You think of humans/slashdot as a group who all think the same. We are not. Not all/. members are intelligent. Just read at -1 and you will see what I mean.
As for the wider public. In holland we got a tv program "ook dat nog" wich is a copy of a bbc program that highlights people problems with businesses and goverment with what some call humor.
It is/was a pretty popular program with very high viewer ratings. It also been on for years.
At least once per season it would show the hosts informing us about people who been suckered into pyramid schemes and such. Year in year people have been warned that these schemes are pure scams. Year in year out people fall for them.
For the emails that are scams the old saying goes, "you can't scam an honest man". Like those nigerian emails. No honest person would fall for them.
Same with those work from home scams. Honest people who know about things like taxes and being self employed know that it can't be true. If you could make 75 an hour sitting on your couch then why do they have to recruit? You would think they needed to beat the applicants of them with sticks.
Finally you got the viagra and other stuff. This is just aimed at the stupid. You will be amazed how many there are. It is not even stupid as in trailer trash. It is stupid as in not being able to reason enough to see the logic flaws.
Lets face it if there really was a way to increase the penis with natural herbs then it would be sold all over. Men being men even Long Slong Silver would be popping the pills day and night.
Stupid people are everywhere and scammers know this./. hides them at -1 but sadly there is no moderation system in the real world.
I never seen the ipod links you refer to, try setting your post limit higher. It is less adventurous but saves your sanity.
It was about a school somewhere in america, I think New York but am just guessing. The story was about the increased occurence of private companies subsidising parts of a school in exchange for advertising.
This has been an issue for a long time around the world and every single time it is done the powers that be insure us that it will not go out of control.
lucky for the dutch we are several years behind the rest of the world so if we want to see the future we take a ticket to the US of A.
Far from the cafeteria being run by McD or books on economy being printed by Wall Street the docu saw a far far worse case.
Students were made to watch simple commercials on tv. Don't watch the commercials and you can't attend classes.
So for those worried about ordinary tv forcing you to watch commercials, you are a bit slow. Far worse has already been tried.
Personally I only drink from a MiG-25
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Hacking Vodka
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· Score: 1
Anything else just isn't real. Americans and their bottles. Sissies.
Perhaps. People have invested an awfull lot of time with their EQ1 characters. Are they really willing to start all over?
WoW has had a lot of positive reviews but nothing truly staggering. Nothing to suggest that people not yet involved with MMO games will take it up. Will it be enough to take people away from characters they invested a lot in to try a new game?
SWG has released JTL. The figures are not yet in on how good or bad it is doing. SWG has a lot of dual even tripple accounts (1 player having more then one payed for account). JTL really doesn't have a reason for you owning more then 1 account. Will the sales reflect this? Will new people start joining? I seen a couple but the server is not exactly being flooded with newbies.
Guildwars is trying a different license system with no monthly fee, you just pay for the game and any expansion packs they bring out.
We had a whole bunch of western MMO's come out but only SWG DAoC seem to be have achieved some success.
EQ's dip is hardly a dip if the drop is going directly into a rise of EQ2. Sony will not be worried if EQ1 entire subscriber base goes over into EQ2. What will really worry them if they don't. Since the dip is happening now this means that either people have decided to leave EQ1 without waiting for WOW without just sticking with their characters and waiting for WoW to come out and wow them away.
I think WoW will perhaps not be as big a change as blizzard hopes. Yes in some ways it looks good but they also been amazingly reluctant to truly open up their betas to europeans. Have they got something to hide?
I don't play demoless games. MMO's are just to expenive to try.
I am in SWG and at times it feels very very lonely. Same is true of most western MMO levelling based games. Read some of the comment on WoW or EQ2, you will see every other review/preview talk about how hard or difficult soloeing is. Ehm HELLO? This is a multi-player game? Why are you soloing everything? Why do you complain that certain story based quests have to be done in a group? If you want solo go play baldurs gate.
Of course it is just a play style but it is one that is not there in the korean games.
At least not with korean players. At a previous job we had some contact with asian companies and I got to know 2 geeks who were into ragnarok. They were rather amazed at the way westerners played it. All solo and not chatting just bend on leveling up.
To them these games are far more social afairs. Kinda like how some people play bridge or whatever. Not as a serious competition but as just something to do while they chat.
Think IRC with pictures.
Most games can be done like that. You got people who play bingo and turn it into a party and you got people killing each other because the other shouted bingo to early.
Some men go fishing as an excuse to sleep during the day away from the wife. Others throw stones at watersporters.
If I read some of the reviews of EQ2 and WoW (and seen the way some people play SWG) then I almost feel they are playing a solo Diablo/Baldur gates style game with online ladder/ranking system.
It is not that lineage or ragnarok can't be played in the same way. It is just that its rather simple nature also lends itself more easily to chat while playing it.
For some reason checkers or monopoly is more often a fun game played for playing with others then chess. Perhaps party games need to be simpler.
If you are playing in a nice group then lineage and ragnarok can be fun. If the more solo style play does it for you then the western games offer more. Wich is better? Neither, both are multiplayer games but the motivation for you wanting to play multiplayer might make you choose one or the other.
Oh and think about this. More people are playing korean RPG's with all their horrible western support then are playing ALL western games. Perhaps they got something right.
She still has all the bits that make up a dolphins tale. Just less surface area. A human with a no leg can't walk. She could swim just that she tired quickly (because less surface area means less power per ehm wiggle?)
So she would have to get used to having something attached to her but she is a trained animal with reasonably intelligence. Even dogs manage to get used to being attached to wheels instead of legs and you can't get much dumber then dogs. (oh and dog lovers bite me. Only a braindead creature can keep up a bark for hours on end before getting bored)
So how do dolphins do it? Simple same as we do when we hurt our foot and use a crutch for a while. No training needed.
When the entire leg is gone and people have to train to use a completly different set of damaged and weakened muscles to walk, that is when the months of retraining start kicking in. You don't need to retrain seeing when you finally get the glasses you have been avoiding to get do you?
