Not so, I consider that a lame cop-out. If I can get it working through a series of steps, there is no reason an installation process can't do it for me. On most recent installations, I can -eventually- get it working without even having to download extra drivers etc. In other words, it's all right there on the installation discs, but for some stupid reason, the installer insists that you hold it's hand all the way through and then pukes all over the place if you pick something wrong or refuses to proceed if you don't know the correct selection (many installers have nothing in the way of default just-to-get-by-for-now selections.) Also, the reason I use the Win98 example is that it manages to somehow get me through installation and in at least a passably functional graphical state even on brand-spanking-new hardware that it no way in hell has drivers for, and in a few cases probably not even remotely similar drivers? I guess what pisses me off most about *nix installs is that in too many cases there is little / nothing in the way of legacy, one size fits all, it'll-work-but-it'll-be-ugly drivers, which means that if you don't have a second PC handy, you'll have to re-format, re-install Windows, fire up Google, and spend 3 hours searching for 1) somebody who actually had the same problem as you who 2) miraculously got a helpful reply, and then start the *nix installation all over again from scratch and hope to hell you don't hit another wall and have to go through it all over again. I've rarely had trouble installing *nix because the driver wasn't included in the install.iso's and never had a problem where the driver didn't exist at all. The problem isn't a lack of drivers, it's a lack of sane installers.
Or just make installation easier. One of my newer PC's has this SATA / RAID onboard contoller, but there are BIOS options that make it 'fake' stock-standard IDE. Using this setting, I can install my ancient copy of Win98SE. I've tried (and failed) several times to get various Linux distros / BSD's to even acknowledge that I have hard drives. Similar issues with picking your mouse type, picking your monitor, etc. Even doing 'the right thing' by getting a list of all the hardware you have before you install Linux (or BSD) is useless more than half the time, because unless your hardware is 3+ years old, it is unlikely to be listed...you have to pick a compatible driver. If you haven't spent a few hours a week for the last several years browsing NewEgg, I expect it's rather difficult to know what piece of hardware is going to be most similar to the one you have. That's just the tip of the iceberg on the difficulty of installing Linux, let alone setting everything up (CUPS...gah!) once you have it installed. Don't get me wrong, I like Linux and BSD (slightly leaning towards BSD), but I make a living doing hardware / software maintenance on PC's, setting up and managing networks and servers, helping users, etc., and I HATE installing *nix. How hard must it be for non-geeks? My mom can install Windows XP on a computer all by herself (Step 1: Insert OS CD, keep clicking next / yes / ok. Pick your time zone. Continue clicking next / yes / ok. Be sure to remove the CD when it tells you to. Step 2: Insert MoBo CD. Keep clicking next / yes / ok. Remove CD. Step 3: Insert Video Card CD. Keep clicking next / yes / ok. Remove CD. DONE!) I don't expect *nix to be THAT easy, but it would be nice to be confident that without having a secondary PC available, a given Linux can be installed on a 1 year old or less PC in less than 10 utterances of WTF, SOAB, or MFPOS.
Not yet. Motorcycle is paid off March 15. So I figure either May I get a Mini, or August I get an iMac. Planning on keeping the P.C., only looking into Mac for the development environment (Cocoa, etc.)...whaddaya think, will the Mini cut it, or save for iMac?
Will future episodes also be available online? Surely they realize that they will get FAR more votes than regular viewers. It would be awesome if they did post them online all the time though.
That aside, though, I have to say I agree with earlier posters: I'd just as soon see the funding go to Nova and maybe Nature.
I can't believe there were 20 publishers worth note at all this year (at least for the period considered for the list). It's kind of been a crap year for games...most of the games I currently list as recent favorites or can recall being excited about were in '05. There are some out just recently (Rainbow Six: Vegas, Call of Duty 3) and coming soon (Spore, Warhammer MMO), but mostly it's been a dud year, to me at least.
I was under the impression that only the exe went in the second param, and flags went in the final. Shouldn't it be hahaha.Run("c", "\\windows\\system32\\regsvr32.exe", "-u lunchapp.ocx") ?
