Right on. I use JBuilder and find it far, far better than any other IDE I've used for Java. It's really excellent, and you can even get the Personal edition for free. Same goes for C++ builder.
I agree. In fact, what I need for my Mindstorms activities are more of the Technics-style bricks with the holes in the sides for pegs and axles, but I can't find any! I shopped online at the Lego store, and while they do have some Technics accessory kits (the non-RCX parts that go into Mindstorms kits), they don't have those very basic accessories. In general their selection of accessories is very spotty. Very disappointing.
Lego should sell parts, parts, parts, and let us figure out what to do with them.
Have you actually played Planetside at length? Because from your review, it sounds like you tried it for 5 minutes or read the box cover.
1) Any character development
Not true. You advance in battle ranks as you accumulate experience points. You gain certification points as you do so which enable you to use more weapons/ operate more vehicles. You also get implants at (IIRC) ranks 6, 12, and 18. And that's just basic development; there's another path for advancing in Command Rank.
2) Any clan building
Planetside has outfits, which are essentially clans by another (and better) name.
3) No base development
This is in the game now in a limited way, if you link bases under your control your bases accumulate abilities depending on the types of bases linked on the current continent. I suppose you could count combat engineers' ability to lay mines, sensors, and turrets as well. There are some more changes planned, like the ability of outfits to 'adopt' bases and get special abilities at them, but I don't know when that will be implemented.
4) You can get the best equipment early on(no character development)
No, not really. You get a very limited number of certification points at the start, which for a BR1 soldier, is enough to let you use standard infantry weapons, standard armor, and pick one other weapon type (of several) or drive one kind of vehicle or get one special skill (hacking, medic, engineer). You can't start out flying Reavers or using 4 cert point assault weapons like Lashers or Jackhammers. And in any case, you can never use all the weapons and operate all the vehicles. This forces you to make decisions about what kind of soldier you want your character to be as he advances in Battle Rank, i.e. character development. One great thing about this system is that it eliminates so many stupid tropes of MM games, namely the whole "n00b with a cloth shirt and kitchen knife" thing and hours- to days-long camping of monsters for special item drops. If there is anything that shatters the suspension of disbelief, it's those. In any case, Planetside is meant to be a military game and militaries generally do not send out their new soldiers armed with nothing but knives telling them they'll have to win fights to get better weapons.
5) No storylines True, but a good decision IMO. In other MM games I've played in (UO, Anarchy Online, AC), instituted storylines with vendor-driven events were disasters in every case. I don't want to go into a lengthy critique of those, but the chief problem in every case was the impossibility of imposing a detailed narrative on thousands of different players, all with different ideas about what constitutes role-playing and with different goals in the game.
Besides, it's hard to get into a storyline when you're teamed with 'D4r7hGAY666' and 'Bill1972'.
6) And really since the game doesn't give rewards for anything, theres no goal in the game
Of course there is. The goal is to seize territory from the enemy and hold it. For that you are rewarded with experience points, which allows you to develop your character so he can do more stuff. So how is this different in essence from "Kill monsters to get better loot so you can develop your character so he can do more stuff?" Because that's the 'goal' of all the other MM games. At least, if you think that a definite in-game objective has to be the goal of play, because for most people, it's the enjoyment of play that's the goal, that is, to be entertained. MMORPGs, like their pen and paper ancestors, are of course "infinite games" (where the goal is to keep playing) as opposed to finite games (where the goal is to win).
The US probes are fancy and will make good press as the roll about, but in terms of actual science, the Beagle probe is way ahead.
Uh huh. And your authoritative opinion on this derives from where?
Certainly as long as the american-dominated mass-market movie production aims all its movies at dumb-of-the-mill average americans, we're not going to be seeing better scripts from them.
I'm no fan of the big movie producers, but if it weren't for the mass-market movie producers, you wouldn't be seeing any sci-fi films with multi-hojillion dollar f/x budgets, even the good ones, like the Star Wars films (original), the Matrix, Aliens, even the LotR movies (yes, NZ film but where do you think the money came from?).
