I'm really surprised this is "news"... not only was it released a while ago, it had been rather publically in development for a least a year prior.
For those wondering, it's made by Fantasy Flight Games, the same company that did the board game based on Warcraft, as well as the CCG and board game based on the A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels by George R.R. Martin.
It's actually much more accurate to compare it to Space Hulk than Frag. Frag was based on the multi-player aspects of FPSes, while Doom is based on the single-player element (although you work on a team with other Marines in this version).
Yes, I have played Warcraft 3 without two buttons, and it worked perfectly fine. Hell, I had to back with the Mac versions of Warcraft 2 and Starcraft. Holding down command while clicking functions exactly the same as a right-click in any of Blizzard's games.
Not that I ever use the right-click in any of the Warcraft games anyway, even when I'm playing on my PC. The problem is that right-clicking is contextual- if you click on the ground it issues a move order, and enemy unit an attack order, etc. But often you'll want an attack order even when you're just moving your troops, that way they'll stop and fight if they get attacked, rather than just get butchered as they continue to the point you told them to move to. So just keep another hand on the keyboard and press the appropriate keyboard command for whatever command you wish to order. You get a lot more control, and you only need one mouse button.
If you want to know what's impossible, it's playing any FPS with a trackpad, Mac or PC.
I think the difference between the two is that Apple is perhaps underestimating the cababilities of their users, while Microsoft overestimated the capabilities of theirs.
Photoshop supports a scroll-wheel, and right-clicking brings up the brush options in a popup window (or similar choice of options depending on the tool selected. It works the same on both Mac and PC. If that's not doing anything useful, what would you rather the right mouse button do?
I'm all for differing opinions, but I can't stand people making false statements.
One thing that surprised me quite a bit was that amongst all of the Mac web browsers that support tabs, the only one that doesn't open a new tab with a middle-click is Firefox, the browser that made that shortcut popular to begin with. They may have fixed this oversight since last I checked, however.
"The apple mouse hasn't changed since it first came out"?
It's gone between four different bus types (Apple II joystick port, ADB, USB, and recently Bluetooth), five different physical shapes (really boxy, sorta boxy, smoothed, hockey puck, and lozenge shaped), and two different types of sensor (ball w/rollers and optical).
Pretty much the only thing that's been consistent over the years about the Apple mouse is the single button thing.
Petitiononline is simply a site that helps facilitate the creation of petitions by its users. You can't discredit one petition on the site just because one started by a different user. That'd be like discrediting everything on Slashdot because of the trolls.
Well, if you're using the AIM (Oscar) protocol with a different client you're technically still using something made by AOL.
I haven't used the official AIM client on any computer since '97 or so. It's just not a very good client. There's plenty of alternatives.
On Linux and Windows I use GAIM, and on a Mac I use Adium (which is really just GAIM with a redesigned UI). I know some people who use Trillian on Windows and iChat on the Mac, but I personally don't care for either of them.
Honestly, I just wish people would give up AIM and switch over to Jabber. It's perhaps missing a few features of AIM, but it's easily extendable (it uses XML, so adding client-specific features is pretty simple) and at least you're not relying on AOL.
Actually, this has been Apple's policy for years, and it makes perfect sense.
I've installed RAM on dozens of Macs over the years, and none of them have ever been refused service.
On the other hand, I had to work on a Powerbook one time where the owner tried to install RAM himself and broke the piece of plastic that holds the DIMM in place. Because he broke it trying to install a module himself, it wasn't covered under warranty. My answer for him ended up being a single large module to put in the other slot and be more careful next time.
This is actually a pretty leniant policy, and one I appreciate. They don't want people poking around that don't know what they're doing, but if you know what you're doing there's no reason to pay someone else to do it.
Compare that to other computer manufacturers such as Dell. I don't know if they still do this, but some old Dells I had to work with actually had a switch that got triggered whenever you opened the case, so when you brought it in to be serviced the technition would be able to tell if you were poking around inside. Not cool- I should at the very least be able to clean out the dust in my PC without voiding the warranty.
Apple has enough money in reserve that they could turn zero profit and still continue to operate for over a decade. In fact, it's been that way since the Apple ][ days.
Add to the fact that their market share has been increasing as of late (especially with the success of the iPod) and I think it's safe to say that Apple isn't going anywhere.
