We could put the smokers and the fatties and the children and their parents and the loud talkers and the snorers and the stinkers ALL together into one section. But lets face it, who would be left for the normal person section?
I mean, they don't allow you to sit in the cockpit anymore. Another thing islam has ruined.
Big business leaders don't know IT. For that matter, few people in IT really know IT, but that is another rant.
Someone who can run a transport company successfully and knows that only a fool would allow your company to be totally dependent on one vehicle supllier will NOT realise that the same thing applies to the computers controlling the fleet of vehicles.
Standard example, every truck fleet owner has a favorite brand, yet they always got a couple of trucks that are of a different brand. The reason, simple, it makes negotiations a bit easier. Sure out of the 500 trucks in company 490 will be say Mercedes BUT on the day the Mercedes rep comes to talk about a new order you can bet that the 10 daf trucks will be proudly parked right outside the office. Just a hint that the order does not have to go to Mercedes this time.
That is because trucking company directors understand trucking. They do not understand IT. So when the MS salesrep arrives he will have confirmed via outlook, using documents created in office and be assured of seeing nothing but windows machines as he visits the office.
Offcourse he still gives a nice discount. That is easy. Establish the true price, hike it by a couple of hundred percent, give a discount of 50% percent and you got MS record profits.
And the really odd thing is that all those directors who wouldn't trust a truck maker who reported the same kind of profits as MS think it is a good sign that MS is making such huge profits.
People do NOT understand fields that they are not experts in and this goes triple for IT.
Couple this with the old maxim, nobody has ever been fired for buying Microsoft and you got the current situation.
It is changing but you are going to have to fight a bloody struggle to get anywhere. Remember, if you introduce linux into a company and suddenly costs plummet and productivity soars you will have made an awfull lot of enemies, every single person who said that MS software was the way to go.
I was in this situation once. A company had two websites belonging to different divesions. The one I was responsible for ran a webshop and services for customers and offcourse ran on linux cheapo hardware. The intraweb was purely windows and was run by the internal IT department but it also contained some sites available to our resellers and such. My divesion was brought back in under the umbrella of the mother coorperation, our website sold more products then all other sales efforts combined, so rather then being an experiment we turned into the biggest sales channel.
Anyway, oneday a director asked the question of why the intraweb was down once again, and for some reason the question was asked NOT to the internal IT department but to the web department (probably the doofus didn't realize the difference).
So what was I supposed to do? The reason the intraweb sucked was simple, it was run on windows, with IIS (or ISS, what ever acronym stands for steaming pile of garbage, was run by windows admins, and just wasn't designed by anyone who cared.
Yet for some reason, the idea seemed to be that since the director new that we used linux and windows and that the intraweb sucked that linux was used for the intraweb. And since everyone knows I run Linux I was told to convert the site to windows to fix the troubles and get help from the internal IT department.
Can you guess how many seconds it took me to reactivate my CV on monsterboard?
It was not that the guy in question was an idiot, he knew his business. It just didn't happen to be IT. And what could I do? My department was supposed to merge with the internal IT department and since they wore suits it was pretty clear to me who would end up as whose boss.
So I arranged some job interviews, and just told them that linux sadly wasn't up to the job and that switching the external site to windows was the best way to go, but sadly I did not have the qualifications to do that so the internal IT department should handle it, and handed in
You bought a cutrate product and expect firstrate support.
Mmm, do you have any idea how much tech support costs? Do you have any idea for that matter just how little margin there is on products like this?
They just don't want to do personal tech support because it eats away their profits like you won't believe.
Oh, and if you know your device, you can easily find it on their site and then find all the drivers you need.
It is slow as hell, to be sure but you cannot fault them for you not being able to find the required drivers.
No you sound like the typical customer who buys a lada but expects a roll-royce style customer support.
Ain't going to happen, and Asus knows this. They have done it this way for long enough for people to know better and they are still in business, because people like me know and accept the trade-offs.
They run Windows 2003. Just about says it all doesn't it?
On the other hand, I recently following some live changing events I had to work with three different machines in getting them back up and working. A HP kayak early P3 generation, a self built asus P3 (both dual) and a g3.
Can you guess from wich site I had the least problem getting info?
Yeah the apple site was fast, and constantly telling me about OS-X while the actuall bloody machine ran 8.6, HP had retired much of the data leaving only ASUS to still have all the relevant data simply online. Slow yes, but available without jumping through hoops.
Asus website is a horror, let there be no mistake about that, BUT they do have a track record of keeping all data online and easily accesiable and not constantly trying to sell you something new when looking up info about old stuff.
GPL: I buy everyone a round because the license of the bar says that everyone else will also buy a round when it is their turn.
BSD: I buy everyone a round because hell, I am just a nice guy and I want everyone to have a beer even if that means I will end up paying for all the beer being drunk.
Closed source company: Hell, I like you BSD, keep them coming.Eh, my round? I left my wallet at home, say BSD, how about a napeleon brandy mate?
BSD: Sure, we are all mates.
GPL: You are an idiot BSD. But hey, make mine a double.
That is a HUGE difference. I am perfectly willing to give you ride somewhere. I am not going to give you my car.
It says it all that Microsoft LIKES bsd style opensource. Hell it is a public secret that windows for a long time contained BSD code in its network stack. MS doesn't have a problem at all with BSD style opensource since it can take all it wants and give nothing back. The GPL doesn't allow that. The GPL is about sharing.
I share with you, so you have to share with me. If I give you a ride it is sorta understood that you will give me a ride someday, or at least to someone else someday.
Both BSD and GPL have their nobelity. In think with BSD it is supposed to be, we want the world to use quality software and have it available and if that means others can take our work and never ever give anything of their own so be it. BSD is willing to do all the work.
Very noble, but most people don't work that way.
In this case, the broadcom GPL drivers have extra capabilities, if BSD had written them then broadcom would have been able to use that in their own drivers, without offcourse at anytime opening up any of their own stuff. BSD would have done their work for free. BSD don't mind, they see it as their cause, to improve software this way. Perhaps windows users the world over are thankfull to BSD for MS Windows wonderfull network code. Perhaps. If windows users ever knew about it.
The GPL works very different. What happens in GPL, stays in GPL. If you want to use GPL software you gotta GPL what you add to it. So broadcom can use the GPL drivers and their extra capabilities BUT only if they gpl the stuff they add themselves.
I will give you ride BUT only if you give me a ride tomorrow.
GPL is for older people, ones who know that in this world there are people who will NEVER buy their round, who never offer rides, who are always on holiday when it is someone elses turn to move.
Oh and opensource means nothing. Just because the source is open does NOT mean you can share it. After all a book is opensource but just you try to share the latest harry potter.
Insulting windows users just ain't any fun to us seasoned opensource users is it. It is like trying your wits against a duckling, one that has been run over and chewed on by the rats. Far better to cross daggers with a person of your own calibre, even if in the case of you BSD lovers it is an undead calibre.
But very well, I shall engage you on the battlefield, as long as you promise to stay down wind of me.
BSD is the thief and the thief does NOT get to complain about how the victim responds. If you break into my house I am not obliged to send you a polite letter first to ask you to please return my stuff, I send for the police, I do that publicaly and if they wake up everyone in your street and haul you out in front of your neightbours in your Steve Jobs underwear while they go about reclaiming my possesions then all the better.
The BSD people involved really should have known better then to do this. Contrary to what some people think both BSD and GPL people strongly believe in copyrights (what differs from closed source supporters is just how much control the author has over the user and/or further authors). You may not like either the GPL or BSD BUT for either to work they must respect the other.
Buesch might have done this in private BUT it is his decision and his decision and alone how to handle this. The offenders do not get to dictate how the victim voices his complaint. Theo should shut the fuck up, apologize for his and his team actions and be damned glad no formal complaint is being launched in the courts.
Just how much code is there in BSD anyway that is not there legally? Were there is smoke, there is fire.
You know as in winmodem or winprinter, a device that has taken much of the logic from the device were it belongs and onto the cpu were it will cause slowdown and despite the fact that software should be easier to update this only means the device will ship with buggy logic wich will never actually get updated.
Windows "ready" meant stay the fuck away. This is crap only a windows user would fall for.
