Re:Indeed
on
Quake is 10
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I remember back in highschool, every day we played quake co-op at lunchtime. We had 8 people playing through it on nightmare difficulty. Eventually we got to the point that everyone had an exact role to do and path to follow on each level. We managed to consistantly get through it in 40 minutes or so after a few months of doing it every single day. There's just something that co-op has over everything else, the level of screaming sitreps and orders across the room, the level of everyone thinking that they are elite SAS commandos. There is just nowhere else you can find that stuff, not even in Battlefield 2 (a damn good game though).
I think the edge Quake had was it wasn't designed for coop, but had just enough coop friendly features (late arrivals doors etc) to make it still fun to play. That way we were able to exploit it, wait at certain doors, hit buttons in certain orders and split up into certain sized fireteams in places to thoroughly beat the system. Most coop games make the mistake of making the game linearly harder with more players, that is stupid because you don't feel your buddies are helping you, it would be no harder to be there on your own. If nightmare becomes easy in co-op, you owe a lot to your team and feel connected.
In most commonwealth countries (such as India), professional degrees such as medicine, law, buisiness, engineering, etc. are all typically done as Bachelor's degrees. The concept of a 2-3 year science/arts degree at a small collage then a masters degree at another institution is pretty much unknown outside of the US.
While there are many, many bad schools in India, a graduate with a Bachelors degree from a good Indian university has all the formal education they are ever expected to have.
Hey, I used the word "effect" where I should have used the word "affect" until I was 21 and now you are expecting me to spell "paedophilia" correctly? Damn, get some reasonable expectations.
Did you ever consider that I may have a paraphilia regarding bad spelling? I don't much care for feet or children, so I need something disturbing to get excited over don't I? If you think the foot fetishists have a bad time, I had an education with primary school teachers that tried to force my sexual identity of bad spelling out of me. Spelling is both intollerant and marginalising to those oriented in a different way.
Anyway, it isn't a problem, because I'm from NSW and the constitution declares that "trade and intercourse between states shall be absolutely free" (whether that gross misreading would stand up in court is another matter). Mind you, 16 year old girls not only often tend to be physically undeveloped but tend to also have their heads full of nothing but the most boring drivil so I don't see that law affecting me any time soon. To me personally, the age of consent can be no lower than the age of a woman I could stomach taking for dinner and a movie beforehand.
Pedophilia is a sexual fixation on children before puberty, most child molesters are not pedophiles and a few pedophiles are not child molesters. IIRC most sex crimes involving children are born out of the availability of that child, rather than a sick fixation on pre pubecents.
Australian states have laws prohibiting the carnal knowledge of a minor (under 16 in all states IIRC) and anal penetration of a minor (18 in most states, 16 in some).
Australian states also have laws imposing harsher sentances for sexual / indecent assult or rape involving children and broader definitions of what a sexual or indecent assault is in these context.
There are federal laws prohibiting Australian citizens/residents from having sexual contact with minors (under 16) overseas, especially underage prostitutes/sex slaves.
There are also laws restricting underage (under 18) pornography making it an offence to obtain or posess such media and an even bigger offense to create or supply it.
There are also restrictions on the employment of sex offenders in industries that involve children. All child related facilities must be audited by the department of community service to ensure that they do not employ people convicted of sexual and/or violent crime.
Penalties for most of these things are moderately harsh compared to similar countries, though carnal knowledge of a willing minor is not treated as harshly as it is in the US where it is considered to be a type of rape and sentanced as such.
IANAL by the way. I just picked up a bit of legal knowledge from my lawyer parents. As an early teenager, my parents liked to remind me that if I was to have sex with a girl my age we would both be committing a fellony. I was always a computer geek so it never made any difference.
Substitute "United States Government" with "Commonwealth of Australia" and you might be right. Anyway, it isn't strictly interest free, it is tied to the CPI to compensate for inflation. But since when have Americans had public loans or more than one good public university in one city anyway? I think I'm missing something here. Besides, Australian public universities pretty much pay for themselves, where do you think these chineese people go when they can't get a place in a good domestic school but still have $100 000 to blow on a degree? My education's price is regulated by the government, but it isn't subsidised by them, the chineese do that.
While I agree that private schools have many merits, privatization is not the only way to success. I attend a "Times Higher Education Supplement" world top 20 university owned by my government. I pay about US$4k a year for the privilege, supplied by a government interest free loan. I'm not the only one either, 40 thousand other students can say the same thing. In another top 20 university 5 KM away, 60 thousand students get their education for the same price. It is cheap and plentiful.