Many other people have pointed out that GMail is still in beta, and that if they would have told Google first it probably would have gotten quietly fixed without any damage being done.
Of course, they acknowledge that, but they're arguing that they're helping protect people by making them aware of the problem.
I call bullshit. This is about them wanting recognition for finding the bug. If they would have sent it to Google, it would have been fixed and no one would care who discovered it. Because they went public with it they can boast that they were the ones who found the bug.
Of course, it swings both ways. Now if someone uses this exploit and steals your password (which is honestly rather unlikely), you know who to blame for making it public knowledge before Google had the chance to fix it.
The "i" in "iMac" originally stood for "internet," but has since become a designation of Apple's consumer products. None of Apple's product geared towards the professional market have "i" in the name.
Consumer Mac: iMac Professional Mac: PowerMac
Consumer Laptop: iBook Professional Laptop: Powerbook
Consumer Video Editing: iMovie Professional Video Editing: Final Cut Pro
You get the point.
What I find especially interesting is the release of a new consumer product (the Mac Mini) without "i" in the name. This may be a sign that Apple has decided to start moving away from the "i" naming scheme.
Of course, there's still iWork, which includes the aforementioned Pages. I'm guessing that iWork (which includes Pages and Keynote) is a predecessor to a larger professional suite we'll see in the future. That way when they start pushing Pages as a professional word processor it won't be stuck with the consumer name.
Naw, "Digital Rights Management" makes perfect sense.
"Management" means it is being controlled or restricted by my interpretation. Thus "Digital Restrictions Management" is just being redundant, and doesn't say what is being restricted (in this case, your rights to digital content).
I dunno, the public high school I went to at the very least strongly encouraged everyone to use a TI-83. While other calculators may have been allowed none of the instructors knew how to use them, and some of the fancier calculators (including some TIs) were not allowed on tests.
In fact, the SATs and the ACTs have limits on the types of calculators you can use on them. I believe you're not allowed to use anything more powerful than a TI-83+.
It should be pointed out that M1A1 does make some changes from the original Marathon. For one thing, Arrival starts with the end of Pathways Into Darkness, which tend to confuse people who aren't familiar with the original games.
If Gore hadn't pushed for funding of the National Science Foundation to create nsfnet, the Internet wouldn't exist in the manner it is today.
Just change "took the initiative in creating the internet" with "ran the initiative to fund the creation of the internet" and you have a sentence that means the exact same thing yet can't be misinterpreted.
Having rode in a car with HID lighting, I can vouch for the fact that they do provide much better illumination than standard headlights.
They are also more directional than standard lights, which means that it's mostly the road and curb that get illuminated, not the oncoming traffic.
I've also been oncoming of a car with such lights before, and yes, they are brighter. But having been in both situations, I'd say that (this part is simply my opinion) the amount of increased visibility for the driver of the car with the lights is much greater than the decreased amount of visibility for everyone else.
There's a problem with comparing "normal use" to continual use. What constitutes normal use? Some bulbs in my house are only on for a couple of hours a week. Others are on for more than twelve hours a day. I'm guessing that neither of those are considered "normal."
I wouldn't be surprised if the "10 years of normal use" would only be about 3-4 years continual, if that. When you have a term such as "normal use" the manufacturer gets to determine what that means.
1) FASA licensed the mecha legitimately. Unfortunately a larger company (Harmony Gold) also licensed the designs and insisted they had exclusive rights to them. FASA was perfectly in the right to use the artwork, but by that time they were already having serious financial problems and couldn't afford to fight it out in court.
2) The figures were made by Ral Partha, the same company that made all of the old official D&D figures. Ral Partha paid TSR for the rights to make the D&D figures the same as they paid FASA for Battletech. The reason the Battletech figures cost more is because they're larger. (Later on FASA bought Ral Partha, but that was after they had been making the figures for years.)
3) FASA is no more. They closed shop several years. Battletech is now owned by WizKids (a company founded by ex-FASA employees) and published by GamePro.
There have only ever been two versions of each of the Lord of the Rings movie- the theatrical release and the extended release. The extended release reincorporates scenes that were cut out due to time constraints. This has always been the plan, and they've been pretty upfront about it. We all knew this release is coming, and I've specifically held off of buying the theatrical release because of it.
