We would find some way to send them back where they came from. Launch an unmanned Mars return vehicle (if they were already in Earth orbit - sending Progress-like automated supply vessles up with food and the like in the interim) and then send a trickle of supplies back to Mars on a regular basis to keep them alive, and perhaps reach a level of self-sustainability. (which a Mars base SHOULD and almost certainly would have in the first place)
What might end up being rather interesting is if the contamination poses absolutely no risk to humans but is still too suspect to introduce into Earth's environment, then perhaps the stranded astronauts would live quite a long time, with the constant risk of possible additions to their ranks. Some astronauts might forgo the Depo Provera or Norpland and simply decide to risk it or may not take any birth control medications and find themselves caught up in the heat of the moment. And there is always the chance of birth control failing. (even though Depo Provera has a lower failure rate than ANYTHING - even surgical sterilization of either partner)
So, in a while, you might get a growing colony on Mars of humans that are developed differently (due to the gravity), with radically different life experiences and are also unable to interact directly with humans from Earth.
'if in fact somebody is using our characters to create a story unto itself, that's not in the spirit of what we think fandom is about. Fandom is about celebrating the story the way it is.'
The RIAA, BestBuy and others continue to make two, essential false assumptions about the music industry.
- The decline in sales has nothing to do with the content being produced by the music industry.
Sorry, try again. Many, many people who download songs end up buying the albums, however there is a severe lack of anything new or remotely innovative in popular music, right now. Record companies are STILL placing all their bets on Teen Pop, Metal, Rap and a stunning number of bands who have decided to get Eddie Vedder impersonators as their vocalists. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but really, the catagories I mentioned are the sum total of 99.9% of the music industry right now.
If people don't buy CDs, the record company mentality goes, it must be because of something wrong with the customer. They are unwilling to admit that they have alltogether tightened the reigns on the industry to the point where it is being choked. Radio playlists across the country are exactly the same, paid for by corprate moolah (indirectly, of course) and some DJs are not even permitted to play ANY songs of their own choosinig.
MTV has descended to the point where you get one, single video show per day and that's it. (if you are lucky)
TRL is a pressure cooker for sales. Videos are premiered on the show and since that is for many the only exposure to videos they have, they simply vote for the video they have been spoonfed. The result is a never-changing block of videos that are fed to the masses in a trickle so the minimum amount of variety can be used to gain the maximum amount of exposure for an "artist". This extremly tightly focused enviornment is used to force an artist on as many impressionable people as once, and give them few other musical options.
Now, for the second false assumption:
- That BestBuy, and any company that supports such measures will ever receive my business again.
I've spent thousands upon thousands at particular stores or products by particualr companies over many years. However, their business practices mean that my disposible income will cease to flow into their cash registers.
And I'm not alone.
The music industry has shown their utter contempt for me and I see no reason to give them a dime of my money any longer. I would like to support the artists I like, but even buying a CD now means risking buying crippled media. It doesn't matter WHY I would want to use a non-copy prevented CD, I'm sure it would surprise them that I would be doing nothing remotely illegal, just keeping one CD in the car and a couple of MP3s in my playlist.
But they don't care, and therefore, neither do I.
There are countless others like me now, and there are more all the time. I really hope the record industry likes what they've done.
You reap what you sow, and believe me, the record company better count it's blessings that a 10% drop in sales is all they have to deal with right now.
It's going to get much worse, and their strong-arm tactics are the only reason why.
Half-assed realism where a strong effort was made to achieve realism only to be dumbed-down for mass-appeal is extremly repugnant and annoys the hell out of me. When you have something that strives to be true to life, only to be peppered with a number of regulation "goofy" or cartoon-ish elements you destroy the value of even caring about realism and working to acheive it.
You end up with a game that is neither likely to please the realism freaks or those who are looking for a little lighthearted fun.
Sure, it might sell, and to many people that is all that matters, but to others, it is just a waste of time.
Furthermore, I don't see any problem with realism itself. People often tell me, if you want realism, go outside. But that completely defeats the purpose of fantasy. Which is not always to introduce radically new worlds and situations - in essence an entire universe's worth of new rules - but to offer the chance for the player to entertain some of their personal fantasies, whatever they might be. A lot of people I've talked to seem convinced that if you aren't offering a Dungeons and Dragons or Toliken-type world then you are just wasting your time.
I'm sorry, but most of my fantasies don't involve Orcs, Hobbits or Elves but being able to take a different path in life, one that I can see in front of me every day, but would never get to experience. That is my kind of fantasy. And it is not intended as a replacement for real life, but to offer a window on life that someone would not otherwise have.
And I would like those precious glimpses onto alternate paths to be true to life as possible. To give me a feeling of what it would be like to follow them without actually having to.
I don't consider it mindless escapism, though there is certainly a strong element of escapism in every game imaginable, but rather the ability to become more well-rounded as a person, to experience life in new, and different ways that are far different from what I ever could. And give me a perspective on the world I would not have otherwise had.
Realism gives us the chance to be anyone, to go anywhere and to step into anyone's shoes. It's not about replacing your day to day life, but about giving you the chance to see how someone else's is. Those who oppose it most likely don't understand this very important fact, or perhaps have different tastes or, perhaps are just unwilling to attempt to go to the trouble to implement it in their works, and perhaps fear the day where it would be expected of them.
For it is far easier to write your own rules, and to create your own bounderies than to take your concept, your dreams and to mold them into the realities of our world.
In case you are wondering who the often-referenced Captain Hector is, he is a character that would appear in Escape Velocity: Overrride.