After all, what device does NOT work with windows? For all its craptastic nature the windows OS widely supported and you would be very hard pressed to go into an average store (look, the apple store does not count alright) selling computer components and come out with a device that does not have windows drivers.
The windows logo therefore means absolutely nothing. Never has, never will. It can't, ms can't even certify its own stuff. Let alone others. When MS stuff works with MS stuff, then and only then can they start commenting on others people hardware.
Like when I am asked for computer help by a 19 year old blond girl untroubled by a high IQ and find that NOT only does she OFFCOURSE run firefox and has for a long time BUT also runs VLC for her media needs and can be very easily persuaded to use proper opensource apps rather then crappy closed source crap because she gets it.
Amazing. A bright new era has emerged and no longer will I ever be asked to de-infest a machine of tons of spyware.
Except that the very next day a much older guy who really should know better as he is supposed to be much smarter was complaining that his machine wasn't working properly and the net was slow only to find him using unprotected IE with a ton of shit installed.
Typical, the same era as before and I will be doomed to de-infest machines of tons of spuware until the end of time.
The problem is that of the yes men. The author talks how none of the people he meets and talks to use windows anymore. Yup. I can believe that. You tend to surround youreselve by people who share your view of the world. Since I cannot see myself having sex with myself naturally all the women in my life share that view and won't have sex with me either. IF only I had an narcacist complex I would be rolling in the sex.
For every person slowly weening themselves of MS software there are a dozen still firmly hooked who don't even know they are hooked.
And then there is the final nail in the coffin of anyone claiming MS is dead. The long proclaimed dead of the desktop.
Ain't going to happen. Ever.
Trust me on this. Photoshop on the net sounds nice but it is going to be more of an MS paint then a fullblown photoshop. The reason? Download a photoshop cd. Count the minutes. Are you willing to wait this long for every photograph you want to edit?
Ah, but you won't need the full program (not that the full program will be available anyway) all the time. Yeah, sure you don't, but will you ONLY need the limited tools available? I only buy a small percentage of products from a supermarket BUT a supermarket that only offers those products wouldn't do much business with anyone else would it?
I been around to long to still believe "dead of X" stories. Gmail is nice and all and certain tools may indeed shift slightly too a different format BUT by and large the same reason tools went of the mainframe and onto individual computers is the reason that they will remain there.
It works. The day that online space becomes availble in the terrabyte range for trivial amounts of money and I can stream HD video from my online storeage, then and only then could the desktop be "replaced". Technology may make it possible, internet companies will however have a far harder time learning to accept that kind of advanced use by their customers.
Simply put, do you keep a flashlight for when the power fails? Bottled water for when the water mains break, blankets for when the heat fails? Well, then keep a offline copy of your emails for when your internet fails.
If MS is dead, then for corpse it is damned active.
And if nobody is afraid of them anymore then, well perhaps that is like most city folks don't fear say a tiger. Don't mean tigers are harmless just because you are to stupid to realize it is a danger. Especially one that has been wounded and is on the edge of starvation and suddenly sees a lot of stupid fat cityfolks walking around.
What is not supposed to happen in "normal" circumstances, is that one process "accidently" accesses a part of memory not assinged to it. However plenty of programs work by doing this on purpose and as long as they behave, there is nothing wrong with it. It just so happens that trainers are a common example.
However typically with trainers, the user level is the same. There is no real problem with a trainer I run, modifying the memory of a program I am also running. It becomes more of a problem if user levels are not accepted (should I be able to read the memory of a program belonging to another user?).
In Vista/DRM case the problem is even more severe because there even processes belonging to you should still not be accesable to you. Why not? Well, because you are nasty mean piraty who steal the living from hard working people, you commie!
But no, traditionally OS'es do NOT protect process memory against deliberate snooping.
So you would walk around with something ugly if it was cheap, *looks at brads wife*, ah, I see you do.
I am KIDDING!
But geez, isn't the fact that the thing is fucking ugly reason enough? It don't even matter that the device is apparently available in other colors then brown, in peoples mind the device is brown and brown is NOT the color of an Mp3 player. It hasn't been the color of any consumer electronics in decades. It is the color of old stuff. When wood was still the only thing people found acceptable in the house so everything had to look like it was made of wood, even if it mostly looked like plastic.
The ZUNE is the ultimate reminded that first impressions count. It don't matter if you buy a black Zune, it will still be brown.
A recent news item in Holland has been the firing of thousands of postal workers. "To all the people that send email, if you think that you are only hurting big companies you are wrong. There are thousands of working people with families who no longer have jobs because of email."
You can do the same for lots of developments in society. How many people once made a living taking care of all the horses needed for transportation? When steam went the way of the horse, how many stokers were fired? Do you use electric or gas for cooking? Did you spare a thought for the poor guy who is now unemployed that used to deliver coal?
However the coal guy did NOT spy on me to make sure the coal I bought was only used in my own stove. The postal worker did NOT up prices and tell me that from now on I could no longer send postcards but only letters with a minimum of three pages (the same as the music industry trying to kill singles).
The music industry is suffering from new technology but it ain't just incapable of adjusting to a new a world, it is actually trying to worsen the situation. Imagine if in this day and age when sending email is just so much easier then sending a letter, the postal companies would reduce the number letterboxes, cut down deliveries, increase prices, put insane restriction on what you can send and who you can send too and in general behaved like a load of asshats.
Would you give a damn about their demise then?
Music shops should have protested over a decade ago. Now it is too late, they are the hanger ons to a failed strategy. They are as much to blame as the RIAA itself, because of their inaction.
Well, you don't seem to know much about turkey either. Turkey is probably one of the few countries were you will find the "liberals" siding along with the military powers.
Yes, Turkey is indeed secular and extremely western (depends a bit on what part of the west you compare it to) "thanks" to the efforts of the man who would be come known as ataturk, father turk, for his efforts to turn unite Turkey and turn it into a modern nation.
The problem is this, Turkey is NOT a united country by itself. One turk is NOT the same as another. This is one of the biggest problems with for instance immigration to the west. Those people that are looked down upon in western europe are looked down upon in Turkey as well. It is roughly like how a Hillbilly will be frowned upon in Amsterdam by the locals AND by any visiting New Yorkers.
Turkey however so far has remain united thanks to its military leadership that comes down like a ton of bricks on anyone who dares to take Turkey in an undesired direction. The EU problem is that the Turkey that has the most change to join is also in a very real sense a military dictatorship. If as the EU insists the military reduces its influence then Turkey might very well become an islamic state.
Remember the riots in France about banning headscarfs? Similar stuff happens all over europe usually at the level of should headscarfs be allowed to be worn by public officials, like for instance in the courtsmthe legal system should be impartial, and at least in most european countries judges and other officials are therefore NOT allowed to show any signs of religion or politics. Muslims being allowed to wear headscarfs is therefore a direct attack on western traditions. So what is the case in Turkey? Well, they are banned and the military makes sue that that remains to be the way because they know what secular means.
So yes, turkey is a modern secular state, BUT what the grandparent might have been referring too is that it seems that IF the people in Turkey had a choice that might not remain the case.
Turkey is a democracy, but only so long as the people vote for the "correct" path as laid down by the military. It therefore is also very much a dictarorship, just that in some peoples eyes, that the dictatorships policies are desirable.
Turkey is like a man standing behind you with a gun, forcing you to make love to beautifull sexy women for a living. Yes, you might like making love to beautifull sexy women for a living BUT there is still a man with a gun behind you telling you what to do.
Say that this case was true for an entire nation, would you therefore conclude that this nation is entirely hetero OR might that country go homosexual the moment the man with the gun is removed.
EU efforts might very well result in them creating another muslim nation right on their doorstep.
The US has a city called philidelphia (or something) wich I believe is usually regarded as the most liberal of cities, (by US standards). Imagine this as Istanbul. Now imagine that phili is the capitol of the US and that the pentagon is making sure that phili politics are US politics. The US would seem to be far more "modern" then it really is, it might even allow gay marriages and such.
BUT the US ain't really that modern, there is the backward Bible Belt.
The father of all turks was a great man, BUT his rule is enforced through force. The question is what would happen when you remove that force.
Tell me, do americans in places like New York or LA etc feel that gay marriages should be outlawed? Nonetheless they are. Same with Turkey, just because Istanbul is the face of Turkey doesn't mean the body agrees with it.