Come to think of it...
Certainly as long as the american-dominated mass-market movie production aims all its movies at dumb-of-the-mill average americans, we're not going to be seeing better scripts from them.
--------
You can never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the american public.
Got a little bee in your bonnet about Americans, do you?
Actually, he's only 1/3 wrong. The other two came to Linux after they hit Windows first (100% sure in case of NWN, pretty sure in case of America's Army).
I never knew such a "distinction" existed. Here I thought SF = science fiction and SciFi = science fiction. Now I wish I didn't know. It sounds like the sort of thing that mouth-breathing fanboys come up with.
I see. So if their motives are purely to maximize their income and, as such, they suddenly work out a deal with the RIAA that the RIAA pays them whenever they have to comply with any of the RIAA subpoenas, and keep this a secret all the while continuing to appear to fight the RIAA, you'll have no problem with that? They'll continue to appear to fight the RIAA so it's not like you'll notice any difference.
Well, if they work out a deal with the RIAA that ends up screwing me, then the situation has changed, hasn't it? Then I will no longer consider them a benefactor and change my feelings toward them appropriately. But until such an event comes to pass, I'll be duly appreciative of their efforts.
You shouldn't spend so much effort constantly second-guessing the motives of others; you won't be better off for it in the end and at some point you'll end up ascribing motives to others that exist only in your head and you'll end up a paranoid.
So what? Do you require your benefactors to be saints before you accept or even appreciate their help? It's enlightened self-interest. I could care less about their motives, that they're fighting the RIAA is enough for me.
What the hell are you babbling about? "Befoul the constitution?" Did you actually RTFA?
Hackers whose exploits result in injury or death -- if they disable emergency response networks or destroy electronic medical records, for example -- face 20 years to life in prison.
Do you think 20 years for some hacker who fucks with the 911 system is unreasonable? I think you're the one who is not taking things very seriously. Give us some meaningful justification for your hysteria, like exactly how the punishments discussed in the article are too much for the crimes they are intended to redress, or knock it off.
But deterrance isn't the only reason for sentencing. Some people just deserve to rot in jail. And perhaps a stiffer sentence will deter their next crime. That I can believe.
That is exactly right. Punishment is not primarily to deter other, potential criminals - that's a secondary purpose. Punishment is the retribution society takes against someone who has wronged others or society as a whole.
The article also notes how the current ratio of packet traffic to voice is already 8:1.
I wonder how much of the packet traffic in that ratio is accounted for by spam?
To live in blatant ignorance of reality, or to propose ways of changing an unpleasant state of affairs that are completely at odds with reality, is the province of childhood. I am not against idealism per se, but an idealism that is ineffective in the world is useless, or even worse than useless, as it can seduce people into unwise behavior.
The future should be a place where there are no militaries. The future should be a place where human beings are civilized enough to not brandish weapons at one another. Until then, we are not much better than animals.
Well, that's exactly what we are, including you. That humans are equally as capable of, and prone to, evil as good is a well documented fact and thumbing your nose at the military will not make that go away. That you can hold these beliefs and publically proclaim them without fear of being imprisoned or murdered you owe, ironically, to the very military you despise. As Orwell said, "pacifism is possible only in countries that
possess strong navies."
The adult thing to do, faced with this, at a minimum is to realize that to have a society where people can live in relative peace and with some measure of dignity, militaries are necessary, and to at least show some appreciation for this, given the alternatives. To wish anyway for an abolishment of the military because violence offends you is the mark of a petulant child, not to mention a selfish indulgence considering the ramifications for the 270 or so million other people who would be without protection.
You and he refuse to face up to the world as it is and instead you advocate policies with no hope of changing things for the better. The only criterion you have it seems is what makes you feel good, not what is realistically best. That is not idealism, that is immaturity.