You would be cruising along the galaxy when a ship buzzed by and a Captain Hector would send you a message reminding you to register if you liked the game.
If you waited too long to register, or just never bothered, Captain Hector wouldn't just buzz by anymore. He would stop, and train his guns on you and blast away at your ship.
He proved to be quite effective, to say the least.
Well, in that case, people should be willing to move. If there is such a glut of talent as there appears to be, and people are miserable as they say they are, those without families or many ties in the area should be willing to relocate.
And I believe they are!
There is just a terrible fear that many IT companies have of being anywhere other than Sillicon Valley, and they need to get over it and quickly. People who want to work badly enough will move, especially if they are young and without families of their own yet.
Over here on the East Coast there is no shortage of expereinced workers - and plenty of IT companies have had no problems finding the people they need.
People need to break out of the Bay Area. it just doesn't make much sense to be there anymore. Companies need to take a long, hard look at their other options and I don't believe they are.
I never saw the reason for companies to locate their headquarters in the most expensive and trendy place possible. How many companies out there need that much physical proximity to others in the industry? Think of all the small manufacturing shops you see in the most remote places, and they depend on raw materiels and suffer if the freight cost is too high. What excuse does the IT industry have? None, as far as I can see. There are literally countless locations across the country that are ridiculously inexpensive and have the high-quality of life that will attract workers.
But no, IT corporations say "We need to move to San Franciso!". They are idiotic, and they get what they deserve for making such stupid mistakes, I have about as much sympathy for them as those who are rebuilding for the third time in the same location because putting up a house on a flood plain was a Really Good Idea (tm).
Is there any compelling reason to be there, other than ego? In most - read: almost all - cases....no.
Furthermore, what really gets me, is when companies have little or no revenue stream and decide to plop down in the most expensive place they can find and then set to work on maybe, you know....making some money.
Here is a stunning idea, locate somplace inexpensive - if you think you won't get any employees or business by setting up someplace that isn't flashy you are ignorant or simply unwilling to accept the truth. Then, build your bussiness slowly, spend as little as possible, supply good, but not extravagant workspaces and equipment and do away with most or all luxuries and see what happens. You might actually last more than a year or two. And when your company grows, it might actually be sensible to move to somplace more upscale. You know.....when you can actually afford to.
People just need to think for a minute, before they go off making dumb and obvious mistakes then crying about it later on.
A good UI is only as good as the apps
on
BeOS For Linux
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· Score: 3, Interesting
You can create the most beautiful, well-thought-out and consistant UI for an OS, but if the individual apps are written with sloppy UIs, it all falls apart.
The one problem I have with Linux is the fact that 90% of the GUI apps have simply idiotic user interfaces. I burst out laughing the first time I used Linuxconf. The dialog window that popped up the first time it ran had a "Quit" button instead of a "Close" button. That is a perfect example of the misleading, inconsistant and just difficult to use interfaces plague the platform. There needs to be some sort of effort put into implementing a consistant UI across all apps, or else all of this work will be for nothing.
On the Mac, and to a slightly lesser extend on Windows, almost every app is interacted with in the same way. A user knows what to expect when they start just about anything but a game. And while you can argue what paradigm is the best, the fact remains the consistancy is the key and Linux lacks not only that, but a core set of accepted design principles. You can argue this will somehow curtail your "freedom" or something all you want, but the fact remains it is a solution that offers much more promise than the embarassingly ameturisih one we currently have to suffer through.
Badly designed user interfaces make Linux look bad. It's simple as that. When Linux looks bad, it's adoption rate is affected. How do people expect to combat the negative stereotypes of the platform if they are unwilling to band together to overcome the easiest to fix, yet most glaring problem with the OS? This isn't as much about asthetics of Linux apps as it is about the success of Linux itself.
If you think "Oh, I just use the command line" or "Who cares, let them program it themselves" or "It's pretty, so what's the problem?" you are being ignorant of the demands and expectations of those you care attempting to bring over from Windows or wherever.
Drop the elitism, drop the selfishness, just realize what needs to be done and understand the awful truth of the computing industry, one that seems lost on most Linux developers:
Give them what they want, or they will go away.
It's not about what you want, it's about what they want, how they want to work. Never forget that. You can't force-feed them every paradigm change and excuse for every bit of laziness on your part. You have to adapt to their needs and adapt quickly. You only get one chance to make a first impression and pissing them off by acting high and mighty about changing things to make their lives easier is not the way to do it. Many a promising platfom has died because of this, don't for a second think Linux is immune to the negative effects of the choices made by its proponents.
People need to realize that ignoring this sort of thing forever will somehow fix the problem, or that we will slowly somehow overcome it. I don't think that meshes very well with reality. It's going to take a clear and consistant vision with a lot of effort on the part of the developers and users to overcome this impasse. And believe me, it is an impasse. The platform is currently reaching critical mass and a point where it decides where it wants to go, and what it wants to be. Sure, this is going to be unpopular, but I don't care, I'd rather get modded down to oblivion than let this go unsaid. Because it needs to be said, and it needs to be appreciated, if not neccesarily liked.
When was the last time a real political sim came out? Go on, think about it.
Well, it's been a while. That prettied-up version of Civilization 2 (aka Civilization 3) sitting on your hard drive is not a political sim. It's been years since one has appeared. And the trend has been towards dumbing-down the political aspects of non-political games to the lowest-level possible. Just compare the relatively complex diplomacy of Sid Mier's Alpha Centauri to the Fisher Price foreign-relations of its successor Civ 3.
Political sims are valuable tools. They are a wonderful way to learn about the way governments work and the complexities of foreign relations that will not even be explored my most textbooks.
