One fact about computers that even technical people often forget:
The job of the computer is to make your job/task easier - it is not the other way around.
Yes, there is a time and place to learn a particular interface for a specialized job, to configure a certain program to get a special behavior or download some patch or driver to get some random hardware to work. But these things should be the exception and not the rule. I think there's way too much software that forces the user to bend to its design/shortcomings, rather than the other way around.
Futhermore, I'm rather saddened by the fact that nowadays I notice most people are afraid of their computers. They don't explore or try something new just to "see what happens" - because everyone has been bitten hard by some bug or some unexpected behavior and lost valuable time and data. So they have a very simple and rigid routine, one they know "just works", even if it's completely convoluted and non-sensical. I'm sure most people here have observed the same thing.
Have you seen this show before? There are no aliens on Battlestar Galactica. The whole point of the human cylons is that they perfectly mimic regular crew members, allowing them to have relationships - emotional, intimate and yes, sexual - that are indistinguishable from other humans.
Besides, people seem to have no problem having sex with objects only remotely humanoid-looking - have you seen a blow-up doll? - Boomer and Six are hott!
You are correct in saying I have no way of knowing if he was disliked or unprofessional, but those comments were obviously speculative and anecdotal. The only opinion I stated was that he was ignorant, insensitive and overzealous, which is seems pretty well supported from the articles. His position was much more apparent than "choice quotes from a private email". These were posts which were on a public yahoo discussion group, which is hardly the same thing. Did you say something about needing facts? Furthermore, if you don't label this quote:
I don't think most Catholics really know what they are supposed to believe, they just go home and use condoms and some of them beat their wives and husbands.
as ignorant, than we will be at an impasse. Finally, saying he can bash Catholics because he was raised one is akin to saying minorities can't be racist - not really advised.
I think this story nicely illustrates how you needn't be religious to be ignorant, insensitive and over-zealous. Also, I have a feeling that if this course was presented in an neutral and objective manner (with a nice boring title like, "Comparing and Contrasting Different Paradigms of Origin") nobody would've cared - not even the students. Indeed, I imagine the talk around campus would be "Don't take Origins, Mirecki's a dick" or "I wrote a 20 page paper where one of my points disagreed with his and he gave me a D!". I'm sure we can all relate to similar professors.
Considering the fact that men who have sex with other men are nine times more likely to be infected with HIV, I would say no, that's just the probable outcome of this disease.
The best article about buffer overflows is the well-known "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" by Aleph One in Phrack. Here's the first link google gave me.
Everything else (like this article) pales in comparison.
Unfortunately, we have to inform you that you are simply not welcome here in the free software community. Obviously, you are just being a parasite by commercially supporting the use, maintenance and extension the KHTML library. Not only are you making bug fixes and amplifying the usefulness of the code, but you're also sending them back to upstream for them to integrate. This burden you are placing on us is clearly unacceptable.
Happily, we don't care for or need your help - as you know the use of free software amongst large and recognizable corporations is incredibly commonplace, and all those companies have no problem at all helping out the community and contributing back in the way we desire.
Although you're new and unexperienced in the free software community, you'll understand if we have no patience for your assistance. Still, I'm sure you found working with us to be a great experience, and we hope that you consider us in the future when you're developing other projects. Clearly, nobody else will see this situation as any sort of reason not to bother dealing with free software in the future.
If I had mod points, I would definitely give them to you right now; I was a happy user of dvarchive for some time, and tried to be patient with author and his claims of forthcoming source. He totally used the resources of the opensource community (sourceforge) to promote his own program and reneged on his only obligation - to provide source code.
A "port" is different than a "fork". None of those python ports you mention is diverging away from mainline python. A comparable example is if you said User Mode Linux is "forking" from the normal linux kernel.
The "fork" that everyone is afraid of is pretty rare, but still does happen - xfree86, emacs, gcc.
Honestly, if you're developing a new application, are you going to develop for the mature and distributed Windows desktop environment, or will you use Linux, which is available now with some ephemeral advantages but some serious disadvantages?
Sounds about the same to me.
The decision to use whatever toolkits or environments is certainly up to the developer. I'm not saying using E is an invalid choice. Personally I just don't think the advantages E provides are sufficient.