You just reminded me of a category I hadn't even thought of, that being simple time-waster 'minesweeper' type games. I have to have burned as much time on 'Jardinains!' / 'Jardinains! 2' this year as any other game...easily as much time.
Games I burned the most time on / enjoyed the most this year:
1) Eve Loving the Kali expansion. Oh, and as to the complaint that older players are 'uncatchable': I don't mind, because it's not possible to be the end-all be-all of everything in Eve, unlike other MMO's where you can master all types of weapons, magic, armor, get the highest possible level, etc. And even if you could, you can only fly one ship at a time. All the Cruiser skills in the world don't mean jack when you're in a Battleship. No matter how old a character is, they are only slightly less vulnerable than the next guy in low security areas.
2) Day of Defeat: Source. At first I hated it compared to the original DoD, but it grew on me.
3) Final Fantasy XII Yeah, FF freak, what can I say?
4) Sam & Max: Culture Shock. It's almost like Myst or Safecracker or something, except with sick / violent / non sequitur humor all over. Awesome!
If they want to pull this off, one thing they will absolutely have to do is make available for download some sort of non-geek friendly equivalent of 3DMark so that people who don't know the make and model of every component in their PC can just run a quick test and get a list of all the games they can currently run and possibly what they need in order to run LatestKillerGame 2008 or whatever, as well as hardware compatibility testing and a guided, centralized driver, BIOS, etc. upgrade system. So long as you have to know a dozen different numbers, from GPU to RAM speed to Processor family to Driver Version, as well as digging through archaic hardware manufacturer support sites and mysterious newsgroups to make sure that you don't end up with a dud even though your hardware exceeds the spec (Ubisoft / NVidia, I'm looking at you) because drivers are clashing and all involved parties are sitting on one hand and using the other to point a finger at somebody else instead of fixing it, PC gaming will simply never compare to console. Granted, I use a console maybe twice a month compared to gaming on PC nearly daily, but there's just no way in hell most of my console-gamer friends could hope to sift through the mess.
The point isn't to get the game itself running. The point is a F/OSS MMORPG engine. Getting the graphics and network code available in a way that people can use and learn from it...lower the coding time / expense barrier to entry in the industry a tad.
Game developers of the world: Sit down, shut up, and start taking notes! This is how you turn a beta into a game people will actually pay for before the 'Gold Edition' (with all the patches of the last year included) is released.
I used to have a Cadillac with a switch on the mirror...there were 3 modes: Normal, Auto-Dim 1, Auto-Dim 2. The Auto-Dim settings were like the tab you flip at night so that it's tinted so car headlights behind you don't blind you. The two modes varied how sensitive it was / how dark the tint was.
Not really a problem for me or any other Eve players I know, simply because there is no sense of level building by EXP like in other RPGs; you train skills, and the skills train until they're done whether you log in or not. Also, they keep your character / property intact for a very long time if you cancel the account (I once went over 6mo. without internet and still had all my stuff when I came back). Taking a break is no problem...set a long skill to train and forget about it. The only penalty for not logging in is that you can't kill / mine for money (you can put stuff on market or auction and sales will be managed by the market / auction system whether you log in or not), but you can easily make 'enough' money if you only play 5 - 10hrs a week. Aside from money, which as I say isn't a big issue anyways, there's no punishment for not being able to play as many hours as the average 14 year old. On the flip side, of course, there's no reward for being able to play as many hours as the average 14 year old (aside from more money and technical skill at the game) so the playerbase, on the whole, seems to be significantly more mature than other games I've played. As it happens, strategy and planning have more bearing than a quick mouse finger, though, so even at that you get a bonus for being older. Lots of ex-mil folks play.
