If only I could add real custom songs with real guitar parts using a real guitar...
There is this thing I heard of called a jam session. Most of my friends are in the local music scene, and half the parties I go devolve into 10 people sitting in a soundproof room rocking out with guitars. Truly a better "gaming" experience than Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Higher resolution too.
I wasn't really claiming one was better than the other, I was addressing the OP who claimed that consoles are the way (and only way, was implied) to go.
Get what you want. I personally would rather spend money on the hardware I already have and use daily, than go buy another piece of hardware that does the same thing, without all the useful features. Yes, I have a Wii for parties, since it works better for that than my PC.
I'm not boycotting anything, I just haven't found a reason to get more than a PS2 yet. With my TV I can't tell the difference between the "next gen" and the PS2 or 360. Games haven't functionally changed enough to warrant it, either.
Yes, laptops are big in the entry PC and college markets now. I can see this making some difference. I personally prefer, when at home, to stare at my 48" flat panel, than hunch over my 17" laptop though. I went for laptops for awhile in college because they were more convenient sounding, and I got sick of messing with hardware. But eventually I decided that being able to do incremental hardware updates was better than watching my laptop slowly sink into obsolescence (yes, thank god for Linux, keeping old cruddy computers running long after their prime, like zombies).
Fallout 3 isn't an FPS, it's an RPG that looks like an FPS. You don't need super accurate aiming since you're supposed to be using VATS most of the time. It takes time to get used to a dual analog controller, at first you won't have the fine manipulation skills to be able to use the right analog stick properly, but give it some time.
Fallout might have been a bad example. To be honest, I'm getting bit old for twitch gaming, it seems. Well, maybe not too old, but the genre seems to be a bit less fulfilling than it was in the mid-to-late 90's. There hasn't been a game with the "wow" factor of Quake 3 Arena, or UT.
For some reason, this is opinion take it with salt, it seems like consoles are holding back the FPS genre. Developers seem to be making games for console hardware and porting it to PC then, which leads to rather sad graphical leaps these days. That and someone decided that Halo was actually an exemplar of the genre, which should be emulated, which pretty much means that FPS makers are shooting for mediocre now.
There's a few, mostly PC ports or RTS's developed simultaneously for console and PC like Warzone 2100. Red Alert 3 is the most recent one I know of.
I'd still take those two game on the PC, over the console. Its about the control scheme.
More like $600 or $700. You can pay less if you go smaller or settle for 720p/1080i. Mine is a 19inch 720p/1080i model which sits on a desk, since I often boot into Linux on my PS3.
So, you can build a gaming rig for 800+Monitor, which runs around $200. So, $1000 for a decent gaming rig, or $400+$600 for a PS3 and a TV to utilize it, which also is $1000. Factor in, then, that PC games are still $50, while PS3 games are $60, and with services like Steam you can grab new games cheaper from time to time on the PC. And if your unscrupulous, PC games are free.
There's no Dwarf Fortress for Linux on PPC. I couldn't play Nethack on my big fancy PS3 right out of the box, but I had Yellow Dog Linux install media ready and as long as you have that, you can install Linux on your PS3 right out of the box. Then I could play Nethack, the quickest way being
Some of us prefer genres other than FPS and RTS, such as "party" minigame collections, "smash" platform fighting games, and other kinds of arcade-style multiplayer action games whose major-label publishers have traditionally ignored the PC platform.
Then by all means get a console. I wasn't harping on people who have consoles, like the GP was harping on anyone who wants to game on PCs, period. Get what works, to claim that one is a better gaming medium than the others is absurd.
I play Fallout 3, Supreme Commander, etc... on my PC. But I also have a Wii sitting around somewhere for when I want to get drunk with a bunch of friends and act like morons. Though they generally prefer all the guitar hero games on the the PS2.
Which hasn't mattered yet. Yes, AGP cards are getting harder to find, but last time I checked 1/3rd-ish of the cards at my local Fry's were still for AGP. Also AGP was a standard for how long? So I wouldn't worry about that too much.
An entry-level $600 TV makes Wii look good. Not all genres need 1080p or higher resolution.
Most do. My Wii doesn't see much use outside of said drunken parties. It doesn't really have any decent games right now. Sure you have the Nintendo franchise games, but those are generally few and far between. Playing party games by yourself, after work, is generally rather unfulfilling.
As for the other "next gen" consoles, I have an old 30" TV. The output of the 360/PS3 are almost indistinguishable from the output of the PS2 on it. Graphics, as far as I can tell, is really the only big draw to the new consoles (that aren't the Wii), game-play doesn't seem to have changed, the games, as a whole, don't seem much better (though more expensive).
Some of us prefer to have a computer over a console. I'd rather play Fallout 3 on my computer because I can't stand console controllers, especially for FPSs. Its nice to be able to Alt-tab out of games and check things out, and to be able to download patches for buggy games, and extra content for the expandable ones. Consoles also suck for RTS games, as in there aren't any to speak of.
Also PCs are cheaper to deal with, once you have one for gaming. Throw in a $80 video card every 2-3 years and your good to go. This seems to be slowing down as well, so I wouldn't doubt it if your 4-5 year old card works fine.
Right now a decent video card gets you better graphics than on a console as well. As consoles age their hardware gets dated, and can only look modern by software tweaks.
Yes, more expensive to begin with, but it does more than just sit in your living room and collect dust.
Also, why the heck would I want to buy a console with either a 50% failure rate (360), or one that costs a heap more than its functionality warrants? Neither of which even come close to a computer when you don't pony up $1500 for a new TV graphics wise.
Also, can you play Dwarf Fortress II or Nethack on your big fancy PS3, out of the box?
My point was, that will go away when we get old and die. Sorry if that's depressing, but it's probably true.
It depends. If youth culture acts like it does now, and recycles fads from the past over and over, then I doubt it will completely die off for some time to come. It depends on whether Polaroids are like LPs or 8 Tracks, in the long run, I suppose. One is undeniably dead, and the other somehow stays alive with no real sign of dying off.