But is this comparison to Linux/Windows a fair one? As I mentioned before, Linux has a hope of going against the momentum. But the reasons it does is because of stability, scalability, being a proven technology, providing freedom to users and developers, etc. Aside from the freedom part (thanks to _all_ free software developers, including E, gnome, KDE) it seems those reasons for choosing Linux over Windows would be the same for choosing gnome/kde over E.
First of all, did I just read a story that gave all the background to Rasterman's response, but left out the actual response itself? Nice.
I've always liked the Enlightenment project, and I try to keep up-to-date with what's going on (which is not easy), but it seems pretty clear to me that it will not be the future of the Linux desktop.
E is not really a valid option for the OSS world - I wouldn't be surprised if more people were using XFce or Rox than E at this point. Sure, Linux itself has proven that if something new and amazing comes around and blows everything away by a large margin it may have a *hope* of shifting the momentum, but as great as E is, I doubt it is that impressive.
The reason why the framework Seth+Havoc describe will win over the E stack is because it is integrative, whereas E is not. When the next-generation X rendering system is in place, it will be available to everyone who uses those extensions. Probably by the time Damage + Composite are enabled by default on X, the latest KDE + gnome desktops will have support for them. And all the applications in those respective desktops will quickly (if not instantly) gain those advantages. Remember when the same thing happened with anti-aliased fonts a few years ago?
Yes, you can get the E magic right now, but you have to go through E. As long as they remain the sole gatekeepers, you can expect them to have the same extremely limited influence they have now. At this point in the game, I seriously doubt they can beat the inertia from the other desktops. Honestly, if you're developing a new application, are you going to develop for the mature and distributed kde or gnome desktop environments, or will you use E, which is available now with some ephemeral advantages but some serious disadvantages?
It's also true that by using E you're not committed to using _only_ E, but then, what's the point? If you use E + some random GTK application, you're not going to get the consistent graphical features until GTK itself gets those features... but at that point all gnome applications will have them.
The example of the Cathedral and the Bazaar is a good metaphor for these differing stacks. It seems to me the E project has always been fiercly exclusive in the way it does things - the whole Enlightenment Foundation Libraries are the best example of reinventing the wheel with E technologies. But the cost they've paid is limited deployment, slower releases, less interest and a rather narrow development strategy. Certainly that may suite some people fine. However, with that in mind I don't know how reasonable it is for Raster to be calling sour grapes.
No, the sort of things Seth is talking about is not what E is about. Maybe in the superficial stuff like pagers and advanced theme management, but Seth is speaking of a whole new framework.
Enlightenment is sort of hard to categorize. I believe they refer to the whole suite as a "Desktop Shell". That is, they offer more than a Window Manager (a suite of high-powered libraries, a launcher/panel, desktop effects, file browser, etc.) but less than Gnome or KDE in terms of a desktop environment (which include full cross-platform toolkits, application interoperability, central configuration, random daemons, etc.) The goal of E17 seems to be creating an amazing user desktop experience, but the goals of the next-gen rendering are mainly a superset.
What Seth is talking about is the fundamental application stack for rendering windows and widgets on the screen. Right now, the printing usability situation is really bad. This is one area where I think Windows really gets it right. Adding a printer is quite easy, and your document always looks like what those "print preview" pages allege it will. Currently, there's little guarantee that the printed output of your document will match what you expect it to be, because there's two different rendering pipelines for screen versus page. This is what Seth is talking about. Unless they want to get even more ambitious, the Enlightenment project has nothing to do with printing.
By itself, E17 may be able to give your windows shadows or fake transparency, but a full compositing manager + hardware accelerated backend will allow true alpha blending, fast updates and fun live animations like OSX's genie. Note that this extensions can be easily used by E17 as well, but are really impossible without them.
Finally, the toolkit integration is probably the most exciting. I know E17 is sporting a basic toolkit library itself, but that's probably because they want tight integration between native E17 apps and the WM. I personally think this is the wrong move, because they're probbaly not going to be able to create a fully-featured and cross-platform toolkit like GTK+. (Hence, not many application developers are going to use EWL.) A GTK (and eventually, QT4) application will be able to rely on a sophisticated drawing level (Cairo, instead of Xlib), which will allow all of its applications to be rendered nicely, allowing blending and more free-formed widgets. gDesklets and the like are just the beginning.