"I would rather the military run out of reasons to keep existing, and I don't want them to have any credit for something I have accomplished--which they clearly would if they gave me the money," says Steve Potter
It's amazing how people so clever in one field can exhibit appalingly naive and childish thought in other areas. I would rather scientists like Potter grow up and face the realities of the world outside their labs than have their silly views pandered to by an indulgent press.
"Surprise, surprise, it is different," he says. "Not different enough for me. Just think about the sheer magnitude of what hundreds of billions of dollars we spend on military efforts could do if spent on, for example, building schools in countries that need them, or creating diplomacy centers like the Carter Center, or informative research and practical solutions like those of the Union of Concerned Scientists."
Surprise, surprise, we do spend loads of money on countries that need schools and agricultural help and so on, but as anyone who has looked at the sad history of development aid in, say, Africa, knows, it is no use to build schools and whatnot if endemic violence destroys those schools and kills the people who would attend them. But like so many naive bien pensants, it's all 6 degrees of Dubya to him, and every evil that is is traceable back to the Pentagon.
...."And the result is that we all become cynics."
Welcome to the harsh world of reality. Do or Die.
Capitalism, like democracy, requires trust in order to function properly. When corruption, cheating, and law-breaking become widespread, the system breaks down, to the detriment of all. If you cannot trust other actors in the market, it is impossible to wisely buy, invest or engage in entreprenurial action. There's a lot more to capitalist economics than "buy low, sell high."
My term is 'gaming the system'. When you exploit loopholes and bend rules, you defeat the purpose and intent of a system, thus ensuring that even if you believe the system in theory should work as intended, it won't.
Exactly - that's also almost the same term we used when I was in the Army for cheating at wargames; the term was "gamesmanship." It was doing stuff like rigging MILES transmitters to fire without firing the rifle, covering up MILES sensors so you can't get shot, sneaking in "god keys" from home station MILES sets so you could bring yourself back to life when getting shot before an observer/controller could note that you were shot, and so forth (MILES btw is a laser-based weapons simulator, kinda like laser tag).
Units would do this in order to 'win', but at the cost of degrading the training experience which was the whole point of the exercise in the first place. In war, these cheats obviously aren't going to be available.
Java is dying, news at 11
on
Java vs .NET
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Sounds like more MS FUD to me. So how many times has Java been declared dead/ dying now?
Where I work (for a DoD agency) we are developing J2EE solutions with open source tools in part to get away from vendor lock in, something that MS is particularly bad with. Once MS ratchets up the lock in with the introduction of DRM in Office file formats, I think MS solutions as a whole are going to become less attractive, and this will be a strong disincentive to adopt.NET.
This is all because of conditioning. MS releases windows, which doubtless is easy to use. So easy that users are conditioned to leave their brains at home when they use it. Fast forward to now...and you expect those same users to have a clue? Or new users when all they've heard about are from the same clueless bunch?
Drawing solely on personal experience (family), these are the same bunch of people whose VCRs have been flashing 12:00 for years now. I don't think MS is going to be able to condition them to acquire better security habits.
Why the need for all the pseudo-intellectual debates on "whither gaming?" If Carmack and whoever else think that there's a demand for simple games, then they should build them. If there really is a strong demand for such games, he/they will make a lot of money (or even more money, in the case of Mr. Carmack). Meanwhile, other developers will make more complex games that appeal to other segments of the market, and make money that way. It's really quite simple.
Role playing games didn't "get to where you needed a book to play them." The ones he probably had in mind (I'm guessing the Baldur's Gate games) are based on a famous old pen and paper game that required MANY books to play, as far back as back in the day. There are a lot of people who like these sort of games (D&D has been around since the 70s) and sales certainly support their further development. The market for games is hardly monolithic and there is plenty of room for both simple and complex games.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously... I'm waiting for an aswer on this one too. I've never seen any better IDEs than the ones Microsoft makes.
Looks like you have your answer.
