Well, stopping the elections could be considered a failure. The problem with elections however is that they have to be held again and again. So the enemy gets to try to prevent them again and again. It doesn't look like they have given up.
As for defeating through attrition and failed public support. Are you kidding? They got Spain to pull out, Blair got his ass kicked in recent elections and Bush ain't doing to well. Rememeber, you are not allowed to set the deadline. Until the last enemy stops fighting you can't call it a win. At best this is a stalemate.
As for creating a lawless Iraq. Define lawless. From what I know the koerds in the north seem to be in relative peace and control. The south isn't supposed to be too bad but the center is a no-mans land. What exactly do you mean by civil war? If the civilians fight other civilians?
The enemy may not have won but neither have the americans. At best the war is ongoing. A bloody stalemate. Or is it deadlock? What do you call it when two parties fight but are each unable to achieve a decisive victory?
Mmm, what then. Ah, the spammer is from russia so how about "Communist attack on the internet". That better?
No? Oh okay, how about russian spam is often for pedo sites. "Pedo's attack on the internet". Nah, "Red Pedo's attack Internet!"
Yeah, that will work. Good thing we got rid of the mention of terrorists. After all people might argue that one person's terrorsit is another freedom fighter but no-one will dare come to the defence of pedo's. Or pinkos.
Take a CD and insert it in your PC and try to read it.
No problem right?
Okay now intervere with it script kiddie style. Scratch it and try to read it again.
Notice how your computer grinds to a halt as it tries to read the damaged area?
Okay now let a nuke fly. Totally obliterate the CD by removing it from your PC. Try reading it again. That didn't take long to fail did it?
Nuclear attack would have destroyed a connection. This is easy to detect and causes very little load on the machine that has been disconnected.
A DDOS however keeps the link alive just saturated so now the machine that is connected has to deal with a huge load.
The machine can't simply decide to cut the line if it goes over a certain limit so it just has to deal with it.
This makes a nuclear attack much simpler to deal with.
I can see the same effect on my linux machine. It tries to mount some network shares during boottime. Now two things can go wrong. Sometimes there is no network connection at all. This is simple. If there is no network you can't mount a network share and so the script fails almost instantly. IF however for some reason the remote machine ain't serving properly then it takes ages as the bootscript has no way of knowing if the remote machine is down or merely slow as hell.
So yes the Internet is that fragile. It was designed to deal with outside threaths, not inside.
Project Leader: Right you coder, the HTML designer doesn't understand PHP so you got use a template language instead you never heard off.
Coder: Oh okay, I can do that, so Designer guy, you can help with learning this template language?
Designer: No, I never heard of it either and I am going to just delete any html I don't regonise just like I do with php tags.
Coder: Fuck.
And this ain't a joke. My introduction to templates went pretty much like this. In order to deal with a designer who kept removing PHP because of the design program she used I had to learn a new "language" wich didn't help since she still kept deleting it.
Also templates are very limited if you want to do extra stuff. Like changing the layout of the table you just gave dynamically.
Is it possible to color each row an alternate color for instance? Probably it is but either way you end up adding more complexity to deal with what problem? Your designer unable to deal with your coding language? Get a better designer. Coders don't just delete html do they?
That is with no "bare html" inside. All the html is output via functions.
so for instance to get the title tag I would have something like.
function Title($title) { print("<head>{$title}</head>"); } Title("My title");
Except that the function is part of a class wich does all the basic layout.
Why? Well I find it easier to maintain. But is this any easier then use doing
PHP CODE HERE ?> <head>My title</head> <?php PHP CODE HERE
No not really. But what if the title is being generated from something else? What if the title isn't known until you reach the end of the code? Ofcourse there are other solutions to overcome this but this is the one I took.
There are a couple of forms of maintenance but basically if the designers wants to make minor color changes he doesn't need to touch the main code anymore, he can just edit the css file. IF he does want to make major changes to the layout I can far more easily rearrange stuff by simple altering the order of function calls then he can mess with template code or html with PHP included.
If I want to make functional changes I don't have to worry about having to wade through reams of html and find that I need to alter it completly. The code just looks cleaner to me.
In the end I can generate new function much faster by being in total control over the layout. What is easier displayField('user'); displayField('password'); or the html with all the php includes needed to set all the values to what you want?