I think the reality is a bit more fuzzy than LP vs. 8 Track. 35MM isn't going to die for a very long time, while Polaroid will probably be a diminishing niche market for a long time, unless there is a popular or artistic revival of interest in them. Right now there is a minor resurgence. To be honest, I haven't even though of Polaroid since I was in my early teens.
But now I'm digging through all my old (non-digital) albums marveling at what a moron I was when I was young.
The one thing all the "new = better" people are missing is the idea that Polaroids were fun, screw the professional money-making crap, screw the art crap as well, they were fun. I think most of us who are over a certain age have fun memories of using Polaroids. Taking stupid pictures of your stupid freinds doing stupid things, and having an instant, crappy photo with a really bad white balance to laugh at. I'm sure a ton of us have some old Polaroids sitting around in a drawer somewhere full of people we only vaguely remember from our youths.
Sure, I could now carry around (if I was young) a digital camera, and a photo printer, with the requisite cords, some ink, and a ream of paper. Or I suppose something the "new = better" people would prefer I take a picture of myself type with my webcam, then send it to MySpace/Facebook/what not, so all my digital friends can see me having a rocking digital time.
Sorry for getting snarky. I'm sick of the "new = better" crowd being so full of themselves. Sometime sentimentality is fine, I like albums, I sometimes even buy new ones. I don't think they sound better, I don't find them more convenient than my Ipod, but I like the large-format art on them, and the tactile experience. Yes, I'm sure digital is FAR more superior by objective metrics, but who cares?
But then again this is from someone who refuses to own a cell phone since no one has proven to me how they actually improve my life, or could make me a happier, better (not more productive, that doesn't matter one bit to me) person?
Hell, I used to love film cameras, just because it was hands on. I felt I had more involvement with my finished work. It was more work, meaning I had more invested. I like that better. You like easiness and efficiency better. Good. Welcome to the world of subjective judgments, we're all entitled our opinion. There is no reason to be a technology cheer-leader. This is/., the luddites here are still leagues more technophiliac than the general public.
I don't agree with others here, I don't think you should go to your local ghetto and find a shady character to buy some tweak from. You really don't want to go down that path, the other effects are probably worse than any of the symptoms you currently have (and it seems learned to live with).
This might seem a little cheesy, but bear with me. Try meditation. Not in the bogus "new age" sense, but in a more practical "mind training" methodology. Basically your forcing yourself to concentrate for prolonged periods of time, this slowly rewires your brain to make concentration on a single detail or task easier. It might be a slower and less drastic fix than becoming a tweaker, it probably is better for you in the long run, and might achieve longer lasting results.
As a personal anecdote, meaning take it with a grain of salt, I was diagnosed with ADHD sometime in grade school. I was a terrible student, I couldn't focus on tasks, etc... Though I could sit in the corner of my house and read for 12 hours a stretch, oblivious of the the world outside of my book. If given a sketch pad I could draw for hours on end, and never even realize that there was a world outside my paper and pen. Long tangent, short; the put me on all manner of drugs, Ritalin, and later the second generation of ADD drugs, eventually even Lithium. My parents noticed a flattening of affect, and that I stopped being able to have my focus on things that were interesting to me, and took me off of it all. My behavior improved. Though I never became good at school until college, where I could pick subjects that challenged me. Even them I had better grades in the harder courses, than I even achieved in the core classes and the other meaningless fluff needed to get a degree (Eng101, for example). The point of this is, drugs aren't the always the answer, and may suppress useful bits of your mental talents as well as the bad bits, and also make sure to find the line between boring and disorder. How do you perform on your hobbies, or things you have a true passion for?
Also, congratulations, your one of the few people I can actually believe has adult ADD. 99% of the time people just decide to self-diagnose themselves with it because they feel they should be more attentive in boring tasks, when in fact most of our jobs are down-right hostile to our natural inquisitive mental modes. Yes, a lot of our co-workers can stair at a monitor or sit through meetings with out belaying attentional wandering, but if we pay attention to them we will find that they are either incredibly dull people, or have as hard a time focusing on boring tasks as the self-diagnosee does, but are better at concealing it.
90% of all cases of ADD/ADHD didn't last beyond puberty when I was diagnosed in the early 90's, but now it seems EVERYONE has it, and has it well into their 40's (oddly coinciding with the early wave of ADD/ADHD diagnosis). When over 50% of the population has a disease, I don't think we really can call it abnormal, or a disorder anymore.
Perhaps it was created for a "shock and awe" type approach. Don't just make a weapons platform, make a REALLY scary looking weapons platform. Demoralize your enemies as well as kill them.
T3 was a steaming pile of crap. The only Terminator stuff worth paying attention is the first, second, and I might even include small bits of the TV show if I'm feeling generous. But thats mostly because Summer Glau and Shirley Manson.
Anything running a GUI could be said to be trying to be like Windows. They all have "windows", some form of "menus" and mouse interaction. This is already pretty much the universal default for ALL OSes. I can't remember the last time I installed Linux, but not a windows manager with it. Hell, I was using "windows" like apps before Windows became ubiquitous. Back in DOS I pretty much only used Xtree, even to execute files.
Yes, a minor fringe of people will still insist on CLI only, but they are completely irrelevant.
I personally don't care if all OSs converge on being "Windows like" (which itself is "Mac like". Its the stuff under the hood that matters more, as long as none of that changes, I don't care. Look at OS X, yes it has a slick GUI that puts non-intimidation and user-friendliness above pure geekish power, but one hot key away is a shell prompt and 90% of the power of BSD, more with extensions. The same will probably go for Linux. Unless they somehow scrap the kernel completely, and remove the ability to quickly open a terminal window, there is no problem.
Ubuntu, also, is a pretty solid distro, ignoring being somewhat, kinda, but not really, Windows like. I haven't really run into any lack of Linux features. Hell, if decide to boot into pure GUI-free linux, I doubt many people could really tell the difference.
Also, Linux will always be free for tinkerers. If you don't like Gnome or KDE's current look, go fork it and make it to your tastes. Hell, I don't even know how many alternative windows managers are out there these days, maybe one of them is not-Windows enough for your tastes.