One problem, though, is that there's no force-feedback. Sword-swinging action might be good for fighting games or something like Morrowind / Oblivion in that you always follow through completely before starting your next attack. For light-sabre type stuff that would sorta suck because if your attack was blocked in the game but you followed through IRL, the resulting movements of your light-sabre would be unpredictably wild, but if you paid attention to make sure you didn't let your arm get out of sync with the in-game due to in-game factors (such as an enemy blocking with a light-sabre of their own), it'd be basically like playing Counter Strike with a 300ms ping...you'd have to be constantly hesitant and a bit behind the curve to not get messed up.
Re:Standard geek viewpoint == standard geek proble
on
Why Vista Took So Long
·
· Score: 1
But at McD's they have pictures and descriptive names that tell you the difference between an Number 3 and a Number 10. At Big Box Mart, you can read the box, compare prices, use brand name recognition, etc. What MS does is about like if Big Box Mart just stacked all the stereos together in identical, plain white boxes, and named labeled some 'Stereo', some 'Radio', and some 'CD Player'. So say you buy a 'Radio' and a friend buys a 'Stereo'. Except...they both can produce stereo audio, both receive AM/FM radio, and both can even play CD's, it's just that one of them seems to turn on a little bit faster, but once in a while the tuner will be reset to the default station. It's not so much about the choices, as it is about the ambiguity about which does what and why you might use one instead of the other.
Re:Standard geek viewpoint == standard geek proble
on
Why Vista Took So Long
·
· Score: 1
A true geek probably wouldn't bother with something that took 2-3 mouse-clicks to do if there was a keystroke-combo that did the job.
Exactly. I have two ways of leaving my computer: Work computer on weeknights, home computer all the time: Ctrl-Alt-Del 'Enter' (and then I turn off the monitor). Work computer on Friday night: Ctrl-Alt-Del 's' 'Enter' (and then I turn off the monitor).
Slashdot Mirror
I can think of at least a few bits of ASCII art that could be fun on a billboard...
Not so, I consider that a lame cop-out. If I can get it working through a series of steps, there is no reason an installation process can't do it for me. On most recent installations, I can -eventually- get it working without even having to download extra drivers etc. In other words, it's all right there on the installation discs, but for some stupid reason, the installer insists that you hold it's hand all the way through and then pukes all over the place if you pick something wrong or refuses to proceed if you don't know the correct selection (many installers have nothing in the way of default just-to-get-by-for-now selections.) Also, the reason I use the Win98 example is that it manages to somehow get me through installation and in at least a passably functional graphical state even on brand-spanking-new hardware that it no way in hell has drivers for, and in a few cases probably not even remotely similar drivers? I guess what pisses me off most about *nix installs is that in too many cases there is little / nothing in the way of legacy, one size fits all, it'll-work-but-it'll-be-ugly drivers, which means that if you don't have a second PC handy, you'll have to re-format, re-install Windows, fire up Google, and spend 3 hours searching for 1) somebody who actually had the same problem as you who 2) miraculously got a helpful reply, and then start the *nix installation all over again from scratch and hope to hell you don't hit another wall and have to go through it all over again. I've rarely had trouble installing *nix because the driver wasn't included in the install .iso's and never had a problem where the driver didn't exist at all. The problem isn't a lack of drivers, it's a lack of sane installers.
Or just make installation easier. One of my newer PC's has this SATA / RAID onboard contoller, but there are BIOS options that make it 'fake' stock-standard IDE. Using this setting, I can install my ancient copy of Win98SE. I've tried (and failed) several times to get various Linux distros / BSD's to even acknowledge that I have hard drives. Similar issues with picking your mouse type, picking your monitor, etc. Even doing 'the right thing' by getting a list of all the hardware you have before you install Linux (or BSD) is useless more than half the time, because unless your hardware is 3+ years old, it is unlikely to be listed...you have to pick a compatible driver. If you haven't spent a few hours a week for the last several years browsing NewEgg, I expect it's rather difficult to know what piece of hardware is going to be most similar to the one you have. That's just the tip of the iceberg on the difficulty of installing Linux, let alone setting everything up (CUPS...gah!) once you have it installed.