They were after a rubber that is easy on female skin, it too has to endure physical stress and is often wet. Wink wink, nudge nudge you know what I mean.
Yes having a source of any poisonous gas without good ventilation is bad.
Wich is way any half way decent garage will have a setup to vent the exhaust fans from cars they are working on to the outside.
Why forklifts dedicated to working inside are electric.
Why non-smokers want smokers to stand outside in the freezing rain. (well actually this is because we hate the goddamn slackers and their 15 minute smoking breaks every half hour)
Any decent copier/printer room will have an exhaust system because the air inside is definetly not healthy.
No this does not mean that your laser printer at home is going to kill you instantly. However if you are in a small cabinet with a set of copiers and printers in constant use you will definitely be taking in more poison then is compatible with a 80+ lifespan.
1 laser printer wich is rarely used in a cubicle area is harmless. A bunch of copiers/printers in a small area in constant use IS bad. Ventilate that room.
The republicans (the vote was split along party lines) just voted through a 800 billion dollar debt increase. Wich seems like a lot of money to me. And this on top of already record debts by the US of A.
Sure tax decreases seem nice but if the price for it is a gigantic debt then something is wrong.
Basically what the if the US was a person then this would be like saying, No I am not going to work extra hours, in fact in general I will be working less (Bushes 300 dollar tax cut) but I will be spending more (War on terror/drugs/filesharing) and just borrow money to make up the difference.
It sounds nice but the whole thing about borrowing is that at one time or another it got to be paid back.
Now the US is not a person and so it is a bit harder to send the baillifs around to reposses New York. However sooner or later there may be nobody left to borrow from. If america becomes incapable of paying interests on the debt then other countries will just not give out any new loans.
Other countries may not be able to force america to pay of its debts but neither can america force other countries to lend it money. No not even with its powerfull army. Wars cost money and america is out of money.
Once the debt has reached its limit you got a real problem.
The high spending republicans can't raise taxes. The high spending democrats won't get elected because they will have to raise taxes.
Sure a ban on internet tax sounds fun. It also sound amazingly short term to me. The current goverment of america spends to much money. Cutting taxes is exactly the wrong way to counter spending to much. Either spend less or increase the income.
It is basic home economics. Say my income is $800 and I spend $1000. Everyone would suggest I better start earning more or spend less. Republican answer solution? Earn less and spend more. Worrying about tomorrow is for suckers.
Bootlegs ain't legal, neither are old bands (thank you extended copyright) or forgotten recordings. Tiny bands can be depending on their license but yes they are the exception.
Napster and Kazaa is less for me about the latest albums being ripped but the weird content. This weird stuff ain't legal at all. Just that I can't buy it legal either.
So not really sugar coating it either. Just pointing out why iTunes means nothing to me. It ain't got what I want.
Sadly the so called "trusted" helper has been known to abuse the trust. Sure using foreigners is extreme but at least use someone who has absolutly no relation and therefore no possible control over the person needing help.
Voting should be done alone with YOUR vote only known to you. If it is impossible for this to happen then at least you should make sure that the person who knows YOUR vote doesn't know you or you will ever come to depend on.
Certain countries were womens rights are not respected it is well known that the husband is in the voting boot with the wife controlling wether she votes the way he wants to. Oh but he is only there to help because she can't read. YEAH RIGHT.
Poll workers are also usually local. Local means you might feel presured to vote the way of the majority. Why do you think voting is supposed to be anonymous? Foreigners you will never see again are the closest I can think off to ensure no pressure on the voter.
Also by using foreigners you show that america is not afraid to be tested. The netherlands has a pretty good history on fair elections and have foreign observers.
I think it was a recent star wars fps where I was stuck so I switched of clipping and drifted through the walls to see where I was supposed to go. Bit of a suprise when I saw myself standing somewhere. It was the setup for a cutscene.
Basically in a quake like game wether it is half-life or quake itself the game centers around the player. The player is the center around wich the world moves. Until you move and trigger something wether it is AI or a scripted sequence the world will remain static.
In a simulated world the world will go happen wether you move or not. A very good example is MS flight simulator. With the proper settings if you start the game you are sitting on the ground at an airport. But as you sit there you can see weather patterns moving. Other aircraft taking off an landing. Air control giving instruction to ensure seperation.
Note that this is purely an approach to how the "story" in the game is developed. You could easily use the quake engine to create a simulated world and use MS flight simulator to create a trigger driven story game. In fact they exist.
So halo has the same kind of graphical answer as quake. What is different is how the population changes. It seems that the halo makers claim they have a more MS flight simulator like approach where the AI does its thing even if you just stand at the start. Note that in the recent MS flight simulator you are part of the AI as both air traffic control and other aircraft react to you (sometimes).
It should be easy to check if there is an invisible mode/no clipping mode in halo 2. If they are right then you should see that enemy walking around and chatting long before you have walked along the corridor and triggered them to do their stuff.
Personally I think Halo2 is a cross. A true simulated FPS would have far more of a realistic combat mode as you would be on a battlefield with a battle going on and you would be just one of the soldiers. If you remember Call of Duty then think about the russian square assault. While their is obvious AI going on the AI is totally incapable of achieving anything. You score the majority of kills and you "unlock" the next bits in a level.
If Call of Duty had a simulated world then you could just sit to the side and slowly see the AI on one side win. F16 falcon had this to a certain degree. It was a very realistic combat flightsim and I sucked at Air to Air. However as long as I setup the right mission where I bombed and had my wing mates cover me the AI would do the job. One time I started a mission but had a call of nature. The rest of the flight started in the air and the base was attacked. As I was sitting on the toilet I could hear my wing engaging the attacking flight and shooting them down. All without me even having touched the controls. That is a simulated world.
So is this the future? Well for some games. Imagine if you played a simulated RPG. If you then went to the toilet and let the game running a NPC would pick up the role of hero and complete the story quests. Hmmm.
Imagine in Halo if it was truly simulated world. If you take the wrong turn your AI buddies could very well have completed the level while your trying to find your way back.