But they don't sell as much as SimCity 3000, Civilization 3 or Quake 3.
So, they aren't made anymore. Even the old mainstays of semi-intelligent gaming have fallen victim to the effort to make them more "accessilbe" (read: severly-dumbed down) to sell as many copies as possible.
I know it is a bit of a cliche, but back when graphics were far less detailed and 3D engines were unheard of, for a title to be considered unique, it had to rely on depth of gameplay, not color pallate.
Not that I have anything against bright, 3D games. I enjoy playing them everyday, however I think it is terrible that such enjoyable and valuable software has vanished and can only be found at Abandonware sites.
The service they provide is excellent, but that should not be confused with the level of service they provide, which, I must say is sorely lacking.
They have buggy software. This means on occasion, more money is withdrawn from your non-PayPal accounts then you authorized them to take. Giving them access to your checking account is a horrible thing to do, double-dipping is widespread and if you have any checks that need clearing, well......you are in trouble - assuming they haven't overdrawn your account in the first place (did it to me).
Due to the sheer size of their user-base, and their inability to correct their problems, much less deal with the number of complaints generated by things that aren't their fault (action sellers taking money and running, for example) they've taken to a scorched Earth manner of dealing with problems.
Any sign of trouble - your account is frozen - along with any money that might be there. Too bad if you're in the middle of a huge transaction involving lots of money that you really can't afford to lose.
This is like using a nuclear device to wipe out an ant infestation. It causes much more damage to innocent users than you could possibly imagine.
You have a problem, even if it is their fault they might not fix it. Wait more than 30 days to complain that they stole your money and guess what? The money is gone forever, you will never get it back. They will not allow you to file a complaint about their rape of your checking account if you wait more than a few weeks.
To sum it up, PayPal provides a great service, but they have shown themselves to be incapable of actually providing that service with any great degree of reliability or accountability.
This lawsuit has been a long time coming. More power to the plaintiffs.
The man has a vision, no one can deny that. But he has an obsessive desire to control every aspect of the computing experience with a zeal few in the industry have ever been able to even approach, much less match.
He has a long-standing history of making sure Macs are as non-expandable as possible. Which doesn't mean he's going to bolt the G4 case closed, but he is going to limit expansion options as much as possible where it won't ruin sales of the particular model.
He wants uniformity across the line in every way possible. Even programming a theme creation app is enough to bring the wrath of Apple Legal down upon you. Of course, the offical reason is that a user could possibly violate Apple's trademarks with such a program, but really, everyone knows that it is to protect Aqua.
Apple likes to control its hardware and its software. Moreso than even Microsoft. They go to extrodinary lengths to make sure what ships from the factory is what ends up being thrown away years later.
The whole "you can mess with the BSD/Mach stuff" in OS X is nothing more than a bone thrown to the community. The stuff they use is already out there, so it's better for Apple to just let it remain so. People buy-into the idea that Apple is somehow a reasonably friendly company that won't screw you over. But that's a fantasy, I'm afraid. One proven countless times by various actions by the company as it has strived to maintain it's control over every aspect of the platform and the experince a user has interacting with it.
But people defend them because they are Apple and not Microsoft. People want to see an alternative and they are willing to accept any one that bills itself as being better, even if the painful reality is far different than they want it to be.
The point is, Apple wants to have an extremly high-level of control over every aspect of your computing experience. In many ways, even Microsoft is less restrictive. x86 hardware - even with some sort of ROM - would be the complete and total antethisis of what Apple consideres to be acceptable. They would quickly lose control over the platform, and their (Steve's) vision of the computing experience would be completely and utterly undermined.
......one of the first things some scientist did after they managed to do capture the stuff was suddenly yell "Antimatter containment is failing! We're gonna have to eject the core!!!!!!!!" before falling to the floor laughing hysterically?
You know there has to be someone, somewhere who is just dying to be the first person to say that.
Honestly, did you read the article, look at the evidence that has been presented - and the statements regarding its accuracy, or simply look at the claim and then say "It can't be true"?
Do you have any idea of the amount of extremely important news that is simply ignored, completely and uttterly by the mass media? You can try to excuse it all you want as "Bullshit", but the fact remains, the media fails to report an overwhelming majority of what happens out there. It simply doesn't bring in veiwiers. Which leads to the beleif that things aren't true, that they didn't happen, if the nightly entertainment known as "The News" didn't bother to report them. It is having a catastrophic effect on our nation, one that I fear, will cause us HUGE problems in the future. Why? Because without a proper idea of what is going on, or what has been done in the past, people believe only the bits and peices they are spoon-fed by those with the power to "make" the news. And they are left incapable of holding their leaders accountable, and as a result their nation. And their country becomes a rouge state that serves the interests of their leaders and those in power. While the context of any actions are presented through the filter of the condensed, 99.999% truth free reality that most of the country exists in. It's already happening now. And you can use the old "media bias/conspiracy" smear to discredit anything that isn't convient. But you will only be doing yourself a disservice. Stop ignoring what isn't nice, and start paying attention to it. Open your eyes, shut off CNN and actually LOOK at what is happening out there and don't require CNN, FoxNews or ABC to give the truth their stamp of approval. The notion that such a thing is needed, bodes ill for our world.
Perhaps it is now reported enough to be true, for you, but maybe for you it won't be true unless it becomes more popular? Popularity = Truth? A scary concept indeed.
"Oh. And here's an interesting tid-bit: In Toronto, there is a fellow claiming to be a U.S. Navy spy claiming that he had foreknowledge of 9-11. The interesting part is that he was locked up in a Canadian jail back in August. He was screaming and yelling about the impending September attacks, to the point where he signed a document to this effect, had it witnessed and court sealed, several weeks before they happened."