And that is just it. It is alright. Damned by faint praise. It is a middle of the road device, so while it doesn't actually totally suck at anything, it doesn't shine at anything either.
Take its size, no it is NOT huge. The biggest is the Nintendo DS. That one is larger then the PSP in all dimensions. The DS Lite is exactly the same size as the PSP if you cut of the rounded sides of the PSP. But it is huge compared to the Gameboy advance mini.
So it ain't the biggest, and it ain't the smallest. I wouldn't want a DS in my pocket, I can't slip the PSP in as easy as a GBA mini.
Its screen is amazing scratch proof compared to other devices (say the GBA), but I won't be as easy going with it as my DS.
It doesn't have to play "lesser" games because of its hardware like the GBA/DS series BUT its hardware while similar to the PS2 is NOT close enough to actually be able to just play PS2 games. If for no other reason then that is lacks the controls for those games. This is perhaps the most damning (is that a word) aspect of the PSP. The GBA and DS are NOT capable of running the "big" games and so they don't. They have their own unique games, made entirely for the handheld. Quite a few of the PSP games are clones of "full" games, wich just don't fit on the console.
Not that Sony/PSP is alone in this. I remember a GBA game that for its save system required you to note down a 16 character code. Yeah that is userfriendly, especially on the go.
But simply put, I at least do not play handhelds as fullblown consoles, I play them on the move. That requires a certain style of gaming, for instance, don't make the game impossible to see in bright daylight.
Other middle of the road stuff that damns it. It is an mp3 player. But Memory sticks are smallish and expensive. Plus the player itself is a bit limited. It is like carrying an old style HD player with you with the storage space of a flash player.
It plays video, and fairly reaosonable, except that its storage space is barely big enough to hold a complete movie (and all your other crap). The dead pixels everyone seem to have don't help. No sony, dead pixels are not acceptable, they are the signs of a broken product and people can't look past them on a screen this small.
So it is bigger then an video iPod, and indeed most portable video players, but its storage space sucks and its screen has defects.
A nice thing about the PSP is that it has speakers. You can therefore do a thing with it that an iPod cannot do. Use it as a jukebox. Nice, except that its speakers lack power. Some people use their phones this way and their music is far louder. So you can use it as a jukebox, but only if everyone is really quiet.
Its screen is bigger then the Nintendo handhelds BUT it has less real estate compared to the DS.
Simply put, what is the PSP trying to be. If it was a handheld PS2 it would be a console on the go. But it ain't. If it had more storage it could be a media player. But it ain't. If it had stronger speakers, it could be a jukebox like system. But it ain't. If it games were more made for being on the move. It could be fun like the Nintendo games. But it ain't.
The sad fact is that I play GTA on my PSP and that is it. I also use it to play movies and such but mostly I use it for as a jukebox for when I am in a hotel or something, while I play games on my DS.
Frankly, with all its faults, perhaps the second biggest mistake by Sony (apart from making few "on the move" games) is that PSP games are just so fucking expensive. I rather buy a DS game then for 10-20 euros less.
5. Pedestrian stops complaining about how filthy the beach is and why doesn't the goverment do anything about it.
Your argument sounds a lot like dog owners who complained about fines for letting their dogs crap on the sidewalk BUT also complained about crap on the sidewalk.
Is it really that hard to make sure your dog does NOT take a dump were everyone, including yourselve is walking? Is it that hard to drop your litter in a can?
You see, the problem for me, a middle aged white male, is that I see two choices. Talking camera's and security patrols (wich do not affect me) OR walking through areas littered with crap (affect the people who think the street is a garbage dump). Hmmm, what a choice to make eh. My convenience for your freedom to inconvenience me, yourselve and everyone else.
Sorry, you need to come up with a better example then the state repressing your freedom to litter.
You can't properly review an OS or indeed most software. Reviews of any product are going to be already biased by nothing more then the simple differences between people in their physical build. Obviously a tall person will find space in car slightly more important then a small person, hell, to small a reviewer might even mark a car as bad if they can't see over the steering wheel.
But at least they are all driving on the same road, using more or less the same fuel and gravity is pretty much the same for all car reviewers.
Computer configurations are just too different to be accurate for everyone. For instance there is a marked difference between Windows on a dual CPU setup and a single CPU even back with W2K. Stability skyrockets with a dual rig because windows well known run away processes can no longer freeze the entire OS. The difference was so staggering that for a long time I refused point blank to have my dual P3 upgraded to a newer P4 simply because with the P4 you could no longer get dual on the cheap. Check old office P3's and you might be suprised just how many were dual ready.
Another huge difference is going to be memory. Swap sucks and windows LOVES to swap. So does linux but at least with the proper software and setup you can at least make it behave. Sometimes. To a degree, for instance I can get my current setup to stay swapless IF don't open to many tabs in opera and stay out of java. E17 can still provide all the eyecandy with lots of stuff running and stay under 512MB of use.
Try the same with Windows XP sometimes. As for Vista, 2GB or don't even bother.
But even that is going to depend heavily on the user. Just what does a reviewer consider a slow/fast response.
Simple fact. Windows is buggy as hell and needs constant patches, just re-installed XP and it seems the machine has rebooted more because of patches then because I shut it down for making to much noise. This makes it FAR more important for me that XP boots fast then Linux wich reboots ONLY if they there is significant reason to do so. My linux box boots significantly slower then my windows machine BUT I spend far less time waiting for linux to finish booting. So how do I rate this in a review honestly?
A car reviewed from a travelling sales person view is going to be different then a review from a city dweller making short journeys on occasion. Who cares if the car has to get "warm" for a few minutes if you are going to be driving it all day. If on the other hand your average journey is a few secs, it is going to suck donkey balls.
My linux on a laptop I would have to shutdown and powerup constantly would absoluty be the pits. On the other hand, if sleep/suspend works on laptop X my linux setup would be far better (lesser demands, means less power needed, means more battery life and less hassle with updates)
Vista has a new sound system, possibly because of DRM needs, so soundcard users are going to be pissed off. Totally different from those who think sound is something that comes with the mobo.
OS reviews are therefore ALWAYS going to be a case of "it crashes for me" vs "it never crashes for me".
Just as there are people who NEVER have problems with linux and printing there are still others who never ever get it to work. I never have problems but that could very easily be because I got the right (combination of) hardware, if another user doesn't, their experience is going to be different.
One thing that keeps popping up is windows activation. For X percentage of people this goes smoothly, for the rest it doesn't. Neither group can understand the others experience. It is as simple as the fact that I don't like beer because I don't like the bitter taste of hops. Don't like bitter tastes period. Nonetheless every single beer drinker tries to sell me on beer X because they claim that it ain't as bitter. People who like bitter tastes cannot crasp the fact that others do not.
If for you activation went smoothly you cannot understand the experience someone
For years Linux has been blamed every single time some user couldn't get their soundcard or whatever to run, and that was Linux's fault. Now windows has the same problem and all of sudden that is acceptable.
Your argument sounds a lot like the "ie crashes on a site, must be a bad site. Firefox crashes on a site, bad firefox" crap.
Face it, MS screwed over the soundcard user for no other reason then to enforce their DRM onto the world. This from the same company that NEVER has bothered to include drivers for the creative soundblaster card.
This is indeed not 1994 anymore and why in 2007 linux live cd's get all my hardware right on my machines and windows can't even include drivers for basic intel network cards I will never understand.
In 2007, you get crashes because of a soundcard, in an OS that does almost all of its sound in software to enable drm and you find that acceptable? God, can you be any more of a tool?
You say that if evolution is a linear process then....
And that is where you go wrong. It ain't a process. Human beings need to think that way but evolution isn't some kind of system that you can analyse, it is just a name for observed data.
But ultimately it is random, claiming you should see evolution every two hundred years because of the law of averages is such complete and utter nonsense because that just ain't how it works. It would be like saying that if you flip a coin 100 times it should land on its side 2 times. While you can calculate this in theory, in practice the flipped coin may not land on its side if you flip it from now until the sun blows up. Then again, it may land on its side every single time.
But we are seeing evolution, humans with less and less hair. Bacteria that are resistent to drugs. Bacteria that thrive in human created toxic enviroments that never existed before.
But you go right on believing that some magic dude created it all. That explains it all, except, were did HE come from?
