You give the clue youreselve. LEGAL. Most of these scams are things that are legal! Trying to get money to save hungry childeren from your mom and keeping it myself makes me the scumbag. Your mother is truly and honestly trying to do good. She doesn't profit by it. The scam with lottery reports does work on greed but at least it doesn't act the victim to do illegal stuff.
This guy didn't. He wanted to defraud a goverment out of money it owned legally. You can't con an honest man may not work for every scam but the nigerian scam does work with it. If you don't think it is legal to defraud and bribe then you won't fall for it. Now go ask your mom if she think it is okay to defraud the goverment out of huge fortune. With 21 billion you would be up there with the richest people of the world.
As for what is done to prevent normal people from more normal scams? Pay enough taxes so police officers in uniform can go around and educate people about what to be aware off. It is cops that can educate and intervene and protect those that can't protect themselves.
Well no not really. This is not like some poor old biddy who gets scammed into paying for needless repairs or whose house is burgled at the back while they help someone at the frontdoor.
These people are doing normal legal even very nice things, like assisting 1 of the frauders while the other wanders around the house to steal stuff. The scumbags that do this rely on most peoples trust that if someone tells you your house needs to be fixed that they are not lying. Do you check your garage for every repair? You also presume that if someone asks you for help that they don't have someone in the back breaking in.
This guy was asked to help in a fraud and he let greed suck him in. He is blaming the goverment of nigeria for not just giving him 21 billion. Doesn't he even realise that in a country like that it is probably several times the countries income?
Oh and as for admitting he was scammed. Those old people who are really scammed have no trouble at all admitting it and LISTEN to the police when they come around. In england they did even help in sting operations of their own where they waited for the scammers to come back only now there were coppers waiting for them. They may be suckered once be not twice and certainly don't presume that the police are lying when they say those nice people were really crooks.
Anyone else slightly puzzled about that Secret Service Agent giving his name? Aren't these people supposed to be secret? As in not giving their name to the press?
Speaking of wich. I got an uncle who died and left 21 billion dollars and now the goverment wants it all unless we can somehow swindle them out of it. I need about a quarter million to set it up. Intressted?
Yeah he wanted to do good with the money. Oh sure. I think we found the one person more stupid then sessions. It is you.
He had 250.000 dollars and apparently could raise even more. I hardly see that as being poor or being unable to pay the bills. No he wanted it all because he was a greedy bastard. If he had wanted to good he could have sold his cars before kept a cheap little runabout and used to money to fund a local charity. No need to steal 21 billion dollars. Don't be a sucker youreselve he is scamming you just as he wanted to scam the Nigerian goverment.
You see his fault his not being stupid. His fault is thinking that he was smarter then everyone else. Even know he doesn't believe the police because he believes he is smarter then they are.
That is the secret to avoid being scammed wether it is classic stuff like this or more subtle stuff like cheap loans, buying girls gifts, advertising. Ask yourselve this. Am I the smartest person in this deal? No? Then stay away.
In order to qualify you have to somehow remove yourselve from the gene pool. Since he is 70 already he prob is beyong reproduction and likely has already reproduced. So unless he has to sell his kids for their organs his genes have spread.
I should be more sympathetic? Fuck that. This guy is a criminal. He funded the bribing of officials all in an attempt to defraud a foreign goverment for nothing else then pure financial gain. Rule 1 of being a criminal be aware of bigger criminals. Oh well no doubt a lot of other idiots will help this sucker out proving to him that god exists and that it is goverments who seek to screw people over. God bless america.
This story has two sides. DNA is a god send to those charged with finding criminals. It is almost impossible not to leave some dna at a crime scene even for pros and most crimes are not committed by pros. If the police had access to a database with everyones dna then a hell of a lot more crimes could be solved and a lot faster at a lesser cost and with less change of false arrests or the criminal committing another crime while police are investigating.
On the other hand is a huge privacy issue. While it is true that the innocent SHOULD have nothing to fear the sad fact is that this is not true. Nor can we assume that even if it is true now that it will remain true in the future. The germans had a registration of who had what religion in the 1930's. We all know how that ended. Can you be sure who is in charge of the US or any country proposing a similar scheme in 10 years? That is now 3 elections away.
I have little patience with people just concerned with their privacy. Most of them are just people who don't want to be caught should they ever decide to commit a crime. Guess what sherlock that is part of the reason for introducing such a thing. "Commmit a crime and we will find you" as opposed to now, "Commit a crime and maybe we will find you". The higher the chance of getting caught the more people will be deterred.
On the other hand I do have my doubts if such a system in future might not be abused. So on the one hand yes everyones dna logged will make life a lot harder for criminals. It will also make life a lot easier for anyone seeking to oppress non-criminals in the future. Or people we consider now to be innocent but who might be made to be guilty in the future.
