Odd, didn't happen to me. I am sure I would have remembered. Or maybe I am the one who was patched:P I tend to play these games with all the user patches available.
Then again morrowind is a lot of things but bugfree ain't one of them.
As far as I know, fuck and shit have never been allowed on public television.
Perhaps not in america, over here in the free world we didn't use to believe in censorship. (sadly that is changing, the bbc now has the most idiotic warnings, even warning in news programs that some of the news may be upsetting, geez what the fuck? Next instead of images from war we show images of fluffy kittens and tell people all is well and good? Even in holland this kind of stuff is happening wich is why I am aggresive about it) Apart from some rules about hardcore porn not before a certain time it was pretty much let up to the tv-station and the viewer to decide what was appropriate. So the EO (christian) didn't swear or show nudity, the VPRO (liberal) has had some childeren shows with full frontal nudity. Veronica (youth) had a program when AIDS was a hot item that showed everything related to sex and aids. Including how to use a condom. Various sex acts were enacted for real by pornstars.
Other more recent programs also show that in holland pretty much anything goes. And while I don't want to watch a girl getting a piercing thought her labia (with her dad holding her hand for encouragement for some reason I couldn't fathom) I certainly don't want the state to tell me I can't watch it.
Being told what can be said and what can't is a slippery slope. What next, a ban on programs dealing with homosexuality? A ban on a critical movie of american soldiers? Or far more subtle a ban on a tv-show about the KKK because the word nigger is not allowed?
America has an odd history in that it never really been under the control of an oppressor. Most of the rest of the world has and we know that once people stop you from saying things the next step is to stop you from breathing. Fuck and shit may not be much in the grandscheme of things. But I am thinking that someone else is thinking "babysteps".
I was wondering what the fuck they wear trying to do by banning people from saying shit like s--- or f--- (how do you pronounce it anyway?) Now excuse me but my job blows so I am going to a blowjob from my gf before she learns I got a paycut and calls me a fucking shit.
Oh and to people that use "prOn". DIE, you are one step away from people like bush and it is a step on the wrong side. Wether it is the holocaust, communist dictatorships, McCarthy trials, catholic priest child abuse, badly bodged police investigate of the Dutroux case, they all got one thing in common. Censorhip being attempted and accepted.
Most of us can do very little but the little we can do is not censor ourselves.
Oh well I am having bad hope that this will all blow over. Dutch tv was way way way more liberal then anything american and we now too got people going about morality. Strangely enough the ones complaining about morals always are the same people that take funding away from hospitals and education. Odd that.
Picture a decrepit room maybe an old office in an abondonned factory. Various though guys handling weapons and calling each other various colors are obviously preparing for something. Now in the corner is playing a tv. Right before they move out a Dutch tv program with boobies comes on. Will the men A. go out and commit murder or B. go oooh bouncies and be couch potatoes for the rest of the evening.
Boobies for peace! Instead of a dove we should have a tittie. During the olympics instead of realsing a thousand white doves all the women bare their breasts. Colors of the world UNITE and jiggle for peace!
That only happens if you are female or you played with a patch (or perhaps you had a bug (he didn't ask my male char)) but morrowind was hetero. Meaning females and males had different love interests. Of course since morrowind was designed to be easily patched by users this was quickly altered so that you could do all the love stories regardless of your characters sex.
Wich might suggest that the game playing audience is a lot more ready for this then the game makers or the game reviewers or the game raters.
In morrowind when you where naked you were still in your undies. In a prequel I think when you where naked you really where naked. This was removed to appease goverment regulators in the USofC(ensorship).
From what little I know from japan from the media (and how much does anyone of us really know about the world except through the media) they are even more homophobic then Americans. It is just that there is one segment of the entertainment media that makes money off selling stories about guys in love with guys. Why? Ask a yaoi reading japanese girl:P then ask her for her phone number and take an upskirt photo (perhaps that is the reason. It has been suggested that to women gay men are safe. A gay man will not harress, rape or peek at them.) As a guy I like some ecchi anime but some of it crosses the line where you start to wonder when the girl will just punch the guys teeth out.
Anyway that is my theory about yaoi.
In most games where relationships take a role I don't like it when I am forced to "only" take the approved hetero option. The sims was a very welcome exception. I can tolerate that the love interest in Planescape torment are only girls, I am a guy with strong hetero feelings (translation: Oooh bouncies!!!!!) but I can imagine that a hetero female or gay male or gay female wants to have a wider choice then angel succubus and boiling devil girl.
Same with the otherwise excellent KOTOR. Why can't I whoo balista with a female char eh? (and people that choose to finding out that the mandolorians were like the spartans eh?)
As someone whose family was closely affected by the holocaust I am extremely nervous about people that suggest that certain life styles are less worthy. You just know that people that say gay people should have lesser rights then hetero's want to say the same thing about differently colored people or people with different religions.
So good luck to The sims 2, a courageos decision if they really leave it in in the current american climate. Peter Molyneux if you finally allow me to play a lesbian (and anyone who wants to a gay) paladin I might even forgive you for Black & White. (note it got to be a love story not toee was not a love story)
As to the gamespot story, well it is clear its author still needs to learn a thing or two about homosexuality. Picking out high-heels and lipstick for your female avatar doesn't make you gay. If anything picking a male character and making his looks just right and hunky makes you gay. Creating a sweet hot perky female avatar just makes you pervert. When gay rights have been achieved world wide the human race will have made a step forward but when the rights of perverts have been regonized we will have arived at nirvana. Oh well back to getting balista to play the b-side. (as a side note do female players of KOTOR like the way the male comes on to their character? As the male I played the "50's" movie banter character constantly teasing balista but playing as a female I just found him tiresome, is that my testosterone talking or does the estrogene crowd feel the same?)
