The Magician's Nephew SHOULD be read last. It looses all meaning if it's read first. Likewise, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe looses effect if it's read 2nd.
Sometime in the late 70's/early 80's publishers got the great idea of renumbering the series to make it chronological. It was one of the worst ideas ever.
Gamers out there might remember a game that game out about a year ago on the PS2 called Magic Pengel. It reminds me quite a bit of this project.
In this game, you used a variety of different brushes to draw a monster. You had different options, such as picking a "head" brush to signify the object you were drawing was part of the monsters head, etc...but, for the most part, the game just saw the lines you were drawing. The AMAZING part of this game was that it would take your 2d sketch and, for the most part, flesh it out in 3d. Not only that, it would also fully animate the model through a built in algorithm.
The impressive part was how well this worked. Not only did it do what it was supposed to do but, in most cases, it actually realistically animated the monster. It's a little cutesy, but you guys who are into this kind of thing should check it out!
I'm still a nerd and I still don't have a date tonight.
Until I can show a girl my Magic the Gathering card collection and impress her, lonely I shall be...
Hmm....are we forgetting about cd-burners? I know that when I download music, the first thing I do is burn them as audio tracks on a blank cd.
When I can get a dvd based mp3 player or a 20+gig mp3 player for ~ $100, I might be converted. Until then, the only place I actually listen to mp3's (that I've ripped or downloaded) is at work on my laptop, on one of the 6 dvd's I have that hold my entire collection.
"None of the questions in Reloaded are answered."
Geez, I think you're giving Reloaded too much credit....
The only question Reloaded raised to me was "why the hell did I spend $7 on this crap." Once I see Revolutions, the answers sure to be clear. "Because it's a Matrix movie, you damn fool!"
Hmm, so I could burn 4 tons of plants per mile to drive my gas truck....OR I could go to McDonalds, have them dump out their fry oil into my bio-diesel truck for free and get about 50mpg.
See, here's the flaw with your logic. NO ONE is forcing you to use Windows Media player or the Shop For Music Online function. If you choose to use it, MS is going to take you to their store or their prefered store. No one said you couldn't open Mozilla, Opera, etc., type in www.cdnow.com, and go shopping for music. It's YOUR CHOICE to use the Shop For Music Online tool.
That's like you walking into Best Buy and complaining that they don't have things set up like Circuit City. If you choose to shop at Best Buy, you shop under their conditions.
If it's that big of a deal, you're a big kid...open your favorite web browser and go to your favorite store. There's advertisement all over the internet and you still use it. Same with Windows. Take it or leave it.
I'm not an MS fan, but this is a little silly. Anti-trust or no anti-trust, if Microsoft wants to give their media player a shop option that points to their shop using their browser, let them. What next, do you want to be able to set default shops so when you click on the button, it opens your favorite music store in Mozilla? I mean, that's just a little silly...
This comparison doesn't even do what it sets out to do. It doesn't really COMPARE anything...at least fairly.
First of all, the IDE drive only has 2mb of cache while the SCSI has 4mb. Now, cache is more important to IDE drives due to the whole IDE architecture. SCSI is a much better designed architecture...cache limitations aren't going to be as apparently obvious. This is very unfair to IDE drives.
Secondly, the IDE hard drive is on a 2.2ghz system. The SCSI is on a 700mhz system. While they both have 512mb RAM, it'll still give the edge to the IDE.
Third, I'm assuming they're both using Linux? Are they the same OS on both systems? Same version? Kernal? etc, etc...
Fourth, what IDE chipset does the 2.2ghz system use? Not all are created equally. Conversly, we know EXACTLY what SCSI controller is being used. Pretty nice one too.
Fifth. The author never told us the size of either drive and how full each drive is. It can make a big difference. It's not unlike CAV cd-roms. The read speed varies depending on what part of the platter the info is on.
We all know that SCSI can't be beat as far as search and destroy type missions go. Pretty good at mass data transfers too. I'd like to see the author compaire the SCSI drive to an ATA133 8mb 7200 HD of equal size on an ATA133 controller...both HD's with a mirror of the same exact information.
The SCSI will still win, but it would be nice to see how things REALLY stack up in a real world situation.
I totally agree. Part of my job is UI design and I have to say, until linux distro's start comming out with a familiar, improved UI, people aren't going to use linux. It's part of the reason I don't use it. Of course I understand how to use it...I've done small scale unix and linux coding...but do I enjoy using it? Not really. Sure, I don't enjoy a lot of things about Windows either, but I can shortcut my way to oblivion. Half of the stuff is automated and, while I like to control my machine as much as the next nerd, my computer is so much more powerful than what I really need at this point that speed and raw performance isn't an issue.