Right on. I use JBuilder and find it far, far better than any other IDE I've used for Java. It's really excellent, and you can even get the Personal edition for free. Same goes for C++ builder.
I agree. In fact, what I need for my Mindstorms activities are more of the Technics-style bricks with the holes in the sides for pegs and axles, but I can't find any! I shopped online at the Lego store, and while they do have some Technics accessory kits (the non-RCX parts that go into Mindstorms kits), they don't have those very basic accessories. In general their selection of accessories is very spotty. Very disappointing.
Lego should sell parts, parts, parts, and let us figure out what to do with them.
Have you actually played Planetside at length? Because from your review, it sounds like you tried it for 5 minutes or read the box cover.
1) Any character development
Not true. You advance in battle ranks as you accumulate experience points. You gain certification points as you do so which enable you to use more weapons/ operate more vehicles. You also get implants at (IIRC) ranks 6, 12, and 18. And that's just basic development; there's another path for advancing in Command Rank.
2) Any clan building
Planetside has outfits, which are essentially clans by another (and better) name.
3) No base development
This is in the game now in a limited way, if you link bases under your control your bases accumulate abilities depending on the types of bases linked on the current continent. I suppose you could count combat engineers' ability to lay mines, sensors, and turrets as well. There are some more changes planned, like the ability of outfits to 'adopt' bases and get special abilities at them, but I don't know when that will be implemented.
4) You can get the best equipment early on(no character development)
No, not really. You get a very limited number of certification points at the start, which for a BR1 soldier, is enough to let you use standard infantry weapons, standard armor, and pick one other weapon type (of several) or drive one kind of vehicle or get one special skill (hacking, medic, engineer). You can't start out flying Reavers or using 4 cert point assault weapons like Lashers or Jackhammers. And in any case, you can never use all the weapons and operate all the vehicles. This forces you to make decisions about what kind of soldier you want your character to be as he advances in Battle Rank, i.e. character development. One great thing about this system is that it eliminates so many stupid tropes of MM games, namely the whole "n00b with a cloth shirt and kitchen knife" thing and hours- to days-long camping of monsters for special item drops. If there is anything that shatters the suspension of disbelief, it's those. In any case, Planetside is meant to be a military game and militaries generally do not send out their new soldiers armed with nothing but knives telling them they'll have to win fights to get better weapons.
5) No storylines
True, but a good decision IMO. In other MM games I've played in (UO, Anarchy Online, AC), instituted storylines with vendor-driven events were disasters in every case. I don't want to go into a lengthy critique of those, but the chief problem in every case was the impossibility of imposing a detailed narrative on thousands of different players, all with different ideas about what constitutes role-playing and with different goals in the game.
Besides, it's hard to get into a storyline when you're teamed with 'D4r7hGAY666' and 'Bill1972'.
6) And really since the game doesn't give rewards for anything, theres no goal in the game
Of course there is. The goal is to seize territory from the enemy and hold it. For that you are rewarded with experience points, which allows you to develop your character so he can do more stuff. So how is this different in essence from "Kill monsters to get better loot so you can develop your character so he can do more stuff?" Because that's the 'goal' of all the other MM games. At least, if you think that a definite in-game objective has to be the goal of play, because for most people, it's the enjoyment of play that's the goal, that is, to be entertained. MMORPGs, like their pen and paper ancestors, are of course "infinite games" (where the goal is to keep playing) as opposed to finite games (where the goal is to win).
The US probes are fancy and will make good press as the roll about, but in terms of actual science, the Beagle probe is way ahead.
Uh huh. And your authoritative opinion on this derives from where?
Because tomorrow it could be you or me.
Certainly as long as the american-dominated mass-market movie production aims all its movies at dumb-of-the-mill average americans, we're not going to be seeing better scripts from them.
I'm no fan of the big movie producers, but if it weren't for the mass-market movie producers, you wouldn't be seeing any sci-fi films with multi-hojillion dollar f/x budgets, even the good ones, like the Star Wars films (original), the Matrix, Aliens, even the LotR movies (yes, NZ film but where do you think the money came from?).