If you are a windows born and bred type of computer user linux will be hard. Especially if you really want to learn linux and not just whine on/. about how it is not windows.
People with dos experience will have the basic mindset that not everything has to be done in a GUI with a wizard but people raised on windows 95 and later will have to do some adjusting.
Oh and if you want linux to be like windows just give up right now. It isn't and hopefully never will be. Linux is a unix. Love it or leave it.
So on to my tip. DO NOT SWITCH. DO NOT INSTALL LINUX OVER YOUR WINDOWS and expect to enjoy it. DO NOT EVEN USE DUAL BOOT.
Why not? No matter how smart you are if you are used to Windows 95 and later you will find plenty of moments where you just get stuck in linux. If you are in dualboot and need to reboot to read up on how to get your network up and running then you are setting youreselve up to get a hatred of linux because to you windows just works and linux doesn't (you ofcourse will be forgetting that you once had to learn to get windows to work too).
Instead setup linux on a old machine and use a kvm switch to switch between them. Then you can use your old familiar setup to read up on how to work with your new OS and if for some reason you quickly need to do something you haven't yet learned on Linux Windows is only a button press away. Get frustated, lost, out of time? 1 press and hello windows. Want to try again after your head cleared? 1 press and back you are to learning and trying.
KVM switch (keyboard video mouse) is even better then two machines next to each other. Why? When you press the button for linux that is all you see, no problems with two keyboards and one is easier to type on or the windows machine has the bigger monitor. Keep the printer on windows for now so that when you got some long piece of text on windows on a linux subject you can print it (printer setup in linux is easy enough once you mastered it, mastering it isn't easy for everyone so wait, babysteps)
Now if you got linux running smoothly start using it for 1 or 2 tasks. If your a gamer do all your browsing, downloading and music playing on linux. You will then notice if you use a browser like opera you can keep all the webpages open as you like, have downloads going in the greatest memory hogs java ever spawned, play your mp3 collection from beginning to end WHILE gaming with 100% of your windows machine. Does the game crash? No worry, the linux machine will still be playing your MP3's while windows reboots, have the walkthrough page where you left it and the download happily downloading. BUT always remember to take babysteps. Don't do them all at once. One at the time. Browsing/. is probably the easist.
Next you may try stuff like Mplayer (linux movie player) and get rid off all the conflicting codecs on your windows machine that are just eating resources. Try openoffice for writing your letters. Email may be intresting to switch (do you really need outlook and exchange at home?)
I think this way works best, it works excellently for me. I am a web developer with some coding skill and an avid game and anime watcher. ALL my gaming is on windows plus some photoshop. ALL the rest is on linux. Because my game windows doesn't do anything else I got more memory for my games and more cpu cycles. I also care far less about game crashes as it doesn't interupt anything else (I don't photoshop and game at the same time).
Meanwhile I have learned an awfull lot of linux (to be fair I come from a unix background and had plenty of dos experience so it wasn't that hard for me) and more importantly I have the mindset that there is more then 1 OS out there. You might be suprised to learn this but if you go out into the workplace you might encounter everything from DOS to unix to VMS to mainframes (well software running on mainframes) to custom-made to windows 3.1->2003 to Linux to OS-2 to Mac OS 8-X etc.
A Windows 95-2003 person will be horribly confused. So am I but at least I have managed to learn the principles behind using a computer. Not just to press buttong X in situation Y.
and once you figured it out it will just keep on working day in day out. Not suddenly have the drivers disappear or stop being regonized or you switch on and it spews out all the pages or suddenly stops accepting requests from the network or fail to respond to a cancel request.
Linux is harder but once it works it works. I always waste some time if I have to install a linux system on getting it right, it even crashes a couple of times. But once I finished it just stays up and works. I never had linux go tits up on me.
Of course this is my personal experience. Yours may differ. Currently my windows game machine in windows explorer when I click on a folder in the right pane it opens search. I can't change the default action in the file options and basically am just stuck with no option but a reinstall. In 4+ years of linux use and 8+ years of unix use I never done a reinstall. EVER. (perhaps this explains why I need more time to install linux then windows. In 95/98 days I could do a windows install blindfolded.)
So for me the article is total nonsense. I long since switched and am loving it. Linux is like a willis jeep and windows is a BMW AND (and this bit is important) I AM A FULLY QUALIFIED MECHANIC. The jeep I can fix with basic tools. The BMW just has to be towed to a garage if something goes *bleep*.
OSS kills jobs, serves him right Ipod for Linux NOW!!!!
Oh, ain't about that jobbs. Another piece of crap from redmond. How desperate can you get? And in asia too. Home of the Opensource TRON operating system wich was killed by MS and wich meant japan lost a chance to have controlled the OS market.
Oh well here is hoping leaders in asia got a good memory and a taste for revenge.
So you either spend your IT budget on MS software and on patching it and all the countless "extra" software you need as windows itself is extremely bare and on the latest hardware needed to run it all.
Or you install linux on the old hardware bear the one time transition cost and from then on spend the IT budget on custom applications tailored to your company rather then bending over backwards to conform to the expectation of of the shelf software.