The answer? I don't have one. Anyone who claims they have one are lying. Don't believe those who guarantee the safe use cause they can't. Don't believe the privacy people cause they are not now the victims of crime. The moment their child is murdered they will change their tune faster then a prisoner on his way to the chair.
I needed the picture to figure it out. Getting old I guess. Damn kid journalists making up new words. Why when I was there age we had only 1 word and we liked it.
Reading the article they seem to rely an awfull lot on luck. Nose cone, parachutes, airbags, batteries, solar panels. They better buy some lottery tickets cause if this thing makes it they will all win the jackpot.
Oh well. At least they dare to do the impossible. Lets hope it doesn't land on some martians head.
Isn't it? We got Linus himself admitting that some of his code in 0.01 was embarrisingly bad. IT GOT FIXED. This is very important. Opensource can get fixed by anyone. Not everyone can or will do this but apparently enough to create some very serious software.
I think the IE patch is a wonderfull example. 1 person had the IDEA but not the coding talent. Others with more talent then complemented his work by patching his code. Those patches made the original work better and more valuable.
No matter how obvious a mistake is in closed source you can't fix it.
Myst is of the school of "The 7th guest". This had a story but in order to progress you had to solve puzzles. These puzzles had little today with the story but were classic braintwisters. Simple things like moving pieces on chessboard or answering riddles.
The other style of adventure is the Sierra or Lucasarts adventure. Here the puzzles are usually based in items you collected and combinging them with other items to move along. Think MacGuyver. For instance in the recent adventure "Runaway a road adventure" you have problem. You need to convince some killers that your love intrest is in another bed. How? Well there is a card with her name on it at the bottom of the bed and an empty bed next to it. So locate some cushions a dummy head a wig and a sheet and you got a nice target. Now to do the medical chart. You found a marker pen but it is dry. You also found some alcohol and a syringe. Hmmm, can you figure out what to do next? Probably. Do you like figuring it out or do you go, why don't I just shoot the killers?
Some of use like adventures and puzzles like this. Some like myst style puzzels. You like patformers and rpgs en shooters with a few puzzles. Genre mixing doesn't work for everyone. Adventure gaming isn't dead but people sure keep trying to kill it.
I think the difference here is between pc and console. I know mario world and as a pc player I can't see who would call it an adventure. I would classify it as a platform game.
Of course consoles never had pc styled adventures.
To make it clear when pc players talk of adventures they mean games like Monkey Island 1-3, Gabriel Knight Sins of the father, King Quest series, Sam & Max and so on.
So the original post is true from a console perspective. The response is true from a pc perspective.
Monkey Island. A great point and click adventure series. Killed by the fourth installment wich added well a "different" way of doing things. Instead of moving your mouse around the screen hunting for pixels that would do something you now had to move a tiny character with the cursor keys to hunt for pixels that would do something. The reviewers loved it. Adventure reborn! An important thing to remember about reviewers is that they get PAID to play games. Where as buyers PAY to play. The game didn't sell and lucasarts adventures are no more.
The Gabriel Knight series is another example. The first was a classic point and click and sold well. Sadly the developers caught the "full motion video" bug that was doing the rounds and number 2 was well not as good. By the time it was time for number 3 the FMV bug had died but a more virulent strain had sprung up called "3D". Even reviewers thought this Gabriel Knight 3 was not very good. The public avoided it like the plague.
Broken Sword 1 & 2 were moderately succefull point & click adventures. Number 3 caught the 3D bug however and while it makes for a nice looking game you once again find yourselve controlling a character with sub-standard controls (no side stepping) in the hunt of pixels. Add some pointless Tombraider bits (pointless since there is no skill involved) and a bit of dragon lair and you got another adventure killer. Nice game but not an adventure as we know and love them.
Is all hope lost? No. Funcom released a little gem called "The longest journey". In a great example that shows the value of reviews it was highly regarded by most game sites and mags and totally ignored by the buyers. Then something happened. Word of mouth got out that here was a classic point and click like in the olden days and slowly it started to sell becoming a moderate success.
And here is the good bit. THEY ARE MAKING A SEQUEL. Oh yes. Working title "The longest journey. Static".
Another new hopefull is syberia. Granted I thought it had a few to many empty screens but at least the interface worked. It is successfull enough for a sequel as well.
Out of nowhere came also "Runaway a road adventure" not sure how this one did but it again is a classic point and click and a lot of fun to play even if the characters are horrible ripoffs from the broken sword series.
So what of the future? Well it is hard to tell. With PC games becoming more of a niche the lure of consoles and a more arcade like adventure may proof unresistable. Broken sword has fallen to the unwashed hordes of the gamepad others may follow. However there will always be new and brave people who are willing to make the classic adventure. After all did not a group of volunteers make a classic "Space Quest" game? Even got the old ega graphics for that bit of nostalgia.