It occurs to me that no US private universities (of comparable academic value) supply degrees to as many students as mine for as cheap as mine does. Also, it occurs to me that the only US university that has both a brilliant academic reputation and enough alumni to supply its fair share of the worlds education needs is the University of California, a public institution.
I went to a conservative church and a wild highschool and I've seen kids brought up in many different ways. In the long term, the strictness and invasiveness of this upbringing never made much difference to the end result. One of the most well adjusted and independant young men I know grew up with a mother who controlled almost his every move and a father that controlled the remainder. They still have a very loving, respectful relationship. Also I know people who grew up well in houses where they were allowed to do whatever they wanted, good or bad and I know some very strong counterexamples to both as well.
Generally, a child will grow up strong in their parents values if they form a close, respectful and loving bond with their parents. If a child respects their parents they will grow up like their parents wanted them to, if a child does not, they will reject what their parents taught them whether it was just a suggestion or whipped into them. The mother and father should be influential leaders who set good examples, make good desisions and treat the child and each other well. That's what makes a good adult in my experience.
and remember that you're probably a complete moron about at least one thing
I'm sure he is, but then again he's not the one going for rides with strangers. It's one thing to not be able to write a realtime scheduler, its another thing to lack the basic life skills that keep you safe in this world. Just because someone is too dumb/arrogent/independant to be safe, doesn't make us responsible for it. If life were any easier for the stupid, they would just have licence to be even dumber. If they can only hurt themselves, let them be free and responsible, it is not our problem.
Unfortunently, even evolution will never get rid of childhood stupidity because it is exactly this kind of person that finds themself a parent at the age of 15.
The source is Starwars VI Return of the Jedi nomatter where else you've heard it. IIRC Admiral Akbar utturs these highly profound words when he witnesses the power of the "fully operational battlestation".
It is not supprising you have heard the line elsewhere though. George Lucas was never one for highly momentous lines, witness the usually talented Natilie Portman looking like a moron when she says pearls like "hold me like you did on naboo" and "you're breaking my heart Aniken". Hell, the only memorable lines in the 6 movies were Han Solo's which were probably snuck on the script when Lucas was visiting the shrine to himself for his daily devotion.
The emporer had force powers that allowed him to control weak minds and shoot lightning from his fingertips. Microsoft has money and a bunch of software that works sorta, most of the time, in some ways, if you don't try to do something important with it. I guess they both have covert control over the senate, but if MS was designing the death star, the rebel alliance wouldn't have needed to fly through the exhaust tunnel, or hit a thermal vent the size of a "womp rat" because the reactor would have been put on the outside to remain compatible with deathstar 98 and to allow a certain class of star destroyer to dock that hadn't been used for ten years.
You can download drugs from bittorrent now? If you thought the Riaa was extortive, you just wait until the drug dealers find out that their buisiness model is in trouble.
Let's say I know 15 people (other nerds) who don't know what the hell facebook.com is and none who do. "Population" mean is supposed to be 72% so sigma = sqrt(1 * 0.72 * 0.28) = 0.201. Standard error = 0.201 / sqrt(15) = 0.051. So my confidence interval size (for 95% confidence) is now T(0.05, 14)*SE = 0.089. The sample mean is zero, so the population mean has a 95% chance of lying between 0% and 8.9% at my university and thus I can be pretty confident that the study is totally inconsistant with anything I've experienced.
And by the way, a sample size of 100 collected in a country where alcohol is illegal for those under 21, conserning tick boxes representing what is "in" or not is likely to be about as relavant as data your great aunt learned at bridge club from a friend of a someone that saw it on a current affair program.
Hey, don't bash nerdy university students. I'm an undergraduate currently studying for a research masters level course on neural networks with a beer in my hand (11:25 am) and no iPod or whatever the hell a facebook is in sight. Mind you, I do live in Australia, which might explain my priorities a little.
Yep, I know some things change, but also some things don't. Compare the three donkey kong country games, they are all good, but they are pretty much the same. What about the two super smash brothers games, they are even on different consoles, but they are both the same game, one with minor enhancements. To go with zelda, compare Ocarina of Time with Majoras Mask, or Link's awakening with Link to the Past. How many Super Mario 1 games with slightly better graphics have they rehashed on Snes and various Gameboys for the last 20 years?