A few years ago this kind of talk could be seen as a threat. Now it is just the bleating of a worried sheep. People have woken up. No there won't be an overnight revolution. Instead slowly each week you see another story of a company or goverment using linux in some small way. A few years ago only a handfull of small stores in the entire world could install linux for you. Now it is hard to find a serious retailer that doesn't sell linux. HP/compag IBM and dell are obvious but even the local chain Mycom.nl has linux knowledge, they don't sell it yet but they use it internally.
So does switching to linux mean joblosses? Perhaps. But other jobs can be gained. Programmers/administrator/fixer. There will be less demand for off the shelf software and more demand for inhouse developed custom application that are far less feauture rich/bug ridden and instead tuned exactly to the demands of the workplace. Less Excell spreadsheet more webapps.
Kinda like how factories can choose to buy their machines ready made from outside or have their own people building the machines to fit their specific needs. The more money they can save on what they have to buy the more they can spend on their custom stuff.
I like it, the off the shelff stuff is made in redmond or india. The custom stuff is made right here where I work. So redmond will loose jobs, amsterdam holland will gain some.
Their ONE demo on their own site doesn't work in opera on linux. Mmmm, web tricks not working on browser X. Gee just what is needed eh?
It sounds like a nice idea but if MS chooses not to implement it or to do it badly (like say PNG support) then it is all for nothing UNLESS opera can use its dominance on the phones to some good. IF the phone is going to replace the PC (there are more mobile phones then PC's already) THEN people might be getting upset that their browser on their phones beats the pants of the browser on their PC.
Not likely but you never know. (to those who think people are going to switch because of IE security, HAHA, people still buy cars from companies whose cars KILLED PEOPLE, simple credit card fraud ain't gonna stop them)
Still they better fix that demo first this just looks stupid.
Flash ain't evil, it is used for evil sure, but flash and the company behind it ain't all that evil. They are cross-platform for one. It been a long time that I had flash problems on linux.
Opensource is not about putting commercial companies out of business.
Wich RPG's did you play? Certainly none of the recent ones. Baldur's gate most certainly falls outside the boat. Planescape tourment as well. Maybe you and I got different memories and ideas about "pre-destined" but much of the Ultima series as well. Nevewinternights might count.
Most RPG's have the main character just a normal person with no "specials" starting out to do something. About the only one that comes to mind is that MS "diablo" clone forgot the name. There you are just a regular farmhand who decides to take revenge for an attack. If I remember correctly you got nothing special and start fighting with farm equipment.
Sure there are differences between japanese RPG's and western RPG's but personally I see them more in the decission taking. Most western RPG's seem to want to give you moral choices like "do I save person X"/"kill them and take all their money"/"save them for a price" while in the few japanese games I played this was always prechosen. (Please don't list the japanese games that are not like this I only played a couple). From what I seen of the Final Fantasy series it is more like an adventure with fighting then what we would call an RPG.
As to why the japanese wouldn't want to play it. Well that is only a valid question if westerners DID play it (not want to play it in a survey, people can say anything in a survey, these figures are meaningless unless people put their money where there mouth is).
MMORPG are a gigantic failure. There is ultima and evercrack and the rest are pathetic. If you look at the number of active subscribers vs the numbers speculated then you can't help but conclude that westerners don't want to play mmorpgs either.
Why not? Well I recently cancceled my subscription to SWG after just a couple of months. It is not the money, I work and can easily afford it. It is not the payment system, SWG has 3, creditcard, automatic bankpayment and prepaid gamecard.
It is the gameplay. You compare them to single player RPG's but they are nothing like it. SWG comes closer to a cross between Diablo and Counter Strike and Arcade style games. Let me explain.
Diablo is a levelling up game, no story (certainly not enough to play it over and over). Just go out do missions for a few hours and get lvls/money/goodies. Is this fun? Well to a point but considering the sales figures not to many. At least diablo is honest, it is not sold as a story RPG. Most customers want more then a levelling threadmill.
Counter Strike. SWG has PvP. The two sides (rebel and imperial) can fight it out, if you are overt on either side the other side can attack you. Slight problem? It means every game server has a couple of kiddies running around using every exploit available to prove how leet they are. No room for a rebel doctor or an imperial scout. You got to a tooled up warrior wearing only certain parts of certain armour and 2-3 weapons to count. Just like CS kiddies who spend all their time learning every exploit in the game and use aim bots and similar. (note that CS while seemingly popular can hardly be considered a game that appeals to wide audience)
Arcade style games. I don't like console games as the only difficulty from them comes from giving the enemies insane hitpoints. SWG developers seem to love this however. Your character has perhaps 3000-4000 hitpoints. The enemies in the recently opened Death Watch bunker got a quarter million hit points + 100% resists. Considering you do about 2000-3000 damage minus resists and that the enemies respawn every 3 minutes it soon becomes clear that this is not just insane, it just plain isn't fun.
There is the crafting system (all the equipment and supplies you find in a RPG is made by other players) but just ask yourselve how much fun it is to endlessly click on a very bad interface (way to many clicks needed on different screens and the screen flashes between screen in a way sure to give an epeleptic the seizure of a life time if they are in a hurry). Designing clothing can be some fun, same as image styl
Sure one can question the wisdom of altering the course of an asteroid that is currently not on a course to earth as there is a risk that the new course might be a problem. Except that it would be reasonable to assume that the people at ESA have thought of this too.
The trajectories of space objects are something we actually understand really really well. It is simple math and the bigger objects have had their path calculated very accuratly centuries ago.
If we follow the advice of people like the above poster the human race would still be stuck up a tree worried about the dangers of the forest floor. Luckily we didn't and some of the monkeys got eaten but others survived and thrived.