From the pdf "Gametrac boasts and ARM8 400Mhz processor with a 64MB memory co-processor".
What the hell is that?
No games mentioned and the graphics all seem to me to be drawings. Then their is the mentioning of ads. Wtf?
Sure there is a gaming market out there. Well sony seems to think so but they are huge and can certainly put together a software catalog. In korea you got the GP32 but it doesn't seem to be in any hurry to go west. Nintendo of course is king because they got a cheap reliable robuust toy that appeals to all. It ain't hot tech but it sure sells like it.
No I think this is like all those other wannabe companies that release hope statements about the "next" console. Ain't gonna happen. Or in the case of nokia did happen but rather wish it didn't.
Oh and I just realised, if it is CE then surely all the current Windows PDA games should run on it? Why not mention them?
Now where is my pink gameboy (it was the only one left).
All these artificial life games or for that matter any game where you indirectly have to control your avatar suffer from the same problem. They are dumb as shit.
I liked the sims but after a few hour play I want to kill them all. If these were humans they would be in a home strapped to their beds to prevent them hurting themselves.
Breakfast time. My 6 gals (yes I am a pervert) would do all right UNTIL it was time to clear the dishes. All of them queing up to use the dishwasher. Of course that meant waiting really long so they either just dumped the plates or peed their pants. When they run to the toilet do they seek out an empty one? No they just stand in front blocking each other so one of them pees in their pants.
Of course this then drops their hygiene. Better make sure not to install any wash basins or they spend the rest of the day washing their hands to get clean instead of just taking a bath.
The sims became more of a maze game then anyone else. Except instead of designing a robot to traverse the maze with ease you are designing a maze that a dinky toy can traverse with ease.
Getting them to educate themselves was also far to much work. Maybe I just hate micro management but I would prefer to be able to leave them to their own devices while I say cook dinner. Then come back and make some improvements only to leave them to get on with it again. Oh and did anyone ever get a sim to reliable collect the mail?
Oh well. Just have to see what is going to happen.
The 1 program to bind them all are windows users who either are trying to prove windows is better for having no choice. Or windows users that want to turn linux into windows.
The posters today are mostly KDE users most of who can't read or just can't understand why someone does not choose their obviously superior desktop, it is ofcourse so obvious that no ones needs to link to any evidence.
So your comment is incorrect. Different people are allowed to have different ideas you know even if they post on the same forum:)
Oh and you might notice that most of the "KDE is better, bruce is a moron, gnome sucks" posts don't mention the license issue or get it totally wrong.
Of course there are exceptions and it is those that still make it worthwhile to read all the way to the bottom.
Well by that reasoning the KDE developers should just accept that this has happened and get over it. Spend a month learning gnome and make that better. It happened recently when Linus choose one virtual disk system over the other.
Instead all I see is a lot of KDE users bitching that they rule and gnome is the sucks. Having read all the links in the post I think Bruce Perens is the adult here. He has a very difficult project to do that so far noone else has come even close to accomplising. A standard linux.
Is it needed? Well maybe. I use gentoo so have the choice of 2 dozen desktops/windows managers. I can deal with it. I don't really like either Gnome or KDE. HOWEVER I am not a big business looking at the choice between Microsofts windows, Suns Java Desktop, Mac OS X or Userlinux. Now tell me. How many desktops do the first three have? Good. Now tell me how many desktop should the last one have?
I think Bruce Perens is making the right choice to limit the default install to 1 desktop. I even think the choice for gnome is a good one. The KDE letter is crap as it completly fails to address the issue Mr Perens has with KDE. The license for qt.
However userlinux coming with gnome does not exclude KDE from being used with it. Nothing will stop the KDE team, least of all Bruce himself according to his post, from making their own debian packages to install KDE with Userlinux.
Anyway I think my sig really says it best. KDE vs Gnome arguments are totally pointless and the only thing I will tell all the KDE posters, please try to back up your arguments. I seen to many posts saying "KDE is better" without any evidence. No doubt if this was a story about gnome losing gnome users would do the same and it would be just as meaningless.
Oh and as a side note. I use virtual desktops to seperate my activities. KDE allows different backgrounds making it easy to identify where I am. However gnome is far faster in updating my transparant windows (yes I am graphics whore) but has only 1 wallpaper. Make of that what you will.
Let me explain. Since we all seen ATM machines with windows error screens I think it is fair to presume that the computer inside is not exactly small. It is not like say a pocket calculater where every bit counts.
So why oh why does it remind me to take the receipt when I told it no receipt? It is not printing one out so somewhere in its memory a flag is set. So why can't the last message be adjusted to reflect it? It is a very simple thing to do. I think you learn this kind of thing in the second chapter of any programming book.
I think until such simple things are realised (I seen people waiting for a receipt that is not going to appear making the throughput of the machine slower wich is not good on a busy shoppping day) we can forget such machines ever becoming even the slightest bit intelligent and say use your name to greet you. Let alone be able to give you say access to you bank statements of that month to see if the rent has already been deducted.