And the funny thing is, even with the remarkable.....simply STUNNING evidence (which is a matter of the public record) the U.S government doesn't seem to care if this guy lives or dies. He's demanding to be given a new identity and put in the Witness Protection Program if the U.S manages to extradite him for what appears to be a thurougly BS charge. But the U.S just wants to dump him into Gen Pop in prison.
Quite an odd place to put someone who obviously appears to know something.
Gen Pop is ridiculously unsecure, and legendary for being a place where people with information are silenced. I find it disturbing that the U.S government wants to put this man in the most unsafe place possible.
I'm not a conspiracy buff, but this sort of thing really bothers me. There is not a bunch of hearsay and twisted accounts making up the basis of this story. Just a lot of notarized affidavits from before the attacks even happened. And the fact no one seems to care is quite upsetting.
You can see something he wrote back in mid-August. It's now part of the court record in Canada. here
A note he wrote back in August contains the following quote:
"Let one happen, stop the rest!!!
An apparent aknowledgement that he would not be believed until after things started to happen, but a desperate plea to consider his claims once the attacks began.
But Mr. Carmack and his company have their critics. Their games are bloody and repetitive. Many former Id employees moved on because they tired of making the same game where players shoot anything that moves
Which is why I'm glad that the've decided to keep all the engine work in-house, while farming out a lot of the actual game development to more qualified parties.
By the time Quake 3 Arena came out, I think a lot of people realized that id had basically become a brilliant game engine company that should just cast off the illusions that they were experts in creating innovative gameplay. Because I think, while you can debate the merits of the technology behind id's products until the end of time, it became clear to many that the innovative gameplay was happening somewhere else. While the engine was brillaint, Quake 3 the game was the same old, same old. Deathmatch in a brown castle.
While many people had not-so-kind things to say about the multiplayer aspects of the origional Unreal, when Unreal Tournamnet came out, Epic was pushing the bounderies of online gameplay, while id was left in the dust, cranking out the same thing yet again.
Not to say Quake 3 was a crap game, a hell of a lot of people enjoyed it then and enjoy it to this day. I'm just saying that it was part of a downward trend at id, one that they seem to have addressed, and I commend John Carmack for that.
What you describe is the Green Light Of Death. A common flaw in the first generation of iMacs. One that has claimed a hell of a lot of machines.
Including mine.
I wish Apple would *do* soemthing about it, but they don't seem to care.
Needless to say, after my iMac died and Apple didn't want to fix it, I dumped the Mac for good. If it were some simple, random hardware failure, I would just deal with it. But this was a design flaw, plain and simple. It's their responsibility to fix it, not ask for $300 to repair the damage they are responsible for.
On one hand, you have them using and contributing to open source. On the other, you have them sending the lawyers after people who try to create a theme engine because they believe it is theoretically possible for someone to use it to violate Apple's trademarks.
You have them giving away developers tools a short while after they send their users firmware upgrades to prevent G3 users from upgrading (without telling the G3 users what the magical firmware upgrade did)
You have them sending firmware upgrades to block the use of RAM that doesn't meet Apple's strict standards, without telling users ahead of time the sticks they spent hundreds on are now utterly useless.
Apple can't decide wether it wants to be free and open, or continue to manifest its worst control-freak tendancies - ones that even rival Microsoft.
...that Apple can't be bothered to put decent video cards in most of their machines. They've just barely dumped the Rage 128 on the desktop - like 3 years after it was obsolete - and if you want anything more than a non-upgradeable Geeforce 2 MX, you will be forced to pay well over 2 grand.
But they don't mind making DVD burning accessable and shipping it as standard on some models. They're so intent on the user using the iApps they've lost sight of the fact that some people don't want their computing uses to be pre-determined by someone in Cupertino.
If they offered a choice between a Superdrive and a Geeforce 3 on the high end iMac the Mac gaming market would be a hell of a lot better off. Right now, it has to deal with getting cards one full generation behind the rest of the computing world and having to deal with them for ages - if you had less than 2 grand, a Rage 128 was your only option between 1999 and 2002 - now that they have the slow Geeforce 2 MX, many upcoming games are demanding Geeforce 3s.
I mean, the Mac would be so much better off if Apple could let their users forgo the DVD burning, Gigabit ethernet and other things they will most likely never use, and simply let them play games for once.
China doesn't give Communism a bad name, Communism gives Communism a bad name. Can you name a single Communist nation that you would hold up as a shining beacon to the rest of the world?
All so-called "Communist" nations are about as far from true Communism as you can get, and are nothing more than petty dictatorships that operate under the guise of being Communist. I find it amazing most people fail to realize this.
CIA Spook: "Boss, we've heard some rather interesting transmissions from the Chinease leader's bedroom"
Head Spook: "Please, don't tell me if this is gonna be some more 'Happy Fun Time' stuff with him and his missus."
CIA Spook: "No, sir, we have the translation for you, right here."
++++++++Begin Transcript****TOP SECRET+++++++
"HAHAHHAHAHAHAAHA! YUO IZ OWN3D HAHAHAHAHAH COCKSUCKER HAHAHAHAHAHA DUMB LAMAZ, ALWAYS PLAYING HW GUY! HAVEN'T YOU GOT A 1337 RIG LIKE ME? I IZ USING VIRTUAL PC ON MY WICKED 233 IMAC!!!! I CAN RUN TEAMFORTRESS ON UNIX, THAT'S LIKE LINUX, WHAT ALL THE SMART KIDS USE, BUT, NOT AS GAY HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!"