I am trying to get work done you bloody idiot and you just broke my concentration.
Seriously any company that allows programmers and such to answer calls directly from the outside (no secretary or such in between) is wasting resources. It may look like I have time to answer the phone but in reality I am thinking (or sleeping) and being distracted means that I am not only going to have to waste time getting my thoughts on track (or falling asleep again) but you are also allowing your customers to be handled by people whose skills probably are not in communication.
So I would instead teach a different lesson. If the person answering the phone isn't any good at it, don't let them answer the phone.
The previous ones on linux suffered and suffered badly from "too many open file" bugs. It was even blamed on java by some but since I haven't updated java only azureus and with the latest version it is now gone I think that the problem was definitly azureus.
So before I agreed that java was a piece of crap whose only saving grace was that it could be portable (plenty of java apps are not). Now that azureus works very stable (constant run since the last update) I must admit that java can work. HOWEVER
I also run freenet and the memory and CPU usuage is still insanely high. Of course this could simply be a freenet problem but it doesn't help java's image.
To me java is an intresting tool that can solve certain problems. It is not perfect and one of its imperfections is that it is a resource hog. Makes you wonder what is different between the java on linux/windows and the java on mobile phones.
Anyway to get back on topic, too bad but the time is not yet right for these kind of projects. If you actually use freenet and look around there is very little worthwhile on it. Just yesterday someone posted Slackware 10 on it. Yeah we need anonymous network to distribute linux. NOT. Maybe if SCO wins but today it just shows that people are just desperate to look for uses.
Current uses are file sharing (can be done far more easily through other means especially if the files are legal), child porn and similar (not exactly something most people consider a worthy cause) and weirdos. About the only "real" use are DeCSS and the Scientology papers (can easily be hosted by those living in free nations).
The problem of course is that while freenet may not be needed now if it is ever needed in the future it will be too late to write it.
By the time the dictator is in power it is too late to protest.
Arm designs chips and then lets other license them and make them. So intel and the others in the list got a simple choice. Do their own work or pay ARM for their work.
So plenty of competition and hardly small ones. It just seems that some of the big boys prefer think giving ARM money makes a better deal for them. After all it is not like IBM or Intel can't design their own chips.
I am living currently near a old folks home and the ones you see are the lucky ones. The ones whose bodies are giving up but whose brain is still ticking over as it always been (just that the body attached to it become less responsive). But there are plenty you don't see to who the brain is as badly shot as that woman with walker hips. And they need to be taken care off not like an animal but like a toddler.
Of course if people didn't elect their leaders based on whom promises to give the biggest tax cut we could simply have nurses and similar staff take care of them. No danger in people running into the street if there is a proper congierge at the gate. But sadly people vote for the guy that gives them 300bucks (and takes a 1000) so we are reduced to this.
At least I hope this is only used for the elderly with mental problems. Using this on the mentally capable is I think way way way beyond privacy invasion.
Then again I once SAW (not heard about) a old woman who was tied to her chair to prevent her walking off. Staff just didn't have time to keep checking up on her. Ah well, as long as CDA (the bush party of holland) keeps promising tax cuts this kinda stuff will keep happening.
Enjoy sleeping for 8 hours straight youngster. For that matter, enjoy sleeping.
And of course there is the always present thought that each morning you could be one of the ones who doesn't wake up at all. Remember retirement homes are places you check into. Kinda like a life sentence in prison with no chance of parol.
I heard about not reading the linked article but not even reading the/. story? You just saw "ipod mini" and wanted to sound off about how expensive they are and how you would never buy them without even spending a second thinking about it.
You could ask the question why people pay for these minis when they can get a bigger device for more. Mmmmm, that doesn't sound right, you can usually get a bigger device for a more money.
So why don't people pay 50 bucks more for the bigger device? Because duh and if you didn't spot this one you have the intelligence of a slug THE OTHER DEVICE IS BIGGER.
The ipod mini is small but has a gigantic amount of space. Sure my music collection wouldn't fit on it but I could put an awfull lot of my most popular music on it.
Apple either has a lousy production rate or they struck gold once again as they have been unable to keep up with demand.
So you thinking that there isn't enough demand for it shows that you are a liar, you haven't thought about it at all.
Well at least I am. Personally I don't have the guts to pull this kind of scam since I would be afraid that one of the dumbshits would be told by some smarter (like say the housecat) that he been had and come look for me. Dumb people can be awfully big.
So I just stand by the sideline and laught at the dumbshits who buy this kind of stuff. Antenna extenders are so basic. Who hasn't used their body to clear the radio signal on a portable?
I know that most radios used in workplaces (factories) wich have a lot of metal usually have a few meters of wire attached or have the antenna leaning against a handy pylon.
For the more fragile/.er there is the old pringle can antenna.
These guys selling pringle carton at a huge markup are pretty smart. Now it is just a question if they are smart enough to avoid the trading standards agencies. This is england and not the US. In england only very large companies are allowed to rip people off.
If you ever read up on the problems with education in poor areas you would soon learn just how bloody expensive books are and how quickly they are outdated. That is if the books are even available in the local language. Not much use teaching kids in south africa basic maths with euro coins. Or dollars. Or pounds. They should have books that use the rand as an example.
Perhaps I should have this discussion with you when you got school going kids and you get the first bill for their school books.
As for books being carried home you obviously are a dreamer. In poor areas they are lucky if they got enough books for a full class let alone each student that takes the class. These books stay at school. Hell in some places they use slates to learn to write on and do sums to save on paper.