Oh and this behaviour is spotted on ATM's in holland in several different models belonging to different banks (our cards work with all banks)
There is tax coming into effect that ads 50 euro cent to the one type of dvd recordables and 1 euro tax to the other type. That is per disc!
Of course this is goverment not the courts who laid that down and like in the US those two are supposed to be seperate. Also like the US it is hardly unheard of for the courts to shoot down the goverment.
So I wouldn't say it is to different from the US. Not the same but not to different either. Think differences between say california texas and new york rather then say US vs Cuba.
just give the bloody codecs so that people can install it like they install divx and use their own favorite player. Why exactly do I need three different players installed? WiMP, that piece of apple shit, and real crap?
Yes I hate them all. I want a movie player. Not a music player. Not a catalog. Not an ad machine. I just want to play the goddamn movie. Is that so difficult?
I can't even decide wich one is worse. they are all just so evil.
WMP forces you to use windows though so far little noise seems to be made about mplayers capabilties on linux with windows dlls.
Realplay gets so much in the way of playing I just don't do rm anymore.
Quicktime just keeps bugging you to buy the full version. Talk about wanting to have their cake and eat it to (make money at client side or server side not both). The free ride is over eh Steve Jobs? That why you based your overpriced OS on free software? Creep. Write your own instead of sponging of the gnu, linux and bsd.
Argh. So evil company fighting evil company in evil courtroom. Where is a terrorist when you need them.
Pointed this out before but this is a patch. Word you are looking for is a fix. Patch is temporary. Like patching a wound until it can heal. Patching your clothing until it can either be properly repaired or replaced. Patching a punctured tire so that you can put some air back in and get home where sooner or later you will have to get it repaired properly.
I am against words getting a new meaning just because computers are involved. YES I am anal. Some of us need to be.
As for how this is done? Same way as all the IE plugins. All those bars you see and popup blockers? Same thing.
Yeah those damn commies. Why can't they just release a patch that repairs the binary iexplorer.exe eh?
This is actually a patch in the normal world. Think as in patching a punctured tire. You put on a piece of rubber until you can have the tire replaced properly. A workaround to a busted tire would be to take the load off it. Both are not as nice as repairing the tire but it is better the being stuck for a month while your mechanic gets of his lazy arse.
I think you are looking for the word FIX. MS is supposed to FIX it but in the meantime these guys have released a PATCH wich is a hell of a lot better then having to do the WORKAROUND of checking all urls in notepad or something. (hard to do if the url is generated with javascript).
So no they didn't fix or repair Internet Explorer. They are coders, not god. They did however provide you with a working patch. Since you are commenting on the use of function I presume you can read code. I think it provides a good patch that will get you home until it can be properly repaired.
Oh and at least they PROVED to you that the code works by allowing you to read it for yourselve. Wanna bet that MS just expects you to take their word for it?
IE allows addons or third-party plugins. Stuff like the google bar and hotbar and whatnot. Ever heard of popup blockers? Do you think they have access to the source of IE?
Of course not. But IE does have a documented api that allows you to put your own plugin into the functionality of IE.
So just as some addons block requests for new pages to be opened (popupblockers) or send all your surfing behaviour to a central server (spy programs) it is very easy to add a little program to perform some checking on the url.
That is all this does. Check the url for the offending characters and IF it finds these and ONLY if it finds these it sends you to their site wich displays a warning message.
Why does it send you to their site and not simply popup a warning message? Well perhaps to gather data on the current number of exploits out there. If MS in future will spew some fud then they can simply show their server logs to prove that the patch served a real need. Or not of course. Anyone know of the bug being exploited?
Oh and WAHAHAAAHAHAHA MS OWNED!!!
And to the MS apologists. Don't worry, weekend is almost there, you can recharge again while the rest of us are sick with cramps from laughing to much.
In other gaming news adventure fans go wtf are these guys complaining about. What having to wait a half a decade or so for a new game in a series. Boohoo.
Just as long as someone doesn't take your favorite type of game and turns it into a crappy lara croft wannabe. Broken Sword, The Sleeping Dragon anyone? Oh sorry I forgot Dragon Lair wannabe. Take a hint. Monkey Island was a highly succesful series. Then it went 3D. It died. Gabriel Knight 3 was 3D. It didn't sell. The people that want 3D forced into their adventures are quake players. They buy the next quake. Not some talkie adventure.
Oh well now it is up to the last adventure game maker to save the genre for coming generations. Funcom is doing a sequel to "The longest Journey". Old news but I only recently found out.
So I am far to blissfull on my pink happy cloud to let DNF non-news disturb me. Mmmm, April Ryan.