And then there is another thing, if you were a god, would you hand design everything, try to figure it all out in advance how all those species would live together in a changing world OR would you just "create" evolution and plant a tiny seed and sit back and what happens.
Have you ever met a person that you would describe as having an average intelligence? What do you mean, I am reading a post by one right now?
Anyway, half of the people, are even less intelligent then that.
There are people out there with IQ's well below 100 and they are allowed to vote.
Now just because a person has a low intelligence does NOT have to mean they are stupid. Far more dangerous are the people with just enough of intelligence to think they know better. You know the type, "How can there be global warming when it is freezing outside".
These same people look at evolution, can't see how a bacteria instantly develops into a human being and therefore it must be done by magic. Evolution is possible because of two things. First because if you have enough time even the most unlikely event is bound to happen but far more importantly, because the end result isn't nearly so fantastic as we would like to believe.
Lets face it, if a god had designed human beings would he have made such a mess. Take teeth, human beings live far to long for their teeth, so why hasn't god given us the constatly growing teeth of rabits OR the constantly replaced teeth of sharks? No instead we are lumbered with teeth that rot because of our diet and just don't have the required lifespan to last for 80+ years.
The eyeball is often used as an example of god's existence but lets face it, who of us couldn't come up with a better design if they were all powerfull. How about a simple autocorrection system so we don't need glasses. For that matter why not give your "top" design not the same eyes as say an eagle so they can see properly?
Part of the blame for religous nonsense like ID lies with the scientists. I seen everything from scientist trying to explain woman's boobs to us walking upright by "logic". Nature/evolution don't work that way. Women got boobs, because they got boobs. They are NOT substitutes for a baboon's bottom. (think about it, other big apes don't have them either, plus just because humans walk upright don't mean you can't see their asses) And human walk upright because, well we do. I am pretty sure that if somewhere there is an intelligent species that cartwheels around on 1004 limbs they will have scientist claiming that this is the most efficient system that could evolve.
Evolution happened because given enough time anything will happen. Nature does not exist, there is no goal, no end result, no plan, no path. We just happened.
Darwin never claimed Survival of the fittest. It is like how the term "global warming" got used instead of global climate change wich in itself is just a part of the impact human's have on nature. People focus on the warming bit because they can attack that and ignore that even if it NOT correct, we still are in trouble if we die of poisenous air and/or destory the ozone layer.
But yeah, global warming ain't real, because it is freezing outside, and god created man because you have this amazing eyeball that is outmatched by dozens of animals eyeballs. We can't see in the dark, our color vision sucks, we can barely see any distance, have trouble with fast moving objects OR objects standing still. IF a god created us, he didn't want us to see much of his creation did he. We can't even properly see the bloody flowers.
It has got to be the original Alien vs Predator
on
Most Impressive Game AI?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The game was not perfect, its crap save system for one thing BUT playing as the alien had some nice moves.
For once the "enemy" was more then just cannon fodder with a deathwish. You were a nasty scary alien and the humans knew it. So a fair number of them would NOT react all that well to signs of your presence.
Once I was hanging upside down from the ceiling slowly eleminating the lights. Below me a civilian must have spotted something for he threw up a molotov cocktail (or similar) at the shadows. Offcourse gravity did its job and it exploded when it fell down again and engulfed a soldier and another civie.
Another event had me again on the ceiling staring around corner down a hallway that was sloping down. At the end a soldier with a rocket launcher must have spotted me for he fired a round. Pity that a bend in the tunnel was in the way and the rocket exploded just a few meters away from him. AvP had volumetirc flames but by the time it reached me I had already ducked back into hiding.
Other events saw soldiers machine gunning straight to civilians as they tracked me and scared people hiding in toilets and throwing grenades in confined spaces.
In itself stupid behaviour every last one of them BUT made realistic because of the fact that the AI acted as if it was scared.
If it had been a regular soldier fps the AI would have blown chuncks, but because you were a scary nasty meany alien chewing the head of humans, the AI worked.
The combination of soldiers tracking you down combined with the capacity to introduce a state of mindless terror really worked. AI makes a dumbhead move? Must be because you scared it senseless.
Pity the sequel lost all of the originals capacity.
A really great AI must make you believe you are part of a real world.
But testing for vitamin C is not exactly cutting edge science.
What is in fact amazing about this story is that nobody has ever checked it before, you would expect food safety regulators to actually enforce the mandatorry labels by checking that what is inside them, is inside them.
Not that I ever heard of the drink, is this because the drink is not actually allowed in places were the goverment DOES check the contents of food products?
Why hasn't the NZ goverment found this out before, we know why the US goverment hasn't, but I didn't think NZ was as corrupt, sorry, properly concerned with the interest of big business to let this slide for so long.
The game Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, a SOE MMORPG, packs in at a whopping 17gb installed. 2 DVD's plus the inevitable patches and updates that need to be downloaded.
While you can rant and rave about the merits of Vanguard it shows that a single dvd just isn't enough anymore.
And that game, unlike Everquest 2 doesn't even have tons of speech in it.
Neither does it have any pre-rendered movies. That 17gig of data is just maps, textures, music and sounds.
I remember that one of the first CD games, 7th guest game in fact on multiple cd's.
And no, that wasn't very user friendly. People HATE to swap discs. The alternative is a lengthy install procedure were everything is transferred from the install discs to the HD. A limited space HD (a pitifull 20gb for the core 360) that you probably don't want to clutter with the intro movie that could just as well play from the play disc.
Frankly, kid, welcome to 2007. Every single time a new storage medium makes its introduction someone claims that the old ways are still good enough. Well I got news for you, 640kb is NOT enough for everyone. Technology moves on.
Not everyone does. I typically just don't give shit. XP is something that just happens to increase, and at points you go "ding" and you get some new option that might change the way you play your character a little. Big difference at least in MMORPG land between a healer who can just heal and a healer who get his rez spell. "Oops, sorry buddy, didn't notice your meter there, *cough*, can I try my new rez spell on you btw?"
I have done a lot of MMORPG's as well as the western CRPG's and the Pen & Paper stuff on the occasions I have time available AND I do not GRIND.
I can understand the concept, it is possibly just a little bit like chatting up a girl, taking her out, pretending to give a shit for the potential future reward of sex. At least I think that is how it is supposed to go. Lets face this is slashdot game section.
But might I suggest that a possible path instead might be to actually have fun while doing this? That you enjoy talking with her, going out, listening to her?
Mmm, yeah your right. What a load of nonsense.
MMORPG's are grinded because people grind them. If you gave players the choice between two quests, one "Kill 100 X" that gives enough XP to advance a level and one that gives 0 XP but tells a story that will move your soul and make you a changed man, all but a handfull will pick the second quest.
If you ever asked yourselve, how much does this quest pay, then you are a natural grinder. The game don't make you grind, you want to grind. What you should ask yourselve, how much fun is this quest, and see the pay, if any, as a bonus.
SWG the most reviled of MMORPG's did in fact have some nice story based quests in it. All but a handfull of players completed them however because the payout was frequently nothing more then a momento.
While some of us were having fun, others were killing the same mobs over and over to desperatly gain another level so they could grind a little bit faster.
At some point you got to ask yourselve were the fault for todays grind lies, is it purely bad design OR is it just that player when presented with a levelling system can't help but want to advance as quickly as possible?
When you see stuff like "Double XP weekend" you really got to start wondering what the fuck is wrong with people.
A real estate company? Please, they are used to dealing with millions of dollars, not the pennies involved in Second Life.
This is advertising but with a twist in that is slightly more then just putting up a banner. But it is advertising nonetheless and they know exactly what it is going to cost them because buying/renting land in Second Life is simple enough.
While the costs are high for a casual player for a company it is peanuts compared to even a simple direct mail campaign or even having a couple of pencils made with your logo on it.
This is NOT investment, this is NOT business, this is advertising. They would just as much loose their shirt in this as when Coca-Cola decides to sell shirts with its logo on it for cost. Yes, it is possible to totally bankrupt yourselve this way BUT I don't think that these people are that stupid.
Simply pay Linden a low monthly fee, hope it creates positive press and deduct it from the advertising budget. How could they loose? (Me starts a countdown for the number of seconds for someone to open a sexshop on Coldwell land, knowing second lifers, a furry pedo bdsm sex shop)
Slashdot Mirror
We could put the smokers and the fatties and the children and their parents and the loud talkers and the snorers and the stinkers ALL together into one section. But lets face it, who would be left for the normal person section?