Not everyone likes my method of doing things. Hell I seen people that didn't even use functions in PHP and they choke on my extended use of classes.
In the end I suppose the only real answer is to use the method that works for you.
Personally I never got the taste for using templates. Lots of reasons really but mostly because they are a pain to debug and for some reason template users never seem to bother with commenting their code.
Personal experience of course and I am sure other have different experiences but what else is there to judge things by but personal experience?
Basically, do what works for you if you are the one in control or use what your project leader tells you to do.
The first thing to learn as a developer is that there is no golden path to a succesfull project. Newbies often think that if only they use method X then everything will be alright. Nope, sorry.
The only method that works the tiniest bit is to at least be consistent. Try some stuff out and then settle on one method.
If you think that templates might be an intresting method go ahead and develop a test project with them to see if you like them and they make things easier for you.
The problem being that how do you get good system management when the admin is india and the machine is here.
This is an intelligence test people. If you do not get the next step that is the obvious solution to managers who came up with the idea of outsourcing then congrats. You are an idiot.
The solution to the problems that arise when you outsource the management of your non-outsourced systems? Outsource the systems.
TADA!
Why not? They are outsourcing everything else aren't they?
And don't think outsourcing is anything new either. How many of you work in companies that have their own cantina's. Used to be a member of the company meaning they had heart for the business and were for instance willing to work overtime along with the other workers.
Been outsourced to special companies meaning nowadays it is all the same generic crap with zero attention to the specific needs of the company. Like for instance making the cooking equipment available to people having to work the nightshift.
Offcourse now everyone is crying because it is their job that is going away. If you didn't protest when the thee lady was outsourced then don't expect anyone to protest because your job is going away.
HOW DARE YOU OVERUSE MS OS! You were not granted the right to just keep using it forever and ever communist! Why did you refuse to stimulate the american economy by not buying every single MS Windows release? Next you are telling me you didn't buy any of the Plus Packs.
Hanging is too good for you. I sentence you to ten years of Windows ME support.
Offcourse MS doesn't sell an OS. It sells a desktop. Same as KDE or Gnome. Linux is the kernel GNU/Linux the OS and KDE the Desktop (/me waves a white flag of peace to avoid being lynched for perhaps getting the OS/kernel distinction wrong)
Windows does an awfull lot more then just sit between you and the hardware.
One of the reasons IE boots faster then Firefox is because firefox doesn't know it is going to run until you tell it too and then has to do all of its getting ready. IE is already pre-loaded, ready to be used. (By anyone wishing to bot your machine)
1gig may sound like a lot but as an owner of a linux P3x2 512mb machine I can tell you that it is not extreme. I constantly run against the fact that my PC has to swap and if I could add another 512mb for less then the entire machine cost me I would (it uses the evil intel ram whatever it is called)
Granted if Vista itself REALLY needs the full 1gig you are going to need at minimum 2gig to game and possible more. There are already plenty of games wich prefer more then a gig on W2K3 (my gaming rig).
It might shock you but I think if you are a gamer and your game is going to be vista only you might want to bite the bullet and get a 4gig machine.
Damn. Then again, my current vidcard for my gaming machine got the same amount of memory as my desktop pc. And yes I am old enough to have had harddisks a fraction that size. Oh okay I am old enough to have had harddisks with less space then a PSP satisfied?
I am kinda amazed however that it only requires a 1gig processor. With overclocking my P3 can reach that. Odd.
That more then anything suggests to me that Vista is a bit bloated. What the hell are they loading into memory that doesn't require CPU power to process but does have to be in main memory?
It is like those EULA's what some company lawyer writes down is worth jackshit. If the judge in this case decides that Linden Labs has a case to answer they can take their agreement and shove it where the sun don't shine.
Not that I think there is a case but that is because he committed fraud.
At least in europe all those agreements got a line that effectively says, this agreement is binding unless the law says otherwise. It is basically what they hope they can get away with until someone has the balls to take them to court.
They are rare in the wild, those blue gorilla's. Well not rare exactly. Rare for anyone to report on them because they tend to sit on people that annoy them. And when a 800 pound gorrila sits on you, you stay sat on.