Slashdot Mirror
We would find some way to send them back where they came from. Launch an unmanned Mars return vehicle (if they were already in Earth orbit - sending Progress-like automated supply vessles up with food and the like in the interim) and then send a trickle of supplies back to Mars on a regular basis to keep them alive, and perhaps reach a level of self-sustainability. (which a Mars base SHOULD and almost certainly would have in the first place)
What might end up being rather interesting is if the contamination poses absolutely no risk to humans but is still too suspect to introduce into Earth's environment, then perhaps the stranded astronauts would live quite a long time, with the constant risk of possible additions to their ranks. Some astronauts might forgo the Depo Provera or Norpland and simply decide to risk it or may not take any birth control medications and find themselves caught up in the heat of the moment. And there is always the chance of birth control failing. (even though Depo Provera has a lower failure rate than ANYTHING - even surgical sterilization of either partner)
So, in a while, you might get a growing colony on Mars of humans that are developed differently (due to the gravity), with radically different life experiences and are also unable to interact directly with humans from Earth.
Quite an interesting concept.
Oh, the iorny
At the Museum Of Science And Industry in Tampa, Florida
The RIAA, BestBuy and others continue to make two, essential false assumptions about the music industry.
- The decline in sales has nothing to do with the content being produced by the music industry.
Sorry, try again. Many, many people who download songs end up buying the albums, however there is a severe lack of anything new or remotely innovative in popular music, right now. Record companies are STILL placing all their bets on Teen Pop, Metal, Rap and a stunning number of bands who have decided to get Eddie Vedder impersonators as their vocalists. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but really, the catagories I mentioned are the sum total of 99.9% of the music industry right now.
If people don't buy CDs, the record company mentality goes, it must be because of something wrong with the customer. They are unwilling to admit that they have alltogether tightened the reigns on the industry to the point where it is being choked. Radio playlists across the country are exactly the same, paid for by corprate moolah (indirectly, of course) and some DJs are not even permitted to play ANY songs of their own choosinig.
MTV has descended to the point where you get one, single video show per day and that's it. (if you are lucky)
TRL is a pressure cooker for sales. Videos are premiered on the show and since that is for many the only exposure to videos they have, they simply vote for the video they have been spoonfed. The result is a never-changing block of videos that are fed to the masses in a trickle so the minimum amount of variety can be used to gain the maximum amount of exposure for an "artist". This extremly tightly focused enviornment is used to force an artist on as many impressionable people as once, and give them few other musical options.
Now, for the second false assumption:
- That BestBuy, and any company that supports such measures will ever receive my business again.
I've spent thousands upon thousands at particular stores or products by particualr companies over many years. However, their business practices mean that my disposible income will cease to flow into their cash registers.
And I'm not alone.
The music industry has shown their utter contempt for me and I see no reason to give them a dime of my money any longer. I would like to support the artists I like, but even buying a CD now means risking buying crippled media. It doesn't matter WHY I would want to use a non-copy prevented CD, I'm sure it would surprise them that I would be doing nothing remotely illegal, just keeping one CD in the car and a couple of MP3s in my playlist.
But they don't care, and therefore, neither do I.
There are countless others like me now, and there are more all the time. I really hope the record industry likes what they've done.
You reap what you sow, and believe me, the record company better count it's blessings that a 10% drop in sales is all they have to deal with right now.
It's going to get much worse, and their strong-arm tactics are the only reason why.
Half-assed realism where a strong effort was made to achieve realism only to be dumbed-down for mass-appeal is extremly repugnant and annoys the hell out of me. When you have something that strives to be true to life, only to be peppered with a number of regulation "goofy" or cartoon-ish elements you destroy the value of even caring about realism and working to acheive it.
You end up with a game that is neither likely to please the realism freaks or those who are looking for a little lighthearted fun.
Sure, it might sell, and to many people that is all that matters, but to others, it is just a waste of time.
Furthermore, I don't see any problem with realism itself. People often tell me, if you want realism, go outside. But that completely defeats the purpose of fantasy. Which is not always to introduce radically new worlds and situations - in essence an entire universe's worth of new rules - but to offer the chance for the player to entertain some of their personal fantasies, whatever they might be. A lot of people I've talked to seem convinced that if you aren't offering a Dungeons and Dragons or Toliken-type world then you are just wasting your time.
I'm sorry, but most of my fantasies don't involve Orcs, Hobbits or Elves but being able to take a different path in life, one that I can see in front of me every day, but would never get to experience. That is my kind of fantasy. And it is not intended as a replacement for real life, but to offer a window on life that someone would not otherwise have.
And I would like those precious glimpses onto alternate paths to be true to life as possible. To give me a feeling of what it would be like to follow them without actually having to.
I don't consider it mindless escapism, though there is certainly a strong element of escapism in every game imaginable, but rather the ability to become more well-rounded as a person, to experience life in new, and different ways that are far different from what I ever could. And give me a perspective on the world I would not have otherwise had.
Realism gives us the chance to be anyone, to go anywhere and to step into anyone's shoes. It's not about replacing your day to day life, but about giving you the chance to see how someone else's is. Those who oppose it most likely don't understand this very important fact, or perhaps have different tastes or, perhaps are just unwilling to attempt to go to the trouble to implement it in their works, and perhaps fear the day where it would be expected of them.
For it is far easier to write your own rules, and to create your own bounderies than to take your concept, your dreams and to mold them into the realities of our world.
I've seen places use excessive fire-proofing as a decorative feature.