The music we listen to doesn't all have to be serious, artistic, complex stuff, but it should be written for musicans and fans to enjoy--and the industry prevents that as much as possible.
They aren't doing a very good job at it. There is only one band on a major label that I would still buy CDs from (Tool), and I think that they are about ready to pull a Trent Reznor. Everything else is either old, on an independent label, or self-released. I doubt I'm an exception to the rule, either, yes I might be a little uncommon, but not rare.
As for pop, thats how media markets work. You start with a single channel, and eventually is blows up into millions of specialty markets. The B-52s might not have been massive, but they would have had a respectable fan-base and following. There is way to many bands/artists out there now for even a decent fraction of them to become house hold names.
I look at modern popular music as fashion accessories, or lifestyle products. You wear it as a kid to show all the other kids who you are, what you stand for. Big music is a brand, and brands need tons of money behind them to be recognizable.
We simply select a very small, minimalistic sub-set of our every-day language and provide very concise and unambiguous definitions for this subset. Then use it to define the laws of the land.
Life isn't as simple as computer science, therefore any language referring to it will also be messy and somewhat ambiguous. Also, when your dealing with law, you have parties who are trying to break it, get around it, and get away scott free. I don't know many computers who decide to find loop-holes in code, computers are not antagonistic. As such laws must grow more complex as the people who assail it find better ways.
This isn't disagreeing with your original premise, laws are too complex, and it isn't in the lawyer/powers-that-be's interest to make it more comprehensible. Some level of arcane complexity is inevitable, though.
Language IS ambiguous. When I pass a simple binary law "thou shall not kill", I immediately must add caveats, "thous shall not intentionally kill", "thou may, however kill in self defense", then, as we've been doing, we must add a ton of caveats as to what constitutes self-defense, and what constitutes manslaughter and accidents from murder. Now we're weaving a web of complexity once again. We also, just to make this more fun, add a level of non-universality for soldiers, and the state so they may be allowed to apply the death penalty and fight in wars.
This is just one very small sliver, imagine how complexity would spiral out from other areas too. Is one allowed to have a contract forfeiting their own life? Is the killer a murderer, is the contract valid... etc... Amusing thought experiment.
I went to school for philosophy, which is burgeoning in specialized terms and jargon created to add greater specificity to language. It still is vague enough to have generations of philosophers arguing about it. Logic has the same fault, once you get beyond the second order of logic (simple syllogisms), ambiguity grows exponentially.
Things are going to be messy because life is messy.
I always wondered what would happen if religions with a blissful afterlife didn't have the anti-suicide clause. I'm guessing there would be a lot less religious people in the world.
Why is it that the internet atheismos are always the LEAST educated about religion (yes, even less educated than the blind followers)?
Way to lump us all together. Isn't that what they do?
I was being a bit difficult, but it was on purpose. The "zomg people who use adblock are gonna kill truth, justice, and the American way" crowd annoys me. In short, I got riled by an AC troll, happens to us all from time to time.
My main point though is that us minority of people using ad-block probably has minimal effects. Also the internet is full of 99% crap, and a small drag caused by ad blocking might act as quality control.
To further distill this down; it won't lead to the end of truth, justice, and perhaps even the Amercian Way.
I understand this, I originally went to school for social psych and marketing, though it was fully too useful and I ended up in philosophy. This doesn't make me an expert, but it does help me understand that this is true.
This still doesn't invalidate the larger point, the people most likely to actively go through the effort to block ads are probably also the people least likely to buy products because of them, especially because of the sub-conscious factors. I'm guess I'm rather common in this group, where I go out of my way to AVOID products that had advertising that I hated. Beyond that, I buy products that I like, I won't buy domestic swill because I hate it, sadly I don't like the major "micro brews" such as Sam Adams and New Belgium either because I can't stand their taste, their "I'm a person of taste and distinction who truly loves beer" memes notwithstanding. If Stone had a Stone IPA commercial staying what a bitter hoppy bastard I am, I'd buy it, but mostly because I actually like the beer. the commercial might induce me to try it, but my continued contribution to their revenue stream depends on it being to my tastes.
Back when AMD was the processor of nerds, their advertising budget was... I don't think they ever did... while Intel pimped themselves desperately. I bought both, and stuck with the unadvertised brand for years because it was a better product. Even now I'm weary of Intel, even if they are still more advertised, and technically better just because AMD was a better product years ago.
Making this short, quality sells to a certain group of people better than image does. This group is probably the people who don't like advertising. If you want to sell to them, you need a genuine buzz, not a manufactured one. If I had a person I trust tell me the Budwieser was a superior beer over Stone IPA, or Dogfishhead IPA, I'd trust them. But I don't trust the company itself. Whatever they say just makes me MORE skeptical.
This isn't typical, and it might only be true for a minority of people. But this is the insignifigant minority who block ads. The effort is the key. If you had a browser that did this by default, then you'd run into problems. But once people put forth effort (commitment), then the point is moot.
Yes, its significant, but... The OP has a point, the Enigma machine is the BIG historical artifact, it should be preserved at all costs. As for the actual complex itself, it is important, but you must remember that funds are limited, and there might be more historic places in England (probably many many of which are much more important than this one complex). While this place, and the people who worked there were historically important, they weren't important enough to compete with places which much longer term significant (Hadrian's Wall, the various roman ruins in the city, etc...)
Personally, when I think of Bletchley park I think of Alan Turing (and fatal homophobia), and Enigma. The 10,000 other anonymous strangers fade into a indiscriminate blur. Yes, its sad, but so is the loss of memory of millions of other people who had some minor influence on history.
I'm not saying not funding the site is a great idea, but we must remember that historical momument funding is always going to be limited.
My personal fave is Rye Hard, the story of Bruce Willis and his affable side-kick Moisha, a Jewish baker-slash-deli-owner, and their quest to save the world from Islamofascism and the horrors of white bread.
Linux has a 1-2% market share, while OS X has a 9-10% share, windows owns the remaining 90%. Its not hard for Google to see where to allocate their priorities.