One thing I don't understand is all the fuss that comes on slashdot when a show is getting cancelled. I'm not going to say Futurama or the Family Guy or Firefly or Enterprise isn't a good show, but it should be clear as day to anyone watching television that quality is a poor indicator of a show's success. And sometimes a show becomes incredibly successful when it enters syndication - but that isn't something you can really bank on.
People, if you want to prevent your show from being cancelled, the answer is simple: SUPPORT IT. And I mean while it's still on the air, before it gets announced on slashdot that it's going to be killed. Watch every episode, tell your friends to watch it, make fan websites devoted to the show and its cast, buy merchandise related to your show, and buy whatever crap is advertised during your show's commercial breaks. Whenever slashdot runs a story about the next sci-fi series on the chopping block, I'm usually not surprised. Because outside the reality-distortion-field of slashdot, it's clear to me that not a lot of people support the show.
Yes, sometimes networks put shows in unfortunate slots or don't put as much money into production as say, the O.C. But if there is anything to be guaranteed about corporations is that their actions are going to be centered around what's best for them. Do you think they would even consider dropping Enterprise if it a had a huge devout following like American Idol? Money is ultimately the bottom line, and will speak much louder than any petition or ad in the LA Times.
I liked Halo as well as Halo 2 and will play it for a few hours every week. I think it's a great game and Bungie should be proud of it, but I also don't think it's the most amazing thing ever made. While I did think this review was pretty complete (and certainly long), I had some of the same observations at first but now I've come to better appreciate Halo 2. Since all my Halo 2 gametime is spent in multiplayer, that's where my comments will be directed.
I'm not going to comment on the small details the writer of this review thought are were very important (the pump of the shotgun on reload, or the emission from the plasma weapons), because, well, I just don't think they're important. I understand it's a level of polish and can appreciate it, but as a developer myself I can see why you tend to remove superflous details and concentrate on what's important.
H1 Pistol vs H2 Battle Rifle + Magnum In H1, the pistol was pretty unbalanced, and a slight skill difference between players would become a pretty large margin when one of them has the pistol. The zooming capability in itself makes a weapon more powerful, and I think a good compromise was reached with the Battle Rifle and the Magnum. I don't know why the reviewer says the Battle Rifle doesn't have range - anyone who plays on Colossus knows otherwise. It's not unfairly powerful like the H1 pistol, but mid-range you can usually beat someone dual-wielding SMGs.
As for the magnum, most new people to H2 don't think it's very powerful - until you find out that a headshot from one of them without your shields = death. I agree ammo for the magnum is scarce, but I think that's because for nearly all weapons there's just too much ammo.
Gernades Gernades are definitely different in H2 and I can see difficulty in trying to balance them. I was really used to them in H1, and the author is right that not using them isn't a big disadvantage of dual-wielding. On the the other hand, when you want to play a game like H2, you want your kills to be a sign of skill, not just some lucky toss (which happened a lot in H1).
Rocket Launcher I agree, there's no reason a close-range rocket kill shouldn't at least severly damage the shooter.
Covenant weapons I hated the H1 covenant "freeze", and was fine to see that go. But clearly Covenant weapons are more effective at taking away your shields, so there is still a useful distinction. However, I do agree having both the human and covenant version of a Battle Rifle, Sniper, etc. does seem a bit silly.
Picking up dual weapons The example of trying to exchange your non-current weapon, while a bit contrived, simply demonstrates one of the disadvantages of dual-wielding. When you're playing a fast-paced game like a FPS, you need to quickly decide what weapon suite you'll carry. If you're in a situation where you're going to be killed quickly, don't go through all those steps. It should also be mentioned that if the shotgun is that important, you can also just pick it up by holding X (though obviously you'll lose your dual guns).
Energy Sword I think the energy sword is well balanced. You can only whip it out in the short range, try it in midrange against dual-SMGs, or even in close range against two people and you'll find it's hardly a superweapon.
Needler I'm willing to be surprised, but I agree this weapon remains useless.
Melee Like the gernades and the pistol, melee was really powerful in H1. Unless you're assassinating someone, I wouldn't count on meleeing someone to death without shooting them a couple times. I think this a much more realistic feel than H1.