I wonder if it gets them better insurance rates?
*insert obligitory cliche about Wayne County, Utah being devoid of intelligent life*
;)
*return to your regularly scheduled thread*
*sigh*
I'm glad that's over with
In case you are wondering who the often-referenced Captain Hector is, he is a character that would appear in Escape Velocity: Overrride.
You would be cruising along the galaxy when a ship buzzed by and a Captain Hector would send you a message reminding you to register if you liked the game.
If you waited too long to register, or just never bothered, Captain Hector wouldn't just buzz by anymore. He would stop, and train his guns on you and blast away at your ship.
He proved to be quite effective, to say the least.
Well, in that case, people should be willing to move. If there is such a glut of talent as there appears to be, and people are miserable as they say they are, those without families or many ties in the area should be willing to relocate. And I believe they are! There is just a terrible fear that many IT companies have of being anywhere other than Sillicon Valley, and they need to get over it and quickly. People who want to work badly enough will move, especially if they are young and without families of their own yet. Over here on the East Coast there is no shortage of expereinced workers - and plenty of IT companies have had no problems finding the people they need. People need to break out of the Bay Area. it just doesn't make much sense to be there anymore. Companies need to take a long, hard look at their other options and I don't believe they are.
I never saw the reason for companies to locate their headquarters in the most expensive and trendy place possible. How many companies out there need that much physical proximity to others in the industry? Think of all the small manufacturing shops you see in the most remote places, and they depend on raw materiels and suffer if the freight cost is too high. What excuse does the IT industry have? None, as far as I can see. There are literally countless locations across the country that are ridiculously inexpensive and have the high-quality of life that will attract workers.
But no, IT corporations say "We need to move to San Franciso!". They are idiotic, and they get what they deserve for making such stupid mistakes, I have about as much sympathy for them as those who are rebuilding for the third time in the same location because putting up a house on a flood plain was a Really Good Idea (tm).
Is there any compelling reason to be there, other than ego? In most - read: almost all - cases....no.
Furthermore, what really gets me, is when companies have little or no revenue stream and decide to plop down in the most expensive place they can find and then set to work on maybe, you know....making some money.
Here is a stunning idea, locate somplace inexpensive - if you think you won't get any employees or business by setting up someplace that isn't flashy you are ignorant or simply unwilling to accept the truth. Then, build your bussiness slowly, spend as little as possible, supply good, but not extravagant workspaces and equipment and do away with most or all luxuries and see what happens. You might actually last more than a year or two. And when your company grows, it might actually be sensible to move to somplace more upscale. You know.....when you can actually afford to.
People just need to think for a minute, before they go off making dumb and obvious mistakes then crying about it later on.
You can create the most beautiful, well-thought-out and consistant UI for an OS, but if the individual apps are written with sloppy UIs, it all falls apart.
The one problem I have with Linux is the fact that 90% of the GUI apps have simply idiotic user interfaces. I burst out laughing the first time I used Linuxconf. The dialog window that popped up the first time it ran had a "Quit" button instead of a "Close" button. That is a perfect example of the misleading, inconsistant and just difficult to use interfaces plague the platform. There needs to be some sort of effort put into implementing a consistant UI across all apps, or else all of this work will be for nothing.
On the Mac, and to a slightly lesser extend on Windows, almost every app is interacted with in the same way. A user knows what to expect when they start just about anything but a game. And while you can argue what paradigm is the best, the fact remains the consistancy is the key and Linux lacks not only that, but a core set of accepted design principles. You can argue this will somehow curtail your "freedom" or something all you want, but the fact remains it is a solution that offers much more promise than the embarassingly ameturisih one we currently have to suffer through.
Badly designed user interfaces make Linux look bad. It's simple as that. When Linux looks bad, it's adoption rate is affected. How do people expect to combat the negative stereotypes of the platform if they are unwilling to band together to overcome the easiest to fix, yet most glaring problem with the OS? This isn't as much about asthetics of Linux apps as it is about the success of Linux itself.
If you think "Oh, I just use the command line" or "Who cares, let them program it themselves" or "It's pretty, so what's the problem?" you are being ignorant of the demands and expectations of those you care attempting to bring over from Windows or wherever.
Drop the elitism, drop the selfishness, just realize what needs to be done and understand the awful truth of the computing industry, one that seems lost on most Linux developers:
Give them what they want, or they will go away.
It's not about what you want, it's about what they want, how they want to work. Never forget that. You can't force-feed them every paradigm change and excuse for every bit of laziness on your part. You have to adapt to their needs and adapt quickly. You only get one chance to make a first impression and pissing them off by acting high and mighty about changing things to make their lives easier is not the way to do it. Many a promising platfom has died because of this, don't for a second think Linux is immune to the negative effects of the choices made by its proponents.
People need to realize that ignoring this sort of thing forever will somehow fix the problem, or that we will slowly somehow overcome it. I don't think that meshes very well with reality. It's going to take a clear and consistant vision with a lot of effort on the part of the developers and users to overcome this impasse. And believe me, it is an impasse. The platform is currently reaching critical mass and a point where it decides where it wants to go, and what it wants to be. Sure, this is going to be unpopular, but I don't care, I'd rather get modded down to oblivion than let this go unsaid. Because it needs to be said, and it needs to be appreciated, if not neccesarily liked.
When was the last time a real political sim came out? Go on, think about it.
Well, it's been a while. That prettied-up version of Civilization 2 (aka Civilization 3) sitting on your hard drive is not a political sim. It's been years since one has appeared. And the trend has been towards dumbing-down the political aspects of non-political games to the lowest-level possible. Just compare the relatively complex diplomacy of Sid Mier's Alpha Centauri to the Fisher Price foreign-relations of its successor Civ 3.