Flight sims and realistic combat games might be fun with truly simulated worlds. FPS ala Halo are perhaps better when the player is the hero who triggers events. Some simulation can take place but do you really want the intresting bits to be done by the your AI buddies?
Half-life is a scripted STORY engine. Halo claims to be a simulated STORY engine. The graphics are exactly the same. They choose the wrong words.
Unless you got the thinest and lightest under powered over priced gadgets this is going to weigh tons.
Yet man kind has invented something for this. Wheels.
Get one nice laptop with a nice screen and get a powerfull one.
Get a professional carrying case with wheels. Something they use to haul tv equipment in. You are a geek, look like a geek.
Fix one the powerfull ugly laptop in a permanant way but so you can still operate it. If you get a suitcase like model, screw the display to lid. so that when you open the lid of the cause you can then let the bottom of the laptop fall and have access to the machine without losing it if you need access.
Lift the better looking laptop out of the case. Close case and put away. Hoopup good looking laptop to equipment in case and use vnc or similar to then have both oses running at the same time on their own hardware. If even VNC isn't good enough then use two ugly laptops, fix them permently inside and buy an LCD monitor mouse and keyboard and a KVM switch.
Problem solved. Sure you look like a dork but this is/. Better then carrying two laptops in a bag. I did this for a while. Damn that shit is heavy.
Geez, India got over billion people a lot of who can't read or write, is piss poor, is at war with itself and its neighbours and yet seems somehow to manage to do an election without to much trouble.
I propose a new voting system.
Everyone who pays taxes and is not currently in jail for a certain level of crime can vote. Political crimes like being arrested during a demonstration do not count for reason I hope are obvious. Crimes wich remove the vote can only be passed with a 99% majority.
Everyone who has the right to vote MUST vote. (Those who claim that Bush won the popular vote this time are idiots. The vast majority of americans did not vote for him. Just count number of votes for bush vs Total americans - bush voters. It is a problem all over the world btw not just america)
Add an option of "none of the above" if this reaches a certain percentage then the election must be held again. Three times and you have hold a revolution.
Each person goes to a polling station in their county where they identify themselves through their identity papers. A mark is made on the paper as well as the person. This mark is made in such a way it cannot be removed. People who have voted are secluded. For one day every four years the country shutsdown. No double voting. No travel.
The voter is handed a ballot and directed into a closed of area.
The vote is done on a very simply laid out piece of paper. A mark is made with a pencil. Those who are blind or otherwise unable to fill it in on their selves can be helped by volunteer sworn in people from an another country, under no circumstance is anyone from america allowed to be in the same booth.
The piece of paper is handed by the voter to a group of checkers who are secluded from the outside world and cannot identify the voter through any means. They check the ballot if it is correctly filled in.
Depending on your hatered of stupid wrongly filled in ballots are either discarded and the voter asked to do it again or discarded and the voter is shot.
The checkers press a button on the counting machine. This relays wich vote is going to be recorded to the voter through a light. If correct the voter commits the vote.
You know have three checks. The voter does the first check of course. The checker does the second and the voter checks the checkers has read it right. You now have the count on the counter wich can be so simple there is no way to cheat. it can be a pure mechanic device with the mechanism open for checkers to see (not for everyone to see or else you could see by the turning wich vote a person has cast. You also got a paper trail wich you know only contains correct votes.
The current system fails for two reasons. people can cast the wrong vote or unclear votes. This should be eliminated.
A vote should always be assured to be 100% accurate. Start adding interpretation to how each ballot was cast and you get the america of today.
Sure sure, most of this is to extreme to pass but at the moment democracy in the west is becoming a joke. And no not just america. The netherlands is busy tearing itself apart with a totally ineffective goverment style wich policy has and continues to be to wait things out and hope they go away on their own.
Remember that while we are stuggling with democracy China is marching on without all this mess. Yes democracy is "better" but is this really democracy or just a charade? When the majority of adults have a leader they did not vote for? When election result after election result turns out to be wrong?
This is a lengthy article? Geez. It would barely fill an A4. If you passed this is class as a lengthy article you would get a 1 for effort.
Apart from being short it also repeats itself and is pretty light on the details. Basically it claims to turn an exisiting P2P application/network from having illegal files to only having legal files and legal downloads overnight. Ehm, how? and just as important. Why?
P2P has this deal. In exchange for bandwith I get free content. With this in exchange for bandwidth and cash I get paid for content. So like iTunes and all the others except I need to upload as well? Oh and have a really crummy search?
Right. Kazaa and others are what they are because I don't have to pay for what I download and because what is being shared is made by users. Bootlegs, old records, forgotten recordings, tiny bands. All the stuff you can't find in the shops.
If I am going to pay for downloads I want the bloody receiver of my money to pay for the fucking bandwith and not have to download it from some guys 56k modem. Geez. Is the music industry insane or just stupid?
That is the whole problem. Those of us who download music feal that the perceived value of a cd != the price it sells for in the shops.
Perceived value is extremely important and explains who soda drinks can vary so much in price. Why can an event hall sell the exact same can at a ten fold the supermarket sells it? Certainly there costs can't be that much higher?
Why exactly can toll roads charge so much when most of the people on the road make less salary in the time it takes to drive around? Because they perceive the product they are buying as being worth the higher price.
ipods are worth it, cd's are not.
To counter some of your points.
MORE content. P2p has illegal bootlegs, p2p had the live aid concert for ages with the dvd only being out now.
MORE secure. No credit card to be stolen.
MORE useful. I still can't find that bootleg on iTunes. Or that alternative band.
MORE convenient. Yeah paying 99 cent +++++++++ my internet connection is so convenient. I don't know what salery you make but I can spend a few minutes searching for 99 cents.
I will ask you to label two modern creatures to show why talking about t-rex eating behaviour is so futile.
Would you label the Hyena as a predator or a scavenger? And the lion?
Modern studies show that the scavenger Hyena kills a higher percentage of its food then the lion. Yet many still label the killer hyena as the scavenger and the lion known to eat hyena left overs as the predator.