Yes, there is a Linux and Mac version in the works. Both of which, I hear, are functional, but not quite up to Google's finished pro^W^W beta release standards. But we can see why the resources were first devoted to getting the Win version to work well. We might even decide to see the Win version as the bug check for the forthcoming Linux and OS X releases.
Patience... and lacking that, a quick bunch of Google-fu will find you the alpha for your alt OS of choice.
Funny thing, I was setting up my fathers computer, and threw ad-block on Firefox. He never noticed.
To me this says that ads aren't as powerful as people think they are. I don't watch much TV, nor browse the web without adblock+, and when I actually do turn on network TV, or use a friends computer (that I didn't set up) I'm shocked. I don't think thats because there is too many ads, but because I haven't been exposed to them for 8 years. To other people, their normal background noise that they subconsciously block.
Sure, they're going for unconscious exposure, but 99% of them are completely irrelevant to anyone.
Unless there really is someone out there that thinks drinking crappy domestic beer will make them sexy, and the life of the party. This is the person I fear.
I like how you write
its like modern Poetry, sweet broken
And slightly insulting
This whole adblocking movement is just by a bunch of whiny "kids". You all expect free things, but you block the very tiny things that let them be free. Totally a childish mentality.
No. I'm sick of ads, even tasteful ones. How you keep your website up is your problem, not mine. I don't have to go to it, there is a replacement out there, probably even a better site that I haven't found yet. If you charge me for your page, I'd be happy to pay IF (and only if) you make it worth my time and money. If it isn't worth paying for, no one will, and you will either be forced to have something worthwhile, or you will go away. I'm fine with this.
The web will not die, the internets will survive. If worse comes to worse 10% of the total population will ever figure out how to use an ad-blocker, and this 2% segment of the population is probably not the market your looking for anyways. If I'm so sick of ads that I will go out of my way to find a way to get rid of them, I'm probably a nasty, penny pinching, curmudgeon, and you don't want me to buy your stuff anyways.
Though I really kind of like the pay-to-play idea for webpages, it would kill a ton of content free crap. But, luckily, that is just my opinion, just like your opinion is only yours, and both of our opinions are equally valid.
For the last... 10-15 years... I've installed Linux on average once year to try it. Its a ritual, grab some older hardware, buy a six pack of Red Stripe, and spend a quiet evening watching horror movies and installing whatever Linux distro that has the most online (or earlier BBS/Usenet) buzz. I still don't use it as my primary OS, even with a glut of "tries".
My current install of Ubuntu is probably sticking around, but not on my primary computer still. Other than that I had an install of Yellow Dog for a year that somehow resurrected my dead iBook, even when it had bad FAT and Boot sectors (go go Zombie Apples).
The learning curve is still not worth it, though Linux has made MASSIVE leaps between my tries. Ubuntu is truly a thing of awe, someone finally decided to push the Linux community into making a decent OS for normal people, and throwing SOME degree of polish into their software. That was my main complaint on all my previous attempts at loving Linux (and not just the idea of Linux) was that all the software, and the OS itself, was written for hardcore nerds, by hardcore nerds. As a result all usability fell by the wayside for pure arcane functionality. This is changing, for the most part, and it is a good thing.
I personally like iTunes, its much better than most of the music management apps out there. Songbird is getting close, but it manages to crash from time to time, where iTunes is pretty solid, most of the time.
There are as many preferred music management schemes as there are people. I like to just have an app throw all my music into directories for me, so I can just forget about the files themselves and just worry about the front-end. I used to enjoy micromanaging the files themselves, but now I don't.
Its up to the users preferences, there is no right way of doing it.
Thats what always gets me about the whole Win vs. Mac. vs. Linux vs. whatnot OS debate, the constant confusing of someone's opinion with some sort of objective reality. That and somehow OS choice has been erroneously conflated with personal worth.
One of my issues with Linux is that it doesn't DO enough to actually satisfy switching. Yes its better, but not that much. Yes, I'm going to get modded to hell for that previous statement, but its true. For all the hassle of learning and becoming proficient in another OS, I don't see what added value I get.
Yes, Linux is faster than Windows, but with Ubuntu this is barely noticeable. Linux is also much less hardware intensive than Windows (well, Vista and Win7, XP can run on about anything these days), but all of my computers are pretty modern and loaded so this difference is hardly noticeable.
Linux is more secure... This is true, but security always depends on the end user as much as the OS. You can stick a moron on a vault, with no network connection and they will find a way to get a virus, even on Linux. That said, from XP to Vista I've had a total of two viruses, one from a hostile college network enviroment, and a prolonged period of time between anti-virus updates thanks to moving, and once from letting a friend mess around online. Both of there were easy to clean, taking only around 15 min. So 30 min for 5 years, I'm not too concerned.
Linux is more stable. This is true as well, though VistaSP1 and XPSP1 are also pretty damn stable. Not counting crashes that were my fault, from messing with settings wantonly, I probably have one BSOD a year, which isn't too concerning. I've managed to kill Linux and OS X too, so no big deal.
Linux is more powerful... this is completely subjective depending on what you use it for. I'm not a programmer, I rarely even am forced to sling code about, and I don't admin a server, so Windows and OS X is sufficient. I do graphic design (and with a $400 Photoshop license, I'm not going to drop it until I feel I got my value from it), light text layout work, tons of generic word processing (I use Office, but mostly because I got it on a heavy student discount), and some gaming. Any platform is equally proficient on most of these tasks, though Windows is still the king of gaming, Wine is almost there, but doesn't quite cut it yet, for the amount of effort it sometimes requires.
To make it short, Linux isn't an upgrade enough to warrant all the extra work of having to learn how to compile my own drivers. This is getting better, but still... Conversely, if I was forced to buy Windows, I'd go straight to Linux, since the differences between the OSs also isn't enough to warrant coughing up $80-$200.
This isn't a Linux flame, my laptop is running Ubuntu, and I love it.
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If only I could add real custom songs with real guitar parts using a real guitar...