Political sims are valuable tools. They are a wonderful way to learn about the way governments work and the complexities of foreign relations that will not even be explored my most textbooks.
But they don't sell as much as SimCity 3000, Civilization 3 or Quake 3.
So, they aren't made anymore. Even the old mainstays of semi-intelligent gaming have fallen victim to the effort to make them more "accessilbe" (read: severly-dumbed down) to sell as many copies as possible.
I know it is a bit of a cliche, but back when graphics were far less detailed and 3D engines were unheard of, for a title to be considered unique, it had to rely on depth of gameplay, not color pallate.
Not that I have anything against bright, 3D games. I enjoy playing them everyday, however I think it is terrible that such enjoyable and valuable software has vanished and can only be found at Abandonware sites.
The service they provide is excellent, but that should not be confused with the level of service they provide, which, I must say is sorely lacking.
They have buggy software. This means on occasion, more money is withdrawn from your non-PayPal accounts then you authorized them to take. Giving them access to your checking account is a horrible thing to do, double-dipping is widespread and if you have any checks that need clearing, well......you are in trouble - assuming they haven't overdrawn your account in the first place (did it to me).
Due to the sheer size of their user-base, and their inability to correct their problems, much less deal with the number of complaints generated by things that aren't their fault (action sellers taking money and running, for example) they've taken to a scorched Earth manner of dealing with problems.
Any sign of trouble - your account is frozen - along with any money that might be there. Too bad if you're in the middle of a huge transaction involving lots of money that you really can't afford to lose.
This is like using a nuclear device to wipe out an ant infestation. It causes much more damage to innocent users than you could possibly imagine.
You have a problem, even if it is their fault they might not fix it. Wait more than 30 days to complain that they stole your money and guess what? The money is gone forever, you will never get it back. They will not allow you to file a complaint about their rape of your checking account if you wait more than a few weeks.
To sum it up, PayPal provides a great service, but they have shown themselves to be incapable of actually providing that service with any great degree of reliability or accountability.
This lawsuit has been a long time coming. More power to the plaintiffs.
Steve Jobs, to be exact.
The man has a vision, no one can deny that. But he has an obsessive desire to control every aspect of the computing experience with a zeal few in the industry have ever been able to even approach, much less match.
He has a long-standing history of making sure Macs are as non-expandable as possible. Which doesn't mean he's going to bolt the G4 case closed, but he is going to limit expansion options as much as possible where it won't ruin sales of the particular model.
He wants uniformity across the line in every way possible. Even programming a theme creation app is enough to bring the wrath of Apple Legal down upon you. Of course, the offical reason is that a user could possibly violate Apple's trademarks with such a program, but really, everyone knows that it is to protect Aqua.
Apple likes to control its hardware and its software. Moreso than even Microsoft. They go to extrodinary lengths to make sure what ships from the factory is what ends up being thrown away years later.
The whole "you can mess with the BSD/Mach stuff" in OS X is nothing more than a bone thrown to the community. The stuff they use is already out there, so it's better for Apple to just let it remain so. People buy-into the idea that Apple is somehow a reasonably friendly company that won't screw you over. But that's a fantasy, I'm afraid. One proven countless times by various actions by the company as it has strived to maintain it's control over every aspect of the platform and the experince a user has interacting with it.
But people defend them because they are Apple and not Microsoft. People want to see an alternative and they are willing to accept any one that bills itself as being better, even if the painful reality is far different than they want it to be.
The point is, Apple wants to have an extremly high-level of control over every aspect of your computing experience. In many ways, even Microsoft is less restrictive. x86 hardware - even with some sort of ROM - would be the complete and total antethisis of what Apple consideres to be acceptable. They would quickly lose control over the platform, and their (Steve's) vision of the computing experience would be completely and utterly undermined.
......one of the first things some scientist did after they managed to do capture the stuff was suddenly yell "Antimatter containment is failing! We're gonna have to eject the core!!!!!!!!" before falling to the floor laughing hysterically?
You know there has to be someone, somewhere who is just dying to be the first person to say that.
Now they can pay me back the $40 or so they owe me from double-dipping my checking account!
*grumble*
Honestly, did you read the article, look at the evidence that has been presented - and the statements regarding its accuracy, or simply look at the claim and then say "It can't be true"?
Do you have any idea of the amount of extremely important news that is simply ignored, completely and uttterly by the mass media? You can try to excuse it all you want as "Bullshit", but the fact remains, the media fails to report an overwhelming majority of what happens out there. It simply doesn't bring in veiwiers. Which leads to the beleif that things aren't true, that they didn't happen, if the nightly entertainment known as "The News" didn't bother to report them. It is having a catastrophic effect on our nation, one that I fear, will cause us HUGE problems in the future. Why? Because without a proper idea of what is going on, or what has been done in the past, people believe only the bits and peices they are spoon-fed by those with the power to "make" the news. And they are left incapable of holding their leaders accountable, and as a result their nation. And their country becomes a rouge state that serves the interests of their leaders and those in power. While the context of any actions are presented through the filter of the condensed, 99.999% truth free reality that most of the country exists in. It's already happening now. And you can use the old "media bias/conspiracy" smear to discredit anything that isn't convient. But you will only be doing yourself a disservice. Stop ignoring what isn't nice, and start paying attention to it. Open your eyes, shut off CNN and actually LOOK at what is happening out there and don't require CNN, FoxNews or ABC to give the truth their stamp of approval. The notion that such a thing is needed, bodes ill for our world.