Some people claim that t-rex build was unsuitable to hunt (head to big unable to run for long). Some claim that it build was exactly right to an ambush style hunt where it would deliver one large trauma wound and then use its nose to track the animal as it slowly died.
The same nose could also be used to find already dead prey.
Most like t-rex filled both roles shifting from one to the other as circumstances dictated. There are pure predators who refure to eat already dead animals but they are rare. Most predators are also scavengers and even some well known herbivores eat meat if they come upon it.
Talking about the movie. If you want to nitpick then nitpick that movie itself describes that the T-rex has a good nose but is somehow unable to small a scared human right infront of it. Even my cat spots a meal if you rub its nose in it. And this animal mews when I open a paint can.
Even a rewrite has a daddy
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Netscape Reborn?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
If not you would have started from scratch. With a rewrite you at least use something if nothing but some of the ideas and ideas and lessons learned from what your rewriting.
Most rewrites also happen in parts. So that while at the end everything is rewritten during development you have rewritten code and old code sitting next to each other so that you have some working product.
So Netscape is still Mozilla's daddy.
This is not just nitpicking. Starting from scratch is a totally different approach to development then doing a complete rewrite. With a rewrite if you do it right you can have working product to show your achievements so far at an earlier stage. If you start again from scratch you lose the baggage of old code being used but you also need to build everything before you can show your product.
The excuse for this is to check attendance. If every student just attended the classes as they are supposed to and schools didn't make up figures of number of students then their would be no excuse to introduce this.
We have speed limits because some people can't drive responsible. We have gun controls because some people can't handle owning a gun.
Silly thing is that nobody ever seems to want a protection that is against them but is always for protections that protect them.
Car drivers balk at speed cameras but want cyclist without lights to be shot on sight. Media companies don't want the state to tell them what they can show but want to control what viewers can view. We don't want to spend taxes on students who don't study but students don't want to be tracked.
Humanity eh? Their is alien intelligent live out there. The evidence is clear of their intelligence. They stayed the fuck away from this place.
Flying in extreme cold at hight is not all that easy. It is why flying is less safe then driving. If your engine freezes on your car then it is just a nuiscance and you better unfreeze it before you freeze as well. If it freezes on your airplance/chopper then at leas you will die warm in the fireball that is soon to happen.
Helicopters suck donkeyballs in thin air. They also guzzle fuel like their is no tomorrow. Check docu's on the artic. Ever seen a chopper in it?
Basically the area to be travelled in is to high, to far and to cold for helicopters to operate in.
However walking there is a proven techinique. It has worked for decades. Why develop a 1 use aircraft when you can simple hire some idiots^H^H^H^H^H^Hbrave men to haul your stuff there?
So china is flexing is muscles and telling tiny but evil nations like japan (germany gassed childeren. Japan raped or worked them to death.) that they shouldn't have any thoughts of rebuilding their army.
Germany also doesn't deny their warcrimes unlike japan.
The chinese have plenty of reason to threathen japan. If they send a nuke or two over then it is just delayed justice and really no different then America invading Iraq.
No if you want to blame china for anything do it for their actions in Tibet. That is nasty enough for anyone.
If you are really serious about peace-loving nations not working together with more aggressive nations then america would be in total isolation right now. China is just saber rattling. Making sure that past war criminals do not get the idea they could do it again.
For the near future China has a booming economy that could only be hurt by going to war. They like being the maker of everything sold in the entire world. Why risk it all with a war?
It is roughly the same reason you hear nothing about Tibet. The western powers that be like having everything made cheap in China so China can go ahead with its own crimes as long as it doesn't do it accross its borders.
Money is a powerfull motivator for peace but peace can only happen when you remind people that they will loose if they are not peacefull.
America uses its fleets and the occasional invasion. China hold big parades and sends some parts of its fleet on excersises.
So far it seems that the biggest threat to world peace is firmly in the west.
It all depends on what kinda software you are talking about. Consider a lamp webpage inside a company that does some datamining. You know the stuff. Department X needs to get each day a set of data that is really gotten by going into several different data sources and doing some business stuff and then displaying the results. In the olden days they just do it by hand but you can make a living of automating this.
Of course with lamp (linux apache mysql php/perl) being "free" software you can't really make any money of selling it. Although IBM seems to manage it but they are of course not counted because they don't agree with your theory.
You can make a living by using this "free" software to write your stuff. Businesses will always require custom written software. If the tools for making that software is free they safe money wich can then be spend on custom software.
Less work for MS, more work for me. This is bad why? Oh sure, MS is a lot fancier then Factory X wich needs a simple inhouse programmer. But some of us can't or won't work for MS but like their job at Factory X.
All GPL is doing is shifting work and money from the tool makers to the tool users.
Had to happen, it worked so well for the RIAA
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MPAA Sues Movie-Swappers
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· Score: 2, Insightful
After all we all know that music filesharing has plummetted after the first lawsuits started.
Oh? It has stayed pretty much the same? Can't be. The RIAA says it did. Oh they are a bunch of lying weasels who turn every figure around to suit their current agenda even telling different things to different audiences at the same time?
Aren't ticket sales up and DVD selling like hotcakes?
In many ways this reminds me of the war on drugs. Apparently america still got that three strikes and your out rule. While I think in itself it ain't a bad idea, if you are to criminal/stupid to learn not to steal/murder/rape after two warnings then you can rot in jail for life, it doesn't seem to work with drugs.
Relativly harmless dopeheads are costing a fortune because they are to stupid not to carry weed after being caught twice before. Sure sure it is the law but is justice really being served by live sentencing stupid but harmless people? Even if a drug user feeds his addiction with a little car stealing give them a slap on the wrist. If you want justice give the chair to the people that buy stolen cars. Kill the buyers and the suppliers will go out of business.
I did however think of something. It is very tinfoil hat but bear with me for a moment.
<tinfoil-hat mode="extreme">
You got some black activists claiming that the war on drugs is a war on blacks. They may be onto something but in a different way then the immidiate impact of making a fast majority of the blacks criminal. A few years in jail in holland is different then a few years in jail in america. In holland if you come out your a citizen again as far as I know. Not so in america. Criminals loose the right to vote. Now if you read a figure that tells you that the majority of black males have been in jail for tiny drugs related offences does that also mean that the majority of black males has lost the right to vote?
