I have the same experience... I first downloaded Ubuntu Dapper (my first distro I actually used as an exclusive Windows replacement) from isohunt. Since then, I've gone back for Ubuntu Edgy and Kubuntu Edgy as well. It [is/was] a great site to find linux torrents. I hope it comes back up. Until then, use google (from the isohunt.com current page):
And more to the point, what is the evolutionary pressure? If everyone lives, then evolution stops. Evolution is a bunch of pointless changes that suddenly become important when the environment changes, wiping out everyone without the change.
Not true, if a set portion of the population suddenly stops reproducing, it is, to evolution, no different than if that same portion is wiped out by an environmental change or disease. Likewise, if one portion of the population reproduces less than another, it has the same effect, but on a smaller scale.
Evolution is not about massive shifts in genetics within a single generation. That's more like the creationist's idea of evolution: "No monkey ever went to bed one day and woke up as a human being." Evolution is small, slow drifts that eventually add up to big changes over a large period of time.
so get everyone using your products and guess what.... you get to be king.
Sounds like the tobacco companies. Any gas station or grocery store that reports a pack or carton of cigarettes stolen to their distributor can get discounts or free products to replace those that are stolen. The tobacco industry learned a long time ago that if a fifteen year old steals a pack of cigarettes, they may have lost one sale, but they've gained a life long customer.
Most interior "locks" I've seen are of the push and twist variety. They don't take anything more than a paperclip or other similar thing to open.
Yeah, where I work we have a half a dozen Yale battery powered forklifts. A couple months ago I hopped on to one in order to move some equipment and found that someone had taken the key. Normally, we leave the keys in them at all times (since they're all indoors anyway) and I was quite certain that we didn't have a spare. Just out of curiosity I shoved a small paperclip in the ignition and turned and it started right up.
So much for security.
And yes, they are still using the paperclip as the "key" in that particular truck.
We love the Pootworm. We are one with the Pootworm. We are one with you.
Of course you realize that this means you are one with the Pootworm.
Rejoice!!
To be one with the Pootworm is to be alive, and why not be alive?
Is that not what living is for?
-The Pkunk
If you were talking about Windows NT4, I might agree with you. NT4 had significant server deployment, and I'd imagine there's still a few corps that might have some machines running it. But Windows 98/ME was a user OS, so I find it very unlikely that anyone that has the cash to poney up for supporting it didn't move their installed base over to Windows 2000 or above long ago. I think the only significant Windows 98 installations you'll see are embedded machines running a POS system (for instance). Since those kind of embedded systems are never used for web browsing this vulnerability has pretty minimal impact on those systems.
Excellent point. I used to work as an operator in a factory a couple years back. We had assembly robots and vision systems that ran on Windows 98 and Windows NT4. FYI, vision systems are just a machine with a whole bunch of cameras, you pop the part in, it takes pictures and compares them to the "master" and verifies that the part is within spec.
Three years later, I'm now responsible for repairing these systems. While many of them have been retired with their respective product lines and replaced with newer versions, we still have two of the Win98-operated robots running. Fortunately, they only use wireless networking to communicate on the LAN in the building (with label printers and barcode scanners, etc), with no internet connection.
I'm sure there are plenty of these little systems running around the world. Some of them may never be replaced, simply because of the engineering costs to redesign the machine and/or rewrite the software.
That's because you have more time to waste playing games than the average person. Games are supposed to be fun. If I have to go through a lot of not-fun stuff to get to the fun stuff, the game sucks. Period. If it's fun getting to the fun stuff, hey, no problem. But that's not how games are designed. They're designed so you start with a Ford Rustbucket that you have to race 50 times before you can move up to the Chevy Not-Quite-So-Rustbuckety, or you have to sink 10's of hours in annoying, repetitive single player mode to get more than the shitty beginner course to play with your friends in multiplayer. The boring repetition to get to the meat is what most people don't like, not the fact that things are there to be unlocked. Again, games are supposed to be fun. You shouldn't have to work to have fun. That's what I do in an office 40 hours a week. I don't want it during my free time as well.
