Remember? I remember like it was yesterday, oh wait, it was yesterday. Modern computer centers (or whatever you local organization calls them) are still air-conditioned heavily year round to combat the heat generated by all of the equiptment. Remember, the power that a computer draws is only half of the equation, you have to get all of that power (in the form of waste heat) back out of the room (which takes more power, which generates more heat...).
The problem is the burden of proof. You (and the Pawn shop owner) has no way to prove that those CDs were stolen. She might have been just cleaning out her attic and going through her and her brother's old CD collection and selling off the stuff she doesn't like anymore.
Of course if you don't believe that you can always vote with your wallet and just walk out (as the original poster did), but it'd be pretty pointless to bring the police in. Also, Pawn shops serve a legitimate purpose as well, they give immediate cash for goods, which is necessary if your rent is due and you can't pay it (but have a nice stereo sitting in the corner), and your credit is so bad that you can't even get a credit card.
Still, it would be nice if there were some sort of stolen goods reporting system that the pawn shop owners could check to avoid buying too much stolen merchandise (or at lest it would allow the cops to set up half way between the scene of the crime and the pawn shop and catch the crook trying to get cash before the goods are entered into the system).
Well, since your phone is probably some analog deal that just blasts out your voice, I'd say upping the power on the access point will just add a bit more noise to your conversation (and probably not help too much in keeping the signal strong when you pick up the phone, although it should help a little).
A better hack might be to change the channel on your access point to something on the other end of the spectrum since you phone may not be taking up the entire band (unless it's a DSS phone). Or you might try moving your phone's base station and access point to opposite ends of the house.
PS: Whoever modded this as a troll: what were you thinking?
The limit breaks were seriously dangerous in FFVII though. Since you had to keep your HP low to use them, it only took a lucky enemy three attacks (or even just one spread attack), and your party would be wiped out. It didn't help that a lot of bosses could pretty much kill full HP characters in only a couple of hits, so the common strategy was:
1. Attack full HP character, kill that character.
2. Immediatly follow up with a beath attack to wipe out the rest of the party.
Nah, Xroach is obviously king. Nothing like hearing coworkers scream when the move a window and a pile of nasty roaches skitter across teh screen looking for a new hiding place. Works best on slower machines though.
Yes, after all, nobody ever exaggerates the size of the fish when they get back to port. I don't think it's too unlikly that something like this could be the start of the Kraken myth, especially once the story is told over hundreds of year through word of mouth.
Kohan from Loki is easily the best game I have bought for the past 3 years. Loki's newsgroup is filled with some of the best people from around the world who set up games weekly (or more often) to play online. Kohan is very stable and tons of fun to play, and has easily soaked up more of my time than I really want to admit. Loki even ports the patches so the Linux players can play against the WinSlaves (although there have been a couple of issues with the "sync error" that are mostly cleared up these days).
If you like RTSes, but hate all of the MM, or are just looking for something that isn't yet another Warcraft clone, then I highly recommend checking out Kohan.
You certainly lived in a different world than I did back then. Netscape of the time was buggy and slow (and a real memory pig by the standards of the day). It also had a bunch of not quite standard standards and dubious features (blink for instance).
Then IE came along and did exactly the same thing, except IE was free (even though nobody ever actually paid for Netscape) and got bundled with the OS to insure market success.
You know, for my roommate who hated how complex the junction system was in FFVIII, that sounds like hell on wheels to him. He plays the games for the interactive movie aspects and sometimes I think would prefer a return to the simpler battle systems of old.
Personally, I'd like to see the following. When given a command (like attack) your characters run up to the enemy and start attacking, whittling off HP as time goes on. Enemies do the same. Your spellcasters can either automatically cast heals as necesarry, or you can micromanage them. Summons would appear in the battle like they do in FFX, but your party would stay around too. If someone hits the monsters with an area attack spell while another character is attacking, then that character takes damage as well. This is in my mind, the ultimate RTB system. You can naturally select any character at any time and have them do something else (like run away from melee with a monster so your mage can cast FIRE-3).
It would also be neat if the magic system worked like it does in Niven's old Magic Goes Away universe. There would be magic rich and magic poor areas (and using too many flashy spells will start to deplete the magic from the area). There would be no "magic points" per say, so mages will be expected to use their magic pretty much constantly (spells would be not much stronger than swords though) in battle.
Of course my caveat to the above is that my roommate would hate that battle system, since it distracts so much from the story.
Yeah!! We should go back to the time when there was no war and diesease. Back in the days when there were no crazy people. Wasn't that a great time to be alive?