Electricity indeed costs money but not as much as you think. Again go back to the price of a kids schoolbooks in the west and your own electricity bill. Further more the cost of elec can be "donated" by simply not charging schools. Donating books requires that same goverment to actually spend money that they don't have.
What use are computers. Well stop thinking in the geek "internet"/"programming" style. Think books. Books are expensive and you need a lot of them. They also have to be constantly updated and that can only be done by replacing them fully.
Now put those books on computers and suddenly each student can access their own book (perhaps even make notations in the book) and have it up-to-date each year.
The cost of books is a very real problem. There have been plenty of reports of poor schools in developing region where students had to share books that had been donated decades ago from the west. While you might think that a book on math from 30 yrs ago is as good as as one printed today many teachers would disagree. Especially when the old one was printed in a foreign language.
There are two ways to use computers in teaching. One is the old "computerlab" most of us will have seen wich are mainly used to teach computer skills. But a far more usefull way of using computers is to replace books and paper and their high cost and non-updateableness. Over here we can "afford" to require new text books each year. Other countries are not so lucky.
Afghanistan got a lot of its aid from japan so they were so gratefull they blew up statues important to japan's religion. Afghanistan was helped by the US in the war against the USSR so they fly planes into US buildings. There are many more examples, immigrants from the arab world into the western world come to mind.
The way to peace is not to make one country depend on another. It only works if both need each other to be at peace. Even just needing each other is not enough, one of them might decide they need the other really badly and invade.
The best way for peace is if two countries just ignore each other. This kind of "poor backward pakistan" needs "powerfull smart india" is not going to do any good. The indians might get the smugness of americans and the pakistanies the resentment of the arab nations. We all know how well they get along.
For another example, currently the US is extremely dependant on russia for its space program. It was only thanks to russian hardware and knowledge that americans managed to get some duration in space (mir) and the current space station needs russian rockets a lot more then the space shuttle. Yet if you watch american media you would hardly be able to tell this.
Slashdot Mirror
Then again morrowind is a lot of things but bugfree ain't one of them.
Perhaps not in america, over here in the free world we didn't use to believe in censorship. (sadly that is changing, the bbc now has the most idiotic warnings, even warning in news programs that some of the news may be upsetting, geez what the fuck? Next instead of images from war we show images of fluffy kittens and tell people all is well and good? Even in holland this kind of stuff is happening wich is why I am aggresive about it) Apart from some rules about hardcore porn not before a certain time it was pretty much let up to the tv-station and the viewer to decide what was appropriate. So the EO (christian) didn't swear or show nudity, the VPRO (liberal) has had some childeren shows with full frontal nudity. Veronica (youth) had a program when AIDS was a hot item that showed everything related to sex and aids. Including how to use a condom. Various sex acts were enacted for real by pornstars.
Other more recent programs also show that in holland pretty much anything goes. And while I don't want to watch a girl getting a piercing thought her labia (with her dad holding her hand for encouragement for some reason I couldn't fathom) I certainly don't want the state to tell me I can't watch it.
Being told what can be said and what can't is a slippery slope. What next, a ban on programs dealing with homosexuality? A ban on a critical movie of american soldiers? Or far more subtle a ban on a tv-show about the KKK because the word nigger is not allowed?
America has an odd history in that it never really been under the control of an oppressor. Most of the rest of the world has and we know that once people stop you from saying things the next step is to stop you from breathing. Fuck and shit may not be much in the grandscheme of things. But I am thinking that someone else is thinking "babysteps".
Oh and to people that use "prOn". DIE, you are one step away from people like bush and it is a step on the wrong side. Wether it is the holocaust, communist dictatorships, McCarthy trials, catholic priest child abuse, badly bodged police investigate of the Dutroux case, they all got one thing in common. Censorhip being attempted and accepted.
Most of us can do very little but the little we can do is not censor ourselves.
Oh well I am having bad hope that this will all blow over. Dutch tv was way way way more liberal then anything american and we now too got people going about morality. Strangely enough the ones complaining about morals always are the same people that take funding away from hospitals and education. Odd that.
Picture a decrepit room maybe an old office in an abondonned factory. Various though guys handling weapons and calling each other various colors are obviously preparing for something. Now in the corner is playing a tv. Right before they move out a Dutch tv program with boobies comes on. Will the men A. go out and commit murder or B. go oooh bouncies and be couch potatoes for the rest of the evening.
Boobies for peace! Instead of a dove we should have a tittie. During the olympics instead of realsing a thousand white doves all the women bare their breasts. Colors of the world UNITE and jiggle for peace!
Wich might suggest that the game playing audience is a lot more ready for this then the game makers or the game reviewers or the game raters.
In morrowind when you where naked you were still in your undies. In a prequel I think when you where naked you really where naked. This was removed to appease goverment regulators in the USofC(ensorship).
Anyway that is my theory about yaoi.
In most games where relationships take a role I don't like it when I am forced to "only" take the approved hetero option. The sims was a very welcome exception. I can tolerate that the love interest in Planescape torment are only girls, I am a guy with strong hetero feelings (translation: Oooh bouncies!!!!!) but I can imagine that a hetero female or gay male or gay female wants to have a wider choice then angel succubus and boiling devil girl.
Same with the otherwise excellent KOTOR. Why can't I whoo balista with a female char eh? (and people that choose to finding out that the mandolorians were like the spartans eh?)
As someone whose family was closely affected by the holocaust I am extremely nervous about people that suggest that certain life styles are less worthy. You just know that people that say gay people should have lesser rights then hetero's want to say the same thing about differently colored people or people with different religions.