Now, there are quite a few excellent Linux skins out there. They turn the operating system from something usable to something that I would even call practical. I, like the rest of society, have been brainwashed my MS. It's not that they've mastered the UI...it's that Windows has been shoved down our throats and, therefore, we're used to it. Why reinvent the wheel or, in this case, why learn something new when what we already have works fine?
There's monetary reasons.
There's legal reasons.
There's even moral reasons....and tell that to your mom, dad, neighbor, friends, etc....well, you're likely to get the stinkeye. Whatever dude, Windows comes on my computer and I don't have the time to screw around with learning something new as a "hobby." Comes on their computer? Hobby? Ouch, those are fighting words for the opensource community...a group of people who deadicate their free time to giving the world a free, better alternative to corporate Windows. When in the past 50 years have you seen the hippies, PETA, etc. win? You really haven't, and that's what people see open source as.
Anyways, enough with the rant. In short, mimic Windows except make it hip. Take example from popular software. Napster was a sentation, although it was one of the worst fileshare programs out there. It was hip though! VW bug's and golf's sell through the roof when, in actuality, they have some of the highest defect rates among manufacturers now. People buy iPod's when there's cheaper solutions. Make an image, make Linux cool. Heck, DONT EVEN CALL IT LINUX...get around the stigma of Linux and people might come.
The scene is a great thing; however, I think for it to go anywhere you're going to have to have a few imaginative souls to take it to that next level, not just a few programming wiz kids.
By butt ugly I'm talking about nVidia's pre TNT card, the Riva128. That card WAS butt ugly.
Of course, once the TNT card was put out, things started to change. But realize, that was a 2nd/3rd generation product. I'm talking about the old days of the Voodoo and the Verite 1100. I remember when the Riva128 came out, more people bashed it than loved it.
Forget about ATI, I never thought I'd see the day when nVidia was the standard. Back in the old days of the 3D wars, 3DFX was fast, Rendition was pretty, and nVidia was just butt ugly with a handful of problems.
I always rooted for Rendition, but I suppose they died when Micron bought them.
If anything, nVidia was the real underdog in the 3D wars...they were the only company with nothing going from them, and they managed to turn that around. I still hope ATI wins in the end, though. I like their technology quite a bit better than nVidia's....and you can't beat the 2d/3d quality with anything but a Matrox.
I wonder if these guys are getting paid by Microsoft under the table. They're the only corporation in the world that makes them look GOOD....and cheap....
Wow, that clip of the power glove douche was the funniest thing I've ever seen. I have an entire bookstore full of people giggling their heads off about it. I hope to throw at least 100 people into hysterics today
I'm hoping, just hoping, that all you PD well wishers get your wish. You'll get your shiny new cd-rom with your brand new, PD encompasing MMORPG!! You'll install it and start playing it...and here's what you'll find:
First few days: At first it'll be great. You'll die a couple of times at lower levels figuring out the game, but that's the learning curve.
First week: Your level 10 Super Shadow Slayer thingie dies. You actually put REAL hours into this character. You curse that class and pick another, disgusted that, "due to a bug in the game" (or your favorite excuse), you died. Figure you'll be more careful next time.
First month: You're level 20! Wow! However, now you've invested REAL time into your character. You start worrying about "loosing everything." You make sure that you choose your battles. You make sure you'll ALWAYS win.
Second month: The game has turned purely social. All you do is talk to guild mates, plan a strategy for possibly killing the a dragon in some cave somewhere...however, no one actually wants to follow through with the plan because no one wants to die! Everyone maxes out their trade skills and makes the best weapons and armor in the game to show who has the biggest...umm, sword. Yeah, that's it...
Third Month: Everyone gets up the balls to go into the dungeon. 2 people out of 30 die. Those people get super pissed off. They blame the cleric for not healing them, the warrior for not taking damage for them. They might be right. The point is, they trusted someone with their life and they were failed. They cause a tear in the guild, the guild disbands. Disgruntled players quit the game.
You see the point. People don't want to risk what they've invested, literally, days, weeks, even MONTHS of their life on. There's always the potential to die! We're not playing marbles...you're gonna loose more than your aggie.
What it boils down to is that you're eventually going to have to place your life in the hands of others. Yeah, that's great roleplaying I suppose...but there's a difference between pen and paper RPG's and a computer game. There HAS to be a difference! No computer can ever take the place of a skilled DM. So why even try to attempt it?
Bottom line is, if you're gonna have PD you're going to have on of the following....