Campaign Honestly, I don't think either H1 or H2 have very interesting campaigns. The graphics are great, the AI is great, the gameplay is great... but the level design and story just don't do it for me personally.
Now that i know there is a ghetto way of doing it, ill do it, but it is still inexcusable that there isnt a custom game searching mechanism coded.
What exactly is ghetto about it? You and your guest(s) are in the same party, just as you would be if you were playing ranked games, and the playlists are the same (Rumble Training = Rumble Pit, Team Training = Team Skirmish). The only difference is that it's not ranked, nor should it be.
A custom game search would be nice, but I can't really blame Bungie for not wanting to support something like that.
I am REALLY suprised that there isnt a match search system.
I still don't understand why you and your brother don't just use the training match system... when i have guests over (or my roommates wants to play) that's all we play.
I don't think it was a question of poor care. As a rich poster boy I'm sure he had the best care possible. His injuries were very severe.
I simply assumed this was the case as well, but several trustworthy friends (they're nurses or doctors) told me that this was sadly not the case.
Basically, Reeve died of a pressure ulcer which progressed into a letal condition. However, all my friends say that pressure ulcers are completely avoidable and are a sign of bad care. I'm no expert on this subject, so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Well, you can say the same thing about the first version of Linux. But time seems to advance really quickly when you have a community of smart people focused on making something simple and elegant work better.
I think Eminem's new video, "Mosh" is one of the best constructed political anthem's I've heard for our time. Watch it here.
Some disclaimers: It's Eminem, and it's uh, kind of anti-Bush. Whatever you think about either, I still think it's worth watching.
Re:Why I dislike Halo (and all modern console game
on
Halo 2 Goes Gold
·
· Score: 1
Doh!
s/The first reason is that it's just a pain to play games on consoles./The first reason is that it's just a pain to play games on a PC./;
Re:Why I dislike Halo (and all modern console game
on
Halo 2 Goes Gold
·
· Score: 1
There are two main reasons why I've pretty much completely abandoned computer gaming in favor of consoles.
The first reason is that it's just a pain to play games on consoles. I agree that the mouse + WASD is the best way to play first person shooters, but honestly the Halo controls are actually very good. But the endless driver updates, game patches, getting new hardware, etc. is just something I don't really want to be bothered by. I used to think all that "tweaking" was fun, and I know a lot of people get into it. But nowadays, I just want to put the damn disc in and play.
Also, let's face it, playing games on Linux sucks. Yes, it's getting better, and yes, it's doable, but certainly a far cry from plug and play. And plug and play isn't even the situation on Windows.
The second main reason is now I favor multiplayer games. From party games that everyone can play (including the girls that don't play games) to a deathmatch in Halo, I'm the sort of person that really likes social gaming. Writing messages to the other players, or even hearing them through headsets really doesn't compare to seeing and interacting with your competitors in real life. Having four controllers for your xbox is simply better than having the mess of computers and wires in LAN parties. Suddenly, not having the mouse in FPS games doesn't seem so bad.
Slashdot Mirror
One fact about computers that even technical people often forget:
The job of the computer is to make your job/task easier - it is not the other way around.
Yes, there is a time and place to learn a particular interface for a specialized job, to configure a certain program to get a special behavior or download some patch or driver to get some random hardware to work. But these things should be the exception and not the rule. I think there's way too much software that forces the user to bend to its design/shortcomings, rather than the other way around.
Futhermore, I'm rather saddened by the fact that nowadays I notice most people are afraid of their computers. They don't explore or try something new just to "see what happens" - because everyone has been bitten hard by some bug or some unexpected behavior and lost valuable time and data. So they have a very simple and rigid routine, one they know "just works", even if it's completely convoluted and non-sensical. I'm sure most people here have observed the same thing.
Actually the phrase it really needs to translate:
"Oh, I like that baby. I put on my robe and wizard hat."
Slashdot has actually already had an interview with Bjarne:
h tml
http://slashdot.org/developers/00/02/25/1034222.s
Besides, people seem to have no problem having sex with objects only remotely humanoid-looking - have you seen a blow-up doll? - Boomer and Six are hott!
as ignorant, than we will be at an impasse. Finally, saying he can bash Catholics because he was raised one is akin to saying minorities can't be racist - not really advised.