Maybe I've grown up playing RPGs for as long as I've been playing video games. I've come to accept, and enjoy, the rags-to-riches mentality of RPG-style games. You have to start as a group of weak level 1 noobs in Final Fantasy, and only by slowly strengthening them can you ever hope to be uber. Same with MMORPGs.
Imagine an MMORPG like Everquest or Dark Age of Camelot, where you started at the highest level with all of the best equipment available to you from the start. Uh, exactly what would you even do in a game like that?
Gamers like me feel a sense of satisfaction and achievement from advancement, even if it's the monotonously slow leveling of characters, like in Paladin's Quest (by far the worst offender I've ever played). I truly enjoy the Ford Rustbucket races, developing skill and saving up money to get the Porche or Ferrari. To me, that stuff is fun.
Perhaps what we need is a disclaimer on the package of the game, warning gamers of this type of experience, for those who don't like it?
Oh, and I have a pregnant wife, a house, and a 40-50 hour a week job. I only get to spend about an hour a day gaming, half of which is during my lunch breaks at work. I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on my gameboy the last few weeks. It will probably be months before I unlock the Corrupt Judge Missions near the very end of the game. But I certainly don't feel cheated because those missions aren't available from day 1.
In the case of Mario golf, for example, I would never have paid 50 dollars for a game with 2 lousy courses.
Point well taken. I've never actually played this one. The closest I've come is Super Monkey Ball 2, which requires playing the main story mode of the game to unlock extra multiplayer games. You start with five or six, and have to unlock a second set of games. However, all of the unlockable multiplayer games are really annoying to play, or boring, so I didn't even bother.
Yet that is some of the most enjoyable content in the game, for all players, once unlocked. My 3 year old loves plowing around with a cement truck; its her favorite part of the game -- she wouldn't be able to unlock that mode no matter how hard she tried, period. It just doesn't make sense to place things that would be fun for novice players behind gates that only grand-masters can open.
Basically, you're saying that you feel ripped off when there is extra entertainment in a game that you've paid for and you cannot access it because it is too difficult to acquire. Would you feel less ripped off if that content were never put in the game?
I propose designers either put things behind those gates that have no real value, like "trophys" or "high scores", or other status symbols, or if you must hide content, hide stuff that actually needs "grand master" like skill to enjoy. Like the secret robot-cyborg level in the original Doom 1, or unlocking Nightmare/Hell/Hardcore (permadeath) difficulties in Diablo II.
I couldn't agree more with this. I think every game should have unlockable difficulty levels. I loved the extra difficulty levels in Diablo II, Dungeon Siege, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, and Metroid: Zero Mission. But I don't see anything wrong with other types of unlockables in games.
no, the clues in the title. Hes a gamer WITH A JOB. He wants to enjoy the wole game without dedicating his life to it. It's a fair point. Nobody minds there being an uber-difficult level for the hardcore, but people like to think they can get the full enjoyment from a game without it having to take over their life first. With this in mind, difficulty levels are preferable to unlockables.
I am a gamer, with a job. I work 40-50 hours a week. I have a pregnant wife. She's rather demanding (and will proudly admit it).
I admit I don't have the time to sit down and unlock all the content in some of my games now. I've been playing FFTA for many hours, and I'm quite sure I'll never get to the Corrupt Judge Missions.
But can I honestly say I didn't get my money's worth out of the game? Heck no! It's probably the best GBA game I've ever purchased. Followed closely by Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, and FFIV Advance (both have unlockable content).
Now when you say that difficulty levels are preferable to unlockables, it really makes no sense. I'm sure you'd admit that you would feel cheated if you replayed your game on a higher difficulty level and got no extra content for doing it. You'd be pissed if you got the same ending video, or no new cars to race on the track, etc. That's unlockable content.
So when you say he wants to "enjoy the whole game without dedicating his life to it," he's just going to have to accept the fact that some content is only there as a reward for those who dedicate their life to the game. It's not part of the main game experience.