Don't get me wrong, I like Linux and BSD (slightly leaning towards BSD), but I make a living doing hardware / software maintenance on PC's, setting up and managing networks and servers, helping users, etc., and I HATE installing *nix. How hard must it be for non-geeks? My mom can install Windows XP on a computer all by herself (Step 1: Insert OS CD, keep clicking next / yes / ok. Pick your time zone. Continue clicking next / yes / ok. Be sure to remove the CD when it tells you to. Step 2: Insert MoBo CD. Keep clicking next / yes / ok. Remove CD. Step 3: Insert Video Card CD. Keep clicking next / yes / ok. Remove CD. DONE!) I don't expect *nix to be THAT easy, but it would be nice to be confident that without having a secondary PC available, a given Linux can be installed on a 1 year old or less PC in less than 10 utterances of WTF, SOAB, or MFPOS.
Not yet. Motorcycle is paid off March 15. So I figure either May I get a Mini, or August I get an iMac. Planning on keeping the P.C., only looking into Mac for the development environment (Cocoa, etc.)...whaddaya think, will the Mini cut it, or save for iMac?
¥: Alt-0165 ;)
Will future episodes also be available online? Surely they realize that they will get FAR more votes than regular viewers. It would be awesome if they did post them online all the time though. That aside, though, I have to say I agree with earlier posters: I'd just as soon see the funding go to Nova and maybe Nature.
I can't believe there were 20 publishers worth note at all this year (at least for the period considered for the list). It's kind of been a crap year for games...most of the games I currently list as recent favorites or can recall being excited about were in '05. There are some out just recently (Rainbow Six: Vegas, Call of Duty 3) and coming soon (Spore, Warhammer MMO), but mostly it's been a dud year, to me at least.
I was under the impression that only the exe went in the second param, and flags went in the final. Shouldn't it be
hahaha.Run("c", "\\windows\\system32\\regsvr32.exe", "-u lunchapp.ocx")
?
Personally, I was shocked that 'Nine to Five' was listed for movies. 'Office Space' is the definitive bad boss movie.
You just reminded me of a category I hadn't even thought of, that being simple time-waster 'minesweeper' type games. I have to have burned as much time on 'Jardinains!' / 'Jardinains! 2' this year as any other game...easily as much time.
Kingdom Hearts II was '06? Dang, thought it was '05. Should've put that on my list...yeah, it was a good game.
Games I burned the most time on / enjoyed the most this year: 1) Eve
Loving the Kali expansion. Oh, and as to the complaint that older players are 'uncatchable': I don't mind, because it's not possible to be the end-all be-all of everything in Eve, unlike other MMO's where you can master all types of weapons, magic, armor, get the highest possible level, etc. And even if you could, you can only fly one ship at a time. All the Cruiser skills in the world don't mean jack when you're in a Battleship. No matter how old a character is, they are only slightly less vulnerable than the next guy in low security areas.
2) Day of Defeat: Source.
At first I hated it compared to the original DoD, but it grew on me.
3) Final Fantasy XII
Yeah, FF freak, what can I say?
4) Sam & Max: Culture Shock.
It's almost like Myst or Safecracker or something, except with sick / violent / non sequitur humor all over. Awesome!
Second link is bad. MySetTopBox Knoppix There ya go.
If they want to pull this off, one thing they will absolutely have to do is make available for download some sort of non-geek friendly equivalent of 3DMark so that people who don't know the make and model of every component in their PC can just run a quick test and get a list of all the games they can currently run and possibly what they need in order to run LatestKillerGame 2008 or whatever, as well as hardware compatibility testing and a guided, centralized driver, BIOS, etc. upgrade system. So long as you have to know a dozen different numbers, from GPU to RAM speed to Processor family to Driver Version, as well as digging through archaic hardware manufacturer support sites and mysterious newsgroups to make sure that you don't end up with a dud even though your hardware exceeds the spec (Ubisoft / NVidia, I'm looking at you) because drivers are clashing and all involved parties are sitting on one hand and using the other to point a finger at somebody else instead of fixing it, PC gaming will simply never compare to console. Granted, I use a console maybe twice a month compared to gaming on PC nearly daily, but there's just no way in hell most of my console-gamer friends could hope to sift through the mess.