XP was not Windows 6.0 rather 5.something. and Windows 2003 is 5.2.3790
So MS at least for the techies doesn't do the insane numbering either. Sure they do it for consumers who only see the logo but consumers are idiots anyway.
Not defending MS but fair is fair. I think they may go to 6.* for Longhorn. Or "Windows 2011" for the people in the street.
Simple. Want to know where you stand? Imagine you are the little girl in hospital and everyone thinks you just fallen down the stairs and if you tell the thruth then you are still are going to have to go home where he will be waiting for you.
If that doesn't make it 100% clear to you then please report to the frontdesk and hand in your human being badge.
In real life we constantly hear these stories. Care takers, teachers, doctors and neighbours who look the other way as kids are abused. Until the abuse goes to far and the police shows up in white suits and face masks to take the body away. Then we all cry foul and want to know why nobody did anything.
Does EA have a resposibilty in this case? Well I think that a bar owner who overhears a customer talking has the duty. A teacher who sees a child with bruises has the duty. A passerby in the street who sees the abuse has the duty. But then I am a left wing cry baby commie.
Why should "virtual" worlds be excempt from the real world? In the real world we got rules and police and judges to enforce those rules. Just because something involves a computer does not mean the laws are rewritten. Imagine a chess player coming up to another chess player and admitting beating up his sister. No-one in their right mind would suggest that this is exempt from being investigated by cops. And the organisation of the chess tournament where it happened better help the police out by providing the address of player XX.
Oh well. I am getting upset now. Better stop still I start ranting about people not wanting to take responsibilty. Oh to late.
So you are only controlled by the constant threath of being found out and the risk of being put in a little room with a guy called bubba eh?
Intrestting. Some people claim humans are basically good but you are saying you are not. Wich suggests that the moves to create a police state with everyone being monitored is exactly the way to deal with you. Since you yourselve admit that without the police out their to monitor you you would run wild.
Is this true? I don't know but if you look at games like The Sims or places like Iraq and the ex-soviet states in wich for some reason "normal" people are suddenly put into a position where "the law" is removed, then those people argueing for thight control of the public might have a point.
If online games are going to require a constant police presence to control players behaviour it doesn't exactly bode well for our real world does it?
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This guy didn't. He wanted to defraud a goverment out of money it owned legally. You can't con an honest man may not work for every scam but the nigerian scam does work with it. If you don't think it is legal to defraud and bribe then you won't fall for it. Now go ask your mom if she think it is okay to defraud the goverment out of huge fortune. With 21 billion you would be up there with the richest people of the world.
As for what is done to prevent normal people from more normal scams? Pay enough taxes so police officers in uniform can go around and educate people about what to be aware off. It is cops that can educate and intervene and protect those that can't protect themselves.
These people are doing normal legal even very nice things, like assisting 1 of the frauders while the other wanders around the house to steal stuff. The scumbags that do this rely on most peoples trust that if someone tells you your house needs to be fixed that they are not lying. Do you check your garage for every repair? You also presume that if someone asks you for help that they don't have someone in the back breaking in.
This guy was asked to help in a fraud and he let greed suck him in. He is blaming the goverment of nigeria for not just giving him 21 billion. Doesn't he even realise that in a country like that it is probably several times the countries income?
Oh and as for admitting he was scammed. Those old people who are really scammed have no trouble at all admitting it and LISTEN to the police when they come around. In england they did even help in sting operations of their own where they waited for the scammers to come back only now there were coppers waiting for them. They may be suckered once be not twice and certainly don't presume that the police are lying when they say those nice people were really crooks.
Anyone else slightly puzzled about that Secret Service Agent giving his name? Aren't these people supposed to be secret? As in not giving their name to the press?
Yeah he wanted to do good with the money. Oh sure. I think we found the one person more stupid then sessions. It is you.
He had 250.000 dollars and apparently could raise even more. I hardly see that as being poor or being unable to pay the bills. No he wanted it all because he was a greedy bastard. If he had wanted to good he could have sold his cars before kept a cheap little runabout and used to money to fund a local charity. No need to steal 21 billion dollars. Don't be a sucker youreselve he is scamming you just as he wanted to scam the Nigerian goverment.
You see his fault his not being stupid. His fault is thinking that he was smarter then everyone else. Even know he doesn't believe the police because he believes he is smarter then they are.
That is the secret to avoid being scammed wether it is classic stuff like this or more subtle stuff like cheap loans, buying girls gifts, advertising. Ask yourselve this. Am I the smartest person in this deal? No? Then stay away.
I should be more sympathetic? Fuck that. This guy is a criminal. He funded the bribing of officials all in an attempt to defraud a foreign goverment for nothing else then pure financial gain. Rule 1 of being a criminal be aware of bigger criminals. Oh well no doubt a lot of other idiots will help this sucker out proving to him that god exists and that it is goverments who seek to screw people over. God bless america.