If this is true then a conspiracy can't be far off. Blacks are traditional democrat voters, uncle toms like powell being the exception. Make blacks into criminals and you remove a powerfull voting population.
As I said very tinfoil had BUT now think about laws like criminal charges for filesharing or recording a movie with a camcorder. Can this be an attempt to reduce the voting population?
Of course this all depends on wether everyone who goes to jail really looses the right to vote and I am to lazy to check but if it is true then all this legislation may be nothing else then removing the poor from the voting population.
After all the rich can settle out of court. The poor will just have to go to court and get their sentence.
For all its qualities it is a single plot game with no sidelines.
So like watching a plot driven movie, after the first time you can only really relive the moment. But the suprise is gone.
Some comedies like Airplane got so many gags that you might have missed some. A movie like the sixth sense you might watch again to see the build up to the brilliant ending. But basically you have been there.
Worse in a game like half-life is that you are there. You will have spotted every clue because if you didn't you wouldn't have gone passed it. In the sixt sense you might have missed the clues that something was wrong with the lead but if it had been a game you would have known.
It is the vital difference between a game and a movie. In the movie you watch the hero. In the game you are the hero. You might watch sherlock holmes and then go at the end "oh i never thought that would be the solution" but if you play sherlock holmes the games you either know the solution or you can't finish.
Half-life you can play 2-3 times depending on how much you like it but after that it is done. The multiplayer part was what kept it alive for so long.
As to your question, I play some games wich you can play again and again like say Transport Tycoon but some games I know you can only really play once. The heavier the story and the better the story the more likely I can only play it twice. The second time being years later and remembering the good times.
Even a game like Planescape Torment wich has a heavy story element but can be played in multiple ways can for me only really be played in one way. Some people can play through story choices in multiple ways but I like to play a hero, because in real life it is so hard to be one, and so will make the same choices during a second play.
So to me it is a choice. Story or replay. Pick one but not both. That is my choice. Yours may be different but I can tell you this. No story based FPS is going to appeal to you if you want replay. Half-Life least because there is no choice.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the wider public. In holland we got a tv program "ook dat nog" wich is a copy of a bbc program that highlights people problems with businesses and goverment with what some call humor.
It is/was a pretty popular program with very high viewer ratings. It also been on for years.
At least once per season it would show the hosts informing us about people who been suckered into pyramid schemes and such. Year in year people have been warned that these schemes are pure scams. Year in year out people fall for them.
For the emails that are scams the old saying goes, "you can't scam an honest man". Like those nigerian emails. No honest person would fall for them.
Same with those work from home scams. Honest people who know about things like taxes and being self employed know that it can't be true. If you could make 75 an hour sitting on your couch then why do they have to recruit? You would think they needed to beat the applicants of them with sticks.
Finally you got the viagra and other stuff. This is just aimed at the stupid. You will be amazed how many there are. It is not even stupid as in trailer trash. It is stupid as in not being able to reason enough to see the logic flaws.
Lets face it if there really was a way to increase the penis with natural herbs then it would be sold all over. Men being men even Long Slong Silver would be popping the pills day and night.
Stupid people are everywhere and scammers know this. /. hides them at -1 but sadly there is no moderation system in the real world.
I never seen the ipod links you refer to, try setting your post limit higher. It is less adventurous but saves your sanity.
This has been an issue for a long time around the world and every single time it is done the powers that be insure us that it will not go out of control.
lucky for the dutch we are several years behind the rest of the world so if we want to see the future we take a ticket to the US of A.
Far from the cafeteria being run by McD or books on economy being printed by Wall Street the docu saw a far far worse case.
Students were made to watch simple commercials on tv. Don't watch the commercials and you can't attend classes.
So for those worried about ordinary tv forcing you to watch commercials, you are a bit slow. Far worse has already been tried.
Anything else just isn't real. Americans and their bottles. Sissies.
Perhaps. People have invested an awfull lot of time with their EQ1 characters. Are they really willing to start all over?
WoW has had a lot of positive reviews but nothing truly staggering. Nothing to suggest that people not yet involved with MMO games will take it up. Will it be enough to take people away from characters they invested a lot in to try a new game?
SWG has released JTL. The figures are not yet in on how good or bad it is doing. SWG has a lot of dual even tripple accounts (1 player having more then one payed for account). JTL really doesn't have a reason for you owning more then 1 account. Will the sales reflect this? Will new people start joining? I seen a couple but the server is not exactly being flooded with newbies.
Guildwars is trying a different license system with no monthly fee, you just pay for the game and any expansion packs they bring out.
We had a whole bunch of western MMO's come out but only SWG DAoC seem to be have achieved some success.
EQ's dip is hardly a dip if the drop is going directly into a rise of EQ2. Sony will not be worried if EQ1 entire subscriber base goes over into EQ2. What will really worry them if they don't. Since the dip is happening now this means that either people have decided to leave EQ1 without waiting for WOW without just sticking with their characters and waiting for WoW to come out and wow them away.
I think WoW will perhaps not be as big a change as blizzard hopes. Yes in some ways it looks good but they also been amazingly reluctant to truly open up their betas to europeans. Have they got something to hide?
I don't play demoless games. MMO's are just to expenive to try.
Of course it is just a play style but it is one that is not there in the korean games.
At least not with korean players. At a previous job we had some contact with asian companies and I got to know 2 geeks who were into ragnarok. They were rather amazed at the way westerners played it. All solo and not chatting just bend on leveling up.
To them these games are far more social afairs. Kinda like how some people play bridge or whatever. Not as a serious competition but as just something to do while they chat.
Think IRC with pictures.
Most games can be done like that. You got people who play bingo and turn it into a party and you got people killing each other because the other shouted bingo to early.
Some men go fishing as an excuse to sleep during the day away from the wife. Others throw stones at watersporters.
