autobiographical "VALIS", since it is one of the best fictionalized volumes of self exploration, with brief insites into mysticism and gnosticism.
In a word; Yes. Different engines, different 'plots', different types of game play.
Unreal II is a typical (read wolfenstein clone) FPS, no multi, just run and shoot according to the usual FPS plot, with some stupid AI allies thrown in for fun. Not spectacular, but a nice change from all the stupid CS clones (damn you CLANCY!!!)
UT2k3, Just like UT, with a dumbe sniper rifle. Pure multiplayer, no real story, no nothing, just blowing up real people. Also uses the wimp engine.
I could play UT2k3 on my 1.1g Athlon (320 PC-133, Radeon 8xxx) with a decent FPS, with "High" textures/physics. Unreal II is a resource hog, I need to buy a new M/B, proc, and real RAM to play. I think Epic is in cohoots[sic] with Id, unreal II is made solely to get us to pimp out our boxes for Doom III. Less whining about sys resources when everybody already maxed out their boxes, also less feeling of "underwhelm" when compaired to the last player FPS.
Um... I think your greatly exagerating the impact of a silly ad. So how much has Mozilla usership spiked from the X10 pop-unders?
I'm sorry, but a minor annoyance is not warrent enough for most people to do something major like switch browsers, OSs, or anything else that requires learning something new, though redundant.
Life will tick on, and no one will really care, except the rabid.
I only use moz for email, and checking a couple sites. I installed it awhile ago because of the /. moz cult, and kinda liked it for a week. Then I realized that it had nice features (and a crapload of bloat), but I wasn't l337 enough to use it. Also I *HATE* it's bookmarking system, and greatly dislike it's preference menu, which refuses to scale to my resolution or font options.
In some ways it's convinient, in some its obnoxious. But I find the IE and the instinct is much more convienient to me, since I can manage my bookmarks, and don't have to trasnfer all of my forms.
Also my ninja pop-up closing skillz helps me own in twitch gaming.
But just imagine the pr0n potential? 1280x1024 knockers popping up on your screen. You close it, and what do you get, 1200 more 1280x1024 knockers.
My idea of heaven: Being inundated with giant hi-res knockwers.
As much as I hate to quote Americas favorite ex-first-lady; "It takes a whole village to raise a child." (which I think she was quoting from someone else)
This is a very true quote. It is society as whole's responcibility to do whatever they can to look out for the children. This means EVERYONE has to look out for EVERYONE ELSE's children, for the good of society. Children are the future, not just the genetic future of the parents, but the future of all of America.
So, as a member of American society, Amazon, and all other entities (private or no) are obligated to do what they can to protect children.
IMNSHO those who feel that the protection of children lie ONLY on the parents, are guilty of some of the greatest egotism possible.
So, how many people on /. have actually personally heard of someone recently buying an OC proc from a vender? No friend-of-a-friend stuff either, I mean directly, straight from the sucke... horses mouth?
I have heard of such things, and got suckered on my first 808* PC (and 8086 who thought it was an 8088! [incedentily sold to my parents as a 286] w00t!). I think one of my nongeek friends bought an overclocked 300mhz, but wasn't quite sure if it was a board issue or a proc issue making it run like crap. But I haven't heard of anything like this happening recently.
Good point, never though to list the possible foils to the numbers... Such as flaws in reporting, due either poor incidence reports, or bad social mojo, like China now discloseing that they didn't quite report ALL of their cases, only one hospital .
But this is a problem when deriving statistics from anything, you can never know the whole truth, especially if your using someone else's numbers. The further one is from the source of the numbers, the higher number of confounding variables there will be.
Perhaps you miss my point, Herr AC, I'm not lauding the benefits of the US, I'm just saying that developed countries have better medical treatment. Not sure on Canada though, mayhap they just got caught with their proverbial pants down.
Hong Kong ain't a country, BTW, it is a provence of China, which I would call Developing. Mayhap the whole Developed/Non was a bad choice of classification, perhaps Medically Apt would have been better.
And how long have people been saying that?
I personally dig Imperial, it makes no sense, teaches people humility.
I'm sick of this 4% number, anyone with a calculator and an internet connection can do the math...
Goto http://www.who.int/csr/sarscountry/2003_04_10/en/ and look at the numbers...
2781 cases, 111 deaths... 111/2781= 3% mortality rate... Though this is wrong, since this is not including people who are sick, but not recovered or dead... For this we take the 1337 (r0x0r!) number of recovered cases, and do the same high school level math; which is 8%. Much worse than 4% (though I managed to suprise myself, expecting lower)
Further breaking it down, because most of these cases are from developing countries:
Canada 10%
China 4%
Hong Kong 3%
Malasia 33% (I death, skewed)
Singapore 7%
Thailand 28%
Vietnam 6%
Please notice that DEVELOPED countries have no deaths, besides Canada. Canada has had 97 cases and 10 deaths, while the US has had 154 cases and no deaths. UK 5/0; Germany 6/0; France 4/0. Actually among developed nations the mortality rate is only 3%, and is 0% ignoring Canada. (271 cases, 10 Canadian deaths.)
So as an America, I'm not worried, but would be if I was in East Asia, or Canada.
[note, please check my math... Not my strong point]
Ask all of the arab-americans stuck in prison right now, for no real reason. Not to jump off of the PC-bandwagon here, but when I talk of freedom I'm not talking about EQUALITY, I don't quite view them on an equal level. Equality is all nice and fine, in concept, but does not equal freedom. It just means that you have the right to be screwed as much as the next man. Great. We got rid of interment camps, now we just have universal survalience[sic] instead. Now we don't even want the public to talk about those "damn arabs" that we keep locked away. Put away in the dead of night, without probable cause, representation, or even visibility (to family/society as a whole). I'm sorry, but the possibility of 'gettin' disapeared' means that there is a police state.
Um... Yes, COMPARITIVELY we are more free (right now) than most of the world. There are three problems with this though. First is the mater of degrees... Yes, right now we are freer than China, or Soviet Russia used to be, but not as free as Swizerland or the Netherlands. That leaves a whole lot of room for oppression. It sounds as if your stating, 'as long as we're not at the maximum level of opression, we are okay.' This is flawed.
Just because we're not a FULL police state now, doesn't mean that they (not 'They' or 'Them', mind) are not working on it. Just because life in nice right now, does not mean that there is a promise that it can't go down hill, fast. Also, perhaps we're in a transition state, right now, the down slope of the great roller-coaster of police-statehood.]
Taking the 'compairitive' thing further: How are we compaired to pre-9/11 america? The mid '90's? The 70's? The 1840's? 1776? I would put us on par with the mid 50's, with McCarthy running around blabbering about Communist conspiracies. "Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the international terrorist conspiracy? Eh, Mr. Muhammed ibn whatnot?" Seems like a dialogue that could happen now, and your average complacent american wouldn't bat an eye.
I'll admit it isn't bad, now. It will get worse. And hopefully it will pass away, like the grim memory of McCarthyism.
Though I am going to agree with several posters, ditch the unenlightened patriotism, America isn't perfect, America probably isn't even the best. And saying so is honest, and since when was honesty a sin?
Please note that I never said that people need to get rid of ALL their privacy, only a fraction of it... Mind you I DO think that TIA, CAPPS, and such are taking it to far, even if they are only useing info that you gave away willingly.