To simplify: you can't have unlockable content without difficulty levels or challenges, since it would just be part of the main game and therefore not "locked," and you can't have difficulty levels without unlockable content, your else you would feel cheated for trying so hard for nothing.
If you're whining because you can't play all of the characters latest Mortal Kombat game because it's too hard to unlock all of the characters, then maybe you just need to accept the fact that those characters weren't put in the game for gamers like you.
Unlockables are exactly the opposite for me. I often go through a game once just playing the basics (like FFX-2) and then go back and start over trying to get "everything" in the game, because its got replayability and there's a secondary challenge now. Then, having failed to do that the second time through, I'll try it a third.
What has *that* to do with unlockables? The fact that you CAN go back and collect all the coins, or stars, or clear out every dungeon and get your completion score to 100% doesn't bother anybody. If someone likes that sort of exploration/replay/whatever style of play, that's fine. The reward is seeing that high score, or 100% complete, or whatever.
The problem is when you HAVE to do that in order to access other major parts of the game.
Actually, his example was perfect. In Final Fantasy X-2, you complete special quests and jump through hoops to unlock movies, and major pieces of the plot. For example, you can only view the special ending by getting 100% completion. And there's information that ties FFX-2 to FF7 regarding Shinra and Rin from the FFX universe founding Shin-Ra corporation in FF7, but only if you solve the Mi'ihen Highroad Mystery quest in a special way.
Yes, it's tedious, yes, it's jumping through hoops. Your reward is major plot points and FMV sequences that you cannot view in any other way, except maybe Gameshark codes or something.
I'm sorry that you have to work so hard to unlock driving a cement truck. But honestly, the game was not written to race a cement truck, or it would be called "Cement Truck Driving." Those features are extras, designed to reward people who truly enjoy the game, to give them a little additional content to hold them over before the next game comes out.
If you never get that far, those features weren't meant for you to begin with.
Sony seems to think that we're LUCKY to get games for their overpriced console. With their statements about how people would buy it even with no games, and now this garbage?
Sony thinks they're too good for us.
Yeah, they do seem to have that attitude. Remember what they said when people were complaining about the defective PSP buttons?
Quote:
"This is the design that we came up with. There may be people that complain about its usability, but that's something which users and game software developers will have to adapt to. I didn't want the PSP's LCD screen to become any smaller than this, nor did I want its machine body to become any larger.
"The button's location is [architectured] on purpose. It's according to specifications. This is something that we've created, and this is our specification. There was a clear purpose to it, and it wasn't a mistake."
Sony has slowly become the world's most concentrated source of arrogance.
The new worlds are very fun but Atlantica is my worse nightmare of boredom coming true. I really thought they would take advantage of the new right-analogue-stick floating movement and make us use it in a "real" world... but no. Instead we get "finny fun". Thanks for nothing.
Not to be a nitpicker, but you actually do use the right analog stick to control altitude in one very large part of Agrabah, while flying on the carpet. And it's not just in the minigame, you can go there and fight like that anytime you want. But it's got lots of graphical glitches... for instance, if you lower all the way to the ground and jump, the carpet disappears down under the sand. Oh, and enemies randomly appear and disappear if you fly around too fast.
Not necessarily. There's a secret extra ending video after the last video of the game. In order to unlock it, you must be in either normal or proud (hard) mode. In proud mode, you just have to complete the story of the game (unlock each world, etc). On standard, you must both complete the story and complete jiminy cricket's journal, which includes finishing all sorts of minigames and side missions, and getting good scores on them. The video is impossible to get on beginner level, so you'll always get the regular ending.
As a side note, I'm about 98% done finishing the journal, there's just a few items left to collect and some coliseum battles to do. Sephiroth was a royal pain in the behind, I didn't beat him until level 98 (mostly due to bad timing).
The scary thing is, this is exactly how the Church of Scientology recruits. They administer a free "Personality Test" to anyone who wants to take it. The test results ALWAYS have some "critical" flaw that is causing you to be unstable. If you don't fix it right away, you might just go insane. Fortunately, the Church has a remedy for your mental disease, if you just sign up for one of our free classes...