I mean, they don't allow you to sit in the cockpit anymore. Another thing islam has ruined.
Big business leaders don't know IT. For that matter, few people in IT really know IT, but that is another rant.
Someone who can run a transport company successfully and knows that only a fool would allow your company to be totally dependent on one vehicle supllier will NOT realise that the same thing applies to the computers controlling the fleet of vehicles.
Standard example, every truck fleet owner has a favorite brand, yet they always got a couple of trucks that are of a different brand. The reason, simple, it makes negotiations a bit easier. Sure out of the 500 trucks in company 490 will be say Mercedes BUT on the day the Mercedes rep comes to talk about a new order you can bet that the 10 daf trucks will be proudly parked right outside the office. Just a hint that the order does not have to go to Mercedes this time.
That is because trucking company directors understand trucking. They do not understand IT. So when the MS salesrep arrives he will have confirmed via outlook, using documents created in office and be assured of seeing nothing but windows machines as he visits the office.
Offcourse he still gives a nice discount. That is easy. Establish the true price, hike it by a couple of hundred percent, give a discount of 50% percent and you got MS record profits.
And the really odd thing is that all those directors who wouldn't trust a truck maker who reported the same kind of profits as MS think it is a good sign that MS is making such huge profits.
People do NOT understand fields that they are not experts in and this goes triple for IT.
Couple this with the old maxim, nobody has ever been fired for buying Microsoft and you got the current situation.
It is changing but you are going to have to fight a bloody struggle to get anywhere. Remember, if you introduce linux into a company and suddenly costs plummet and productivity soars you will have made an awfull lot of enemies, every single person who said that MS software was the way to go.
I was in this situation once. A company had two websites belonging to different divesions. The one I was responsible for ran a webshop and services for customers and offcourse ran on linux cheapo hardware. The intraweb was purely windows and was run by the internal IT department but it also contained some sites available to our resellers and such. My divesion was brought back in under the umbrella of the mother coorperation, our website sold more products then all other sales efforts combined, so rather then being an experiment we turned into the biggest sales channel.
Anyway, oneday a director asked the question of why the intraweb was down once again, and for some reason the question was asked NOT to the internal IT department but to the web department (probably the doofus didn't realize the difference).
So what was I supposed to do? The reason the intraweb sucked was simple, it was run on windows, with IIS (or ISS, what ever acronym stands for steaming pile of garbage, was run by windows admins, and just wasn't designed by anyone who cared.
Yet for some reason, the idea seemed to be that since the director new that we used linux and windows and that the intraweb sucked that linux was used for the intraweb. And since everyone knows I run Linux I was told to convert the site to windows to fix the troubles and get help from the internal IT department.
Can you guess how many seconds it took me to reactivate my CV on monsterboard?
It was not that the guy in question was an idiot, he knew his business. It just didn't happen to be IT. And what could I do? My department was supposed to merge with the internal IT department and since they wore suits it was pretty clear to me who would end up as whose boss.
So I arranged some job interviews, and just told them that linux sadly wasn't up to the job and that switching the external site to windows was the best way to go, but sadly I did not have the qualifications to do that so the internal IT department should handle it, and handed in
You bought a cutrate product and expect firstrate support.
Mmm, do you have any idea how much tech support costs? Do you have any idea for that matter just how little margin there is on products like this?
They just don't want to do personal tech support because it eats away their profits like you won't believe.
Oh, and if you know your device, you can easily find it on their site and then find all the drivers you need.
It is slow as hell, to be sure but you cannot fault them for you not being able to find the required drivers.
No you sound like the typical customer who buys a lada but expects a roll-royce style customer support.
Ain't going to happen, and Asus knows this. They have done it this way for long enough for people to know better and they are still in business, because people like me know and accept the trade-offs.
They run Windows 2003. Just about says it all doesn't it?
On the other hand, I recently following some live changing events I had to work with three different machines in getting them back up and working. A HP kayak early P3 generation, a self built asus P3 (both dual) and a g3.
Can you guess from wich site I had the least problem getting info?
Yeah the apple site was fast, and constantly telling me about OS-X while the actuall bloody machine ran 8.6, HP had retired much of the data leaving only ASUS to still have all the relevant data simply online. Slow yes, but available without jumping through hoops.
Asus website is a horror, let there be no mistake about that, BUT they do have a track record of keeping all data online and easily accesiable and not constantly trying to sell you something new when looking up info about old stuff.
GPL: I buy everyone a round because the license of the bar says that everyone else will also buy a round when it is their turn.
BSD: I buy everyone a round because hell, I am just a nice guy and I want everyone to have a beer even if that means I will end up paying for all the beer being drunk.
Closed source company: Hell, I like you BSD, keep them coming.Eh, my round? I left my wallet at home, say BSD, how about a napeleon brandy mate?
BSD: Sure, we are all mates.
GPL: You are an idiot BSD. But hey, make mine a double.
Get it?
That is a HUGE difference. I am perfectly willing to give you ride somewhere. I am not going to give you my car.
It says it all that Microsoft LIKES bsd style opensource. Hell it is a public secret that windows for a long time contained BSD code in its network stack. MS doesn't have a problem at all with BSD style opensource since it can take all it wants and give nothing back. The GPL doesn't allow that. The GPL is about sharing.
I share with you, so you have to share with me. If I give you a ride it is sorta understood that you will give me a ride someday, or at least to someone else someday.
Both BSD and GPL have their nobelity. In think with BSD it is supposed to be, we want the world to use quality software and have it available and if that means others can take our work and never ever give anything of their own so be it. BSD is willing to do all the work.
Very noble, but most people don't work that way.
In this case, the broadcom GPL drivers have extra capabilities, if BSD had written them then broadcom would have been able to use that in their own drivers, without offcourse at anytime opening up any of their own stuff. BSD would have done their work for free. BSD don't mind, they see it as their cause, to improve software this way. Perhaps windows users the world over are thankfull to BSD for MS Windows wonderfull network code. Perhaps. If windows users ever knew about it.
The GPL works very different. What happens in GPL, stays in GPL. If you want to use GPL software you gotta GPL what you add to it. So broadcom can use the GPL drivers and their extra capabilities BUT only if they gpl the stuff they add themselves.
I will give you ride BUT only if you give me a ride tomorrow.
GPL is for older people, ones who know that in this world there are people who will NEVER buy their round, who never offer rides, who are always on holiday when it is someone elses turn to move.
Oh and opensource means nothing. Just because the source is open does NOT mean you can share it. After all a book is opensource but just you try to share the latest harry potter.
Insulting windows users just ain't any fun to us seasoned opensource users is it. It is like trying your wits against a duckling, one that has been run over and chewed on by the rats. Far better to cross daggers with a person of your own calibre, even if in the case of you BSD lovers it is an undead calibre.
But very well, I shall engage you on the battlefield, as long as you promise to stay down wind of me.
BSD is the thief and the thief does NOT get to complain about how the victim responds. If you break into my house I am not obliged to send you a polite letter first to ask you to please return my stuff, I send for the police, I do that publicaly and if they wake up everyone in your street and haul you out in front of your neightbours in your Steve Jobs underwear while they go about reclaiming my possesions then all the better.
The BSD people involved really should have known better then to do this. Contrary to what some people think both BSD and GPL people strongly believe in copyrights (what differs from closed source supporters is just how much control the author has over the user and/or further authors). You may not like either the GPL or BSD BUT for either to work they must respect the other.
Buesch might have done this in private BUT it is his decision and his decision and alone how to handle this. The offenders do not get to dictate how the victim voices his complaint. Theo should shut the fuck up, apologize for his and his team actions and be damned glad no formal complaint is being launched in the courts.
Just how much code is there in BSD anyway that is not there legally? Were there is smoke, there is fire.
You know as in winmodem or winprinter, a device that has taken much of the logic from the device were it belongs and onto the cpu were it will cause slowdown and despite the fact that software should be easier to update this only means the device will ship with buggy logic wich will never actually get updated.
Windows "ready" meant stay the fuck away. This is crap only a windows user would fall for.