I fully agree with the above sentiment. For years I was a poor college student unable to afford the latest and greatest consoles (Like the Playstation). That didn't stop me from playing games (and liking them) on friends/roommates machines or at conventions. Now that I'm finally out in the real world, I could finally afford to buy the console I coveted for years, but it is even better since I can buy a PS2 and get access to all of the old games in addition to the new ones. Throw in the fact that it is a DVD player and has component out and I was sold.
I don't care if it is harder to program for than the other systems, that doesn't seem to be slowing down the developers much so far. Even if the game developers declare it too difficult to program for, I'll rest assured that there are already way more games available for it than I'll ever find time to play.
Re:Why bother?
on
Lunar Lasers
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Oh, I just realized how US-centric my post is. For everybody out there with a world map instead of a US map, 40000 square miles is about the size of Montenegro.
Sorry, typo. You are not looking to create a solar array smaller than WV at 20,000 miles square, you are looking to create one that is much larger at 40,000 miles square, or about the size of Ohio.
Re:Why bother?
on
Lunar Lasers
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Do you have any idea how big a 200x200 mile area is?
For comparison, the State of West Virginia has an area of about 24,087 square miles. You are looking at creating a solar array that is 20,000 square miles in size. Where are you going to put this monster? How are you going to clean it? Who's going to pay for the solar cells. If you are using the normal 12% efficent cells (because they are much cheaper), then this whole array is going to cost $91,929,436,402,366US. For comparison, the current US GDP is around $10,229,700,000,000US. Oh, and those solar cells only last about 20 years, so you'll have to keep replacing them. This alos doesn't touch on the current US silicon production capacity vs. what you would need to build this.
On the other hand, my back of the evelope calculation suggests that on a bright sunny day (1000 watts/m^2 of energy hitting the surface) these solar cells could power pretty much the whole world (ignoring transmission loss of course).
You are probably thinking of Something Awful's review of
Tom Sawyer in the Rompit.
Warning: Lowtax has in the past redirected links from slashdot to goatse.cx to avert slashdotting. You have been warned.
By the way, I'm not sure how "fair" the review of Tom Sawyer is, since the reviewer did not speak Japanese and could only go by the graphics when he reviewed the game.
I don't care what you say, Bushido Blade rules. AFAIK nobody has tried to to anything even close it it since. All of the fighting games are still in "Street Fighter" mode where the only challenge seem to be pulling off wave after wave of fireball throwing supermoves instead of coming up with an actual strategy.
C'mon didn't anybody else thing Soul Caliber got a little rediculous after your prone character was sliced in half by a giant axe/sword/hammer/etc..., only to stand right up again as if nothing happened?
Actually, where I grew up there was a small but dedicated group of meddlers that tried to get stores to not carry GI-Joe or other "dangerous influence toys" every year. About once a year (usually during Christmas time) they would stage a protest against violence in toys and get an article in the paper. As far as I know, no major store ever really listened to them, but that didn't seem to slow them down. These days it's all the same, except that now they can get instant worldwide publication through the internut.
I think the real danger is your kid standing around screaming at the top of his lungs for half an hour trying to power up, with perhaps a break every few minutes to ask "Where's Goku?".
The trick is obviously not to live in CA. I live in the Northern Virginia area (in the "rich" suburbs of Reston) and the brick and mortar stores are almost always more expensive than ordering online (especially with Pricewatch scouring the net for low prices for me. The shipping costs are generally similar to what I would have to pay in sales tax. The worst part is that the shipping costs have gradually decreased over the years (adjusted for inflation) while the sales tax has increased. Still, if you are buy cheap items ($25-50 or so) you need to make sure the shipping isn't going to kill you, but how many people buy really cheap items online, or even comparison shop at the local brick and mortars? Most people I know just go down to wherever is convienent and pick it up. I'll probably never buy a standard NIC online because the local Best Buy sells nice Tulip based cards for $5-10. There's no point in really comparison shopping at that point.
Those people were idiots. Solar cells are generally around 12% efficent. On a bright clear day you can expect about 1000 watts per square meter to hit the cell, at 12% efficency that's 120 watts.
7 km^2 is 7000000 m^2.
Multiply that by 120 watts and you get 840 megawatts, or about as much power as an average gas plant.
Of course that doesn't even begin to go into the transmission losses...
I think the rivalry is more pronounced between the English and French parts of Canada. Granted I only saw this from one side of the coin when I lived in Calgary, but it was certainly there.
Um, maybe you should try making sure you know the definition of every word in a post before you follow up?
One entry found for inexpensive.
Main Entry: inexpensive
Pronunciation: "i-nik-'spen(t)-siv
Function: adjective
Date: circa 1846
: reasonable in price : CHEAP
- inexpensively adverb
- inexpensiveness noun
Slashdot Mirror
Remember? I remember like it was yesterday, oh wait, it was yesterday. Modern computer centers (or whatever you local organization calls them) are still air-conditioned heavily year round to combat the heat generated by all of the equiptment. Remember, the power that a computer draws is only half of the equation, you have to get all of that power (in the form of waste heat) back out of the room (which takes more power, which generates more heat...).