So good luck to The sims 2, a courageos decision if they really leave it in in the current american climate. Peter Molyneux if you finally allow me to play a lesbian (and anyone who wants to a gay) paladin I might even forgive you for Black & White. (note it got to be a love story not toee was not a love story)
As to the gamespot story, well it is clear its author still needs to learn a thing or two about homosexuality. Picking out high-heels and lipstick for your female avatar doesn't make you gay. If anything picking a male character and making his looks just right and hunky makes you gay. Creating a sweet hot perky female avatar just makes you pervert. When gay rights have been achieved world wide the human race will have made a step forward but when the rights of perverts have been regonized we will have arived at nirvana. Oh well back to getting balista to play the b-side. (as a side note do female players of KOTOR like the way the male comes on to their character? As the male I played the "50's" movie banter character constantly teasing balista but playing as a female I just found him tiresome, is that my testosterone talking or does the estrogene crowd feel the same?)
If you are a windows born and bred type of computer user linux will be hard. Especially if you really want to learn linux and not just whine on /. about how it is not windows.
People with dos experience will have the basic mindset that not everything has to be done in a GUI with a wizard but people raised on windows 95 and later will have to do some adjusting.
Oh and if you want linux to be like windows just give up right now. It isn't and hopefully never will be. Linux is a unix. Love it or leave it.
So on to my tip. DO NOT SWITCH. DO NOT INSTALL LINUX OVER YOUR WINDOWS and expect to enjoy it. DO NOT EVEN USE DUAL BOOT.
Why not? No matter how smart you are if you are used to Windows 95 and later you will find plenty of moments where you just get stuck in linux. If you are in dualboot and need to reboot to read up on how to get your network up and running then you are setting youreselve up to get a hatred of linux because to you windows just works and linux doesn't (you ofcourse will be forgetting that you once had to learn to get windows to work too).
Instead setup linux on a old machine and use a kvm switch to switch between them. Then you can use your old familiar setup to read up on how to work with your new OS and if for some reason you quickly need to do something you haven't yet learned on Linux Windows is only a button press away. Get frustated, lost, out of time? 1 press and hello windows. Want to try again after your head cleared? 1 press and back you are to learning and trying.
KVM switch (keyboard video mouse) is even better then two machines next to each other. Why? When you press the button for linux that is all you see, no problems with two keyboards and one is easier to type on or the windows machine has the bigger monitor. Keep the printer on windows for now so that when you got some long piece of text on windows on a linux subject you can print it (printer setup in linux is easy enough once you mastered it, mastering it isn't easy for everyone so wait, babysteps)
Now if you got linux running smoothly start using it for 1 or 2 tasks. If your a gamer do all your browsing, downloading and music playing on linux. You will then notice if you use a browser like opera you can keep all the webpages open as you like, have downloads going in the greatest memory hogs java ever spawned, play your mp3 collection from beginning to end WHILE gaming with 100% of your windows machine. Does the game crash? No worry, the linux machine will still be playing your MP3's while windows reboots, have the walkthrough page where you left it and the download happily downloading. BUT always remember to take babysteps. Don't do them all at once. One at the time. Browsing /. is probably the easist.
Next you may try stuff like Mplayer (linux movie player) and get rid off all the conflicting codecs on your windows machine that are just eating resources. Try openoffice for writing your letters. Email may be intresting to switch (do you really need outlook and exchange at home?)
I think this way works best, it works excellently for me. I am a web developer with some coding skill and an avid game and anime watcher. ALL my gaming is on windows plus some photoshop. ALL the rest is on linux. Because my game windows doesn't do anything else I got more memory for my games and more cpu cycles. I also care far less about game crashes as it doesn't interupt anything else (I don't photoshop and game at the same time).
Meanwhile I have learned an awfull lot of linux (to be fair I come from a unix background and had plenty of dos experience so it wasn't that hard for me) and more importantly I have the mindset that there is more then 1 OS out there. You might be suprised to learn this but if you go out into the workplace you might encounter everything from DOS to unix to VMS to mainframes (well software running on mainframes) to custom-made to windows 3.1->2003 to Linux to OS-2 to Mac OS 8-X etc.
A Windows 95-2003 person will be horribly confused. So am I but at least I have managed to learn the principles behind using a computer. Not just to press buttong X in situation Y.
Linux is harder but once it works it works. I always waste some time if I have to install a linux system on getting it right, it even crashes a couple of times. But once I finished it just stays up and works. I never had linux go tits up on me.
Of course this is my personal experience. Yours may differ. Currently my windows game machine in windows explorer when I click on a folder in the right pane it opens search. I can't change the default action in the file options and basically am just stuck with no option but a reinstall. In 4+ years of linux use and 8+ years of unix use I never done a reinstall. EVER. (perhaps this explains why I need more time to install linux then windows. In 95/98 days I could do a windows install blindfolded.)
So for me the article is total nonsense. I long since switched and am loving it. Linux is like a willis jeep and windows is a BMW AND (and this bit is important) I AM A FULLY QUALIFIED MECHANIC. The jeep I can fix with basic tools. The BMW just has to be towed to a garage if something goes *bleep*.
Oh, ain't about that jobbs. Another piece of crap from redmond. How desperate can you get? And in asia too. Home of the Opensource TRON operating system wich was killed by MS and wich meant japan lost a chance to have controlled the OS market.
Oh well here is hoping leaders in asia got a good memory and a taste for revenge.
Or you install linux on the old hardware bear the one time transition cost and from then on spend the IT budget on custom applications tailored to your company rather then bending over backwards to conform to the expectation of of the shelf software.