1) A game full of utter chaos
2) A game full of heroes that NEVER die
3) A game full of very nervous and distrustful people
4) A game that's pace is so absolutely slow that only the most hardcore RPGer's are going to want to play it
-or-
5) A game that is 1% fighting, 99% social interaction, tradeskills, and errand based quests
Option #5 is the only viable PD option IMO
Why not just play Neverwinter Nights, a game where there actually IS a DM?
Actually, DVD+/-R's are substantially LESS compatible on modern home theaters than VCD/SVCD's.
The best option, IMO, is to capture everything and burn to SVCD. Granted, it'll take a while to encode everything into MPEG's, but the results will be worth it. I have SVCD's that I can't tell apart from the DVD's. The only bottleneck would be the capturing device.
A great way to do this, if you have a mini DV cam is to record onto mini DVD through the camera and then transfer it to your PC. DV tapes tend to rewrite really well...I've used one of my tapes about 10 times and I really can't tell any degredaiton.
Just never spent the time to say it in so many words. Linux will never be ready for me (a NetAdmin AND Technical Writer) until it's compatible with the rest of the world (the Windows using world).
I remember buying an "as is" stick of cache for an old 586 mobo once. I got home, got all excited to have a whopping 512k of cache in the sucker, popped it in, turned on the power switch, and.....WOW!!!
I've never seen that big of a ball of lightning jump from a computer in my life. The entire room was illuminated and smoked filled the room.
The next day, fully expecting the computer not to work, I removed the cache and flipped the switch. It worked for 2 seconds and died again. Later, I replaced the power supply and everything worked perfect. Wow, I still can't believe it survived that!
Re:I am sure Gates will be real upset about this o
on
XBOX Media Player 2.0
·
· Score: 1
Well, part of the "huge" loss is in marketing. When you buy an Xbox, part of the money going into your purchase goes towards Marketing.
I mean, you try building a pc with those specs, pay people to put it together (or build a plant that'll do it for you), make a pretty box for it, add a nice controller, pay game companies to make games for it, pay all your employees (including hardware/software developers, marketing guys, etc.), give two games with it for free, ship it half way across the world, sell it for $200 (er...no, that's what the stores sell them for...and it'll only be $150 come Black Friday), and you show me any kind of profit. I'm guessing they put, at the very least, $300 into each system. More like $350 or so. Yeah, they're comming in at a pretty big loss. Their profit is making a few bucks off of every game sold. Then again, when you sell at a loss of $150 per unit....you'd better sell a ton of games to make that back...
Re:I am sure Gates will be real upset about this o
on
XBOX Media Player 2.0
·
· Score: 1
...I have no idea why you got flamebaited either. I thought your post was one of the few logical ones
Slashdot Mirror
The Magician's Nephew SHOULD be read last. It looses all meaning if it's read first. Likewise, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe looses effect if it's read 2nd. Sometime in the late 70's/early 80's publishers got the great idea of renumbering the series to make it chronological. It was one of the worst ideas ever.
In this game, you used a variety of different brushes to draw a monster. You had different options, such as picking a "head" brush to signify the object you were drawing was part of the monsters head, etc...but, for the most part, the game just saw the lines you were drawing. The AMAZING part of this game was that it would take your 2d sketch and, for the most part, flesh it out in 3d. Not only that, it would also fully animate the model through a built in algorithm.
The impressive part was how well this worked. Not only did it do what it was supposed to do but, in most cases, it actually realistically animated the monster. It's a little cutesy, but you guys who are into this kind of thing should check it out!
I'm still a nerd and I still don't have a date tonight. Until I can show a girl my Magic the Gathering card collection and impress her, lonely I shall be...
Hmm....are we forgetting about cd-burners? I know that when I download music, the first thing I do is burn them as audio tracks on a blank cd. When I can get a dvd based mp3 player or a 20+gig mp3 player for ~ $100, I might be converted. Until then, the only place I actually listen to mp3's (that I've ripped or downloaded) is at work on my laptop, on one of the 6 dvd's I have that hold my entire collection.
You sir are a moron. First poster had it right. It's "are"
My good friends George Washington and Andrew Jackson say I'm hot, if you know what I mean (and I think you do).
I'm sooooooo lonely....
Chaos club? Dropping balls? Sounds like a ploy to get school funding for a beer run to me...
Damn, that David Letterman really was before his time...
The only question Reloaded raised to me was "why the hell did I spend $7 on this crap." Once I see Revolutions, the answers sure to be clear. "Because it's a Matrix movie, you damn fool!"
Silly humans...
That's like you walking into Best Buy and complaining that they don't have things set up like Circuit City. If you choose to shop at Best Buy, you shop under their conditions.