There is this thing I heard of called a jam session. Most of my friends are in the local music scene, and half the parties I go devolve into 10 people sitting in a soundproof room rocking out with guitars. Truly a better "gaming" experience than Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Higher resolution too.
I wasn't really claiming one was better than the other, I was addressing the OP who claimed that consoles are the way (and only way, was implied) to go.
Get what you want. I personally would rather spend money on the hardware I already have and use daily, than go buy another piece of hardware that does the same thing, without all the useful features. Yes, I have a Wii for parties, since it works better for that than my PC.
I'm not boycotting anything, I just haven't found a reason to get more than a PS2 yet. With my TV I can't tell the difference between the "next gen" and the PS2 or 360. Games haven't functionally changed enough to warrant it, either.
Yes, laptops are big in the entry PC and college markets now. I can see this making some difference. I personally prefer, when at home, to stare at my 48" flat panel, than hunch over my 17" laptop though. I went for laptops for awhile in college because they were more convenient sounding, and I got sick of messing with hardware. But eventually I decided that being able to do incremental hardware updates was better than watching my laptop slowly sink into obsolescence (yes, thank god for Linux, keeping old cruddy computers running long after their prime, like zombies).
It always boils down to taste.
Fallout 3 isn't an FPS, it's an RPG that looks like an FPS. You don't need super accurate aiming since you're supposed to be using VATS most of the time. It takes time to get used to a dual analog controller, at first you won't have the fine manipulation skills to be able to use the right analog stick properly, but give it some time.
Fallout might have been a bad example. To be honest, I'm getting bit old for twitch gaming, it seems. Well, maybe not too old, but the genre seems to be a bit less fulfilling than it was in the mid-to-late 90's. There hasn't been a game with the "wow" factor of Quake 3 Arena, or UT.
For some reason, this is opinion take it with salt, it seems like consoles are holding back the FPS genre. Developers seem to be making games for console hardware and porting it to PC then, which leads to rather sad graphical leaps these days. That and someone decided that Halo was actually an exemplar of the genre, which should be emulated, which pretty much means that FPS makers are shooting for mediocre now.
There's a few, mostly PC ports or RTS's developed simultaneously for console and PC like Warzone 2100. Red Alert 3 is the most recent one I know of.
I'd still take those two game on the PC, over the console. Its about the control scheme.
More like $600 or $700. You can pay less if you go smaller or settle for 720p/1080i. Mine is a 19inch 720p/1080i model which sits on a desk, since I often boot into Linux on my PS3.
So, you can build a gaming rig for 800+Monitor, which runs around $200. So, $1000 for a decent gaming rig, or $400+$600 for a PS3 and a TV to utilize it, which also is $1000. Factor in, then, that PC games are still $50, while PS3 games are $60, and with services like Steam you can grab new games cheaper from time to time on the PC. And if your unscrupulous, PC games are free.
There's no Dwarf Fortress for Linux on PPC. I couldn't play Nethack on my big fancy PS3 right out of the box, but I had Yellow Dog Linux install media ready and as long as you have that, you can install Linux on your PS3 right out of the box. Then I could play Nethack, the quickest way being
Thanks for reminding me why I love Slashdot.
Some of us prefer genres other than FPS and RTS, such as "party" minigame collections, "smash" platform fighting games, and other kinds of arcade-style multiplayer action games whose major-label publishers have traditionally ignored the PC platform.
Then by all means get a console. I wasn't harping on people who have consoles, like the GP was harping on anyone who wants to game on PCs, period. Get what works, to claim that one is a better gaming medium than the others is absurd.
I play Fallout 3, Supreme Commander, etc... on my PC. But I also have a Wii sitting around somewhere for when I want to get drunk with a bunch of friends and act like morons. Though they generally prefer all the guitar hero games on the the PS2.
Which hasn't mattered yet. Yes, AGP cards are getting harder to find, but last time I checked 1/3rd-ish of the cards at my local Fry's were still for AGP. Also AGP was a standard for how long? So I wouldn't worry about that too much.
An entry-level $600 TV makes Wii look good. Not all genres need 1080p or higher resolution.
Most do. My Wii doesn't see much use outside of said drunken parties. It doesn't really have any decent games right now. Sure you have the Nintendo franchise games, but those are generally few and far between. Playing party games by yourself, after work, is generally rather unfulfilling.
As for the other "next gen" consoles, I have an old 30" TV. The output of the 360/PS3 are almost indistinguishable from the output of the PS2 on it. Graphics, as far as I can tell, is really the only big draw to the new consoles (that aren't the Wii), game-play doesn't seem to have changed, the games, as a whole, don't seem much better (though more expensive).
Some of us prefer to have a computer over a console. I'd rather play Fallout 3 on my computer because I can't stand console controllers, especially for FPSs. Its nice to be able to Alt-tab out of games and check things out, and to be able to download patches for buggy games, and extra content for the expandable ones. Consoles also suck for RTS games, as in there aren't any to speak of.
Also PCs are cheaper to deal with, once you have one for gaming. Throw in a $80 video card every 2-3 years and your good to go. This seems to be slowing down as well, so I wouldn't doubt it if your 4-5 year old card works fine.
Right now a decent video card gets you better graphics than on a console as well. As consoles age their hardware gets dated, and can only look modern by software tweaks.
Yes, more expensive to begin with, but it does more than just sit in your living room and collect dust.
Also, why the heck would I want to buy a console with either a 50% failure rate (360), or one that costs a heap more than its functionality warrants? Neither of which even come close to a computer when you don't pony up $1500 for a new TV graphics wise.
Also, can you play Dwarf Fortress II or Nethack on your big fancy PS3, out of the box?
My point was, that will go away when we get old and die. Sorry if that's depressing, but it's probably true.
It depends. If youth culture acts like it does now, and recycles fads from the past over and over, then I doubt it will completely die off for some time to come. It depends on whether Polaroids are like LPs or 8 Tracks, in the long run, I suppose. One is undeniably dead, and the other somehow stays alive with no real sign of dying off.