A few years ago this kind of talk could be seen as a threat. Now it is just the bleating of a worried sheep. People have woken up. No there won't be an overnight revolution. Instead slowly each week you see another story of a company or goverment using linux in some small way. A few years ago only a handfull of small stores in the entire world could install linux for you. Now it is hard to find a serious retailer that doesn't sell linux. HP/compag IBM and dell are obvious but even the local chain Mycom.nl has linux knowledge, they don't sell it yet but they use it internally.
So does switching to linux mean joblosses? Perhaps. But other jobs can be gained. Programmers/administrator/fixer. There will be less demand for off the shelf software and more demand for inhouse developed custom application that are far less feauture rich/bug ridden and instead tuned exactly to the demands of the workplace. Less Excell spreadsheet more webapps.
Kinda like how factories can choose to buy their machines ready made from outside or have their own people building the machines to fit their specific needs. The more money they can save on what they have to buy the more they can spend on their custom stuff.
I like it, the off the shelff stuff is made in redmond or india. The custom stuff is made right here where I work. So redmond will loose jobs, amsterdam holland will gain some.
It sounds like a nice idea but if MS chooses not to implement it or to do it badly (like say PNG support) then it is all for nothing UNLESS opera can use its dominance on the phones to some good. IF the phone is going to replace the PC (there are more mobile phones then PC's already) THEN people might be getting upset that their browser on their phones beats the pants of the browser on their PC.
Not likely but you never know. (to those who think people are going to switch because of IE security, HAHA, people still buy cars from companies whose cars KILLED PEOPLE, simple credit card fraud ain't gonna stop them)
Still they better fix that demo first this just looks stupid.
Opensource is not about putting commercial companies out of business.
Most RPG's have the main character just a normal person with no "specials" starting out to do something. About the only one that comes to mind is that MS "diablo" clone forgot the name. There you are just a regular farmhand who decides to take revenge for an attack. If I remember correctly you got nothing special and start fighting with farm equipment.
Sure there are differences between japanese RPG's and western RPG's but personally I see them more in the decission taking. Most western RPG's seem to want to give you moral choices like "do I save person X"/"kill them and take all their money"/"save them for a price" while in the few japanese games I played this was always prechosen. (Please don't list the japanese games that are not like this I only played a couple). From what I seen of the Final Fantasy series it is more like an adventure with fighting then what we would call an RPG.
As to why the japanese wouldn't want to play it. Well that is only a valid question if westerners DID play it (not want to play it in a survey, people can say anything in a survey, these figures are meaningless unless people put their money where there mouth is).
MMORPG are a gigantic failure. There is ultima and evercrack and the rest are pathetic. If you look at the number of active subscribers vs the numbers speculated then you can't help but conclude that westerners don't want to play mmorpgs either.
Why not? Well I recently cancceled my subscription to SWG after just a couple of months. It is not the money, I work and can easily afford it. It is not the payment system, SWG has 3, creditcard, automatic bankpayment and prepaid gamecard.
It is the gameplay. You compare them to single player RPG's but they are nothing like it. SWG comes closer to a cross between Diablo and Counter Strike and Arcade style games. Let me explain.
Diablo is a levelling up game, no story (certainly not enough to play it over and over). Just go out do missions for a few hours and get lvls/money/goodies. Is this fun? Well to a point but considering the sales figures not to many. At least diablo is honest, it is not sold as a story RPG. Most customers want more then a levelling threadmill.
Counter Strike. SWG has PvP. The two sides (rebel and imperial) can fight it out, if you are overt on either side the other side can attack you. Slight problem? It means every game server has a couple of kiddies running around using every exploit available to prove how leet they are. No room for a rebel doctor or an imperial scout. You got to a tooled up warrior wearing only certain parts of certain armour and 2-3 weapons to count. Just like CS kiddies who spend all their time learning every exploit in the game and use aim bots and similar. (note that CS while seemingly popular can hardly be considered a game that appeals to wide audience)
Arcade style games. I don't like console games as the only difficulty from them comes from giving the enemies insane hitpoints. SWG developers seem to love this however. Your character has perhaps 3000-4000 hitpoints. The enemies in the recently opened Death Watch bunker got a quarter million hit points + 100% resists. Considering you do about 2000-3000 damage minus resists and that the enemies respawn every 3 minutes it soon becomes clear that this is not just insane, it just plain isn't fun.
There is the crafting system (all the equipment and supplies you find in a RPG is made by other players) but just ask yourselve how much fun it is to endlessly click on a very bad interface (way to many clicks needed on different screens and the screen flashes between screen in a way sure to give an epeleptic the seizure of a life time if they are in a hurry). Designing clothing can be some fun, same as image styl
Sure one can question the wisdom of altering the course of an asteroid that is currently not on a course to earth as there is a risk that the new course might be a problem. Except that it would be reasonable to assume that the people at ESA have thought of this too.
The trajectories of space objects are something we actually understand really really well. It is simple math and the bigger objects have had their path calculated very accuratly centuries ago.
If we follow the advice of people like the above poster the human race would still be stuck up a tree worried about the dangers of the forest floor. Luckily we didn't and some of the monkeys got eaten but others survived and thrived.
Seriously any company that allows programmers and such to answer calls directly from the outside (no secretary or such in between) is wasting resources. It may look like I have time to answer the phone but in reality I am thinking (or sleeping) and being distracted means that I am not only going to have to waste time getting my thoughts on track (or falling asleep again) but you are also allowing your customers to be handled by people whose skills probably are not in communication.