The problem is the burden of proof. You (and the Pawn shop owner) has no way to prove that those CDs were stolen. She might have been just cleaning out her attic and going through her and her brother's old CD collection and selling off the stuff she doesn't like anymore.
Of course if you don't believe that you can always vote with your wallet and just walk out (as the original poster did), but it'd be pretty pointless to bring the police in. Also, Pawn shops serve a legitimate purpose as well, they give immediate cash for goods, which is necessary if your rent is due and you can't pay it (but have a nice stereo sitting in the corner), and your credit is so bad that you can't even get a credit card.
Still, it would be nice if there were some sort of stolen goods reporting system that the pawn shop owners could check to avoid buying too much stolen merchandise (or at lest it would allow the cops to set up half way between the scene of the crime and the pawn shop and catch the crook trying to get cash before the goods are entered into the system).
Well, since your phone is probably some analog deal that just blasts out your voice, I'd say upping the power on the access point will just add a bit more noise to your conversation (and probably not help too much in keeping the signal strong when you pick up the phone, although it should help a little).
A better hack might be to change the channel on your access point to something on the other end of the spectrum since you phone may not be taking up the entire band (unless it's a DSS phone). Or you might try moving your phone's base station and access point to opposite ends of the house.
PS: Whoever modded this as a troll: what were you thinking?
The limit breaks were seriously dangerous in FFVII though. Since you had to keep your HP low to use them, it only took a lucky enemy three attacks (or even just one spread attack), and your party would be wiped out. It didn't help that a lot of bosses could pretty much kill full HP characters in only a couple of hits, so the common strategy was:
1. Attack full HP character, kill that character. 2. Immediatly follow up with a beath attack to wipe out the rest of the party.
Nah, Xroach is obviously king. Nothing like hearing coworkers scream when the move a window and a pile of nasty roaches skitter across teh screen looking for a new hiding place. Works best on slower machines though.
Yes, after all, nobody ever exaggerates the size of the fish when they get back to port. I don't think it's too unlikly that something like this could be the start of the Kraken myth, especially once the story is told over hundreds of year through word of mouth.
Kohan from Loki is easily the best game I have bought for the past 3 years. Loki's newsgroup is filled with some of the best people from around the world who set up games weekly (or more often) to play online. Kohan is very stable and tons of fun to play, and has easily soaked up more of my time than I really want to admit. Loki even ports the patches so the Linux players can play against the WinSlaves (although there have been a couple of issues with the "sync error" that are mostly cleared up these days).
If you like RTSes, but hate all of the MM, or are just looking for something that isn't yet another Warcraft clone, then I highly recommend checking out Kohan.
Re: Netscape
You certainly lived in a different world than I did back then. Netscape of the time was buggy and slow (and a real memory pig by the standards of the day). It also had a bunch of not quite standard standards and dubious features (blink for instance).
Then IE came along and did exactly the same thing, except IE was free (even though nobody ever actually paid for Netscape) and got bundled with the OS to insure market success.
You know, for my roommate who hated how complex the junction system was in FFVIII, that sounds like hell on wheels to him. He plays the games for the interactive movie aspects and sometimes I think would prefer a return to the simpler battle systems of old.
Personally, I'd like to see the following. When given a command (like attack) your characters run up to the enemy and start attacking, whittling off HP as time goes on. Enemies do the same. Your spellcasters can either automatically cast heals as necesarry, or you can micromanage them. Summons would appear in the battle like they do in FFX, but your party would stay around too. If someone hits the monsters with an area attack spell while another character is attacking, then that character takes damage as well. This is in my mind, the ultimate RTB system. You can naturally select any character at any time and have them do something else (like run away from melee with a monster so your mage can cast FIRE-3).
It would also be neat if the magic system worked like it does in Niven's old Magic Goes Away universe. There would be magic rich and magic poor areas (and using too many flashy spells will start to deplete the magic from the area). There would be no "magic points" per say, so mages will be expected to use their magic pretty much constantly (spells would be not much stronger than swords though) in battle.
Of course my caveat to the above is that my roommate would hate that battle system, since it distracts so much from the story.
Yeah!! We should go back to the time when there was no war and diesease. Back in the days when there were no crazy people. Wasn't that a great time to be alive?