On the other hand is a huge privacy issue. While it is true that the innocent SHOULD have nothing to fear the sad fact is that this is not true. Nor can we assume that even if it is true now that it will remain true in the future. The germans had a registration of who had what religion in the 1930's. We all know how that ended. Can you be sure who is in charge of the US or any country proposing a similar scheme in 10 years? That is now 3 elections away.
I have little patience with people just concerned with their privacy. Most of them are just people who don't want to be caught should they ever decide to commit a crime. Guess what sherlock that is part of the reason for introducing such a thing. "Commmit a crime and we will find you" as opposed to now, "Commit a crime and maybe we will find you". The higher the chance of getting caught the more people will be deterred.
On the other hand I do have my doubts if such a system in future might not be abused. So on the one hand yes everyones dna logged will make life a lot harder for criminals. It will also make life a lot easier for anyone seeking to oppress non-criminals in the future. Or people we consider now to be innocent but who might be made to be guilty in the future.
The answer? I don't have one. Anyone who claims they have one are lying. Don't believe those who guarantee the safe use cause they can't. Don't believe the privacy people cause they are not now the victims of crime. The moment their child is murdered they will change their tune faster then a prisoner on his way to the chair.
I needed the picture to figure it out. Getting old I guess. Damn kid journalists making up new words. Why when I was there age we had only 1 word and we liked it.
Oh well. At least they dare to do the impossible. Lets hope it doesn't land on some martians head.
I think the IE patch is a wonderfull example. 1 person had the IDEA but not the coding talent. Others with more talent then complemented his work by patching his code. Those patches made the original work better and more valuable.
No matter how obvious a mistake is in closed source you can't fix it.
The other style of adventure is the Sierra or Lucasarts adventure. Here the puzzles are usually based in items you collected and combinging them with other items to move along. Think MacGuyver. For instance in the recent adventure "Runaway a road adventure" you have problem. You need to convince some killers that your love intrest is in another bed. How? Well there is a card with her name on it at the bottom of the bed and an empty bed next to it. So locate some cushions a dummy head a wig and a sheet and you got a nice target. Now to do the medical chart. You found a marker pen but it is dry. You also found some alcohol and a syringe. Hmmm, can you figure out what to do next? Probably. Do you like figuring it out or do you go, why don't I just shoot the killers?
Some of use like adventures and puzzles like this. Some like myst style puzzels. You like patformers and rpgs en shooters with a few puzzles. Genre mixing doesn't work for everyone. Adventure gaming isn't dead but people sure keep trying to kill it.
Of course consoles never had pc styled adventures.
To make it clear when pc players talk of adventures they mean games like Monkey Island 1-3, Gabriel Knight Sins of the father, King Quest series, Sam & Max and so on.
So the original post is true from a console perspective. The response is true from a pc perspective.
The Gabriel Knight series is another example. The first was a classic point and click and sold well. Sadly the developers caught the "full motion video" bug that was doing the rounds and number 2 was well not as good. By the time it was time for number 3 the FMV bug had died but a more virulent strain had sprung up called "3D". Even reviewers thought this Gabriel Knight 3 was not very good. The public avoided it like the plague.
Broken Sword 1 & 2 were moderately succefull point & click adventures. Number 3 caught the 3D bug however and while it makes for a nice looking game you once again find yourselve controlling a character with sub-standard controls (no side stepping) in the hunt of pixels. Add some pointless Tombraider bits (pointless since there is no skill involved) and a bit of dragon lair and you got another adventure killer. Nice game but not an adventure as we know and love them.
Is all hope lost? No. Funcom released a little gem called "The longest journey". In a great example that shows the value of reviews it was highly regarded by most game sites and mags and totally ignored by the buyers. Then something happened. Word of mouth got out that here was a classic point and click like in the olden days and slowly it started to sell becoming a moderate success.
And here is the good bit. THEY ARE MAKING A SEQUEL. Oh yes. Working title "The longest journey. Static".
Another new hopefull is syberia. Granted I thought it had a few to many empty screens but at least the interface worked. It is successfull enough for a sequel as well.
Out of nowhere came also "Runaway a road adventure" not sure how this one did but it again is a classic point and click and a lot of fun to play even if the characters are horrible ripoffs from the broken sword series.
So what of the future? Well it is hard to tell. With PC games becoming more of a niche the lure of consoles and a more arcade like adventure may proof unresistable. Broken sword has fallen to the unwashed hordes of the gamepad others may follow. However there will always be new and brave people who are willing to make the classic adventure. After all did not a group of volunteers make a classic "Space Quest" game? Even got the old ega graphics for that bit of nostalgia.
What the hell is that?
No games mentioned and the graphics all seem to me to be drawings. Then their is the mentioning of ads. Wtf?