But CDs created from iTMS files are inferior to regular CDs in several ways. They are CDRs, with higher fail rates, they are lower quality audio, and they don't come with reference materials like images, track listings, artist's notes, etc.
Not to rain on your parade, but does anyone really care about artist's notes and track listings? I can make a track listing myself, one that doesn't include 90% crap music like most CD's released today.
The only thing I ever wanted to find in a CD case was some freaking LYRICS!
It's so annoying to have a song stuck in my head and not even know what the words are, just a few scrambled words and a tune. So, you'd think the best place for the words to the song would be the artists themselves, right? You can't exactly call them on the phone, the best you can do is buy the CD. The last four CD's I purchased did not contain the lyrics to the songs inside. That was about six years ago.
Now, if a song gets stuck in my head, I download the MP3 and look up the lyrics in google, then play it a few times until I learn all the words, and *poof* it's out of my head.
As a side note: I seriously think the only reason songs get stuck in my head is because I get stuck on a verse and don't know what comes next, so it backs up and tries again. Once I learn all the words, I stop thinking about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I have the same experience... I first downloaded Ubuntu Dapper (my first distro I actually used as an exclusive Windows replacement) from isohunt. Since then, I've gone back for Ubuntu Edgy and Kubuntu Edgy as well. It [is/was] a great site to find linux torrents. I hope it comes back up. Until then, use google (from the isohunt.com current page):
Search: ubuntu 6.10 ext:torrent
Not true, if a set portion of the population suddenly stops reproducing, it is, to evolution, no different than if that same portion is wiped out by an environmental change or disease. Likewise, if one portion of the population reproduces less than another, it has the same effect, but on a smaller scale.
Evolution is not about massive shifts in genetics within a single generation. That's more like the creationist's idea of evolution: "No monkey ever went to bed one day and woke up as a human being." Evolution is small, slow drifts that eventually add up to big changes over a large period of time.
Sounds like the tobacco companies. Any gas station or grocery store that reports a pack or carton of cigarettes stolen to their distributor can get discounts or free products to replace those that are stolen. The tobacco industry learned a long time ago that if a fifteen year old steals a pack of cigarettes, they may have lost one sale, but they've gained a life long customer.
I would think that Edubuntu would be more appropriate.
Yeah, where I work we have a half a dozen Yale battery powered forklifts. A couple months ago I hopped on to one in order to move some equipment and found that someone had taken the key. Normally, we leave the keys in them at all times (since they're all indoors anyway) and I was quite certain that we didn't have a spare. Just out of curiosity I shoved a small paperclip in the ignition and turned and it started right up.
So much for security.
And yes, they are still using the paperclip as the "key" in that particular truck.
George Michael - Freedom 90
Man, that video was dangerous in the hands of a male teenager.
And the picture for Mac System 7 clearly says "7.5.3" in the screenshot (while 7.5 is supposed to be a couple pictures down).
Here, I keep this site bookmarked at all times:
http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Native_Games
Lost Labyrinth is my current infatuation... well, that and Escape Velocity Nova (windows version) in Cedega, runs beautifully.
I seriously first read that as:
Kinda makes me feel like purchasing a bunch of corrupt officials. Dunno about you.
That would've been funnier, I'm sure, but as a serious comment I was a little peeved. I mean, isn't that exactly what we're trying to stop?
In other words, there's no such thing as idiot-proof, because there's always a better idiot.
Excellent point. I used to work as an operator in a factory a couple years back. We had assembly robots and vision systems that ran on Windows 98 and Windows NT4. FYI, vision systems are just a machine with a whole bunch of cameras, you pop the part in, it takes pictures and compares them to the "master" and verifies that the part is within spec.
Three years later, I'm now responsible for repairing these systems. While many of them have been retired with their respective product lines and replaced with newer versions, we still have two of the Win98-operated robots running. Fortunately, they only use wireless networking to communicate on the LAN in the building (with label printers and barcode scanners, etc), with no internet connection.