If I read some of the reviews of EQ2 and WoW (and seen the way some people play SWG) then I almost feel they are playing a solo Diablo/Baldur gates style game with online ladder/ranking system.
It is not that lineage or ragnarok can't be played in the same way. It is just that its rather simple nature also lends itself more easily to chat while playing it.
For some reason checkers or monopoly is more often a fun game played for playing with others then chess. Perhaps party games need to be simpler.
If you are playing in a nice group then lineage and ragnarok can be fun. If the more solo style play does it for you then the western games offer more. Wich is better? Neither, both are multiplayer games but the motivation for you wanting to play multiplayer might make you choose one or the other.
Oh and think about this. More people are playing korean RPG's with all their horrible western support then are playing ALL western games. Perhaps they got something right.
So she would have to get used to having something attached to her but she is a trained animal with reasonably intelligence. Even dogs manage to get used to being attached to wheels instead of legs and you can't get much dumber then dogs. (oh and dog lovers bite me. Only a braindead creature can keep up a bark for hours on end before getting bored)
So how do dolphins do it? Simple same as we do when we hurt our foot and use a crutch for a while. No training needed.
When the entire leg is gone and people have to train to use a completly different set of damaged and weakened muscles to walk, that is when the months of retraining start kicking in. You don't need to retrain seeing when you finally get the glasses you have been avoiding to get do you?
They were after a rubber that is easy on female skin, it too has to endure physical stress and is often wet. Wink wink, nudge nudge you know what I mean.
Yes having a source of any poisonous gas without good ventilation is bad.
Wich is way any half way decent garage will have a setup to vent the exhaust fans from cars they are working on to the outside.
Why forklifts dedicated to working inside are electric.
Why non-smokers want smokers to stand outside in the freezing rain. (well actually this is because we hate the goddamn slackers and their 15 minute smoking breaks every half hour)
Any decent copier/printer room will have an exhaust system because the air inside is definetly not healthy.
No this does not mean that your laser printer at home is going to kill you instantly. However if you are in a small cabinet with a set of copiers and printers in constant use you will definitely be taking in more poison then is compatible with a 80+ lifespan.
1 laser printer wich is rarely used in a cubicle area is harmless. A bunch of copiers/printers in a small area in constant use IS bad. Ventilate that room.
Sure tax decreases seem nice but if the price for it is a gigantic debt then something is wrong.
Basically what the if the US was a person then this would be like saying, No I am not going to work extra hours, in fact in general I will be working less (Bushes 300 dollar tax cut) but I will be spending more (War on terror/drugs/filesharing) and just borrow money to make up the difference.
It sounds nice but the whole thing about borrowing is that at one time or another it got to be paid back.
Now the US is not a person and so it is a bit harder to send the baillifs around to reposses New York. However sooner or later there may be nobody left to borrow from. If america becomes incapable of paying interests on the debt then other countries will just not give out any new loans.
Other countries may not be able to force america to pay of its debts but neither can america force other countries to lend it money. No not even with its powerfull army. Wars cost money and america is out of money.
Once the debt has reached its limit you got a real problem.
The high spending republicans can't raise taxes. The high spending democrats won't get elected because they will have to raise taxes.
Sure a ban on internet tax sounds fun. It also sound amazingly short term to me. The current goverment of america spends to much money. Cutting taxes is exactly the wrong way to counter spending to much. Either spend less or increase the income.
It is basic home economics. Say my income is $800 and I spend $1000. Everyone would suggest I better start earning more or spend less. Republican answer solution? Earn less and spend more. Worrying about tomorrow is for suckers.
Napster and Kazaa is less for me about the latest albums being ripped but the weird content. This weird stuff ain't legal at all. Just that I can't buy it legal either.
So not really sugar coating it either. Just pointing out why iTunes means nothing to me. It ain't got what I want.
Voting should be done alone with YOUR vote only known to you. If it is impossible for this to happen then at least you should make sure that the person who knows YOUR vote doesn't know you or you will ever come to depend on.
Certain countries were womens rights are not respected it is well known that the husband is in the voting boot with the wife controlling wether she votes the way he wants to. Oh but he is only there to help because she can't read. YEAH RIGHT.
Poll workers are also usually local. Local means you might feel presured to vote the way of the majority. Why do you think voting is supposed to be anonymous? Foreigners you will never see again are the closest I can think off to ensure no pressure on the voter.
Also by using foreigners you show that america is not afraid to be tested. The netherlands has a pretty good history on fair elections and have foreign observers.
Basically in a quake like game wether it is half-life or quake itself the game centers around the player. The player is the center around wich the world moves. Until you move and trigger something wether it is AI or a scripted sequence the world will remain static.
In a simulated world the world will go happen wether you move or not. A very good example is MS flight simulator. With the proper settings if you start the game you are sitting on the ground at an airport. But as you sit there you can see weather patterns moving. Other aircraft taking off an landing. Air control giving instruction to ensure seperation.
Note that this is purely an approach to how the "story" in the game is developed. You could easily use the quake engine to create a simulated world and use MS flight simulator to create a trigger driven story game. In fact they exist.
So halo has the same kind of graphical answer as quake. What is different is how the population changes. It seems that the halo makers claim they have a more MS flight simulator like approach where the AI does its thing even if you just stand at the start. Note that in the recent MS flight simulator you are part of the AI as both air traffic control and other aircraft react to you (sometimes).
It should be easy to check if there is an invisible mode/no clipping mode in halo 2. If they are right then you should see that enemy walking around and chatting long before you have walked along the corridor and triggered them to do their stuff.
Personally I think Halo2 is a cross. A true simulated FPS would have far more of a realistic combat mode as you would be on a battlefield with a battle going on and you would be just one of the soldiers. If you remember Call of Duty then think about the russian square assault. While their is obvious AI going on the AI is totally incapable of achieving anything. You score the majority of kills and you "unlock" the next bits in a level.