But yes this is another story of sue happy america. Got to love the US of A. Especially the fact that it is an ocean away.
Since they ain't seizing your telephone line. That remains right where it is.
In fact the entire bit you quote says nothing about speech. It says nothing about you not being allowed to be eavesdropped on.
It seems to say that you cannot be willfully arrested, or have your house/papers/effects seized or searched. Where does it say anything about your words?
I am not entirely sure what they mean with the word "effects" but to me the constitution does not seem to mention privacy as in being spied upon. Perhaps it is somewhere else.
Would be intresting if they really left it out wouldn't it.
Since criminals can't vote this means that anybody affected by this law can't vote against it come next election because they are convicted criminals. Brilliant isn't it?
Now if only we could outlaw thinking then the next elections should be a steal for the republicans.
But don't worry, I am sure you know better then the people at IBM, must be why you make billion and they do not advising the biggest companies in the world.
One of the best bits of that game (and there were many) is how things where not always as they seemed. There was one part of the world where zombies, ghouls and skeletons had formed a society of their own and not for once to wage war on the living but just to live their own lives.
It was too me very refreshing. The entire "series" had this element of turning stereo types upside down. One of the games allowed you to forge an allience between a village and some gnolls. You could have easily slayed them to complete the quest but making an allience made for a far better game in my opinion.
Nonetheless stereo types are the norm. It is not that suprising really. I have talked to other Torment players who never "discovered" the undead village because they immidialty went into slaughter mode upon spotting the skeleton guards.
It is easier to be able to spot the goodies from the baddies in an instant so you know who too hit with a big sword and who to heal in the confusion of battle. It is kinda the reason why soldiers were uniforms, in some ways zombie is just a uniform that identifies the NPC as an enemy.
But why use real world races in a fantasy setting? Well two reasons, first the Star Trek reason. It allows you to discuss real world politics without immidiatly having all the real world baggage. The klingons were like the soviets but were not the soviets. Be symphatethic with a klingon is okay (Kirk does it several times) be symphatitic with a communist is not.
Sci-Fi often uses this tool the most classic being the case of the two alien races fighting each other tille exstinction. One black and white, the other white and black. Obviously a reference to our black vs white struggles BUT without at any point having to deal with wich of the characters is the white person and who the black.
The second reason wich I think WoW took is because it safes time, copy and paste a culture is easier then making up your own, plus it increases immersion. People will be adding their own knowledge to your game making it seem deeper then it really is.
I don't really think there is that much meaning behind it except perhaps the general kinda low level racism that is so common among all of us it is just part of live.
Could you really picture a jamaican like culture in control of advance tech? Be honest. For that matter could you imagine a troll with the bearing of a british gentleman?
The predator had dreadlocks. Could you imagine him with a Beatles haircut instead?
Like it or not but we are all prejudiced. We can overcome it but at a basic level we expect certain behaviours from people with certain looks. It is as simple as that fat people have good humor and thin people have none.
Most polls mention something like this. 45% said Yes, 50% said No and 5% said don't know.
What they don't say, 35% told us to fuck off and die or just ignored us when we tried to talk to them.
Same with online surveys how many people on being asked to fill one in just ignore it?
When it comes to surveys about ads you can't ignore this group. After all what group is most likely to be irritated by time wasting ads. Those who happily spend time filling in a survey or those that don't want to be bothered.
Can I asume you don't like filling in survey's either as well as hating ads?
Then that is the reason people like you (and me) are not reflected and you can get in our eyes skewed results.
I think ad agencies are idiots. You got the fact that people are trying to escape ads. So what do you do? Try to pacify the group still watching ads to avoid losing them or go after the people who ran away and bombard them with yet more ads? I already use adzapper. What is next should I DOS adservers to make them stop? I DO NOT WANT YOUR ADS. Get it in your fucking skull. Game makers, learn from TV, they have lost the young male audience to the internet and games. It hurtst them but they got other groups. You ain't. Pester those young males and you will loose your only market.
Is this going to be like DVD's again. (watch a pirated movie without ads or pay for a dvd and be forced to sit through endless ads) Shall we in the future not just have hackers remove the copy protection but also the ads?
It ain't like games even come free like tv. STOP BEING SO FUCKING GREEDY.