I think the reality is a bit more fuzzy than LP vs. 8 Track. 35MM isn't going to die for a very long time, while Polaroid will probably be a diminishing niche market for a long time, unless there is a popular or artistic revival of interest in them. Right now there is a minor resurgence. To be honest, I haven't even though of Polaroid since I was in my early teens.
But now I'm digging through all my old (non-digital) albums marveling at what a moron I was when I was young.
The one thing all the "new = better" people are missing is the idea that Polaroids were fun, screw the professional money-making crap, screw the art crap as well, they were fun. I think most of us who are over a certain age have fun memories of using Polaroids. Taking stupid pictures of your stupid freinds doing stupid things, and having an instant, crappy photo with a really bad white balance to laugh at. I'm sure a ton of us have some old Polaroids sitting around in a drawer somewhere full of people we only vaguely remember from our youths.
Sure, I could now carry around (if I was young) a digital camera, and a photo printer, with the requisite cords, some ink, and a ream of paper. Or I suppose something the "new = better" people would prefer I take a picture of myself type with my webcam, then send it to MySpace/Facebook/what not, so all my digital friends can see me having a rocking digital time.
Sorry for getting snarky. I'm sick of the "new = better" crowd being so full of themselves. Sometime sentimentality is fine, I like albums, I sometimes even buy new ones. I don't think they sound better, I don't find them more convenient than my Ipod, but I like the large-format art on them, and the tactile experience. Yes, I'm sure digital is FAR more superior by objective metrics, but who cares?
But then again this is from someone who refuses to own a cell phone since no one has proven to me how they actually improve my life, or could make me a happier, better (not more productive, that doesn't matter one bit to me) person?
Hell, I used to love film cameras, just because it was hands on. I felt I had more involvement with my finished work. It was more work, meaning I had more invested. I like that better. You like easiness and efficiency better. Good. Welcome to the world of subjective judgments, we're all entitled our opinion. There is no reason to be a technology cheer-leader. This is /., the luddites here are still leagues more technophiliac than the general public.
I don't agree with others here, I don't think you should go to your local ghetto and find a shady character to buy some tweak from. You really don't want to go down that path, the other effects are probably worse than any of the symptoms you currently have (and it seems learned to live with).
This might seem a little cheesy, but bear with me. Try meditation. Not in the bogus "new age" sense, but in a more practical "mind training" methodology. Basically your forcing yourself to concentrate for prolonged periods of time, this slowly rewires your brain to make concentration on a single detail or task easier. It might be a slower and less drastic fix than becoming a tweaker, it probably is better for you in the long run, and might achieve longer lasting results.
As a personal anecdote, meaning take it with a grain of salt, I was diagnosed with ADHD sometime in grade school. I was a terrible student, I couldn't focus on tasks, etc... Though I could sit in the corner of my house and read for 12 hours a stretch, oblivious of the the world outside of my book. If given a sketch pad I could draw for hours on end, and never even realize that there was a world outside my paper and pen. Long tangent, short; the put me on all manner of drugs, Ritalin, and later the second generation of ADD drugs, eventually even Lithium. My parents noticed a flattening of affect, and that I stopped being able to have my focus on things that were interesting to me, and took me off of it all. My behavior improved. Though I never became good at school until college, where I could pick subjects that challenged me. Even them I had better grades in the harder courses, than I even achieved in the core classes and the other meaningless fluff needed to get a degree (Eng101, for example). The point of this is, drugs aren't the always the answer, and may suppress useful bits of your mental talents as well as the bad bits, and also make sure to find the line between boring and disorder. How do you perform on your hobbies, or things you have a true passion for?
Also, congratulations, your one of the few people I can actually believe has adult ADD. 99% of the time people just decide to self-diagnose themselves with it because they feel they should be more attentive in boring tasks, when in fact most of our jobs are down-right hostile to our natural inquisitive mental modes. Yes, a lot of our co-workers can stair at a monitor or sit through meetings with out belaying attentional wandering, but if we pay attention to them we will find that they are either incredibly dull people, or have as hard a time focusing on boring tasks as the self-diagnosee does, but are better at concealing it.
90% of all cases of ADD/ADHD didn't last beyond puberty when I was diagnosed in the early 90's, but now it seems EVERYONE has it, and has it well into their 40's (oddly coinciding with the early wave of ADD/ADHD diagnosis). When over 50% of the population has a disease, I don't think we really can call it abnormal, or a disorder anymore.
Perhaps it was created for a "shock and awe" type approach. Don't just make a weapons platform, make a REALLY scary looking weapons platform. Demoralize your enemies as well as kill them.
T3 didn't get that reaction from you?
T3 was a steaming pile of crap. The only Terminator stuff worth paying attention is the first, second, and I might even include small bits of the TV show if I'm feeling generous. But thats mostly because Summer Glau and Shirley Manson.
Anything running a GUI could be said to be trying to be like Windows. They all have "windows", some form of "menus" and mouse interaction. This is already pretty much the universal default for ALL OSes. I can't remember the last time I installed Linux, but not a windows manager with it. Hell, I was using "windows" like apps before Windows became ubiquitous. Back in DOS I pretty much only used Xtree, even to execute files.
Yes, a minor fringe of people will still insist on CLI only, but they are completely irrelevant.
I personally don't care if all OSs converge on being "Windows like" (which itself is "Mac like". Its the stuff under the hood that matters more, as long as none of that changes, I don't care. Look at OS X, yes it has a slick GUI that puts non-intimidation and user-friendliness above pure geekish power, but one hot key away is a shell prompt and 90% of the power of BSD, more with extensions. The same will probably go for Linux. Unless they somehow scrap the kernel completely, and remove the ability to quickly open a terminal window, there is no problem.
Ubuntu, also, is a pretty solid distro, ignoring being somewhat, kinda, but not really, Windows like. I haven't really run into any lack of Linux features. Hell, if decide to boot into pure GUI-free linux, I doubt many people could really tell the difference.
Also, Linux will always be free for tinkerers. If you don't like Gnome or KDE's current look, go fork it and make it to your tastes. Hell, I don't even know how many alternative windows managers are out there these days, maybe one of them is not-Windows enough for your tastes.