I fully agree with the above sentiment. For years I was a poor college student unable to afford the latest and greatest consoles (Like the Playstation). That didn't stop me from playing games (and liking them) on friends/roommates machines or at conventions. Now that I'm finally out in the real world, I could finally afford to buy the console I coveted for years, but it is even better since I can buy a PS2 and get access to all of the old games in addition to the new ones. Throw in the fact that it is a DVD player and has component out and I was sold.
I don't care if it is harder to program for than the other systems, that doesn't seem to be slowing down the developers much so far. Even if the game developers declare it too difficult to program for, I'll rest assured that there are already way more games available for it than I'll ever find time to play.
Just my $0.02
Got Niven on the mind?
This is what I get for not Clicking through the links. Anyway, subsitute Guatemala and everybody should get a good size comparision.
Oh, I just realized how US-centric my post is. For everybody out there with a world map instead of a US map, 40000 square miles is about the size of Montenegro.
Sorry, typo. You are not looking to create a solar array smaller than WV at 20,000 miles square, you are looking to create one that is much larger at 40,000 miles square, or about the size of Ohio.
Do you have any idea how big a 200x200 mile area is? For comparison, the State of West Virginia has an area of about 24,087 square miles. You are looking at creating a solar array that is 20,000 square miles in size. Where are you going to put this monster? How are you going to clean it? Who's going to pay for the solar cells. If you are using the normal 12% efficent cells (because they are much cheaper), then this whole array is going to cost $91,929,436,402,366US. For comparison, the current US GDP is around $10,229,700,000,000US. Oh, and those solar cells only last about 20 years, so you'll have to keep replacing them. This alos doesn't touch on the current US silicon production capacity vs. what you would need to build this.
On the other hand, my back of the evelope calculation suggests that on a bright sunny day (1000 watts/m^2 of energy hitting the surface) these solar cells could power pretty much the whole world (ignoring transmission loss of course).
You are probably thinking of Something Awful's review of Tom Sawyer in the Rompit.
Warning: Lowtax has in the past redirected links from slashdot to goatse.cx to avert slashdotting. You have been warned.
By the way, I'm not sure how "fair" the review of Tom Sawyer is, since the reviewer did not speak Japanese and could only go by the graphics when he reviewed the game.
I don't care what you say, Bushido Blade rules. AFAIK nobody has tried to to anything even close it it since. All of the fighting games are still in "Street Fighter" mode where the only challenge seem to be pulling off wave after wave of fireball throwing supermoves instead of coming up with an actual strategy.
C'mon didn't anybody else thing Soul Caliber got a little rediculous after your prone character was sliced in half by a giant axe/sword/hammer/etc..., only to stand right up again as if nothing happened?
Actually, where I grew up there was a small but dedicated group of meddlers that tried to get stores to not carry GI-Joe or other "dangerous influence toys" every year. About once a year (usually during Christmas time) they would stage a protest against violence in toys and get an article in the paper. As far as I know, no major store ever really listened to them, but that didn't seem to slow them down. These days it's all the same, except that now they can get instant worldwide publication through the internut.
I think the real danger is your kid standing around screaming at the top of his lungs for half an hour trying to power up, with perhaps a break every few minutes to ask "Where's Goku?".
There are some people who still believe that you won't have to go to any trouble to get a flat Earth.
The trick is obviously not to live in CA. I live in the Northern Virginia area (in the "rich" suburbs of Reston) and the brick and mortar stores are almost always more expensive than ordering online (especially with Pricewatch scouring the net for low prices for me. The shipping costs are generally similar to what I would have to pay in sales tax. The worst part is that the shipping costs have gradually decreased over the years (adjusted for inflation) while the sales tax has increased. Still, if you are buy cheap items ($25-50 or so) you need to make sure the shipping isn't going to kill you, but how many people buy really cheap items online, or even comparison shop at the local brick and mortars? Most people I know just go down to wherever is convienent and pick it up. I'll probably never buy a standard NIC online because the local Best Buy sells nice Tulip based cards for $5-10. There's no point in really comparison shopping at that point.
Those people were idiots. Solar cells are generally around 12% efficent. On a bright clear day you can expect about 1000 watts per square meter to hit the cell, at 12% efficency that's 120 watts.
7 km^2 is 7000000 m^2.
Multiply that by 120 watts and you get 840 megawatts, or about as much power as an average gas plant.
Of course that doesn't even begin to go into the transmission losses...
I think the rivalry is more pronounced between the English and French parts of Canada. Granted I only saw this from one side of the coin when I lived in Calgary, but it was certainly there.
Um, maybe you should try making sure you know the definition of every word in a post before you follow up?
One entry found for inexpensive.
Main Entry: inexpensive
Pronunciation: "i-nik-'spen(t)-siv
Function: adjective
Date: circa 1846
: reasonable in price : CHEAP
- inexpensively adverb
- inexpensiveness noun