Based on what? Cause the sales chart don't show the 360 in the lead.
A next-gen console loosing to the oldest console is NOT that big an endorsement.
I guess all those people who say it is gameplay and not graphics that matter are right after all.
A PS2 game should NOT be the best seller but it is.
It does however make sense. Even if the 360 is going to be a success it simply isn't out there in enough number yet to compete with the PS2. No point in buying a game if you don't have the console after all.
Claiming that the 360 is behind this revival reeks of fanboyness.
What is far more likely is that some big titles have finally launched, titles that people cared about who actually buy games, not just fanboys.
Charts are all very nice but I would like to see some hard figures. I am willing to bet there is a big gap between the number one seller and number two seller.
Oh well. Guess all the reports about the death of gaming were premature. Once again.
The internet has automated crime. No longer is a breakin a personal affair with dedicated employees giving you a personal housecall. They can just send bots to do it to thousands, millions at a time globally.
It is wonderfull really because it does in fact allow one person to commit crimes that in the real world would require a small army.
That one man can control a lot of crime is nothing new. Check the history of the mafia. It is filled with nobody's rising to control entire cities.
Imagine if Al Capone had the use of robots that cost virtually nothing to produce. He would have owned the world.
And a bot doesn't cost anything to produce and can easily be set to produce countless offspring.
When you read the occasional story of botnets being discovered counting a million+ machines that means 1 person effictly controls all the home PC's of a small country.
So I don't find it at all amazing that one person can create so much havoc.
What is amazing that we let them get away with it.
Countries like Russia and China should have had their internet cut off years ago and MS been forced at gun point to secure their OS.
Imagine if Sony's robot dog went around stealing peoples mail, how long would it be before Sony was called to order and those robot dogs shot on sight?
Just because it is on the internet we tend to accept things we would never tolerate in real life.
On the other hand, perhaps this is what makes the internet so special. Nobody ever said total freedom would come without a heavy price.
Perhaps this is the reason that where ever people have had total freedom they couldn't wait to introduce law and order. At least that is what westerns tell me.
You are an ISP that means you business getting people to pay you to let them on the internet. Now try to do this. Block people from the internet if they are not running proper software. How many seconds do you think it will be before people switch to a provider that doesn't block bots. Because people don't care they are infected they just want to be hassle free. Until their computer blows up they don't want to know that their machine is a bot.
Anymore then people want to know their 3 ton car is causing global warming. Imagine if Shell refused to sell gas to cars that do not have a certain fuel efficiency. How long would they stay in business?
It is one of the reason to liberetarians are wrong. A lot of things can only happen because they are written down in law.
Should there be a law that forces ISP's to shutdown bots? Well, it all depends on the kind of internet you want. A totally free on that is controlled by criminals or a non-free one that is controlled by the state.
Cause freedom doesn't exist. There is always someone in control. For now it is the spammers.
Wich is why every review site doesn't have screenshots but instead carefully arranged gameplay illustrations.
BULLSHIT!
It is like saying you prefer women with a good personality over one with good looks. Yeah right. Who are you trying to kid.
And what about games where graphics affect the gameplay?
What do you prefer, an enemy with a health meter OR an enemy where you can see how damaged he is?
Is a flightsim where you can see the wing surfaces move a better flightsim because of it? If not then why are there so many usermods for MS Flightsimulator that add extra options like opening doors, lighted cabins etc etc.
Why for that matter bother with higher res textures depicting real airlines? All it means is that you loose a few frames of performance and graphics don't matter right?
The PSP and DS are at two extreme ends. Nobody can deny that PSP grahphics just look better. But does it matter for gameplay? Well playing some DS/GBA games I am forced to ask myself when Nintendo will finally pull their games into 1990 and add some bloody speech.
It is really a nice change to be able to just listen to your handheld rather then having to read slowly scrolling text.
Is speech just candy? Or does it help make a more real game.
Frankly we hear this same discussion about graphics being less important then gameplay every console generation and everytime a new vidcard comes out.
So far it doesn't seem to stop people buy the latest console or vidcard.
If you really think graphics don't matter, play the original pong on a old tv. Have fun.
Large aircraft are a mess with enormous cable trunks running through the entire hull and hopefully nothing will short circuit or simply break over 30 years of use.