The music we listen to doesn't all have to be serious, artistic, complex stuff, but it should be written for musicans and fans to enjoy--and the industry prevents that as much as possible.
They aren't doing a very good job at it. There is only one band on a major label that I would still buy CDs from (Tool), and I think that they are about ready to pull a Trent Reznor. Everything else is either old, on an independent label, or self-released. I doubt I'm an exception to the rule, either, yes I might be a little uncommon, but not rare.
As for pop, thats how media markets work. You start with a single channel, and eventually is blows up into millions of specialty markets. The B-52s might not have been massive, but they would have had a respectable fan-base and following. There is way to many bands/artists out there now for even a decent fraction of them to become house hold names.
I look at modern popular music as fashion accessories, or lifestyle products. You wear it as a kid to show all the other kids who you are, what you stand for. Big music is a brand, and brands need tons of money behind them to be recognizable.
We simply select a very small, minimalistic sub-set of our every-day language and provide very concise and unambiguous definitions for this subset. Then use it to define the laws of the land.
Life isn't as simple as computer science, therefore any language referring to it will also be messy and somewhat ambiguous. Also, when your dealing with law, you have parties who are trying to break it, get around it, and get away scott free. I don't know many computers who decide to find loop-holes in code, computers are not antagonistic. As such laws must grow more complex as the people who assail it find better ways.
This isn't disagreeing with your original premise, laws are too complex, and it isn't in the lawyer/powers-that-be's interest to make it more comprehensible. Some level of arcane complexity is inevitable, though.
Language IS ambiguous. When I pass a simple binary law "thou shall not kill", I immediately must add caveats, "thous shall not intentionally kill", "thou may, however kill in self defense", then, as we've been doing, we must add a ton of caveats as to what constitutes self-defense, and what constitutes manslaughter and accidents from murder. Now we're weaving a web of complexity once again. We also, just to make this more fun, add a level of non-universality for soldiers, and the state so they may be allowed to apply the death penalty and fight in wars.
This is just one very small sliver, imagine how complexity would spiral out from other areas too. Is one allowed to have a contract forfeiting their own life? Is the killer a murderer, is the contract valid... etc... Amusing thought experiment.
I went to school for philosophy, which is burgeoning in specialized terms and jargon created to add greater specificity to language. It still is vague enough to have generations of philosophers arguing about it. Logic has the same fault, once you get beyond the second order of logic (simple syllogisms), ambiguity grows exponentially.
Things are going to be messy because life is messy.
I always wondered what would happen if religions with a blissful afterlife didn't have the anti-suicide clause. I'm guessing there would be a lot less religious people in the world.
Why is it that the internet atheismos are always the LEAST educated about religion (yes, even less educated than the blind followers)?
Way to lump us all together. Isn't that what they do?
I was being a bit difficult, but it was on purpose. The "zomg people who use adblock are gonna kill truth, justice, and the American way" crowd annoys me. In short, I got riled by an AC troll, happens to us all from time to time.
My main point though is that us minority of people using ad-block probably has minimal effects. Also the internet is full of 99% crap, and a small drag caused by ad blocking might act as quality control.
To further distill this down; it won't lead to the end of truth, justice, and perhaps even the Amercian Way.
I understand this, I originally went to school for social psych and marketing, though it was fully too useful and I ended up in philosophy. This doesn't make me an expert, but it does help me understand that this is true.
This still doesn't invalidate the larger point, the people most likely to actively go through the effort to block ads are probably also the people least likely to buy products because of them, especially because of the sub-conscious factors. I'm guess I'm rather common in this group, where I go out of my way to AVOID products that had advertising that I hated. Beyond that, I buy products that I like, I won't buy domestic swill because I hate it, sadly I don't like the major "micro brews" such as Sam Adams and New Belgium either because I can't stand their taste, their "I'm a person of taste and distinction who truly loves beer" memes notwithstanding. If Stone had a Stone IPA commercial staying what a bitter hoppy bastard I am, I'd buy it, but mostly because I actually like the beer. the commercial might induce me to try it, but my continued contribution to their revenue stream depends on it being to my tastes.
Back when AMD was the processor of nerds, their advertising budget was... I don't think they ever did... while Intel pimped themselves desperately. I bought both, and stuck with the unadvertised brand for years because it was a better product. Even now I'm weary of Intel, even if they are still more advertised, and technically better just because AMD was a better product years ago.
Making this short, quality sells to a certain group of people better than image does. This group is probably the people who don't like advertising. If you want to sell to them, you need a genuine buzz, not a manufactured one. If I had a person I trust tell me the Budwieser was a superior beer over Stone IPA, or Dogfishhead IPA, I'd trust them. But I don't trust the company itself. Whatever they say just makes me MORE skeptical.
This isn't typical, and it might only be true for a minority of people. But this is the insignifigant minority who block ads. The effort is the key. If you had a browser that did this by default, then you'd run into problems. But once people put forth effort (commitment), then the point is moot.
Yes, its significant, but... The OP has a point, the Enigma machine is the BIG historical artifact, it should be preserved at all costs. As for the actual complex itself, it is important, but you must remember that funds are limited, and there might be more historic places in England (probably many many of which are much more important than this one complex). While this place, and the people who worked there were historically important, they weren't important enough to compete with places which much longer term significant (Hadrian's Wall, the various roman ruins in the city, etc...)
Personally, when I think of Bletchley park I think of Alan Turing (and fatal homophobia), and Enigma. The 10,000 other anonymous strangers fade into a indiscriminate blur. Yes, its sad, but so is the loss of memory of millions of other people who had some minor influence on history.
I'm not saying not funding the site is a great idea, but we must remember that historical momument funding is always going to be limited.
My personal fave is Rye Hard, the story of Bruce Willis and his affable side-kick Moisha, a Jewish baker-slash-deli-owner, and their quest to save the world from Islamofascism and the horrors of white bread.
Linux has a 1-2% market share, while OS X has a 9-10% share, windows owns the remaining 90%. Its not hard for Google to see where to allocate their priorities.