I'm sure that if Peter Jackson were able to get away with releasing the extended editions in the theatre he would have, but even the theatrical releases clock in at about three hours each. Theatres like to get as many showings in as possible, so there's an (unwritten yet present) time limit as to how long a theatrical release can be.
I myself enjoy the extended editions- the first two added scenes that I think added to the film. But I can understand that not everyone wants to commit four hours to watching a movie, and thus those people would prefer the theatrical release.
Yeah, Square-Enix is porting FF3 to the DS, but that's in Japan. They haven't announced a US release. I wouldn't be surprised if we never get it.
Square has never been all that good to their US fanbase. The first time through we only got about half of their games. Some of them (especially Front Mission 1 & 2, Seiken Densetsu 3, and Final Fantasy III) we still have never gotten official translations of. For the most part their English translations are rushed and shoddy, although in recent years they've done a somewhat better job. When translating the Final Fantasy Collection for the US, we lost an entire game in the process (FFIV, which was later bundled in a separate package with Chrono Trigger called Final Fantasy Chronicles).
Square has made some great games over the years, but they've never really treated their non-Japanese customers with any sort of respect. Nowadays I'm somewhat wary... I'm well past the point where something having the Square logo on it means that it's already on my "must-own" list.
Re:For right handed people only?
on
Nintendo DS Hands On
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The buttons on the right are arranged in a cross for that very purpose- in Metroid the buttons and the d-pad both do the same thing.
This may sound awkward, but I've played other games that use a similar control layout (MDK2 for the Dreamcast, for example) that worked rather well. I'm left handed myself, and the concept doesn't bother me too much (or at all for that matter).
Of course, I just bought my first Gameboy (an SP) earlier this year, so I'm really in no hurry to get a DS anytime soon. I think I'll wait and see if anything worthwhile gets released for it first.
Slashdot Mirror
You really don't seem to get it, but that's probably because you've got a fairly limited experience with board games.
The Doom game is a scenario-based tactical game ala the classic game Space Hulk.
The rules are available as a pdf, for those interested in perusing them.
I'm really surprised this is "news"... not only was it released a while ago, it had been rather publically in development for a least a year prior.
For those wondering, it's made by Fantasy Flight Games, the same company that did the board game based on Warcraft, as well as the CCG and board game based on the A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels by George R.R. Martin.
It's actually much more accurate to compare it to Space Hulk than Frag. Frag was based on the multi-player aspects of FPSes, while Doom is based on the single-player element (although you work on a team with other Marines in this version).
Yes, I have played Warcraft 3 without two buttons, and it worked perfectly fine. Hell, I had to back with the Mac versions of Warcraft 2 and Starcraft. Holding down command while clicking functions exactly the same as a right-click in any of Blizzard's games.
Not that I ever use the right-click in any of the Warcraft games anyway, even when I'm playing on my PC. The problem is that right-clicking is contextual- if you click on the ground it issues a move order, and enemy unit an attack order, etc. But often you'll want an attack order even when you're just moving your troops, that way they'll stop and fight if they get attacked, rather than just get butchered as they continue to the point you told them to move to. So just keep another hand on the keyboard and press the appropriate keyboard command for whatever command you wish to order. You get a lot more control, and you only need one mouse button.
If you want to know what's impossible, it's playing any FPS with a trackpad, Mac or PC.
I think the difference between the two is that Apple is perhaps underestimating the cababilities of their users, while Microsoft overestimated the capabilities of theirs.
Photoshop supports a scroll-wheel, and right-clicking brings up the brush options in a popup window (or similar choice of options depending on the tool selected. It works the same on both Mac and PC. If that's not doing anything useful, what would you rather the right mouse button do?
I'm all for differing opinions, but I can't stand people making false statements.
One thing that surprised me quite a bit was that amongst all of the Mac web browsers that support tabs, the only one that doesn't open a new tab with a middle-click is Firefox, the browser that made that shortcut popular to begin with. They may have fixed this oversight since last I checked, however.