I'm sure there are plenty of these little systems running around the world. Some of them may never be replaced, simply because of the engineering costs to redesign the machine and/or rewrite the software.
Maybe I've grown up playing RPGs for as long as I've been playing video games. I've come to accept, and enjoy, the rags-to-riches mentality of RPG-style games. You have to start as a group of weak level 1 noobs in Final Fantasy, and only by slowly strengthening them can you ever hope to be uber. Same with MMORPGs.
Imagine an MMORPG like Everquest or Dark Age of Camelot, where you started at the highest level with all of the best equipment available to you from the start. Uh, exactly what would you even do in a game like that?
Gamers like me feel a sense of satisfaction and achievement from advancement, even if it's the monotonously slow leveling of characters, like in Paladin's Quest (by far the worst offender I've ever played). I truly enjoy the Ford Rustbucket races, developing skill and saving up money to get the Porche or Ferrari. To me, that stuff is fun.
Perhaps what we need is a disclaimer on the package of the game, warning gamers of this type of experience, for those who don't like it?
Oh, and I have a pregnant wife, a house, and a 40-50 hour a week job. I only get to spend about an hour a day gaming, half of which is during my lunch breaks at work. I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on my gameboy the last few weeks. It will probably be months before I unlock the Corrupt Judge Missions near the very end of the game. But I certainly don't feel cheated because those missions aren't available from day 1.
Point well taken. I've never actually played this one. The closest I've come is Super Monkey Ball 2, which requires playing the main story mode of the game to unlock extra multiplayer games. You start with five or six, and have to unlock a second set of games. However, all of the unlockable multiplayer games are really annoying to play, or boring, so I didn't even bother.
But yeah, I see your point.
Basically, you're saying that you feel ripped off when there is extra entertainment in a game that you've paid for and you cannot access it because it is too difficult to acquire. Would you feel less ripped off if that content were never put in the game?
I couldn't agree more with this. I think every game should have unlockable difficulty levels. I loved the extra difficulty levels in Diablo II, Dungeon Siege, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, and Metroid: Zero Mission. But I don't see anything wrong with other types of unlockables in games.
I am a gamer, with a job. I work 40-50 hours a week. I have a pregnant wife. She's rather demanding (and will proudly admit it).
I admit I don't have the time to sit down and unlock all the content in some of my games now. I've been playing FFTA for many hours, and I'm quite sure I'll never get to the Corrupt Judge Missions.
But can I honestly say I didn't get my money's worth out of the game? Heck no! It's probably the best GBA game I've ever purchased. Followed closely by Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, and FFIV Advance (both have unlockable content).
Now when you say that difficulty levels are preferable to unlockables, it really makes no sense. I'm sure you'd admit that you would feel cheated if you replayed your game on a higher difficulty level and got no extra content for doing it. You'd be pissed if you got the same ending video, or no new cars to race on the track, etc. That's unlockable content.
So when you say he wants to "enjoy the whole game without dedicating his life to it," he's just going to have to accept the fact that some content is only there as a reward for those who dedicate their life to the game. It's not part of the main game experience.
To simplify: you can't have unlockable content without difficulty levels or challenges, since it would just be part of the main game and therefore not "locked," and you can't have difficulty levels without unlockable content, your else you would feel cheated for trying so hard for nothing.
If you're whining because you can't play all of the characters latest Mortal Kombat game because it's too hard to unlock all of the characters, then maybe you just need to accept the fact that those characters weren't put in the game for gamers like you.
Actually, his example was perfect. In Final Fantasy X-2, you complete special quests and jump through hoops to unlock movies, and major pieces of the plot. For example, you can only view the special ending by getting 100% completion. And there's information that ties FFX-2 to FF7 regarding Shinra and Rin from the FFX universe founding Shin-Ra corporation in FF7, but only if you solve the Mi'ihen Highroad Mystery quest in a special way.
Yes, it's tedious, yes, it's jumping through hoops. Your reward is major plot points and FMV sequences that you cannot view in any other way, except maybe Gameshark codes or something.