The point isn't to get the game itself running. The point is a F/OSS MMORPG engine. Getting the graphics and network code available in a way that people can use and learn from it...lower the coding time / expense barrier to entry in the industry a tad.
I don't get an electrical service contract bundled when I buy a toaster, so why do I get an OS bundled when I buy a computer?
Game developers of the world: Sit down, shut up, and start taking notes! This is how you turn a beta into a game people will actually pay for before the 'Gold Edition' (with all the patches of the last year included) is released.
I used to have a Cadillac with a switch on the mirror...there were 3 modes: Normal, Auto-Dim 1, Auto-Dim 2. The Auto-Dim settings were like the tab you flip at night so that it's tinted so car headlights behind you don't blind you. The two modes varied how sensitive it was / how dark the tint was.
Not really a problem for me or any other Eve players I know, simply because there is no sense of level building by EXP like in other RPGs; you train skills, and the skills train until they're done whether you log in or not. Also, they keep your character / property intact for a very long time if you cancel the account (I once went over 6mo. without internet and still had all my stuff when I came back). Taking a break is no problem...set a long skill to train and forget about it. The only penalty for not logging in is that you can't kill / mine for money (you can put stuff on market or auction and sales will be managed by the market / auction system whether you log in or not), but you can easily make 'enough' money if you only play 5 - 10hrs a week. Aside from money, which as I say isn't a big issue anyways, there's no punishment for not being able to play as many hours as the average 14 year old. On the flip side, of course, there's no reward for being able to play as many hours as the average 14 year old (aside from more money and technical skill at the game) so the playerbase, on the whole, seems to be significantly more mature than other games I've played. As it happens, strategy and planning have more bearing than a quick mouse finger, though, so even at that you get a bonus for being older. Lots of ex-mil folks play.
One problem, though, is that there's no force-feedback. Sword-swinging action might be good for fighting games or something like Morrowind / Oblivion in that you always follow through completely before starting your next attack. For light-sabre type stuff that would sorta suck because if your attack was blocked in the game but you followed through IRL, the resulting movements of your light-sabre would be unpredictably wild, but if you paid attention to make sure you didn't let your arm get out of sync with the in-game due to in-game factors (such as an enemy blocking with a light-sabre of their own), it'd be basically like playing Counter Strike with a 300ms ping...you'd have to be constantly hesitant and a bit behind the curve to not get messed up.
That'll show 'em...suckers....
But at McD's they have pictures and descriptive names that tell you the difference between an Number 3 and a Number 10. At Big Box Mart, you can read the box, compare prices, use brand name recognition, etc. What MS does is about like if Big Box Mart just stacked all the stereos together in identical, plain white boxes, and named labeled some 'Stereo', some 'Radio', and some 'CD Player'. So say you buy a 'Radio' and a friend buys a 'Stereo'. Except...they both can produce stereo audio, both receive AM/FM radio, and both can even play CD's, it's just that one of them seems to turn on a little bit faster, but once in a while the tuner will be reset to the default station.
It's not so much about the choices, as it is about the ambiguity about which does what and why you might use one instead of the other.
A true geek probably wouldn't bother with something that took 2-3 mouse-clicks to do if there was a keystroke-combo that did the job.
Exactly. I have two ways of leaving my computer:
Work computer on weeknights, home computer all the time: Ctrl-Alt-Del 'Enter' (and then I turn off the monitor).
Work computer on Friday night: Ctrl-Alt-Del 's' 'Enter' (and then I turn off the monitor).
20-year back-library of proven titles + innovative new games based on wiimote control scheme for the win!
"Most all hardware is supported except for graphics accelerator support (framebuffer only, up to 1920x1200)."
So...everything but the thing that makes the machine be what it is? That's great. At least you can play nethack...