If Call of Duty had a simulated world then you could just sit to the side and slowly see the AI on one side win. F16 falcon had this to a certain degree. It was a very realistic combat flightsim and I sucked at Air to Air. However as long as I setup the right mission where I bombed and had my wing mates cover me the AI would do the job. One time I started a mission but had a call of nature. The rest of the flight started in the air and the base was attacked. As I was sitting on the toilet I could hear my wing engaging the attacking flight and shooting them down. All without me even having touched the controls. That is a simulated world.
So is this the future? Well for some games. Imagine if you played a simulated RPG. If you then went to the toilet and let the game running a NPC would pick up the role of hero and complete the story quests. Hmmm.
Imagine in Halo if it was truly simulated world. If you take the wrong turn your AI buddies could very well have completed the level while your trying to find your way back.
Flight sims and realistic combat games might be fun with truly simulated worlds. FPS ala Halo are perhaps better when the player is the hero who triggers events. Some simulation can take place but do you really want the intresting bits to be done by the your AI buddies?
Half-life is a scripted STORY engine. Halo claims to be a simulated STORY engine. The graphics are exactly the same. They choose the wrong words.
Yet man kind has invented something for this. Wheels.
Get one nice laptop with a nice screen and get a powerfull one.
Get a professional carrying case with wheels. Something they use to haul tv equipment in. You are a geek, look like a geek.
Fix one the powerfull ugly laptop in a permanant way but so you can still operate it. If you get a suitcase like model, screw the display to lid. so that when you open the lid of the cause you can then let the bottom of the laptop fall and have access to the machine without losing it if you need access.
Lift the better looking laptop out of the case. Close case and put away. Hoopup good looking laptop to equipment in case and use vnc or similar to then have both oses running at the same time on their own hardware. If even VNC isn't good enough then use two ugly laptops, fix them permently inside and buy an LCD monitor mouse and keyboard and a KVM switch.
Problem solved. Sure you look like a dork but this is /. Better then carrying two laptops in a bag. I did this for a while. Damn that shit is heavy.
Nowadays I could spend a bit more time sadly. :( damn this burst bubble.
I propose a new voting system.
Each person goes to a polling station in their county where they identify themselves through their identity papers. A mark is made on the paper as well as the person. This mark is made in such a way it cannot be removed. People who have voted are secluded. For one day every four years the country shutsdown. No double voting. No travel.
You know have three checks. The voter does the first check of course. The checker does the second and the voter checks the checkers has read it right. You now have the count on the counter wich can be so simple there is no way to cheat. it can be a pure mechanic device with the mechanism open for checkers to see (not for everyone to see or else you could see by the turning wich vote a person has cast. You also got a paper trail wich you know only contains correct votes.
The current system fails for two reasons. people can cast the wrong vote or unclear votes. This should be eliminated.
A vote should always be assured to be 100% accurate. Start adding interpretation to how each ballot was cast and you get the america of today.
Sure sure, most of this is to extreme to pass but at the moment democracy in the west is becoming a joke. And no not just america. The netherlands is busy tearing itself apart with a totally ineffective goverment style wich policy has and continues to be to wait things out and hope they go away on their own.
Remember that while we are stuggling with democracy China is marching on without all this mess. Yes democracy is "better" but is this really democracy or just a charade? When the majority of adults have a leader they did not vote for? When election result after election result turns out to be wrong?
Apart from being short it also repeats itself and is pretty light on the details. Basically it claims to turn an exisiting P2P application/network from having illegal files to only having legal files and legal downloads overnight. Ehm, how? and just as important. Why?
P2P has this deal. In exchange for bandwith I get free content. With this in exchange for bandwidth and cash I get paid for content. So like iTunes and all the others except I need to upload as well? Oh and have a really crummy search?
Right. Kazaa and others are what they are because I don't have to pay for what I download and because what is being shared is made by users. Bootlegs, old records, forgotten recordings, tiny bands. All the stuff you can't find in the shops.
If I am going to pay for downloads I want the bloody receiver of my money to pay for the fucking bandwith and not have to download it from some guys 56k modem. Geez. Is the music industry insane or just stupid?
Perceived value is extremely important and explains who soda drinks can vary so much in price. Why can an event hall sell the exact same can at a ten fold the supermarket sells it? Certainly there costs can't be that much higher?
Why exactly can toll roads charge so much when most of the people on the road make less salary in the time it takes to drive around? Because they perceive the product they are buying as being worth the higher price.
ipods are worth it, cd's are not.
To counter some of your points.
MORE content. P2p has illegal bootlegs, p2p had the live aid concert for ages with the dvd only being out now.
MORE secure. No credit card to be stolen.
MORE useful. I still can't find that bootleg on iTunes. Or that alternative band.
MORE convenient. Yeah paying 99 cent +++++++++ my internet connection is so convenient. I don't know what salery you make but I can spend a few minutes searching for 99 cents.
I will ask you to label two modern creatures to show why talking about t-rex eating behaviour is so futile.
Would you label the Hyena as a predator or a scavenger? And the lion?
Modern studies show that the scavenger Hyena kills a higher percentage of its food then the lion. Yet many still label the killer hyena as the scavenger and the lion known to eat hyena left overs as the predator.
Some people claim that t-rex build was unsuitable to hunt (head to big unable to run for long). Some claim that it build was exactly right to an ambush style hunt where it would deliver one large trauma wound and then use its nose to track the animal as it slowly died.
The same nose could also be used to find already dead prey.
Most like t-rex filled both roles shifting from one to the other as circumstances dictated. There are pure predators who refure to eat already dead animals but they are rare. Most predators are also scavengers and even some well known herbivores eat meat if they come upon it.
Talking about the movie. If you want to nitpick then nitpick that movie itself describes that the T-rex has a good nose but is somehow unable to small a scared human right infront of it. Even my cat spots a meal if you rub its nose in it. And this animal mews when I open a paint can.
Most rewrites also happen in parts. So that while at the end everything is rewritten during development you have rewritten code and old code sitting next to each other so that you have some working product.
So Netscape is still Mozilla's daddy.