After all, what device does NOT work with windows? For all its craptastic nature the windows OS widely supported and you would be very hard pressed to go into an average store (look, the apple store does not count alright) selling computer components and come out with a device that does not have windows drivers.
The windows logo therefore means absolutely nothing. Never has, never will. It can't, ms can't even certify its own stuff. Let alone others. When MS stuff works with MS stuff, then and only then can they start commenting on others people hardware.
Like when I am asked for computer help by a 19 year old blond girl untroubled by a high IQ and find that NOT only does she OFFCOURSE run firefox and has for a long time BUT also runs VLC for her media needs and can be very easily persuaded to use proper opensource apps rather then crappy closed source crap because she gets it.
Amazing. A bright new era has emerged and no longer will I ever be asked to de-infest a machine of tons of spyware.
Except that the very next day a much older guy who really should know better as he is supposed to be much smarter was complaining that his machine wasn't working properly and the net was slow only to find him using unprotected IE with a ton of shit installed.
Typical, the same era as before and I will be doomed to de-infest machines of tons of spuware until the end of time.
The problem is that of the yes men. The author talks how none of the people he meets and talks to use windows anymore. Yup. I can believe that. You tend to surround youreselve by people who share your view of the world. Since I cannot see myself having sex with myself naturally all the women in my life share that view and won't have sex with me either. IF only I had an narcacist complex I would be rolling in the sex.
For every person slowly weening themselves of MS software there are a dozen still firmly hooked who don't even know they are hooked.
And then there is the final nail in the coffin of anyone claiming MS is dead. The long proclaimed dead of the desktop.
Ain't going to happen. Ever.
Trust me on this. Photoshop on the net sounds nice but it is going to be more of an MS paint then a fullblown photoshop. The reason? Download a photoshop cd. Count the minutes. Are you willing to wait this long for every photograph you want to edit?
Ah, but you won't need the full program (not that the full program will be available anyway) all the time. Yeah, sure you don't, but will you ONLY need the limited tools available? I only buy a small percentage of products from a supermarket BUT a supermarket that only offers those products wouldn't do much business with anyone else would it?
I been around to long to still believe "dead of X" stories. Gmail is nice and all and certain tools may indeed shift slightly too a different format BUT by and large the same reason tools went of the mainframe and onto individual computers is the reason that they will remain there.
It works. The day that online space becomes availble in the terrabyte range for trivial amounts of money and I can stream HD video from my online storeage, then and only then could the desktop be "replaced". Technology may make it possible, internet companies will however have a far harder time learning to accept that kind of advanced use by their customers.
Simply put, do you keep a flashlight for when the power fails? Bottled water for when the water mains break, blankets for when the heat fails? Well, then keep a offline copy of your emails for when your internet fails.
If MS is dead, then for corpse it is damned active.
And if nobody is afraid of them anymore then, well perhaps that is like most city folks don't fear say a tiger. Don't mean tigers are harmless just because you are to stupid to realize it is a danger. Especially one that has been wounded and is on the edge of starvation and suddenly sees a lot of stupid fat cityfolks walking around.
What is not supposed to happen in "normal" circumstances, is that one process "accidently" accesses a part of memory not assinged to it. However plenty of programs work by doing this on purpose and as long as they behave, there is nothing wrong with it. It just so happens that trainers are a common example.
However typically with trainers, the user level is the same. There is no real problem with a trainer I run, modifying the memory of a program I am also running. It becomes more of a problem if user levels are not accepted (should I be able to read the memory of a program belonging to another user?).
In Vista/DRM case the problem is even more severe because there even processes belonging to you should still not be accesable to you. Why not? Well, because you are nasty mean piraty who steal the living from hard working people, you commie!
But no, traditionally OS'es do NOT protect process memory against deliberate snooping.
I am KIDDING!
But geez, isn't the fact that the thing is fucking ugly reason enough? It don't even matter that the device is apparently available in other colors then brown, in peoples mind the device is brown and brown is NOT the color of an Mp3 player. It hasn't been the color of any consumer electronics in decades. It is the color of old stuff. When wood was still the only thing people found acceptable in the house so everything had to look like it was made of wood, even if it mostly looked like plastic.
The ZUNE is the ultimate reminded that first impressions count. It don't matter if you buy a black Zune, it will still be brown.
A recent news item in Holland has been the firing of thousands of postal workers. "To all the people that send email, if you think that you are only hurting big companies you are wrong. There are thousands of working people with families who no longer have jobs because of email."
You can do the same for lots of developments in society. How many people once made a living taking care of all the horses needed for transportation? When steam went the way of the horse, how many stokers were fired? Do you use electric or gas for cooking? Did you spare a thought for the poor guy who is now unemployed that used to deliver coal?
However the coal guy did NOT spy on me to make sure the coal I bought was only used in my own stove. The postal worker did NOT up prices and tell me that from now on I could no longer send postcards but only letters with a minimum of three pages (the same as the music industry trying to kill singles).
The music industry is suffering from new technology but it ain't just incapable of adjusting to a new a world, it is actually trying to worsen the situation. Imagine if in this day and age when sending email is just so much easier then sending a letter, the postal companies would reduce the number letterboxes, cut down deliveries, increase prices, put insane restriction on what you can send and who you can send too and in general behaved like a load of asshats.
Would you give a damn about their demise then?
Music shops should have protested over a decade ago. Now it is too late, they are the hanger ons to a failed strategy. They are as much to blame as the RIAA itself, because of their inaction.
Well, you don't seem to know much about turkey either. Turkey is probably one of the few countries were you will find the "liberals" siding along with the military powers.
Yes, Turkey is indeed secular and extremely western (depends a bit on what part of the west you compare it to) "thanks" to the efforts of the man who would be come known as ataturk, father turk, for his efforts to turn unite Turkey and turn it into a modern nation.
The problem is this, Turkey is NOT a united country by itself. One turk is NOT the same as another. This is one of the biggest problems with for instance immigration to the west. Those people that are looked down upon in western europe are looked down upon in Turkey as well. It is roughly like how a Hillbilly will be frowned upon in Amsterdam by the locals AND by any visiting New Yorkers.
Turkey however so far has remain united thanks to its military leadership that comes down like a ton of bricks on anyone who dares to take Turkey in an undesired direction. The EU problem is that the Turkey that has the most change to join is also in a very real sense a military dictatorship. If as the EU insists the military reduces its influence then Turkey might very well become an islamic state.
Remember the riots in France about banning headscarfs? Similar stuff happens all over europe usually at the level of should headscarfs be allowed to be worn by public officials, like for instance in the courtsmthe legal system should be impartial, and at least in most european countries judges and other officials are therefore NOT allowed to show any signs of religion or politics. Muslims being allowed to wear headscarfs is therefore a direct attack on western traditions. So what is the case in Turkey? Well, they are banned and the military makes sue that that remains to be the way because they know what secular means.
So yes, turkey is a modern secular state, BUT what the grandparent might have been referring too is that it seems that IF the people in Turkey had a choice that might not remain the case.
Turkey is a democracy, but only so long as the people vote for the "correct" path as laid down by the military. It therefore is also very much a dictarorship, just that in some peoples eyes, that the dictatorships policies are desirable.
Turkey is like a man standing behind you with a gun, forcing you to make love to beautifull sexy women for a living. Yes, you might like making love to beautifull sexy women for a living BUT there is still a man with a gun behind you telling you what to do.
Say that this case was true for an entire nation, would you therefore conclude that this nation is entirely hetero OR might that country go homosexual the moment the man with the gun is removed.
EU efforts might very well result in them creating another muslim nation right on their doorstep.
The US has a city called philidelphia (or something) wich I believe is usually regarded as the most liberal of cities, (by US standards). Imagine this as Istanbul. Now imagine that phili is the capitol of the US and that the pentagon is making sure that phili politics are US politics. The US would seem to be far more "modern" then it really is, it might even allow gay marriages and such.
BUT the US ain't really that modern, there is the backward Bible Belt.
The father of all turks was a great man, BUT his rule is enforced through force. The question is what would happen when you remove that force.
Tell me, do americans in places like New York or LA etc feel that gay marriages should be outlawed? Nonetheless they are. Same with Turkey, just because Istanbul is the face of Turkey doesn't mean the body agrees with it.
And that is just it. It is alright. Damned by faint praise. It is a middle of the road device, so while it doesn't actually totally suck at anything, it doesn't shine at anything either.