Except that this does happen as has been found in several big accidents.
The problem isn't one wire running from the cockpit to the controls. It is hundreds of wires running from the cockpit to the controls. Each one critical and not exactly easily replaced.
Wireless makes sense because you would save not just weight but also remove a major maintenance worry. No more short circuits, no more cables coming loose. No problems if a part of the aircraft falls off and takes the cables with it.
Yes interference will be something that must be overcome and I have no idea if it is possible BUT replacing wires in aircraft is not stupid or a waste of time. It would save both money and lives. IF it can be made to work regardless of interference.
There have been several accidents where airliners have crashed because the wire connection was disrupted. Watch those "aircraft investigation" shows on discovery.
One had a fire break out because of a bad cable and it simply burned out the controls.
This couldn't happen with wireless. As long as the two components remain within reach of each other then all is fine. If your control surfaces start to distance themselves from the cockpit you got bigger problems (Japan Air 123)
So a couple of big accidents would not have happened if physical links had been wireless or had wireless backups.
Yes there are other problems but physical connections ain't without problems either.
Slashdot Mirror
As for defeating through attrition and failed public support. Are you kidding? They got Spain to pull out, Blair got his ass kicked in recent elections and Bush ain't doing to well. Rememeber, you are not allowed to set the deadline. Until the last enemy stops fighting you can't call it a win. At best this is a stalemate.
As for creating a lawless Iraq. Define lawless. From what I know the koerds in the north seem to be in relative peace and control. The south isn't supposed to be too bad but the center is a no-mans land. What exactly do you mean by civil war? If the civilians fight other civilians?
The enemy may not have won but neither have the americans. At best the war is ongoing. A bloody stalemate. Or is it deadlock? What do you call it when two parties fight but are each unable to achieve a decisive victory?
No? Oh okay, how about russian spam is often for pedo sites. "Pedo's attack on the internet". Nah, "Red Pedo's attack Internet!"
Yeah, that will work. Good thing we got rid of the mention of terrorists. After all people might argue that one person's terrorsit is another freedom fighter but no-one will dare come to the defence of pedo's. Or pinkos.
No problem right?
Okay now intervere with it script kiddie style. Scratch it and try to read it again.
Notice how your computer grinds to a halt as it tries to read the damaged area?
Okay now let a nuke fly. Totally obliterate the CD by removing it from your PC. Try reading it again. That didn't take long to fail did it?
Nuclear attack would have destroyed a connection. This is easy to detect and causes very little load on the machine that has been disconnected.
A DDOS however keeps the link alive just saturated so now the machine that is connected has to deal with a huge load.
The machine can't simply decide to cut the line if it goes over a certain limit so it just has to deal with it.
This makes a nuclear attack much simpler to deal with.
I can see the same effect on my linux machine. It tries to mount some network shares during boottime. Now two things can go wrong. Sometimes there is no network connection at all. This is simple. If there is no network you can't mount a network share and so the script fails almost instantly. IF however for some reason the remote machine ain't serving properly then it takes ages as the bootscript has no way of knowing if the remote machine is down or merely slow as hell.
So yes the Internet is that fragile. It was designed to deal with outside threaths, not inside.
Project Leader: Right you coder, the HTML designer doesn't understand PHP so you got use a template language instead you never heard off.
Coder: Oh okay, I can do that, so Designer guy, you can help with learning this template language?
Designer: No, I never heard of it either and I am going to just delete any html I don't regonise just like I do with php tags.
Coder: Fuck.
And this ain't a joke. My introduction to templates went pretty much like this. In order to deal with a designer who kept removing PHP because of the design program she used I had to learn a new "language" wich didn't help since she still kept deleting it.
Also templates are very limited if you want to do extra stuff. Like changing the layout of the table you just gave dynamically.
Is it possible to color each row an alternate color for instance? Probably it is but either way you end up adding more complexity to deal with what problem? Your designer unable to deal with your coding language? Get a better designer. Coders don't just delete html do they?
so for instance to get the title tag I would have something like.
Except that the function is part of a class wich does all the basic layout.
Why? Well I find it easier to maintain. But is this any easier then use doing
No not really. But what if the title is being generated from something else? What if the title isn't known until you reach the end of the code? Ofcourse there are other solutions to overcome this but this is the one I took.