I'm sorry that you have to work so hard to unlock driving a cement truck. But honestly, the game was not written to race a cement truck, or it would be called "Cement Truck Driving." Those features are extras, designed to reward people who truly enjoy the game, to give them a little additional content to hold them over before the next game comes out.
If you never get that far, those features weren't meant for you to begin with.
Sony seems to think that we're LUCKY to get games for their overpriced console. With their statements about how people would buy it even with no games, and now this garbage?
9 85.html
Sony thinks they're too good for us.
Yeah, they do seem to have that attitude. Remember what they said when people were complaining about the defective PSP buttons?
Link:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/01/24/news_6116
Quote:
"This is the design that we came up with. There may be people that complain about its usability, but that's something which users and game software developers will have to adapt to. I didn't want the PSP's LCD screen to become any smaller than this, nor did I want its machine body to become any larger.
"The button's location is [architectured] on purpose. It's according to specifications. This is something that we've created, and this is our specification. There was a clear purpose to it, and it wasn't a mistake."
Sony has slowly become the world's most concentrated source of arrogance.
The new worlds are very fun but Atlantica is my worse nightmare of boredom coming true. I really thought they would take advantage of the new right-analogue-stick floating movement and make us use it in a "real" world... but no. Instead we get "finny fun". Thanks for nothing.
Not to be a nitpicker, but you actually do use the right analog stick to control altitude in one very large part of Agrabah, while flying on the carpet. And it's not just in the minigame, you can go there and fight like that anytime you want. But it's got lots of graphical glitches... for instance, if you lower all the way to the ground and jump, the carpet disappears down under the sand. Oh, and enemies randomly appear and disappear if you fly around too fast.
Definitely not worth using on a regular basis.
Not necessarily. There's a secret extra ending video after the last video of the game. In order to unlock it, you must be in either normal or proud (hard) mode. In proud mode, you just have to complete the story of the game (unlock each world, etc). On standard, you must both complete the story and complete jiminy cricket's journal, which includes finishing all sorts of minigames and side missions, and getting good scores on them. The video is impossible to get on beginner level, so you'll always get the regular ending.
As a side note, I'm about 98% done finishing the journal, there's just a few items left to collect and some coliseum battles to do. Sephiroth was a royal pain in the behind, I didn't beat him until level 98 (mostly due to bad timing).
The scary thing is, this is exactly how the Church of Scientology recruits. They administer a free "Personality Test" to anyone who wants to take it. The test results ALWAYS have some "critical" flaw that is causing you to be unstable. If you don't fix it right away, you might just go insane. Fortunately, the Church has a remedy for your mental disease, if you just sign up for one of our free classes...
"If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about."
Which is an idiotic argument, because what's currently okay won't always be okay.
Ask someone who signed up for the trendy, fashionable Communist Party in the 1920s how that act later went over in the 1950s, for example.
I was personally thinking of the Prohibition.
But CDs created from iTMS files are inferior to regular CDs in several ways. They are CDRs, with higher fail rates, they are lower quality audio, and they don't come with reference materials like images, track listings, artist's notes, etc.
Not to rain on your parade, but does anyone really care about artist's notes and track listings? I can make a track listing myself, one that doesn't include 90% crap music like most CD's released today.
The only thing I ever wanted to find in a CD case was some freaking LYRICS!
It's so annoying to have a song stuck in my head and not even know what the words are, just a few scrambled words and a tune. So, you'd think the best place for the words to the song would be the artists themselves, right? You can't exactly call them on the phone, the best you can do is buy the CD. The last four CD's I purchased did not contain the lyrics to the songs inside. That was about six years ago.
Now, if a song gets stuck in my head, I download the MP3 and look up the lyrics in google, then play it a few times until I learn all the words, and *poof* it's out of my head.
As a side note: I seriously think the only reason songs get stuck in my head is because I get stuck on a verse and don't know what comes next, so it backs up and tries again. Once I learn all the words, I stop thinking about it.