"The apple mouse hasn't changed since it first came out"? It's gone between four different bus types (Apple II joystick port, ADB, USB, and recently Bluetooth), five different physical shapes (really boxy, sorta boxy, smoothed, hockey puck, and lozenge shaped), and two different types of sensor (ball w/rollers and optical). Pretty much the only thing that's been consistent over the years about the Apple mouse is the single button thing.
Petitiononline is simply a site that helps facilitate the creation of petitions by its users. You can't discredit one petition on the site just because one started by a different user. That'd be like discrediting everything on Slashdot because of the trolls.
Well, if you're using the AIM (Oscar) protocol with a different client you're technically still using something made by AOL.
I haven't used the official AIM client on any computer since '97 or so. It's just not a very good client. There's plenty of alternatives.
On Linux and Windows I use GAIM, and on a Mac I use Adium (which is really just GAIM with a redesigned UI). I know some people who use Trillian on Windows and iChat on the Mac, but I personally don't care for either of them.
Honestly, I just wish people would give up AIM and switch over to Jabber. It's perhaps missing a few features of AIM, but it's easily extendable (it uses XML, so adding client-specific features is pretty simple) and at least you're not relying on AOL.
It probably would go on cable/satellite (I'm guessing G4 *shudder*) and thus wouldn't be regulated by the FCC.
Actually, this has been Apple's policy for years, and it makes perfect sense.
I've installed RAM on dozens of Macs over the years, and none of them have ever been refused service.
On the other hand, I had to work on a Powerbook one time where the owner tried to install RAM himself and broke the piece of plastic that holds the DIMM in place. Because he broke it trying to install a module himself, it wasn't covered under warranty. My answer for him ended up being a single large module to put in the other slot and be more careful next time.
This is actually a pretty leniant policy, and one I appreciate. They don't want people poking around that don't know what they're doing, but if you know what you're doing there's no reason to pay someone else to do it.
Compare that to other computer manufacturers such as Dell. I don't know if they still do this, but some old Dells I had to work with actually had a switch that got triggered whenever you opened the case, so when you brought it in to be serviced the technition would be able to tell if you were poking around inside. Not cool- I should at the very least be able to clean out the dust in my PC without voiding the warranty.
Apple has enough money in reserve that they could turn zero profit and still continue to operate for over a decade. In fact, it's been that way since the Apple ][ days.
Add to the fact that their market share has been increasing as of late (especially with the success of the iPod) and I think it's safe to say that Apple isn't going anywhere.
Many other people have pointed out that GMail is still in beta, and that if they would have told Google first it probably would have gotten quietly fixed without any damage being done.
Of course, they acknowledge that, but they're arguing that they're helping protect people by making them aware of the problem.
I call bullshit. This is about them wanting recognition for finding the bug. If they would have sent it to Google, it would have been fixed and no one would care who discovered it. Because they went public with it they can boast that they were the ones who found the bug.
Of course, it swings both ways. Now if someone uses this exploit and steals your password (which is honestly rather unlikely), you know who to blame for making it public knowledge before Google had the chance to fix it.
Apple has always had that disclaimer. I've added memory in dozens of Macs and never had Apple deny service on any of them.
The "i" in "iMac" originally stood for "internet," but has since become a designation of Apple's consumer products. None of Apple's product geared towards the professional market have "i" in the name.
Consumer Mac: iMac
Professional Mac: PowerMac
Consumer Laptop: iBook
Professional Laptop: Powerbook
Consumer Video Editing: iMovie
Professional Video Editing: Final Cut Pro
You get the point.
What I find especially interesting is the release of a new consumer product (the Mac Mini) without "i" in the name. This may be a sign that Apple has decided to start moving away from the "i" naming scheme.
Of course, there's still iWork, which includes the aforementioned Pages. I'm guessing that iWork (which includes Pages and Keynote) is a predecessor to a larger professional suite we'll see in the future. That way when they start pushing Pages as a professional word processor it won't be stuck with the consumer name.
Naw, "Digital Rights Management" makes perfect sense.
"Management" means it is being controlled or restricted by my interpretation. Thus "Digital Restrictions Management" is just being redundant, and doesn't say what is being restricted (in this case, your rights to digital content).
I dunno, the public high school I went to at the very least strongly encouraged everyone to use a TI-83. While other calculators may have been allowed none of the instructors knew how to use them, and some of the fancier calculators (including some TIs) were not allowed on tests.