Don't get me wrong, I really like nintendo games, I don't have a console at the moment (I play on PC) but when I used to play console games it was always nintendo, however I am really sick of people claiming that nintendo is the holy grail of creativity just because their new controller is different. I've never had a playstation but I'm sick of people demonising sony because it has focused on graphics this generation, even though its developers are for all I know as innovative as always. Things were different when Shugiru Miyamoto could write two games a year by himself, but in this world of increasingly complex games, Nintendo's inhouse tallent is like spoonful of jam spread over a loaf of bread. Millions now have to be invested in any game that many people would be willing to play, leaving nintendo in the position of only milking their sure winners with almost the same dedication as Squaresoft or ID. I don't blame Nintendo for this, I don't dismiss Nintendo for this, but I sure as hell arn't able to overlook it for another chance to hate Sony.
Sony are evil, Microsoft are evil, I've always bought Nintendo, so why don't I hype Nintendo? It is because Nintendo deserves its current console fate more than anyone is willing to remember, when it was at the top it did some stupid things, first of all it betrayed its then ally sony when it abandoned their "Playstation" collaboration. Nintendo did not keep its deal with Sony to promote CDROMs for the SNES and this caused Sony to enter into the market with the PSX and distroy Nintendo. Also, Nintendo did not treat its 3rd party developers well, it charged extortionant licence fees, used legal thuggary to keep developers under control and entered into favourable deals with certain developers (erroniously known as 2nd party by Nintendo literature) with the exclusion of others, thus now Nintendo has almost no titles apart from the ones they made themselves. This cannot compete with Sony and particually Microsoft who will sacrifice themselves totally for their 3rd party developers and now command the loyalty of most big game houses who don't trust Nintendo.
Nintendo have been down on their luck in the living room for 10 years, but they are not angels.
Hmm, on rereading my post, I've really gone off on a tangent after the very first paragraph, whoops.
You know, I've been gaming all my life and I've played a lot more cookiecutter sidescrollers than FPSs.
Back before technology became good enough for FPS, big development houses were pumping out platformers at a rate they could only dream of doing with the more technologically complicated FPS. How many games have you played with Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Duke Nukem, Commander Keen etc. in their names? Furthermore, how often have they had something unique compared to the rest of their franchise or the other franchises for that matter? That doesn't mean they wern't fun, they just wern't unique in any way shape or form.
As for top down games, how about the Command and Conquer series, the Legend of Zelda series, the Ultima series the war/star craft series and anything by squaresoft (I know some of those games went 3d later on, but retained the original gameplay)? I played and enjoyed all of them too, it doesn't mean that they had any differences to one another of any significance. Remember when every man and his dog had a top down RTS in the late 90s and they were all the same apart from subtle unit naming differences?
Nostalgia is a beatiful thing, but it never gives you the right to be judgemental. The game industry has always been an incestuous nest of copycats, but they have always made us happy with what they have produced as long as our expectations have been low. If anything, I think it is getting better, with games getting bigger there is more places they can accidently do something slightly differently to their last game.
Even hard numbers arn't enough to make this hype worth caring about. Frankly, I won't know if a Wii is any good until I've played one. Will the launch titles be fun to play? Will the motion sensing controller make games more fun or less fun? Will the hardware (which we know is going to be modest) be unable to satisfy requirements for modern games and modern gamers, or is the PS3 and XBox360 just computational overkill? Will the wiimote force nintendo to be innovative in their games, or will they keep pounding out their 20 year old franchises and leave innovative gameplay wholly in the domain of PS3 developers like last generation?
Numbers cannot help with these question, only time and experience. I for one look forward to playing the Wii and maybe even getting one if it is good, though until then, I don't care.
Try ubuntu, it generally installs sound, video, network, etc. out of the box with no hassle. Judging ubuntu based on your experience with debian is like judging Ronald Regan on your experience with Charles Manson, since they both come from California.
This story was about a new version of ubuntu, it has nothing to do with windows or grandma. It is one thing to be nice to MS, it is another thing to bring up argumentative remarks prasing MS in its ability to cater for a hypothetical grandma in a story centred on another operating system. Furthermore it is something that we have all heard many times and doesn't really bring in anything new or insightful, thus the only reason for its existance is to disrupt an otherwise happy discussion.
Why do we need to see this every time? Who's talking about grandmothers here, or XP for that matter? I've never recomended anything but a Mac to someone over 65 because I doubt any grandmother I know could figure out either windows or linux, especially the instalation. I recomend ubuntu linux to anyone with computer literacy or interest in becoming computer literate and it is very good for that demographic. For an early 21st century operating system Ubuntu is easy to install, use and maintain. But it still is an early 21st century operating system and so that means that not every given person you can think of can use it effectively. Some people just don't grok computers and so no operating system on earth can help them (mac comes closest in my opinion, though I'd never use one myself).