So I would instead teach a different lesson. If the person answering the phone isn't any good at it, don't let them answer the phone.
So before I agreed that java was a piece of crap whose only saving grace was that it could be portable (plenty of java apps are not). Now that azureus works very stable (constant run since the last update) I must admit that java can work. HOWEVER
I also run freenet and the memory and CPU usuage is still insanely high. Of course this could simply be a freenet problem but it doesn't help java's image.
To me java is an intresting tool that can solve certain problems. It is not perfect and one of its imperfections is that it is a resource hog. Makes you wonder what is different between the java on linux/windows and the java on mobile phones.
Anyway to get back on topic, too bad but the time is not yet right for these kind of projects. If you actually use freenet and look around there is very little worthwhile on it. Just yesterday someone posted Slackware 10 on it. Yeah we need anonymous network to distribute linux. NOT. Maybe if SCO wins but today it just shows that people are just desperate to look for uses.
Current uses are file sharing (can be done far more easily through other means especially if the files are legal), child porn and similar (not exactly something most people consider a worthy cause) and weirdos. About the only "real" use are DeCSS and the Scientology papers (can easily be hosted by those living in free nations).
The problem of course is that while freenet may not be needed now if it is ever needed in the future it will be too late to write it.
By the time the dictator is in power it is too late to protest.
Arm designs chips and then lets other license them and make them. So intel and the others in the list got a simple choice. Do their own work or pay ARM for their work.
So plenty of competition and hardly small ones. It just seems that some of the big boys prefer think giving ARM money makes a better deal for them. After all it is not like IBM or Intel can't design their own chips.
Of course if people didn't elect their leaders based on whom promises to give the biggest tax cut we could simply have nurses and similar staff take care of them. No danger in people running into the street if there is a proper congierge at the gate. But sadly people vote for the guy that gives them 300bucks (and takes a 1000) so we are reduced to this.
At least I hope this is only used for the elderly with mental problems. Using this on the mentally capable is I think way way way beyond privacy invasion.
Then again I once SAW (not heard about) a old woman who was tied to her chair to prevent her walking off. Staff just didn't have time to keep checking up on her. Ah well, as long as CDA (the bush party of holland) keeps promising tax cuts this kinda stuff will keep happening.
And of course there is the always present thought that each morning you could be one of the ones who doesn't wake up at all. Remember retirement homes are places you check into. Kinda like a life sentence in prison with no chance of parol.
You could ask the question why people pay for these minis when they can get a bigger device for more. Mmmmm, that doesn't sound right, you can usually get a bigger device for a more money.
So why don't people pay 50 bucks more for the bigger device? Because duh and if you didn't spot this one you have the intelligence of a slug THE OTHER DEVICE IS BIGGER.
The ipod mini is small but has a gigantic amount of space. Sure my music collection wouldn't fit on it but I could put an awfull lot of my most popular music on it.
Apple either has a lousy production rate or they struck gold once again as they have been unable to keep up with demand.
So you thinking that there isn't enough demand for it shows that you are a liar, you haven't thought about it at all.
So I just stand by the sideline and laught at the dumbshits who buy this kind of stuff. Antenna extenders are so basic. Who hasn't used their body to clear the radio signal on a portable?
I know that most radios used in workplaces (factories) wich have a lot of metal usually have a few meters of wire attached or have the antenna leaning against a handy pylon.
For the more fragile /.er there is the old pringle can antenna.
These guys selling pringle carton at a huge markup are pretty smart. Now it is just a question if they are smart enough to avoid the trading standards agencies. This is england and not the US. In england only very large companies are allowed to rip people off.
Perhaps I should have this discussion with you when you got school going kids and you get the first bill for their school books.
As for books being carried home you obviously are a dreamer. In poor areas they are lucky if they got enough books for a full class let alone each student that takes the class. These books stay at school. Hell in some places they use slates to learn to write on and do sums to save on paper.
Electricity indeed costs money but not as much as you think. Again go back to the price of a kids schoolbooks in the west and your own electricity bill. Further more the cost of elec can be "donated" by simply not charging schools. Donating books requires that same goverment to actually spend money that they don't have.
Now put those books on computers and suddenly each student can access their own book (perhaps even make notations in the book) and have it up-to-date each year.
The cost of books is a very real problem. There have been plenty of reports of poor schools in developing region where students had to share books that had been donated decades ago from the west. While you might think that a book on math from 30 yrs ago is as good as as one printed today many teachers would disagree. Especially when the old one was printed in a foreign language.
There are two ways to use computers in teaching. One is the old "computerlab" most of us will have seen wich are mainly used to teach computer skills. But a far more usefull way of using computers is to replace books and paper and their high cost and non-updateableness. Over here we can "afford" to require new text books each year. Other countries are not so lucky.
Since it is an infinite amount of monkeys that are needed. So you need infinite / 4 amount of computers.
The way to peace is not to make one country depend on another. It only works if both need each other to be at peace. Even just needing each other is not enough, one of them might decide they need the other really badly and invade.
The best way for peace is if two countries just ignore each other. This kind of "poor backward pakistan" needs "powerfull smart india" is not going to do any good. The indians might get the smugness of americans and the pakistanies the resentment of the arab nations. We all know how well they get along.
For another example, currently the US is extremely dependant on russia for its space program. It was only thanks to russian hardware and knowledge that americans managed to get some duration in space (mir) and the current space station needs russian rockets a lot more then the space shuttle. Yet if you watch american media you would hardly be able to tell this.