I think this story nicely illustrates how you needn't be religious to be ignorant, insensitive and over-zealous. Also, I have a feeling that if this course was presented in an neutral and objective manner (with a nice boring title like, "Comparing and Contrasting Different Paradigms of Origin") nobody would've cared - not even the students. Indeed, I imagine the talk around campus would be "Don't take Origins, Mirecki's a dick" or "I wrote a 20 page paper where one of my points disagreed with his and he gave me a D!". I'm sure we can all relate to similar professors.
Considering the fact that men who have sex with other men are nine times more likely to be infected with HIV, I would say no, that's just the probable outcome of this disease.
The best article about buffer overflows is the well-known "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit" by Aleph One in Phrack. Here's the first link google gave me.
Everything else (like this article) pales in comparison.
Unfortunately, we have to inform you that you are simply not welcome here in the free software community. Obviously, you are just being a parasite by commercially supporting the use, maintenance and extension the KHTML library. Not only are you making bug fixes and amplifying the usefulness of the code, but you're also sending them back to upstream for them to integrate. This burden you are placing on us is clearly unacceptable.
Happily, we don't care for or need your help - as you know the use of free software amongst large and recognizable corporations is incredibly commonplace, and all those companies have no problem at all helping out the community and contributing back in the way we desire.
Although you're new and unexperienced in the free software community, you'll understand if we have no patience for your assistance. Still, I'm sure you found working with us to be a great experience, and we hope that you consider us in the future when you're developing other projects. Clearly, nobody else will see this situation as any sort of reason not to bother dealing with free software in the future.
Thanks again!
If I had mod points, I would definitely give them to you right now; I was a happy user of dvarchive for some time, and tried to be patient with author and his claims of forthcoming source. He totally used the resources of the opensource community (sourceforge) to promote his own program and reneged on his only obligation - to provide source code.
Here's the super secret ending:
Poor people sure are different!
The "fork" that everyone is afraid of is pretty rare, but still does happen - xfree86, emacs, gcc.
But is this comparison to Linux/Windows a fair one? As I mentioned before, Linux has a hope of going against the momentum. But the reasons it does is because of stability, scalability, being a proven technology, providing freedom to users and developers, etc. Aside from the freedom part (thanks to _all_ free software developers, including E, gnome, KDE) it seems those reasons for choosing Linux over Windows would be the same for choosing gnome/kde over E.
First of all, did I just read a story that gave all the background to Rasterman's response, but left out the actual response itself? Nice.
I've always liked the Enlightenment project, and I try to keep up-to-date with what's going on (which is not easy), but it seems pretty clear to me that it will not be the future of the Linux desktop.
E is not really a valid option for the OSS world - I wouldn't be surprised if more people were using XFce or Rox than E at this point. Sure, Linux itself has proven that if something new and amazing comes around and blows everything away by a large margin it may have a *hope* of shifting the momentum, but as great as E is, I doubt it is that impressive.
The reason why the framework Seth+Havoc describe will win over the E stack is because it is integrative, whereas E is not. When the next-generation X rendering system is in place, it will be available to everyone who uses those extensions. Probably by the time Damage + Composite are enabled by default on X, the latest KDE + gnome desktops will have support for them. And all the applications in those respective desktops will quickly (if not instantly) gain those advantages. Remember when the same thing happened with anti-aliased fonts a few years ago?
Yes, you can get the E magic right now, but you have to go through E. As long as they remain the sole gatekeepers, you can expect them to have the same extremely limited influence they have now. At this point in the game, I seriously doubt they can beat the inertia from the other desktops. Honestly, if you're developing a new application, are you going to develop for the mature and distributed kde or gnome desktop environments, or will you use E, which is available now with some ephemeral advantages but some serious disadvantages?
It's also true that by using E you're not committed to using _only_ E, but then, what's the point? If you use E + some random GTK application, you're not going to get the consistent graphical features until GTK itself gets those features... but at that point all gnome applications will have them.
The example of the Cathedral and the Bazaar is a good metaphor for these differing stacks. It seems to me the E project has always been fiercly exclusive in the way it does things - the whole Enlightenment Foundation Libraries are the best example of reinventing the wheel with E technologies. But the cost they've paid is limited deployment, slower releases, less interest and a rather narrow development strategy. Certainly that may suite some people fine. However, with that in mind I don't know how reasonable it is for Raster to be calling sour grapes.