I've never been a big fan of US government policies and American attitudes relating to the rest of the world. But seriously, I think you're taking this a little too far. We live in a world of oppressive dictatorships and nasty republics like N. Korea, China, most of the middle east, half of Africa, Iran and yes,to a lesser extent the United States. However there shouldn't be any reason to be kicking any of them out of the UN, a place where such things should be discussed and resolved. Sure, the USA is evilish, but so are most countries and especially the ones like Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China and the Sudan would fit far further on the evil scale than the US. The US is (to quote Mike Myers) the diet coke of evil.
All governments are evil, mine currently covertly runs/bribes/blackmails many pacific islands governments, brutalises refugees and supports bribing Saddam Hussain at the same time as bombing the living shit out of Iraq but still manages to be seen as one of the nicer ones in this world. Sure, yours gets up to more mischief, but that is mainly because it has more resources.
I'm a man 24/7 and I hate loosing whenever I'm a man. But the only times I winge and act like a complete whiny git when I loose is when I've been playing games. Its not like games teach me to hate loosing, its that they teach me that when things arn't going my way, I should end the contest.
By the way, my younger sister reacts angrily, sometimes violently when loosing a game (regardless of her own performance), far worse than any man I've seen. I think reactions to these things have as much to do with the individual as the sex.
What I find is games make me unable to tollerate defeat. One simply has no reason to loose in a game, since there is nobody to enjoy victory but you so one simply restarts the game. After playing military stratergy games or RPGs, then playing boardgames with friends I can't simply loose gracefully. My inclination is now to do everything in my power to cause the game to restart or leave the game, just like I would if I was playing my computer. This behavior is not very sporting and not becoming of a gentleman, but I find it very hard to control it.
Slashdot Mirror
But what am I?
I think the edge Quake had was it wasn't designed for coop, but had just enough coop friendly features (late arrivals doors etc) to make it still fun to play. That way we were able to exploit it, wait at certain doors, hit buttons in certain orders and split up into certain sized fireteams in places to thoroughly beat the system. Most coop games make the mistake of making the game linearly harder with more players, that is stupid because you don't feel your buddies are helping you, it would be no harder to be there on your own. If nightmare becomes easy in co-op, you owe a lot to your team and feel connected.
While there are many, many bad schools in India, a graduate with a Bachelors degree from a good Indian university has all the formal education they are ever expected to have.
Did you ever consider that I may have a paraphilia regarding bad spelling? I don't much care for feet or children, so I need something disturbing to get excited over don't I? If you think the foot fetishists have a bad time, I had an education with primary school teachers that tried to force my sexual identity of bad spelling out of me. Spelling is both intollerant and marginalising to those oriented in a different way.
Anyway, it isn't a problem, because I'm from NSW and the constitution declares that "trade and intercourse between states shall be absolutely free" (whether that gross misreading would stand up in court is another matter). Mind you, 16 year old girls not only often tend to be physically undeveloped but tend to also have their heads full of nothing but the most boring drivil so I don't see that law affecting me any time soon. To me personally, the age of consent can be no lower than the age of a woman I could stomach taking for dinner and a movie beforehand.
Pedophilia is a sexual fixation on children before puberty, most child molesters are not pedophiles and a few pedophiles are not child molesters. IIRC most sex crimes involving children are born out of the availability of that child, rather than a sick fixation on pre pubecents.
Australian states have laws prohibiting the carnal knowledge of a minor (under 16 in all states IIRC) and anal penetration of a minor (18 in most states, 16 in some).
Australian states also have laws imposing harsher sentances for sexual / indecent assult or rape involving children and broader definitions of what a sexual or indecent assault is in these context.
There are federal laws prohibiting Australian citizens/residents from having sexual contact with minors (under 16) overseas, especially underage prostitutes/sex slaves.
There are also laws restricting underage (under 18) pornography making it an offence to obtain or posess such media and an even bigger offense to create or supply it.
There are also restrictions on the employment of sex offenders in industries that involve children. All child related facilities must be audited by the department of community service to ensure that they do not employ people convicted of sexual and/or violent crime.
Penalties for most of these things are moderately harsh compared to similar countries, though carnal knowledge of a willing minor is not treated as harshly as it is in the US where it is considered to be a type of rape and sentanced as such.