Take its size, no it is NOT huge. The biggest is the Nintendo DS. That one is larger then the PSP in all dimensions. The DS Lite is exactly the same size as the PSP if you cut of the rounded sides of the PSP. But it is huge compared to the Gameboy advance mini.
So it ain't the biggest, and it ain't the smallest. I wouldn't want a DS in my pocket, I can't slip the PSP in as easy as a GBA mini.
Its screen is amazing scratch proof compared to other devices (say the GBA), but I won't be as easy going with it as my DS.
It doesn't have to play "lesser" games because of its hardware like the GBA/DS series BUT its hardware while similar to the PS2 is NOT close enough to actually be able to just play PS2 games. If for no other reason then that is lacks the controls for those games. This is perhaps the most damning (is that a word) aspect of the PSP. The GBA and DS are NOT capable of running the "big" games and so they don't. They have their own unique games, made entirely for the handheld. Quite a few of the PSP games are clones of "full" games, wich just don't fit on the console.
Not that Sony/PSP is alone in this. I remember a GBA game that for its save system required you to note down a 16 character code. Yeah that is userfriendly, especially on the go.
But simply put, I at least do not play handhelds as fullblown consoles, I play them on the move. That requires a certain style of gaming, for instance, don't make the game impossible to see in bright daylight.
Other middle of the road stuff that damns it. It is an mp3 player. But Memory sticks are smallish and expensive. Plus the player itself is a bit limited. It is like carrying an old style HD player with you with the storage space of a flash player.
It plays video, and fairly reaosonable, except that its storage space is barely big enough to hold a complete movie (and all your other crap). The dead pixels everyone seem to have don't help. No sony, dead pixels are not acceptable, they are the signs of a broken product and people can't look past them on a screen this small.
So it is bigger then an video iPod, and indeed most portable video players, but its storage space sucks and its screen has defects.
A nice thing about the PSP is that it has speakers. You can therefore do a thing with it that an iPod cannot do. Use it as a jukebox. Nice, except that its speakers lack power. Some people use their phones this way and their music is far louder. So you can use it as a jukebox, but only if everyone is really quiet.
Its screen is bigger then the Nintendo handhelds BUT it has less real estate compared to the DS.
Simply put, what is the PSP trying to be. If it was a handheld PS2 it would be a console on the go. But it ain't. If it had more storage it could be a media player. But it ain't. If it had stronger speakers, it could be a jukebox like system. But it ain't. If it games were more made for being on the move. It could be fun like the Nintendo games. But it ain't.
The sad fact is that I play GTA on my PSP and that is it. I also use it to play movies and such but mostly I use it for as a jukebox for when I am in a hotel or something, while I play games on my DS.
Frankly, with all its faults, perhaps the second biggest mistake by Sony (apart from making few "on the move" games) is that PSP games are just so fucking expensive. I rather buy a DS game then for 10-20 euros less.
5. Pedestrian stops complaining about how filthy the beach is and why doesn't the goverment do anything about it.
Your argument sounds a lot like dog owners who complained about fines for letting their dogs crap on the sidewalk BUT also complained about crap on the sidewalk.
Is it really that hard to make sure your dog does NOT take a dump were everyone, including yourselve is walking? Is it that hard to drop your litter in a can?
You see, the problem for me, a middle aged white male, is that I see two choices. Talking camera's and security patrols (wich do not affect me) OR walking through areas littered with crap (affect the people who think the street is a garbage dump). Hmmm, what a choice to make eh. My convenience for your freedom to inconvenience me, yourselve and everyone else.
Sorry, you need to come up with a better example then the state repressing your freedom to litter.
You can't properly review an OS or indeed most software. Reviews of any product are going to be already biased by nothing more then the simple differences between people in their physical build. Obviously a tall person will find space in car slightly more important then a small person, hell, to small a reviewer might even mark a car as bad if they can't see over the steering wheel.
But at least they are all driving on the same road, using more or less the same fuel and gravity is pretty much the same for all car reviewers.
Computer configurations are just too different to be accurate for everyone. For instance there is a marked difference between Windows on a dual CPU setup and a single CPU even back with W2K. Stability skyrockets with a dual rig because windows well known run away processes can no longer freeze the entire OS. The difference was so staggering that for a long time I refused point blank to have my dual P3 upgraded to a newer P4 simply because with the P4 you could no longer get dual on the cheap. Check old office P3's and you might be suprised just how many were dual ready.
Another huge difference is going to be memory. Swap sucks and windows LOVES to swap. So does linux but at least with the proper software and setup you can at least make it behave. Sometimes. To a degree, for instance I can get my current setup to stay swapless IF don't open to many tabs in opera and stay out of java. E17 can still provide all the eyecandy with lots of stuff running and stay under 512MB of use.
Try the same with Windows XP sometimes. As for Vista, 2GB or don't even bother.
But even that is going to depend heavily on the user. Just what does a reviewer consider a slow/fast response.
Simple fact. Windows is buggy as hell and needs constant patches, just re-installed XP and it seems the machine has rebooted more because of patches then because I shut it down for making to much noise. This makes it FAR more important for me that XP boots fast then Linux wich reboots ONLY if they there is significant reason to do so. My linux box boots significantly slower then my windows machine BUT I spend far less time waiting for linux to finish booting. So how do I rate this in a review honestly?
A car reviewed from a travelling sales person view is going to be different then a review from a city dweller making short journeys on occasion. Who cares if the car has to get "warm" for a few minutes if you are going to be driving it all day. If on the other hand your average journey is a few secs, it is going to suck donkey balls.
My linux on a laptop I would have to shutdown and powerup constantly would absoluty be the pits. On the other hand, if sleep/suspend works on laptop X my linux setup would be far better (lesser demands, means less power needed, means more battery life and less hassle with updates)
Vista has a new sound system, possibly because of DRM needs, so soundcard users are going to be pissed off. Totally different from those who think sound is something that comes with the mobo.
OS reviews are therefore ALWAYS going to be a case of "it crashes for me" vs "it never crashes for me".
Just as there are people who NEVER have problems with linux and printing there are still others who never ever get it to work. I never have problems but that could very easily be because I got the right (combination of) hardware, if another user doesn't, their experience is going to be different.
One thing that keeps popping up is windows activation. For X percentage of people this goes smoothly, for the rest it doesn't. Neither group can understand the others experience. It is as simple as the fact that I don't like beer because I don't like the bitter taste of hops. Don't like bitter tastes period. Nonetheless every single beer drinker tries to sell me on beer X because they claim that it ain't as bitter. People who like bitter tastes cannot crasp the fact that others do not.
If for you activation went smoothly you cannot understand the experience someone
For years Linux has been blamed every single time some user couldn't get their soundcard or whatever to run, and that was Linux's fault. Now windows has the same problem and all of sudden that is acceptable.
Your argument sounds a lot like the "ie crashes on a site, must be a bad site. Firefox crashes on a site, bad firefox" crap.
Face it, MS screwed over the soundcard user for no other reason then to enforce their DRM onto the world. This from the same company that NEVER has bothered to include drivers for the creative soundblaster card.
This is indeed not 1994 anymore and why in 2007 linux live cd's get all my hardware right on my machines and windows can't even include drivers for basic intel network cards I will never understand.
In 2007, you get crashes because of a soundcard, in an OS that does almost all of its sound in software to enable drm and you find that acceptable? God, can you be any more of a tool?
You say that if evolution is a linear process then ....
And that is where you go wrong. It ain't a process. Human beings need to think that way but evolution isn't some kind of system that you can analyse, it is just a name for observed data.
But ultimately it is random, claiming you should see evolution every two hundred years because of the law of averages is such complete and utter nonsense because that just ain't how it works. It would be like saying that if you flip a coin 100 times it should land on its side 2 times. While you can calculate this in theory, in practice the flipped coin may not land on its side if you flip it from now until the sun blows up. Then again, it may land on its side every single time.
But we are seeing evolution, humans with less and less hair. Bacteria that are resistent to drugs. Bacteria that thrive in human created toxic enviroments that never existed before.
But you go right on believing that some magic dude created it all. That explains it all, except, were did HE come from?
And then there is another thing, if you were a god, would you hand design everything, try to figure it all out in advance how all those species would live together in a changing world OR would you just "create" evolution and plant a tiny seed and sit back and what happens.