Doing effects over non-overlapping windows is possible. Doing such things as this or this or this are not.
No, the sort of things Seth is talking about is not what E is about. Maybe in the superficial stuff like pagers and advanced theme management, but Seth is speaking of a whole new framework.
Enlightenment is sort of hard to categorize. I believe they refer to the whole suite as a "Desktop Shell". That is, they offer more than a Window Manager (a suite of high-powered libraries, a launcher/panel, desktop effects, file browser, etc.) but less than Gnome or KDE in terms of a desktop environment (which include full cross-platform toolkits, application interoperability, central configuration, random daemons, etc.) The goal of E17 seems to be creating an amazing user desktop experience, but the goals of the next-gen rendering are mainly a superset.
What Seth is talking about is the fundamental application stack for rendering windows and widgets on the screen. Right now, the printing usability situation is really bad. This is one area where I think Windows really gets it right. Adding a printer is quite easy, and your document always looks like what those "print preview" pages allege it will. Currently, there's little guarantee that the printed output of your document will match what you expect it to be, because there's two different rendering pipelines for screen versus page. This is what Seth is talking about. Unless they want to get even more ambitious, the Enlightenment project has nothing to do with printing.
By itself, E17 may be able to give your windows shadows or fake transparency, but a full compositing manager + hardware accelerated backend will allow true alpha blending, fast updates and fun live animations like OSX's genie. Note that this extensions can be easily used by E17 as well, but are really impossible without them.
Finally, the toolkit integration is probably the most exciting. I know E17 is sporting a basic toolkit library itself, but that's probably because they want tight integration between native E17 apps and the WM. I personally think this is the wrong move, because they're probbaly not going to be able to create a fully-featured and cross-platform toolkit like GTK+. (Hence, not many application developers are going to use EWL.) A GTK (and eventually, QT4) application will be able to rely on a sophisticated drawing level (Cairo, instead of Xlib), which will allow all of its applications to be rendered nicely, allowing blending and more free-formed widgets. gDesklets and the like are just the beginning.
One thing I don't understand is all the fuss that comes on slashdot when a show is getting cancelled. I'm not going to say Futurama or the Family Guy or Firefly or Enterprise isn't a good show, but it should be clear as day to anyone watching television that quality is a poor indicator of a show's success. And sometimes a show becomes incredibly successful when it enters syndication - but that isn't something you can really bank on.
People, if you want to prevent your show from being cancelled, the answer is simple: SUPPORT IT. And I mean while it's still on the air, before it gets announced on slashdot that it's going to be killed. Watch every episode, tell your friends to watch it, make fan websites devoted to the show and its cast, buy merchandise related to your show, and buy whatever crap is advertised during your show's commercial breaks. Whenever slashdot runs a story about the next sci-fi series on the chopping block, I'm usually not surprised. Because outside the reality-distortion-field of slashdot, it's clear to me that not a lot of people support the show.
Yes, sometimes networks put shows in unfortunate slots or don't put as much money into production as say, the O.C. But if there is anything to be guaranteed about corporations is that their actions are going to be centered around what's best for them. Do you think they would even consider dropping Enterprise if it a had a huge devout following like American Idol? Money is ultimately the bottom line, and will speak much louder than any petition or ad in the LA Times.
I liked Halo as well as Halo 2 and will play it for a few hours every week. I think it's a great game and Bungie should be proud of it, but I also don't think it's the most amazing thing ever made. While I did think this review was pretty complete (and certainly long), I had some of the same observations at first but now I've come to better appreciate Halo 2. Since all my Halo 2 gametime is spent in multiplayer, that's where my comments will be directed.
I'm not going to comment on the small details the writer of this review thought are were very important (the pump of the shotgun on reload, or the emission from the plasma weapons), because, well, I just don't think they're important. I understand it's a level of polish and can appreciate it, but as a developer myself I can see why you tend to remove superflous details and concentrate on what's important.
H1 Pistol vs H2 Battle Rifle + Magnum
In H1, the pistol was pretty unbalanced, and a slight skill difference between players would become a pretty large margin when one of them has the pistol. The zooming capability in itself makes a weapon more powerful, and I think a good compromise was reached with the Battle Rifle and the Magnum. I don't know why the reviewer says the Battle Rifle doesn't have range - anyone who plays on Colossus knows otherwise. It's not unfairly powerful like the H1 pistol, but mid-range you can usually beat someone dual-wielding SMGs.