IANAL by the way. I just picked up a bit of legal knowledge from my lawyer parents. As an early teenager, my parents liked to remind me that if I was to have sex with a girl my age we would both be committing a fellony. I was always a computer geek so it never made any difference.
Substitute "United States Government" with "Commonwealth of Australia" and you might be right. Anyway, it isn't strictly interest free, it is tied to the CPI to compensate for inflation. But since when have Americans had public loans or more than one good public university in one city anyway? I think I'm missing something here. Besides, Australian public universities pretty much pay for themselves, where do you think these chineese people go when they can't get a place in a good domestic school but still have $100 000 to blow on a degree? My education's price is regulated by the government, but it isn't subsidised by them, the chineese do that.
It occurs to me that no US private universities (of comparable academic value) supply degrees to as many students as mine for as cheap as mine does. Also, it occurs to me that the only US university that has both a brilliant academic reputation and enough alumni to supply its fair share of the worlds education needs is the University of California, a public institution.
Generally, a child will grow up strong in their parents values if they form a close, respectful and loving bond with their parents. If a child respects their parents they will grow up like their parents wanted them to, if a child does not, they will reject what their parents taught them whether it was just a suggestion or whipped into them. The mother and father should be influential leaders who set good examples, make good desisions and treat the child and each other well. That's what makes a good adult in my experience.
I'm sure he is, but then again he's not the one going for rides with strangers. It's one thing to not be able to write a realtime scheduler, its another thing to lack the basic life skills that keep you safe in this world. Just because someone is too dumb/arrogent/independant to be safe, doesn't make us responsible for it. If life were any easier for the stupid, they would just have licence to be even dumber. If they can only hurt themselves, let them be free and responsible, it is not our problem.
Unfortunently, even evolution will never get rid of childhood stupidity because it is exactly this kind of person that finds themself a parent at the age of 15.
It is not supprising you have heard the line elsewhere though. George Lucas was never one for highly momentous lines, witness the usually talented Natilie Portman looking like a moron when she says pearls like "hold me like you did on naboo" and "you're breaking my heart Aniken". Hell, the only memorable lines in the 6 movies were Han Solo's which were probably snuck on the script when Lucas was visiting the shrine to himself for his daily devotion.
The emporer had force powers that allowed him to control weak minds and shoot lightning from his fingertips. Microsoft has money and a bunch of software that works sorta, most of the time, in some ways, if you don't try to do something important with it. I guess they both have covert control over the senate, but if MS was designing the death star, the rebel alliance wouldn't have needed to fly through the exhaust tunnel, or hit a thermal vent the size of a "womp rat" because the reactor would have been put on the outside to remain compatible with deathstar 98 and to allow a certain class of star destroyer to dock that hadn't been used for ten years.
You can download drugs from bittorrent now? If you thought the Riaa was extortive, you just wait until the drug dealers find out that their buisiness model is in trouble.
Let's say I know 15 people (other nerds) who don't know what the hell facebook.com is and none who do. "Population" mean is supposed to be 72% so sigma = sqrt(1 * 0.72 * 0.28) = 0.201. Standard error = 0.201 / sqrt(15) = 0.051. So my confidence interval size (for 95% confidence) is now T(0.05, 14)*SE = 0.089. The sample mean is zero, so the population mean has a 95% chance of lying between 0% and 8.9% at my university and thus I can be pretty confident that the study is totally inconsistant with anything I've experienced.
And by the way, a sample size of 100 collected in a country where alcohol is illegal for those under 21, conserning tick boxes representing what is "in" or not is likely to be about as relavant as data your great aunt learned at bridge club from a friend of a someone that saw it on a current affair program.
Hey, don't bash nerdy university students. I'm an undergraduate currently studying for a research masters level course on neural networks with a beer in my hand (11:25 am) and no iPod or whatever the hell a facebook is in sight. Mind you, I do live in Australia, which might explain my priorities a little.
Don't get me wrong, I really like nintendo games, I don't have a console at the moment (I play on PC) but when I used to play console games it was always nintendo, however I am really sick of people claiming that nintendo is the holy grail of creativity just because their new controller is different. I've never had a playstation but I'm sick of people demonising sony because it has focused on graphics this generation, even though its developers are for all I know as innovative as always. Things were different when Shugiru Miyamoto could write two games a year by himself, but in this world of increasingly complex games, Nintendo's inhouse tallent is like spoonful of jam spread over a loaf of bread. Millions now have to be invested in any game that many people would be willing to play, leaving nintendo in the position of only milking their sure winners with almost the same dedication as Squaresoft or ID. I don't blame Nintendo for this, I don't dismiss Nintendo for this, but I sure as hell arn't able to overlook it for another chance to hate Sony.