Evolution does NOT deny the existence of a god.
Have you ever met a person that you would describe as having an average intelligence? What do you mean, I am reading a post by one right now?
Anyway, half of the people, are even less intelligent then that.
There are people out there with IQ's well below 100 and they are allowed to vote.
Now just because a person has a low intelligence does NOT have to mean they are stupid. Far more dangerous are the people with just enough of intelligence to think they know better. You know the type, "How can there be global warming when it is freezing outside".
These same people look at evolution, can't see how a bacteria instantly develops into a human being and therefore it must be done by magic. Evolution is possible because of two things. First because if you have enough time even the most unlikely event is bound to happen but far more importantly, because the end result isn't nearly so fantastic as we would like to believe.
Lets face it, if a god had designed human beings would he have made such a mess. Take teeth, human beings live far to long for their teeth, so why hasn't god given us the constatly growing teeth of rabits OR the constantly replaced teeth of sharks? No instead we are lumbered with teeth that rot because of our diet and just don't have the required lifespan to last for 80+ years.
The eyeball is often used as an example of god's existence but lets face it, who of us couldn't come up with a better design if they were all powerfull. How about a simple autocorrection system so we don't need glasses. For that matter why not give your "top" design not the same eyes as say an eagle so they can see properly?
Part of the blame for religous nonsense like ID lies with the scientists. I seen everything from scientist trying to explain woman's boobs to us walking upright by "logic". Nature/evolution don't work that way. Women got boobs, because they got boobs. They are NOT substitutes for a baboon's bottom. (think about it, other big apes don't have them either, plus just because humans walk upright don't mean you can't see their asses) And human walk upright because, well we do. I am pretty sure that if somewhere there is an intelligent species that cartwheels around on 1004 limbs they will have scientist claiming that this is the most efficient system that could evolve.
Evolution happened because given enough time anything will happen. Nature does not exist, there is no goal, no end result, no plan, no path. We just happened.
Darwin never claimed Survival of the fittest. It is like how the term "global warming" got used instead of global climate change wich in itself is just a part of the impact human's have on nature. People focus on the warming bit because they can attack that and ignore that even if it NOT correct, we still are in trouble if we die of poisenous air and/or destory the ozone layer.
But yeah, global warming ain't real, because it is freezing outside, and god created man because you have this amazing eyeball that is outmatched by dozens of animals eyeballs. We can't see in the dark, our color vision sucks, we can barely see any distance, have trouble with fast moving objects OR objects standing still. IF a god created us, he didn't want us to see much of his creation did he. We can't even properly see the bloody flowers.
The game was not perfect, its crap save system for one thing BUT playing as the alien had some nice moves.
For once the "enemy" was more then just cannon fodder with a deathwish. You were a nasty scary alien and the humans knew it. So a fair number of them would NOT react all that well to signs of your presence.
Once I was hanging upside down from the ceiling slowly eleminating the lights. Below me a civilian must have spotted something for he threw up a molotov cocktail (or similar) at the shadows. Offcourse gravity did its job and it exploded when it fell down again and engulfed a soldier and another civie.
Another event had me again on the ceiling staring around corner down a hallway that was sloping down. At the end a soldier with a rocket launcher must have spotted me for he fired a round. Pity that a bend in the tunnel was in the way and the rocket exploded just a few meters away from him. AvP had volumetirc flames but by the time it reached me I had already ducked back into hiding.
Other events saw soldiers machine gunning straight to civilians as they tracked me and scared people hiding in toilets and throwing grenades in confined spaces.
In itself stupid behaviour every last one of them BUT made realistic because of the fact that the AI acted as if it was scared.
If it had been a regular soldier fps the AI would have blown chuncks, but because you were a scary nasty meany alien chewing the head of humans, the AI worked.
The combination of soldiers tracking you down combined with the capacity to introduce a state of mindless terror really worked. AI makes a dumbhead move? Must be because you scared it senseless.
Pity the sequel lost all of the originals capacity.
A really great AI must make you believe you are part of a real world.
But testing for vitamin C is not exactly cutting edge science.
What is in fact amazing about this story is that nobody has ever checked it before, you would expect food safety regulators to actually enforce the mandatorry labels by checking that what is inside them, is inside them.
Not that I ever heard of the drink, is this because the drink is not actually allowed in places were the goverment DOES check the contents of food products?
Why hasn't the NZ goverment found this out before, we know why the US goverment hasn't, but I didn't think NZ was as corrupt, sorry, properly concerned with the interest of big business to let this slide for so long.
The game Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, a SOE MMORPG, packs in at a whopping 17gb installed. 2 DVD's plus the inevitable patches and updates that need to be downloaded.
While you can rant and rave about the merits of Vanguard it shows that a single dvd just isn't enough anymore.
And that game, unlike Everquest 2 doesn't even have tons of speech in it.
Neither does it have any pre-rendered movies. That 17gig of data is just maps, textures, music and sounds.
I remember that one of the first CD games, 7th guest game in fact on multiple cd's.
And no, that wasn't very user friendly. People HATE to swap discs. The alternative is a lengthy install procedure were everything is transferred from the install discs to the HD. A limited space HD (a pitifull 20gb for the core 360) that you probably don't want to clutter with the intro movie that could just as well play from the play disc.
Frankly, kid, welcome to 2007. Every single time a new storage medium makes its introduction someone claims that the old ways are still good enough. Well I got news for you, 640kb is NOT enough for everyone. Technology moves on.
Not everyone does. I typically just don't give shit. XP is something that just happens to increase, and at points you go "ding" and you get some new option that might change the way you play your character a little. Big difference at least in MMORPG land between a healer who can just heal and a healer who get his rez spell. "Oops, sorry buddy, didn't notice your meter there, *cough*, can I try my new rez spell on you btw?"
I have done a lot of MMORPG's as well as the western CRPG's and the Pen & Paper stuff on the occasions I have time available AND I do not GRIND.
I can understand the concept, it is possibly just a little bit like chatting up a girl, taking her out, pretending to give a shit for the potential future reward of sex. At least I think that is how it is supposed to go. Lets face this is slashdot game section.
But might I suggest that a possible path instead might be to actually have fun while doing this? That you enjoy talking with her, going out, listening to her?
Mmm, yeah your right. What a load of nonsense.
MMORPG's are grinded because people grind them. If you gave players the choice between two quests, one "Kill 100 X" that gives enough XP to advance a level and one that gives 0 XP but tells a story that will move your soul and make you a changed man, all but a handfull will pick the second quest.
If you ever asked yourselve, how much does this quest pay, then you are a natural grinder. The game don't make you grind, you want to grind. What you should ask yourselve, how much fun is this quest, and see the pay, if any, as a bonus.
SWG the most reviled of MMORPG's did in fact have some nice story based quests in it. All but a handfull of players completed them however because the payout was frequently nothing more then a momento.
While some of us were having fun, others were killing the same mobs over and over to desperatly gain another level so they could grind a little bit faster.
At some point you got to ask yourselve were the fault for todays grind lies, is it purely bad design OR is it just that player when presented with a levelling system can't help but want to advance as quickly as possible?
When you see stuff like "Double XP weekend" you really got to start wondering what the fuck is wrong with people.
The moment the lawyer you DIDN'T hire sueed you for not hiring him. Oh and everyone who does NOT mod me up, I am sueing you!
A real estate company? Please, they are used to dealing with millions of dollars, not the pennies involved in Second Life.
This is advertising but with a twist in that is slightly more then just putting up a banner. But it is advertising nonetheless and they know exactly what it is going to cost them because buying/renting land in Second Life is simple enough.
While the costs are high for a casual player for a company it is peanuts compared to even a simple direct mail campaign or even having a couple of pencils made with your logo on it.
This is NOT investment, this is NOT business, this is advertising. They would just as much loose their shirt in this as when Coca-Cola decides to sell shirts with its logo on it for cost. Yes, it is possible to totally bankrupt yourselve this way BUT I don't think that these people are that stupid.
Simply pay Linden a low monthly fee, hope it creates positive press and deduct it from the advertising budget. How could they loose? (Me starts a countdown for the number of seconds for someone to open a sexshop on Coldwell land, knowing second lifers, a furry pedo bdsm sex shop)