In fact, the SATs and the ACTs have limits on the types of calculators you can use on them. I believe you're not allowed to use anything more powerful than a TI-83+.
It should be pointed out that M1A1 does make some changes from the original Marathon. For one thing, Arrival starts with the end of Pathways Into Darkness, which tend to confuse people who aren't familiar with the original games.
What Gore said was poorly worded, but true.
If Gore hadn't pushed for funding of the National Science Foundation to create nsfnet, the Internet wouldn't exist in the manner it is today.
Just change "took the initiative in creating the internet" with "ran the initiative to fund the creation of the internet" and you have a sentence that means the exact same thing yet can't be misinterpreted.
Having rode in a car with HID lighting, I can vouch for the fact that they do provide much better illumination than standard headlights.
They are also more directional than standard lights, which means that it's mostly the road and curb that get illuminated, not the oncoming traffic.
I've also been oncoming of a car with such lights before, and yes, they are brighter. But having been in both situations, I'd say that (this part is simply my opinion) the amount of increased visibility for the driver of the car with the lights is much greater than the decreased amount of visibility for everyone else.
There's a problem with comparing "normal use" to continual use. What constitutes normal use? Some bulbs in my house are only on for a couple of hours a week. Others are on for more than twelve hours a day. I'm guessing that neither of those are considered "normal."
I wouldn't be surprised if the "10 years of normal use" would only be about 3-4 years continual, if that. When you have a term such as "normal use" the manufacturer gets to determine what that means.
1) FASA licensed the mecha legitimately. Unfortunately a larger company (Harmony Gold) also licensed the designs and insisted they had exclusive rights to them. FASA was perfectly in the right to use the artwork, but by that time they were already having serious financial problems and couldn't afford to fight it out in court.
2) The figures were made by Ral Partha, the same company that made all of the old official D&D figures. Ral Partha paid TSR for the rights to make the D&D figures the same as they paid FASA for Battletech. The reason the Battletech figures cost more is because they're larger. (Later on FASA bought Ral Partha, but that was after they had been making the figures for years.)
3) FASA is no more. They closed shop several years. Battletech is now owned by WizKids (a company founded by ex-FASA employees) and published by GamePro.
If you're listing it as an alternative to WinAmp, why should the fact that it's Windows only matter?
This is the movie as the director intended it.
There have only ever been two versions of each of the Lord of the Rings movie- the theatrical release and the extended release. The extended release reincorporates scenes that were cut out due to time constraints. This has always been the plan, and they've been pretty upfront about it. We all knew this release is coming, and I've specifically held off of buying the theatrical release because of it.
I'm sure that if Peter Jackson were able to get away with releasing the extended editions in the theatre he would have, but even the theatrical releases clock in at about three hours each. Theatres like to get as many showings in as possible, so there's an (unwritten yet present) time limit as to how long a theatrical release can be.
I myself enjoy the extended editions- the first two added scenes that I think added to the film. But I can understand that not everyone wants to commit four hours to watching a movie, and thus those people would prefer the theatrical release.
Yeah, Square-Enix is porting FF3 to the DS, but that's in Japan. They haven't announced a US release. I wouldn't be surprised if we never get it.
Square has never been all that good to their US fanbase. The first time through we only got about half of their games. Some of them (especially Front Mission 1 & 2, Seiken Densetsu 3, and Final Fantasy III) we still have never gotten official translations of. For the most part their English translations are rushed and shoddy, although in recent years they've done a somewhat better job. When translating the Final Fantasy Collection for the US, we lost an entire game in the process (FFIV, which was later bundled in a separate package with Chrono Trigger called Final Fantasy Chronicles).
Square has made some great games over the years, but they've never really treated their non-Japanese customers with any sort of respect. Nowadays I'm somewhat wary... I'm well past the point where something having the Square logo on it means that it's already on my "must-own" list.
This may sound awkward, but I've played other games that use a similar control layout (MDK2 for the Dreamcast, for example) that worked rather well. I'm left handed myself, and the concept doesn't bother me too much (or at all for that matter).
Of course, I just bought my first Gameboy (an SP) earlier this year, so I'm really in no hurry to get a DS anytime soon. I think I'll wait and see if anything worthwhile gets released for it first.