Here is a link to a story on the issue by The Tronto Star.
Perhaps it is now reported enough to be true, for you, but maybe for you it won't be true unless it becomes more popular? Popularity = Truth? A scary concept indeed.
And the funny thing is, even with the remarkable.....simply STUNNING evidence (which is a matter of the public record) the U.S government doesn't seem to care if this guy lives or dies. He's demanding to be given a new identity and put in the Witness Protection Program if the U.S manages to extradite him for what appears to be a thurougly BS charge. But the U.S just wants to dump him into Gen Pop in prison.
Quite an odd place to put someone who obviously appears to know something.
Gen Pop is ridiculously unsecure, and legendary for being a place where people with information are silenced. I find it disturbing that the U.S government wants to put this man in the most unsafe place possible.
I'm not a conspiracy buff, but this sort of thing really bothers me. There is not a bunch of hearsay and twisted accounts making up the basis of this story. Just a lot of notarized affidavits from before the attacks even happened. And the fact no one seems to care is quite upsetting.
You can see something he wrote back in mid-August. It's now part of the court record in Canada. here
A note he wrote back in August contains the following quote: An apparent aknowledgement that he would not be believed until after things started to happen, but a desperate plea to consider his claims once the attacks began.
No one listened.
By the time Quake 3 Arena came out, I think a lot of people realized that id had basically become a brilliant game engine company that should just cast off the illusions that they were experts in creating innovative gameplay. Because I think, while you can debate the merits of the technology behind id's products until the end of time, it became clear to many that the innovative gameplay was happening somewhere else. While the engine was brillaint, Quake 3 the game was the same old, same old. Deathmatch in a brown castle.
While many people had not-so-kind things to say about the multiplayer aspects of the origional Unreal, when Unreal Tournamnet came out, Epic was pushing the bounderies of online gameplay, while id was left in the dust, cranking out the same thing yet again.
Not to say Quake 3 was a crap game, a hell of a lot of people enjoyed it then and enjoy it to this day. I'm just saying that it was part of a downward trend at id, one that they seem to have addressed, and I commend John Carmack for that.
What you describe is the Green Light Of Death. A common flaw in the first generation of iMacs. One that has claimed a hell of a lot of machines.
Including mine.
I wish Apple would *do* soemthing about it, but they don't seem to care.
Needless to say, after my iMac died and Apple didn't want to fix it, I dumped the Mac for good. If it were some simple, random hardware failure, I would just deal with it. But this was a design flaw, plain and simple. It's their responsibility to fix it, not ask for $300 to repair the damage they are responsible for.
On one hand, you have them using and contributing to open source. On the other, you have them sending the lawyers after people who try to create a theme engine because they believe it is theoretically possible for someone to use it to violate Apple's trademarks.
You have them giving away developers tools a short while after they send their users firmware upgrades to prevent G3 users from upgrading (without telling the G3 users what the magical firmware upgrade did)
You have them sending firmware upgrades to block the use of RAM that doesn't meet Apple's strict standards, without telling users ahead of time the sticks they spent hundreds on are now utterly useless.
Apple can't decide wether it wants to be free and open, or continue to manifest its worst control-freak tendancies - ones that even rival Microsoft.
...that Apple can't be bothered to put decent video cards in most of their machines. They've just barely dumped the Rage 128 on the desktop - like 3 years after it was obsolete - and if you want anything more than a non-upgradeable Geeforce 2 MX, you will be forced to pay well over 2 grand.
But they don't mind making DVD burning accessable and shipping it as standard on some models. They're so intent on the user using the iApps they've lost sight of the fact that some people don't want their computing uses to be pre-determined by someone in Cupertino.
If they offered a choice between a Superdrive and a Geeforce 3 on the high end iMac the Mac gaming market would be a hell of a lot better off. Right now, it has to deal with getting cards one full generation behind the rest of the computing world and having to deal with them for ages - if you had less than 2 grand, a Rage 128 was your only option between 1999 and 2002 - now that they have the slow Geeforce 2 MX, many upcoming games are demanding Geeforce 3s.
I mean, the Mac would be so much better off if Apple could let their users forgo the DVD burning, Gigabit ethernet and other things they will most likely never use, and simply let them play games for once.
China doesn't give Communism a bad name, Communism gives Communism a bad name. Can you name a single Communist nation that you would hold up as a shining beacon to the rest of the world?
All so-called "Communist" nations are about as far from true Communism as you can get, and are nothing more than petty dictatorships that operate under the guise of being Communist. I find it amazing most people fail to realize this.
CIA Spook: "Boss, we've heard some rather interesting transmissions from the Chinease leader's bedroom"
Head Spook: "Please, don't tell me if this is gonna be some more 'Happy Fun Time' stuff with him and his missus."
CIA Spook: "No, sir, we have the translation for you, right here."
++++++++Begin Transcript****TOP SECRET+++++++
"HAHAHHAHAHAHAAHA! YUO IZ OWN3D HAHAHAHAHAH COCKSUCKER HAHAHAHAHAHA DUMB LAMAZ, ALWAYS PLAYING HW GUY! HAVEN'T YOU GOT A 1337 RIG LIKE ME? I IZ USING VIRTUAL PC ON MY WICKED 233 IMAC!!!! I CAN RUN TEAMFORTRESS ON UNIX, THAT'S LIKE LINUX, WHAT ALL THE SMART KIDS USE, BUT, NOT AS GAY HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!"
++++++End Transcript**********************
"Highly regarded user interface" = "Considered by 6 our of 10 users to be 'the least crappy one on Linux' "
:D