Come to think of it...
Certainly as long as the american-dominated mass-market movie production aims all its movies at dumb-of-the-mill average americans, we're not going to be seeing better scripts from them.
--------
You can never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the american public.
Got a little bee in your bonnet about Americans, do you?
And movie producers wonder why indie movies win the acadamy awards every year....
They do? News to me.
Actually, he's only 1/3 wrong. The other two came to Linux after they hit Windows first (100% sure in case of NWN, pretty sure in case of America's Army).
I never knew such a "distinction" existed. Here I thought SF = science fiction and SciFi = science fiction. Now I wish I didn't know. It sounds like the sort of thing that mouth-breathing fanboys come up with.
I see. So if their motives are purely to maximize their income and, as such, they suddenly work out a deal with the RIAA that the RIAA pays them whenever they have to comply with any of the RIAA subpoenas, and keep this a secret all the while continuing to appear to fight the RIAA, you'll have no problem with that? They'll continue to appear to fight the RIAA so it's not like you'll notice any difference.
Well, if they work out a deal with the RIAA that ends up screwing me, then the situation has changed, hasn't it? Then I will no longer consider them a benefactor and change my feelings toward them appropriately. But until such an event comes to pass, I'll be duly appreciative of their efforts.
You shouldn't spend so much effort constantly second-guessing the motives of others; you won't be better off for it in the end and at some point you'll end up ascribing motives to others that exist only in your head and you'll end up a paranoid.
So what? Do you require your benefactors to be saints before you accept or even appreciate their help? It's enlightened self-interest. I could care less about their motives, that they're fighting the RIAA is enough for me.
What the hell are you babbling about? "Befoul the constitution?" Did you actually RTFA?
Hackers whose exploits result in injury or death -- if they disable emergency response networks or destroy electronic medical records, for example -- face 20 years to life in prison.
Do you think 20 years for some hacker who fucks with the 911 system is unreasonable? I think you're the one who is not taking things very seriously. Give us some meaningful justification for your hysteria, like exactly how the punishments discussed in the article are too much for the crimes they are intended to redress, or knock it off.
But deterrance isn't the only reason for sentencing. Some people just deserve to rot in jail. And perhaps a stiffer sentence will deter their next crime. That I can believe.
That is exactly right. Punishment is not primarily to deter other, potential criminals - that's a secondary purpose. Punishment is the retribution society takes against someone who has wronged others or society as a whole.
So is that how you explain your Republican governor?
The article also notes how the current ratio of packet traffic to voice is already 8:1.
I wonder how much of the packet traffic in that ratio is accounted for by spam?
To live in blatant ignorance of reality, or to propose ways of changing an unpleasant state of affairs that are completely at odds with reality, is the province of childhood. I am not against idealism per se, but an idealism that is ineffective in the world is useless, or even worse than useless, as it can seduce people into unwise behavior.
The future should be a place where there are no militaries. The future should be a place where human beings are civilized enough to not brandish weapons at one another. Until then, we are not much better than animals.
Well, that's exactly what we are, including you. That humans are equally as capable of, and prone to, evil as good is a well documented fact and thumbing your nose at the military will not make that go away. That you can hold these beliefs and publically proclaim them without fear of being imprisoned or murdered you owe, ironically, to the very military you despise. As Orwell said, "pacifism is possible only in countries that possess strong navies."
The adult thing to do, faced with this, at a minimum is to realize that to have a society where people can live in relative peace and with some measure of dignity, militaries are necessary, and to at least show some appreciation for this, given the alternatives. To wish anyway for an abolishment of the military because violence offends you is the mark of a petulant child, not to mention a selfish indulgence considering the ramifications for the 270 or so million other people who would be without protection.
You and he refuse to face up to the world as it is and instead you advocate policies with no hope of changing things for the better. The only criterion you have it seems is what makes you feel good, not what is realistically best. That is not idealism, that is immaturity.