There are a couple of forms of maintenance but basically if the designers wants to make minor color changes he doesn't need to touch the main code anymore, he can just edit the css file. IF he does want to make major changes to the layout I can far more easily rearrange stuff by simple altering the order of function calls then he can mess with template code or html with PHP included.
If I want to make functional changes I don't have to worry about having to wade through reams of html and find that I need to alter it completly. The code just looks cleaner to me.
In the end I can generate new function much faster by being in total control over the layout. What is easier displayField('user'); displayField('password'); or the html with all the php includes needed to set all the values to what you want?
Not everyone likes my method of doing things. Hell I seen people that didn't even use functions in PHP and they choke on my extended use of classes.
In the end I suppose the only real answer is to use the method that works for you.
Personally I never got the taste for using templates. Lots of reasons really but mostly because they are a pain to debug and for some reason template users never seem to bother with commenting their code.
Personal experience of course and I am sure other have different experiences but what else is there to judge things by but personal experience?
Basically, do what works for you if you are the one in control or use what your project leader tells you to do.
The first thing to learn as a developer is that there is no golden path to a succesfull project. Newbies often think that if only they use method X then everything will be alright. Nope, sorry.
The only method that works the tiniest bit is to at least be consistent. Try some stuff out and then settle on one method.
If you think that templates might be an intresting method go ahead and develop a test project with them to see if you like them and they make things easier for you.
Probably ain't true but still. This is MS we are talking about. If they can lie about something, they will.
This is an intelligence test people. If you do not get the next step that is the obvious solution to managers who came up with the idea of outsourcing then congrats. You are an idiot.
The solution to the problems that arise when you outsource the management of your non-outsourced systems? Outsource the systems.
TADA!
Why not? They are outsourcing everything else aren't they?
And don't think outsourcing is anything new either. How many of you work in companies that have their own cantina's. Used to be a member of the company meaning they had heart for the business and were for instance willing to work overtime along with the other workers.
Been outsourced to special companies meaning nowadays it is all the same generic crap with zero attention to the specific needs of the company. Like for instance making the cooking equipment available to people having to work the nightshift.
Offcourse now everyone is crying because it is their job that is going away. If you didn't protest when the thee lady was outsourced then don't expect anyone to protest because your job is going away.
That won't be that cheap. Especially since to add a gig you need to have your 1 gig not spread out over all your memory banks. This is rare.
1gig is a lot for a minimum spec.
Hanging is too good for you. I sentence you to ten years of Windows ME support.
Windows does an awfull lot more then just sit between you and the hardware.
One of the reasons IE boots faster then Firefox is because firefox doesn't know it is going to run until you tell it too and then has to do all of its getting ready. IE is already pre-loaded, ready to be used. (By anyone wishing to bot your machine)
1gig may sound like a lot but as an owner of a linux P3x2 512mb machine I can tell you that it is not extreme. I constantly run against the fact that my PC has to swap and if I could add another 512mb for less then the entire machine cost me I would (it uses the evil intel ram whatever it is called)
Granted if Vista itself REALLY needs the full 1gig you are going to need at minimum 2gig to game and possible more. There are already plenty of games wich prefer more then a gig on W2K3 (my gaming rig).
It might shock you but I think if you are a gamer and your game is going to be vista only you might want to bite the bullet and get a 4gig machine.
Damn. Then again, my current vidcard for my gaming machine got the same amount of memory as my desktop pc. And yes I am old enough to have had harddisks a fraction that size. Oh okay I am old enough to have had harddisks with less space then a PSP satisfied?
I am kinda amazed however that it only requires a 1gig processor. With overclocking my P3 can reach that. Odd.
That more then anything suggests to me that Vista is a bit bloated. What the hell are they loading into memory that doesn't require CPU power to process but does have to be in main memory?
Not that I think there is a case but that is because he committed fraud.
At least in europe all those agreements got a line that effectively says, this agreement is binding unless the law says otherwise. It is basically what they hope they can get away with until someone has the balls to take them to court.
Don't believe EULA's.
But yes this is another story of sue happy america. Got to love the US of A. Especially the fact that it is an ocean away.
In fact the entire bit you quote says nothing about speech. It says nothing about you not being allowed to be eavesdropped on.