This is not just nitpicking. Starting from scratch is a totally different approach to development then doing a complete rewrite. With a rewrite if you do it right you can have working product to show your achievements so far at an earlier stage. If you start again from scratch you lose the baggage of old code being used but you also need to build everything before you can show your product.
We have speed limits because some people can't drive responsible. We have gun controls because some people can't handle owning a gun.
Silly thing is that nobody ever seems to want a protection that is against them but is always for protections that protect them.
Car drivers balk at speed cameras but want cyclist without lights to be shot on sight. Media companies don't want the state to tell them what they can show but want to control what viewers can view. We don't want to spend taxes on students who don't study but students don't want to be tracked.
Humanity eh? Their is alien intelligent live out there. The evidence is clear of their intelligence. They stayed the fuck away from this place.
Helicopters suck donkeyballs in thin air. They also guzzle fuel like their is no tomorrow. Check docu's on the artic. Ever seen a chopper in it?
Basically the area to be travelled in is to high, to far and to cold for helicopters to operate in.
However walking there is a proven techinique. It has worked for decades. Why develop a 1 use aircraft when you can simple hire some idiots^H^H^H^H^H^Hbrave men to haul your stuff there?
Germany also doesn't deny their warcrimes unlike japan.
The chinese have plenty of reason to threathen japan. If they send a nuke or two over then it is just delayed justice and really no different then America invading Iraq.
No if you want to blame china for anything do it for their actions in Tibet. That is nasty enough for anyone.
If you are really serious about peace-loving nations not working together with more aggressive nations then america would be in total isolation right now. China is just saber rattling. Making sure that past war criminals do not get the idea they could do it again.
For the near future China has a booming economy that could only be hurt by going to war. They like being the maker of everything sold in the entire world. Why risk it all with a war?
It is roughly the same reason you hear nothing about Tibet. The western powers that be like having everything made cheap in China so China can go ahead with its own crimes as long as it doesn't do it accross its borders.
Money is a powerfull motivator for peace but peace can only happen when you remind people that they will loose if they are not peacefull.
America uses its fleets and the occasional invasion. China hold big parades and sends some parts of its fleet on excersises.
So far it seems that the biggest threat to world peace is firmly in the west.
Of course with lamp (linux apache mysql php/perl) being "free" software you can't really make any money of selling it. Although IBM seems to manage it but they are of course not counted because they don't agree with your theory.
You can make a living by using this "free" software to write your stuff. Businesses will always require custom written software. If the tools for making that software is free they safe money wich can then be spend on custom software.
Less work for MS, more work for me. This is bad why? Oh sure, MS is a lot fancier then Factory X wich needs a simple inhouse programmer. But some of us can't or won't work for MS but like their job at Factory X.
All GPL is doing is shifting work and money from the tool makers to the tool users.
Oh? It has stayed pretty much the same? Can't be. The RIAA says it did. Oh they are a bunch of lying weasels who turn every figure around to suit their current agenda even telling different things to different audiences at the same time?
Aren't ticket sales up and DVD selling like hotcakes?
In many ways this reminds me of the war on drugs. Apparently america still got that three strikes and your out rule. While I think in itself it ain't a bad idea, if you are to criminal/stupid to learn not to steal/murder/rape after two warnings then you can rot in jail for life, it doesn't seem to work with drugs.
Relativly harmless dopeheads are costing a fortune because they are to stupid not to carry weed after being caught twice before. Sure sure it is the law but is justice really being served by live sentencing stupid but harmless people? Even if a drug user feeds his addiction with a little car stealing give them a slap on the wrist. If you want justice give the chair to the people that buy stolen cars. Kill the buyers and the suppliers will go out of business.
I did however think of something. It is very tinfoil hat but bear with me for a moment.
You got some black activists claiming that the war on drugs is a war on blacks. They may be onto something but in a different way then the immidiate impact of making a fast majority of the blacks criminal. A few years in jail in holland is different then a few years in jail in america. In holland if you come out your a citizen again as far as I know. Not so in america. Criminals loose the right to vote. Now if you read a figure that tells you that the majority of black males have been in jail for tiny drugs related offences does that also mean that the majority of black males has lost the right to vote?
If this is true then a conspiracy can't be far off. Blacks are traditional democrat voters, uncle toms like powell being the exception. Make blacks into criminals and you remove a powerfull voting population.
As I said very tinfoil had BUT now think about laws like criminal charges for filesharing or recording a movie with a camcorder. Can this be an attempt to reduce the voting population?
Of course this all depends on wether everyone who goes to jail really looses the right to vote and I am to lazy to check but if it is true then all this legislation may be nothing else then removing the poor from the voting population.
After all the rich can settle out of court. The poor will just have to go to court and get their sentence.
So like watching a plot driven movie, after the first time you can only really relive the moment. But the suprise is gone.
Some comedies like Airplane got so many gags that you might have missed some. A movie like the sixth sense you might watch again to see the build up to the brilliant ending. But basically you have been there.
Worse in a game like half-life is that you are there. You will have spotted every clue because if you didn't you wouldn't have gone passed it. In the sixt sense you might have missed the clues that something was wrong with the lead but if it had been a game you would have known.
It is the vital difference between a game and a movie. In the movie you watch the hero. In the game you are the hero. You might watch sherlock holmes and then go at the end "oh i never thought that would be the solution" but if you play sherlock holmes the games you either know the solution or you can't finish.
Half-life you can play 2-3 times depending on how much you like it but after that it is done. The multiplayer part was what kept it alive for so long.
As to your question, I play some games wich you can play again and again like say Transport Tycoon but some games I know you can only really play once. The heavier the story and the better the story the more likely I can only play it twice. The second time being years later and remembering the good times.
Even a game like Planescape Torment wich has a heavy story element but can be played in multiple ways can for me only really be played in one way. Some people can play through story choices in multiple ways but I like to play a hero, because in real life it is so hard to be one, and so will make the same choices during a second play.
So to me it is a choice. Story or replay. Pick one but not both. That is my choice. Yours may be different but I can tell you this. No story based FPS is going to appeal to you if you want replay. Half-Life least because there is no choice.