As for the magnum, most new people to H2 don't think it's very powerful - until you find out that a headshot from one of them without your shields = death. I agree ammo for the magnum is scarce, but I think that's because for nearly all weapons there's just too much ammo.
Gernades
Gernades are definitely different in H2 and I can see difficulty in trying to balance them. I was really used to them in H1, and the author is right that not using them isn't a big disadvantage of dual-wielding. On the the other hand, when you want to play a game like H2, you want your kills to be a sign of skill, not just some lucky toss (which happened a lot in H1).
Rocket Launcher
I agree, there's no reason a close-range rocket kill shouldn't at least severly damage the shooter.
Covenant weapons
I hated the H1 covenant "freeze", and was fine to see that go. But clearly Covenant weapons are more effective at taking away your shields, so there is still a useful distinction. However, I do agree having both the human and covenant version of a Battle Rifle, Sniper, etc. does seem a bit silly.
Picking up dual weapons
The example of trying to exchange your non-current weapon, while a bit contrived, simply demonstrates one of the disadvantages of dual-wielding. When you're playing a fast-paced game like a FPS, you need to quickly decide what weapon suite you'll carry. If you're in a situation where you're going to be killed quickly, don't go through all those steps. It should also be mentioned that if the shotgun is that important, you can also just pick it up by holding X (though obviously you'll lose your dual guns).
Energy Sword
I think the energy sword is well balanced. You can only whip it out in the short range, try it in midrange against dual-SMGs, or even in close range against two people and you'll find it's hardly a superweapon.
Needler
I'm willing to be surprised, but I agree this weapon remains useless.
Melee
Like the gernades and the pistol, melee was really powerful in H1. Unless you're assassinating someone, I wouldn't count on meleeing someone to death without shooting them a couple times. I think this a much more realistic feel than H1.
Campaign
Honestly, I don't think either H1 or H2 have very interesting campaigns. The graphics are great, the AI is great, the gameplay is great... but the level design and story just don't do it for me personally.
Simplifications
I really like the simplificatio
What exactly is ghetto about it? You and your guest(s) are in the same party, just as you would be if you were playing ranked games, and the playlists are the same (Rumble Training = Rumble Pit, Team Training = Team Skirmish). The only difference is that it's not ranked, nor should it be.
A custom game search would be nice, but I can't really blame Bungie for not wanting to support something like that.
I still don't understand why you and your brother don't just use the training match system... when i have guests over (or my roommates wants to play) that's all we play.
Basically, Reeve died of a pressure ulcer which progressed into a letal condition. However, all my friends say that pressure ulcers are completely avoidable and are a sign of bad care. I'm no expert on this subject, so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
I think Eminem's new video, "Mosh" is one of the best constructed political anthem's I've heard for our time. Watch it here.
Some disclaimers: It's Eminem, and it's uh, kind of anti-Bush. Whatever you think about either, I still think it's worth watching.
Doh!
s/The first reason is that it's just a pain to play games on consoles./The first reason is that it's just a pain to play games on a PC./;
There are two main reasons why I've pretty much completely abandoned computer gaming in favor of consoles.
The first reason is that it's just a pain to play games on consoles. I agree that the mouse + WASD is the best way to play first person shooters, but honestly the Halo controls are actually very good. But the endless driver updates, game patches, getting new hardware, etc. is just something I don't really want to be bothered by. I used to think all that "tweaking" was fun, and I know a lot of people get into it. But nowadays, I just want to put the damn disc in and play.
Also, let's face it, playing games on Linux sucks. Yes, it's getting better, and yes, it's doable, but certainly a far cry from plug and play. And plug and play isn't even the situation on Windows.
The second main reason is now I favor multiplayer games. From party games that everyone can play (including the girls that don't play games) to a deathmatch in Halo, I'm the sort of person that really likes social gaming. Writing messages to the other players, or even hearing them through headsets really doesn't compare to seeing and interacting with your competitors in real life. Having four controllers for your xbox is simply better than having the mess of computers and wires in LAN parties. Suddenly, not having the mouse in FPS games doesn't seem so bad.