It seems to say that you cannot be willfully arrested, or have your house/papers/effects seized or searched. Where does it say anything about your words?
I am not entirely sure what they mean with the word "effects" but to me the constitution does not seem to mention privacy as in being spied upon. Perhaps it is somewhere else.
Would be intresting if they really left it out wouldn't it.
Now if only we could outlaw thinking then the next elections should be a steal for the republicans.
But don't worry, I am sure you know better then the people at IBM, must be why you make billion and they do not advising the biggest companies in the world.
It was too me very refreshing. The entire "series" had this element of turning stereo types upside down. One of the games allowed you to forge an allience between a village and some gnolls. You could have easily slayed them to complete the quest but making an allience made for a far better game in my opinion.
Nonetheless stereo types are the norm. It is not that suprising really. I have talked to other Torment players who never "discovered" the undead village because they immidialty went into slaughter mode upon spotting the skeleton guards.
It is easier to be able to spot the goodies from the baddies in an instant so you know who too hit with a big sword and who to heal in the confusion of battle. It is kinda the reason why soldiers were uniforms, in some ways zombie is just a uniform that identifies the NPC as an enemy.
But why use real world races in a fantasy setting? Well two reasons, first the Star Trek reason. It allows you to discuss real world politics without immidiatly having all the real world baggage. The klingons were like the soviets but were not the soviets. Be symphatethic with a klingon is okay (Kirk does it several times) be symphatitic with a communist is not.
Sci-Fi often uses this tool the most classic being the case of the two alien races fighting each other tille exstinction. One black and white, the other white and black. Obviously a reference to our black vs white struggles BUT without at any point having to deal with wich of the characters is the white person and who the black.
The second reason wich I think WoW took is because it safes time, copy and paste a culture is easier then making up your own, plus it increases immersion. People will be adding their own knowledge to your game making it seem deeper then it really is.
I don't really think there is that much meaning behind it except perhaps the general kinda low level racism that is so common among all of us it is just part of live.
Could you really picture a jamaican like culture in control of advance tech? Be honest. For that matter could you imagine a troll with the bearing of a british gentleman?
The predator had dreadlocks. Could you imagine him with a Beatles haircut instead?
Like it or not but we are all prejudiced. We can overcome it but at a basic level we expect certain behaviours from people with certain looks. It is as simple as that fat people have good humor and thin people have none.
You can read to much into things.
What they don't say, 35% told us to fuck off and die or just ignored us when we tried to talk to them.
Same with online surveys how many people on being asked to fill one in just ignore it?
When it comes to surveys about ads you can't ignore this group. After all what group is most likely to be irritated by time wasting ads. Those who happily spend time filling in a survey or those that don't want to be bothered.
Can I asume you don't like filling in survey's either as well as hating ads?
Then that is the reason people like you (and me) are not reflected and you can get in our eyes skewed results.
I think ad agencies are idiots. You got the fact that people are trying to escape ads. So what do you do? Try to pacify the group still watching ads to avoid losing them or go after the people who ran away and bombard them with yet more ads? I already use adzapper. What is next should I DOS adservers to make them stop? I DO NOT WANT YOUR ADS. Get it in your fucking skull. Game makers, learn from TV, they have lost the young male audience to the internet and games. It hurtst them but they got other groups. You ain't. Pester those young males and you will loose your only market.
Is this going to be like DVD's again. (watch a pirated movie without ads or pay for a dvd and be forced to sit through endless ads) Shall we in the future not just have hackers remove the copy protection but also the ads?
It ain't like games even come free like tv. STOP BEING SO FUCKING GREEDY.
A next-gen console loosing to the oldest console is NOT that big an endorsement.
I guess all those people who say it is gameplay and not graphics that matter are right after all.
A PS2 game should NOT be the best seller but it is.
It does however make sense. Even if the 360 is going to be a success it simply isn't out there in enough number yet to compete with the PS2. No point in buying a game if you don't have the console after all.
Claiming that the 360 is behind this revival reeks of fanboyness.
What is far more likely is that some big titles have finally launched, titles that people cared about who actually buy games, not just fanboys.
Charts are all very nice but I would like to see some hard figures. I am willing to bet there is a big gap between the number one seller and number two seller.