If it's that big of a deal, you're a big kid...open your favorite web browser and go to your favorite store. There's advertisement all over the internet and you still use it. Same with Windows. Take it or leave it.
I'm not an MS fan, but this is a little silly. Anti-trust or no anti-trust, if Microsoft wants to give their media player a shop option that points to their shop using their browser, let them. What next, do you want to be able to set default shops so when you click on the button, it opens your favorite music store in Mozilla? I mean, that's just a little silly...
First of all, the IDE drive only has 2mb of cache while the SCSI has 4mb. Now, cache is more important to IDE drives due to the whole IDE architecture. SCSI is a much better designed architecture...cache limitations aren't going to be as apparently obvious. This is very unfair to IDE drives.
Secondly, the IDE hard drive is on a 2.2ghz system. The SCSI is on a 700mhz system. While they both have 512mb RAM, it'll still give the edge to the IDE.
Third, I'm assuming they're both using Linux? Are they the same OS on both systems? Same version? Kernal? etc, etc...
Fourth, what IDE chipset does the 2.2ghz system use? Not all are created equally. Conversly, we know EXACTLY what SCSI controller is being used. Pretty nice one too.
Fifth. The author never told us the size of either drive and how full each drive is. It can make a big difference. It's not unlike CAV cd-roms. The read speed varies depending on what part of the platter the info is on.
We all know that SCSI can't be beat as far as search and destroy type missions go. Pretty good at mass data transfers too. I'd like to see the author compaire the SCSI drive to an ATA133 8mb 7200 HD of equal size on an ATA133 controller...both HD's with a mirror of the same exact information.
The SCSI will still win, but it would be nice to see how things REALLY stack up in a real world situation.
...That microchip pill will be the perfect match for this damn robot in my tooth.
lol, yeah, someone forgot their tags today...whoops :)
I totally agree. Part of my job is UI design and I have to say, until linux distro's start comming out with a familiar, improved UI, people aren't going to use linux. It's part of the reason I don't use it. Of course I understand how to use it...I've done small scale unix and linux coding...but do I enjoy using it? Not really. Sure, I don't enjoy a lot of things about Windows either, but I can shortcut my way to oblivion. Half of the stuff is automated and, while I like to control my machine as much as the next nerd, my computer is so much more powerful than what I really need at this point that speed and raw performance isn't an issue. Now, there are quite a few excellent Linux skins out there. They turn the operating system from something usable to something that I would even call practical. I, like the rest of society, have been brainwashed my MS. It's not that they've mastered the UI...it's that Windows has been shoved down our throats and, therefore, we're used to it. Why reinvent the wheel or, in this case, why learn something new when what we already have works fine? There's monetary reasons. There's legal reasons. There's even moral reasons. ...and tell that to your mom, dad, neighbor, friends, etc....well, you're likely to get the stinkeye. Whatever dude, Windows comes on my computer and I don't have the time to screw around with learning something new as a "hobby." Comes on their computer? Hobby? Ouch, those are fighting words for the opensource community...a group of people who deadicate their free time to giving the world a free, better alternative to corporate Windows. When in the past 50 years have you seen the hippies, PETA, etc. win? You really haven't, and that's what people see open source as.
Anyways, enough with the rant. In short, mimic Windows except make it hip. Take example from popular software. Napster was a sentation, although it was one of the worst fileshare programs out there. It was hip though! VW bug's and golf's sell through the roof when, in actuality, they have some of the highest defect rates among manufacturers now. People buy iPod's when there's cheaper solutions. Make an image, make Linux cool. Heck, DONT EVEN CALL IT LINUX...get around the stigma of Linux and people might come.
The scene is a great thing; however, I think for it to go anywhere you're going to have to have a few imaginative souls to take it to that next level, not just a few programming wiz kids.
By butt ugly I'm talking about nVidia's pre TNT card, the Riva128. That card WAS butt ugly. Of course, once the TNT card was put out, things started to change. But realize, that was a 2nd/3rd generation product. I'm talking about the old days of the Voodoo and the Verite 1100. I remember when the Riva128 came out, more people bashed it than loved it.
Forget about ATI, I never thought I'd see the day when nVidia was the standard. Back in the old days of the 3D wars, 3DFX was fast, Rendition was pretty, and nVidia was just butt ugly with a handful of problems.
I always rooted for Rendition, but I suppose they died when Micron bought them.
If anything, nVidia was the real underdog in the 3D wars...they were the only company with nothing going from them, and they managed to turn that around. I still hope ATI wins in the end, though. I like their technology quite a bit better than nVidia's....and you can't beat the 2d/3d quality with anything but a Matrox.