Sure there is a gaming market out there. Well sony seems to think so but they are huge and can certainly put together a software catalog. In korea you got the GP32 but it doesn't seem to be in any hurry to go west. Nintendo of course is king because they got a cheap reliable robuust toy that appeals to all. It ain't hot tech but it sure sells like it.
No I think this is like all those other wannabe companies that release hope statements about the "next" console. Ain't gonna happen. Or in the case of nokia did happen but rather wish it didn't.
Oh and I just realised, if it is CE then surely all the current Windows PDA games should run on it? Why not mention them?
Now where is my pink gameboy (it was the only one left).
I liked the sims but after a few hour play I want to kill them all. If these were humans they would be in a home strapped to their beds to prevent them hurting themselves.
Breakfast time. My 6 gals (yes I am a pervert) would do all right UNTIL it was time to clear the dishes. All of them queing up to use the dishwasher. Of course that meant waiting really long so they either just dumped the plates or peed their pants. When they run to the toilet do they seek out an empty one? No they just stand in front blocking each other so one of them pees in their pants.
Of course this then drops their hygiene. Better make sure not to install any wash basins or they spend the rest of the day washing their hands to get clean instead of just taking a bath.
The sims became more of a maze game then anyone else. Except instead of designing a robot to traverse the maze with ease you are designing a maze that a dinky toy can traverse with ease.
Getting them to educate themselves was also far to much work. Maybe I just hate micro management but I would prefer to be able to leave them to their own devices while I say cook dinner. Then come back and make some improvements only to leave them to get on with it again. Oh and did anyone ever get a sim to reliable collect the mail?
Oh well. Just have to see what is going to happen.
The posters today are mostly KDE users most of who can't read or just can't understand why someone does not choose their obviously superior desktop, it is ofcourse so obvious that no ones needs to link to any evidence.
So your comment is incorrect. Different people are allowed to have different ideas you know even if they post on the same forum :)
Oh and you might notice that most of the "KDE is better, bruce is a moron, gnome sucks" posts don't mention the license issue or get it totally wrong.
Of course there are exceptions and it is those that still make it worthwhile to read all the way to the bottom.
Instead all I see is a lot of KDE users bitching that they rule and gnome is the sucks. Having read all the links in the post I think Bruce Perens is the adult here. He has a very difficult project to do that so far noone else has come even close to accomplising. A standard linux.
Is it needed? Well maybe. I use gentoo so have the choice of 2 dozen desktops/windows managers. I can deal with it. I don't really like either Gnome or KDE. HOWEVER I am not a big business looking at the choice between Microsofts windows, Suns Java Desktop, Mac OS X or Userlinux. Now tell me. How many desktops do the first three have? Good. Now tell me how many desktop should the last one have?
I think Bruce Perens is making the right choice to limit the default install to 1 desktop. I even think the choice for gnome is a good one. The KDE letter is crap as it completly fails to address the issue Mr Perens has with KDE. The license for qt.
However userlinux coming with gnome does not exclude KDE from being used with it. Nothing will stop the KDE team, least of all Bruce himself according to his post, from making their own debian packages to install KDE with Userlinux.
Anyway I think my sig really says it best. KDE vs Gnome arguments are totally pointless and the only thing I will tell all the KDE posters, please try to back up your arguments. I seen to many posts saying "KDE is better" without any evidence. No doubt if this was a story about gnome losing gnome users would do the same and it would be just as meaningless.
Oh and as a side note. I use virtual desktops to seperate my activities. KDE allows different backgrounds making it easy to identify where I am. However gnome is far faster in updating my transparant windows (yes I am graphics whore) but has only 1 wallpaper. Make of that what you will.
So why oh why does it remind me to take the receipt when I told it no receipt? It is not printing one out so somewhere in its memory a flag is set. So why can't the last message be adjusted to reflect it? It is a very simple thing to do. I think you learn this kind of thing in the second chapter of any programming book.
I think until such simple things are realised (I seen people waiting for a receipt that is not going to appear making the throughput of the machine slower wich is not good on a busy shoppping day) we can forget such machines ever becoming even the slightest bit intelligent and say use your name to greet you. Let alone be able to give you say access to you bank statements of that month to see if the rent has already been deducted.
Oh and this behaviour is spotted on ATM's in holland in several different models belonging to different banks (our cards work with all banks)
Of course this is goverment not the courts who laid that down and like in the US those two are supposed to be seperate. Also like the US it is hardly unheard of for the courts to shoot down the goverment.
So I wouldn't say it is to different from the US. Not the same but not to different either. Think differences between say california texas and new york rather then say US vs Cuba.
Yes I hate them all. I want a movie player. Not a music player. Not a catalog. Not an ad machine. I just want to play the goddamn movie. Is that so difficult?
I can't even decide wich one is worse. they are all just so evil.
WMP forces you to use windows though so far little noise seems to be made about mplayers capabilties on linux with windows dlls.
Realplay gets so much in the way of playing I just don't do rm anymore.