Yes, there is a Linux and Mac version in the works. Both of which, I hear, are functional, but not quite up to Google's finished pro^W^W beta release standards. But we can see why the resources were first devoted to getting the Win version to work well. We might even decide to see the Win version as the bug check for the forthcoming Linux and OS X releases.
Patience... and lacking that, a quick bunch of Google-fu will find you the alpha for your alt OS of choice.
Funny thing, I was setting up my fathers computer, and threw ad-block on Firefox. He never noticed.
To me this says that ads aren't as powerful as people think they are. I don't watch much TV, nor browse the web without adblock+, and when I actually do turn on network TV, or use a friends computer (that I didn't set up) I'm shocked. I don't think thats because there is too many ads, but because I haven't been exposed to them for 8 years. To other people, their normal background noise that they subconsciously block.
Sure, they're going for unconscious exposure, but 99% of them are completely irrelevant to anyone.
Unless there really is someone out there that thinks drinking crappy domestic beer will make them sexy, and the life of the party. This is the person I fear.
I like how you write
its like modern
Poetry, sweet
broken
And slightly insulting
This whole adblocking movement is just by a bunch of whiny "kids".
You all expect free things, but you block the very tiny things that let them be free.
Totally a childish mentality.
No. I'm sick of ads, even tasteful ones. How you keep your website up is your problem, not mine. I don't have to go to it, there is a replacement out there, probably even a better site that I haven't found yet. If you charge me for your page, I'd be happy to pay IF (and only if) you make it worth my time and money. If it isn't worth paying for, no one will, and you will either be forced to have something worthwhile, or you will go away. I'm fine with this.
The web will not die, the internets will survive. If worse comes to worse 10% of the total population will ever figure out how to use an ad-blocker, and this 2% segment of the population is probably not the market your looking for anyways. If I'm so sick of ads that I will go out of my way to find a way to get rid of them, I'm probably a nasty, penny pinching, curmudgeon, and you don't want me to buy your stuff anyways.
Though I really kind of like the pay-to-play idea for webpages, it would kill a ton of content free crap. But, luckily, that is just my opinion, just like your opinion is only yours, and both of our opinions are equally valid.
Ah yes... he could have been a contender.
For the last... 10-15 years... I've installed Linux on average once year to try it. Its a ritual, grab some older hardware, buy a six pack of Red Stripe, and spend a quiet evening watching horror movies and installing whatever Linux distro that has the most online (or earlier BBS/Usenet) buzz. I still don't use it as my primary OS, even with a glut of "tries".
My current install of Ubuntu is probably sticking around, but not on my primary computer still. Other than that I had an install of Yellow Dog for a year that somehow resurrected my dead iBook, even when it had bad FAT and Boot sectors (go go Zombie Apples).
The learning curve is still not worth it, though Linux has made MASSIVE leaps between my tries. Ubuntu is truly a thing of awe, someone finally decided to push the Linux community into making a decent OS for normal people, and throwing SOME degree of polish into their software. That was my main complaint on all my previous attempts at loving Linux (and not just the idea of Linux) was that all the software, and the OS itself, was written for hardcore nerds, by hardcore nerds. As a result all usability fell by the wayside for pure arcane functionality. This is changing, for the most part, and it is a good thing.
As a media management app, it is mediocre.
Opinion != truth.
I personally like iTunes, its much better than most of the music management apps out there. Songbird is getting close, but it manages to crash from time to time, where iTunes is pretty solid, most of the time.
There are as many preferred music management schemes as there are people. I like to just have an app throw all my music into directories for me, so I can just forget about the files themselves and just worry about the front-end. I used to enjoy micromanaging the files themselves, but now I don't.
Its up to the users preferences, there is no right way of doing it.
Thats what always gets me about the whole Win vs. Mac. vs. Linux vs. whatnot OS debate, the constant confusing of someone's opinion with some sort of objective reality. That and somehow OS choice has been erroneously conflated with personal worth.
Its like a bloody religion.
One of my issues with Linux is that it doesn't DO enough to actually satisfy switching. Yes its better, but not that much. Yes, I'm going to get modded to hell for that previous statement, but its true. For all the hassle of learning and becoming proficient in another OS, I don't see what added value I get.
Yes, Linux is faster than Windows, but with Ubuntu this is barely noticeable. Linux is also much less hardware intensive than Windows (well, Vista and Win7, XP can run on about anything these days), but all of my computers are pretty modern and loaded so this difference is hardly noticeable.
Linux is more secure... This is true, but security always depends on the end user as much as the OS. You can stick a moron on a vault, with no network connection and they will find a way to get a virus, even on Linux. That said, from XP to Vista I've had a total of two viruses, one from a hostile college network enviroment, and a prolonged period of time between anti-virus updates thanks to moving, and once from letting a friend mess around online. Both of there were easy to clean, taking only around 15 min. So 30 min for 5 years, I'm not too concerned.
Linux is more stable. This is true as well, though VistaSP1 and XPSP1 are also pretty damn stable. Not counting crashes that were my fault, from messing with settings wantonly, I probably have one BSOD a year, which isn't too concerning. I've managed to kill Linux and OS X too, so no big deal.
Linux is more powerful... this is completely subjective depending on what you use it for. I'm not a programmer, I rarely even am forced to sling code about, and I don't admin a server, so Windows and OS X is sufficient. I do graphic design (and with a $400 Photoshop license, I'm not going to drop it until I feel I got my value from it), light text layout work, tons of generic word processing (I use Office, but mostly because I got it on a heavy student discount), and some gaming. Any platform is equally proficient on most of these tasks, though Windows is still the king of gaming, Wine is almost there, but doesn't quite cut it yet, for the amount of effort it sometimes requires.
To make it short, Linux isn't an upgrade enough to warrant all the extra work of having to learn how to compile my own drivers. This is getting better, but still... Conversely, if I was forced to buy Windows, I'd go straight to Linux, since the differences between the OSs also isn't enough to warrant coughing up $80-$200.
This isn't a Linux flame, my laptop is running Ubuntu, and I love it.