Oh well. Guess all the reports about the death of gaming were premature. Once again.
It is wonderfull really because it does in fact allow one person to commit crimes that in the real world would require a small army.
That one man can control a lot of crime is nothing new. Check the history of the mafia. It is filled with nobody's rising to control entire cities.
Imagine if Al Capone had the use of robots that cost virtually nothing to produce. He would have owned the world.
And a bot doesn't cost anything to produce and can easily be set to produce countless offspring.
When you read the occasional story of botnets being discovered counting a million+ machines that means 1 person effictly controls all the home PC's of a small country.
So I don't find it at all amazing that one person can create so much havoc.
What is amazing that we let them get away with it.
Countries like Russia and China should have had their internet cut off years ago and MS been forced at gun point to secure their OS.
Imagine if Sony's robot dog went around stealing peoples mail, how long would it be before Sony was called to order and those robot dogs shot on sight?
Just because it is on the internet we tend to accept things we would never tolerate in real life.
On the other hand, perhaps this is what makes the internet so special. Nobody ever said total freedom would come without a heavy price.
Perhaps this is the reason that where ever people have had total freedom they couldn't wait to introduce law and order. At least that is what westerns tell me.
Anymore then people want to know their 3 ton car is causing global warming. Imagine if Shell refused to sell gas to cars that do not have a certain fuel efficiency. How long would they stay in business?
It is one of the reason to liberetarians are wrong. A lot of things can only happen because they are written down in law.
Should there be a law that forces ISP's to shutdown bots? Well, it all depends on the kind of internet you want. A totally free on that is controlled by criminals or a non-free one that is controlled by the state.
Cause freedom doesn't exist. There is always someone in control. For now it is the spammers.
BULLSHIT!
It is like saying you prefer women with a good personality over one with good looks. Yeah right. Who are you trying to kid.
And what about games where graphics affect the gameplay?
What do you prefer, an enemy with a health meter OR an enemy where you can see how damaged he is?
Is a flightsim where you can see the wing surfaces move a better flightsim because of it? If not then why are there so many usermods for MS Flightsimulator that add extra options like opening doors, lighted cabins etc etc.
Why for that matter bother with higher res textures depicting real airlines? All it means is that you loose a few frames of performance and graphics don't matter right?
The PSP and DS are at two extreme ends. Nobody can deny that PSP grahphics just look better. But does it matter for gameplay? Well playing some DS/GBA games I am forced to ask myself when Nintendo will finally pull their games into 1990 and add some bloody speech.
It is really a nice change to be able to just listen to your handheld rather then having to read slowly scrolling text.
Is speech just candy? Or does it help make a more real game.
Frankly we hear this same discussion about graphics being less important then gameplay every console generation and everytime a new vidcard comes out.
So far it doesn't seem to stop people buy the latest console or vidcard.
If you really think graphics don't matter, play the original pong on a old tv. Have fun.
Except that this does happen as has been found in several big accidents.
The problem isn't one wire running from the cockpit to the controls. It is hundreds of wires running from the cockpit to the controls. Each one critical and not exactly easily replaced.
Wireless makes sense because you would save not just weight but also remove a major maintenance worry. No more short circuits, no more cables coming loose. No problems if a part of the aircraft falls off and takes the cables with it.
Yes interference will be something that must be overcome and I have no idea if it is possible BUT replacing wires in aircraft is not stupid or a waste of time. It would save both money and lives. IF it can be made to work regardless of interference.
One had a fire break out because of a bad cable and it simply burned out the controls.
This couldn't happen with wireless. As long as the two components remain within reach of each other then all is fine. If your control surfaces start to distance themselves from the cockpit you got bigger problems (Japan Air 123)
So a couple of big accidents would not have happened if physical links had been wireless or had wireless backups.
Yes there are other problems but physical connections ain't without problems either.
Perhaps a backup system?
I stand corrected.
*The sound of a dozen guns firing in a split second*.
Me: what a stupid way to die.
Random slashdotter: do you think he meant that " THE PEOPLE WHO WROTE THIS TROJAN SHOULD BE PUT TO DEATH!!!!"
Me: Who cares, we got dupe posters to shoot and it looks like it is going to be an allnighter.