Quicktime just keeps bugging you to buy the full version. Talk about wanting to have their cake and eat it to (make money at client side or server side not both). The free ride is over eh Steve Jobs? That why you based your overpriced OS on free software? Creep. Write your own instead of sponging of the gnu, linux and bsd.
Argh. So evil company fighting evil company in evil courtroom. Where is a terrorist when you need them.
I am against words getting a new meaning just because computers are involved. YES I am anal. Some of us need to be.
As for how this is done? Same way as all the IE plugins. All those bars you see and popup blockers? Same thing.
Yeah those damn commies. Why can't they just release a patch that repairs the binary iexplorer.exe eh?
This is actually a patch in the normal world. Think as in patching a punctured tire. You put on a piece of rubber until you can have the tire replaced properly. A workaround to a busted tire would be to take the load off it. Both are not as nice as repairing the tire but it is better the being stuck for a month while your mechanic gets of his lazy arse.
I think you are looking for the word FIX. MS is supposed to FIX it but in the meantime these guys have released a PATCH wich is a hell of a lot better then having to do the WORKAROUND of checking all urls in notepad or something. (hard to do if the url is generated with javascript).
So no they didn't fix or repair Internet Explorer. They are coders, not god. They did however provide you with a working patch. Since you are commenting on the use of function I presume you can read code. I think it provides a good patch that will get you home until it can be properly repaired.
Oh and at least they PROVED to you that the code works by allowing you to read it for yourselve. Wanna bet that MS just expects you to take their word for it?
Of course not. But IE does have a documented api that allows you to put your own plugin into the functionality of IE.
So just as some addons block requests for new pages to be opened (popupblockers) or send all your surfing behaviour to a central server (spy programs) it is very easy to add a little program to perform some checking on the url.
That is all this does. Check the url for the offending characters and IF it finds these and ONLY if it finds these it sends you to their site wich displays a warning message.
Why does it send you to their site and not simply popup a warning message? Well perhaps to gather data on the current number of exploits out there. If MS in future will spew some fud then they can simply show their server logs to prove that the patch served a real need. Or not of course. Anyone know of the bug being exploited?
Oh and WAHAHAAAHAHAHA MS OWNED!!!
And to the MS apologists. Don't worry, weekend is almost there, you can recharge again while the rest of us are sick with cramps from laughing to much.
Just as long as someone doesn't take your favorite type of game and turns it into a crappy lara croft wannabe. Broken Sword, The Sleeping Dragon anyone? Oh sorry I forgot Dragon Lair wannabe. Take a hint. Monkey Island was a highly succesful series. Then it went 3D. It died. Gabriel Knight 3 was 3D. It didn't sell. The people that want 3D forced into their adventures are quake players. They buy the next quake. Not some talkie adventure.
Oh well now it is up to the last adventure game maker to save the genre for coming generations. Funcom is doing a sequel to "The longest Journey". Old news but I only recently found out.
So I am far to blissfull on my pink happy cloud to let DNF non-news disturb me. Mmmm, April Ryan.
So MS at least for the techies doesn't do the insane numbering either. Sure they do it for consumers who only see the logo but consumers are idiots anyway.
Not defending MS but fair is fair. I think they may go to 6.* for Longhorn. Or "Windows 2011" for the people in the street.
If that doesn't make it 100% clear to you then please report to the frontdesk and hand in your human being badge.
In real life we constantly hear these stories. Care takers, teachers, doctors and neighbours who look the other way as kids are abused. Until the abuse goes to far and the police shows up in white suits and face masks to take the body away. Then we all cry foul and want to know why nobody did anything.
Does EA have a resposibilty in this case? Well I think that a bar owner who overhears a customer talking has the duty. A teacher who sees a child with bruises has the duty. A passerby in the street who sees the abuse has the duty. But then I am a left wing cry baby commie.
Why should "virtual" worlds be excempt from the real world? In the real world we got rules and police and judges to enforce those rules. Just because something involves a computer does not mean the laws are rewritten. Imagine a chess player coming up to another chess player and admitting beating up his sister. No-one in their right mind would suggest that this is exempt from being investigated by cops. And the organisation of the chess tournament where it happened better help the police out by providing the address of player XX.
Oh well. I am getting upset now. Better stop still I start ranting about people not wanting to take responsibilty. Oh to late.
Intrestting. Some people claim humans are basically good but you are saying you are not. Wich suggests that the moves to create a police state with everyone being monitored is exactly the way to deal with you. Since you yourselve admit that without the police out their to monitor you you would run wild.
Is this true? I don't know but if you look at games like The Sims or places like Iraq and the ex-soviet states in wich for some reason "normal" people are suddenly put into a position where "the law" is removed, then those people argueing for thight control of the public might have a point.
If online games are going to require a constant police presence to control players behaviour it doesn't exactly bode well for our real world does it?