I wonder if these guys are getting paid by Microsoft under the table. They're the only corporation in the world that makes them look GOOD....and cheap....
Wow, that clip of the power glove douche was the funniest thing I've ever seen. I have an entire bookstore full of people giggling their heads off about it. I hope to throw at least 100 people into hysterics today
I'm hoping, just hoping, that all you PD well wishers get your wish. You'll get your shiny new cd-rom with your brand new, PD encompasing MMORPG!! You'll install it and start playing it...and here's what you'll find:
First few days: At first it'll be great. You'll die a couple of times at lower levels figuring out the game, but that's the learning curve.
First week: Your level 10 Super Shadow Slayer thingie dies. You actually put REAL hours into this character. You curse that class and pick another, disgusted that, "due to a bug in the game" (or your favorite excuse), you died. Figure you'll be more careful next time.
First month: You're level 20! Wow! However, now you've invested REAL time into your character. You start worrying about "loosing everything." You make sure that you choose your battles. You make sure you'll ALWAYS win.
Second month: The game has turned purely social. All you do is talk to guild mates, plan a strategy for possibly killing the a dragon in some cave somewhere...however, no one actually wants to follow through with the plan because no one wants to die! Everyone maxes out their trade skills and makes the best weapons and armor in the game to show who has the biggest...umm, sword. Yeah, that's it...
Third Month: Everyone gets up the balls to go into the dungeon. 2 people out of 30 die. Those people get super pissed off. They blame the cleric for not healing them, the warrior for not taking damage for them. They might be right. The point is, they trusted someone with their life and they were failed. They cause a tear in the guild, the guild disbands. Disgruntled players quit the game.
You see the point. People don't want to risk what they've invested, literally, days, weeks, even MONTHS of their life on. There's always the potential to die! We're not playing marbles...you're gonna loose more than your aggie.
What it boils down to is that you're eventually going to have to place your life in the hands of others. Yeah, that's great roleplaying I suppose...but there's a difference between pen and paper RPG's and a computer game. There HAS to be a difference! No computer can ever take the place of a skilled DM. So why even try to attempt it?
Bottom line is, if you're gonna have PD you're going to have on of the following.... 1) A game full of utter chaos 2) A game full of heroes that NEVER die 3) A game full of very nervous and distrustful people 4) A game that's pace is so absolutely slow that only the most hardcore RPGer's are going to want to play it -or- 5) A game that is 1% fighting, 99% social interaction, tradeskills, and errand based quests
Option #5 is the only viable PD option IMO
Why not just play Neverwinter Nights, a game where there actually IS a DM?
Actually, DVD+/-R's are substantially LESS compatible on modern home theaters than VCD/SVCD's.
The best option, IMO, is to capture everything and burn to SVCD. Granted, it'll take a while to encode everything into MPEG's, but the results will be worth it. I have SVCD's that I can't tell apart from the DVD's. The only bottleneck would be the capturing device.
A great way to do this, if you have a mini DV cam is to record onto mini DVD through the camera and then transfer it to your PC. DV tapes tend to rewrite really well...I've used one of my tapes about 10 times and I really can't tell any degredaiton.
Just never spent the time to say it in so many words. Linux will never be ready for me (a NetAdmin AND Technical Writer) until it's compatible with the rest of the world (the Windows using world).
I remember buying an "as is" stick of cache for an old 586 mobo once. I got home, got all excited to have a whopping 512k of cache in the sucker, popped it in, turned on the power switch, and.....WOW!!!
I've never seen that big of a ball of lightning jump from a computer in my life. The entire room was illuminated and smoked filled the room.
The next day, fully expecting the computer not to work, I removed the cache and flipped the switch. It worked for 2 seconds and died again. Later, I replaced the power supply and everything worked perfect. Wow, I still can't believe it survived that!
Well, part of the "huge" loss is in marketing. When you buy an Xbox, part of the money going into your purchase goes towards Marketing. I mean, you try building a pc with those specs, pay people to put it together (or build a plant that'll do it for you), make a pretty box for it, add a nice controller, pay game companies to make games for it, pay all your employees (including hardware/software developers, marketing guys, etc.), give two games with it for free, ship it half way across the world, sell it for $200 (er...no, that's what the stores sell them for...and it'll only be $150 come Black Friday), and you show me any kind of profit. I'm guessing they put, at the very least, $300 into each system. More like $350 or so. Yeah, they're comming in at a pretty big loss. Their profit is making a few bucks off of every game sold. Then again, when you sell at a loss of $150 per unit....you'd better sell a ton of games to make that back...
...I have no idea why you got flamebaited either. I thought your post was one of the few logical ones