Sony are evil, Microsoft are evil, I've always bought Nintendo, so why don't I hype Nintendo? It is because Nintendo deserves its current console fate more than anyone is willing to remember, when it was at the top it did some stupid things, first of all it betrayed its then ally sony when it abandoned their "Playstation" collaboration. Nintendo did not keep its deal with Sony to promote CDROMs for the SNES and this caused Sony to enter into the market with the PSX and distroy Nintendo. Also, Nintendo did not treat its 3rd party developers well, it charged extortionant licence fees, used legal thuggary to keep developers under control and entered into favourable deals with certain developers (erroniously known as 2nd party by Nintendo literature) with the exclusion of others, thus now Nintendo has almost no titles apart from the ones they made themselves. This cannot compete with Sony and particually Microsoft who will sacrifice themselves totally for their 3rd party developers and now command the loyalty of most big game houses who don't trust Nintendo.
Nintendo have been down on their luck in the living room for 10 years, but they are not angels.
Hmm, on rereading my post, I've really gone off on a tangent after the very first paragraph, whoops.
Ok, I understand that. That's why developers of games like Katamari Damacy and Ico stay the hell away from the PS2.
Back before technology became good enough for FPS, big development houses were pumping out platformers at a rate they could only dream of doing with the more technologically complicated FPS. How many games have you played with Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Duke Nukem, Commander Keen etc. in their names? Furthermore, how often have they had something unique compared to the rest of their franchise or the other franchises for that matter? That doesn't mean they wern't fun, they just wern't unique in any way shape or form.
As for top down games, how about the Command and Conquer series, the Legend of Zelda series, the Ultima series the war/star craft series and anything by squaresoft (I know some of those games went 3d later on, but retained the original gameplay)? I played and enjoyed all of them too, it doesn't mean that they had any differences to one another of any significance. Remember when every man and his dog had a top down RTS in the late 90s and they were all the same apart from subtle unit naming differences?
Nostalgia is a beatiful thing, but it never gives you the right to be judgemental. The game industry has always been an incestuous nest of copycats, but they have always made us happy with what they have produced as long as our expectations have been low. If anything, I think it is getting better, with games getting bigger there is more places they can accidently do something slightly differently to their last game.
Numbers cannot help with these question, only time and experience. I for one look forward to playing the Wii and maybe even getting one if it is good, though until then, I don't care.
This story was about a new version of ubuntu, it has nothing to do with windows or grandma. It is one thing to be nice to MS, it is another thing to bring up argumentative remarks prasing MS in its ability to cater for a hypothetical grandma in a story centred on another operating system. Furthermore it is something that we have all heard many times and doesn't really bring in anything new or insightful, thus the only reason for its existance is to disrupt an otherwise happy discussion.
Wow, that's way better than my reply to the same parent, I wish I had read it first.
Why do we need to see this every time? Who's talking about grandmothers here, or XP for that matter? I've never recomended anything but a Mac to someone over 65 because I doubt any grandmother I know could figure out either windows or linux, especially the instalation. I recomend ubuntu linux to anyone with computer literacy or interest in becoming computer literate and it is very good for that demographic. For an early 21st century operating system Ubuntu is easy to install, use and maintain. But it still is an early 21st century operating system and so that means that not every given person you can think of can use it effectively. Some people just don't grok computers and so no operating system on earth can help them (mac comes closest in my opinion, though I'd never use one myself).
All governments are evil, mine currently covertly runs/bribes/blackmails many pacific islands governments, brutalises refugees and supports bribing Saddam Hussain at the same time as bombing the living shit out of Iraq but still manages to be seen as one of the nicer ones in this world. Sure, yours gets up to more mischief, but that is mainly because it has more resources.
By the way, my younger sister reacts angrily, sometimes violently when loosing a game (regardless of her own performance), far worse than any man I've seen. I think reactions to these things have as much to do with the individual as the sex.
What I find is games make me unable to tollerate defeat. One simply has no reason to loose in a game, since there is nobody to enjoy victory but you so one simply restarts the game. After playing military stratergy games or RPGs, then playing boardgames with friends I can't simply loose gracefully. My inclination is now to do everything in my power to cause the game to restart or leave the game, just like I would if I was playing my computer. This behavior is not very sporting and not becoming of a gentleman, but I find it very hard to control it.