"I would rather the military run out of reasons to keep existing, and I don't want them to have any credit for something I have accomplished--which they clearly would if they gave me the money," says Steve Potter
It's amazing how people so clever in one field can exhibit appalingly naive and childish thought in other areas. I would rather scientists like Potter grow up and face the realities of the world outside their labs than have their silly views pandered to by an indulgent press.
"Surprise, surprise, it is different," he says. "Not different enough for me. Just think about the sheer magnitude of what hundreds of billions of dollars we spend on military efforts could do if spent on, for example, building schools in countries that need them, or creating diplomacy centers like the Carter Center, or informative research and practical solutions like those of the Union of Concerned Scientists."
Surprise, surprise, we do spend loads of money on countries that need schools and agricultural help and so on, but as anyone who has looked at the sad history of development aid in, say, Africa, knows, it is no use to build schools and whatnot if endemic violence destroys those schools and kills the people who would attend them. But like so many naive bien pensants, it's all 6 degrees of Dubya to him, and every evil that is is traceable back to the Pentagon.
...."And the result is that we all become cynics."
Welcome to the harsh world of reality. Do or Die.
Capitalism, like democracy, requires trust in order to function properly. When corruption, cheating, and law-breaking become widespread, the system breaks down, to the detriment of all. If you cannot trust other actors in the market, it is impossible to wisely buy, invest or engage in entreprenurial action. There's a lot more to capitalist economics than "buy low, sell high."
My term is 'gaming the system'. When you exploit loopholes and bend rules, you defeat the purpose and intent of a system, thus ensuring that even if you believe the system in theory should work as intended, it won't.
Exactly - that's also almost the same term we used when I was in the Army for cheating at wargames; the term was "gamesmanship." It was doing stuff like rigging MILES transmitters to fire without firing the rifle, covering up MILES sensors so you can't get shot, sneaking in "god keys" from home station MILES sets so you could bring yourself back to life when getting shot before an observer/controller could note that you were shot, and so forth (MILES btw is a laser-based weapons simulator, kinda like laser tag).
Units would do this in order to 'win', but at the cost of degrading the training experience which was the whole point of the exercise in the first place. In war, these cheats obviously aren't going to be available.
Sounds like more MS FUD to me. So how many times has Java been declared dead/ dying now? .NET.
Where I work (for a DoD agency) we are developing J2EE solutions with open source tools in part to get away from vendor lock in, something that MS is particularly bad with. Once MS ratchets up the lock in with the introduction of DRM in Office file formats, I think MS solutions as a whole are going to become less attractive, and this will be a strong disincentive to adopt
... are all Japanese and Korean. Where are the US manufacturers with this technology? Dell? Apple?
Let's not forget about Indymedia, either.
This is all because of conditioning. MS releases windows, which doubtless is easy to use. So easy that users are conditioned to leave their brains at home when they use it. Fast forward to now...and you expect those same users to have a clue? Or new users when all they've heard about are from the same clueless bunch?
Drawing solely on personal experience (family), these are the same bunch of people whose VCRs have been flashing 12:00 for years now. I don't think MS is going to be able to condition them to acquire better security habits.
Why the need for all the pseudo-intellectual debates on "whither gaming?" If Carmack and whoever else think that there's a demand for simple games, then they should build them. If there really is a strong demand for such games, he/they will make a lot of money (or even more money, in the case of Mr. Carmack). Meanwhile, other developers will make more complex games that appeal to other segments of the market, and make money that way. It's really quite simple.
Role playing games didn't "get to where you needed a book to play them." The ones he probably had in mind (I'm guessing the Baldur's Gate games) are based on a famous old pen and paper game that required MANY books to play, as far back as back in the day. There are a lot of people who like these sort of games (D&D has been around since the 70s) and sales certainly support their further development. The market for games is hardly monolithic and there is plenty of room for both simple and complex games.