You're wrong. You're talking about physical addiction, when psychological addiction is just as real. For example, the psychological addiction to cigarettes lasts long after the physical addiction to nicotine is broken.
The interesting thing is he can't, even if he wanted to. There are thousands of copyright holders on different bits of Linux. They've all licensed their code under the GPLv2 only. Each one would have to be contacted if Linus wanted to change the license. It's an impossible task.
On the other hand, the FSF holds the copyright on all the GNU code. They can (and probably will) switch to the new license. This could lead to a future where many people are using a BSD userland on the Linux kernel.
Once, being a nerd was synonymous with having a good grounding in science, to the extent that one was capable of a rational, skeptical evaluation of new claims.
Indeed. More and more of the geek population is also going over to engineering, which focuses on the applications of science far more than the methodology.
We now have hardware review sites and political "blogs" where no one seems to understand that a 2% difference is not statistically significant. You don't need a university degree to understand the basics of science and statistics. The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is a great introduction to critical thinking.
Well, it's been out since November 2004 now, so probably not.
True enough. And though I don't like HL2, it's nowhere near as bad as B&W.
And, honestly, I though that HL2 rocked.
Not trying to start a flamewar, genuinely curious: why? What did you like about it? Have you played Deus Ex (the original, not the sequel)?
I ask about Deus Ex because it was the turning point in FPSes for me. After playing DX, any normal shooter was so boring. I know that we who are disappointed with HL2 are a small minority, and I'd like to figure out why.
Half Life 2, on the other hand, doesn't even rate an honorable mention.
I'm glad someone else feels that way. Nearly all the game magazines and review sites are screaming "best game ever!!!", for no reason I can discern.
It has pretty graphics. It may have a cool physics engine, though it was never used to any impressive effect. It has an okay storyline. Maybe it even has an "immersive world" for people who don't remember Deus Ex. But it plays like a fucking rail shooter. With jumping puzzles. You shoot stuff, you follow the predetermined path, and you try to figure out the one and only one way to get past each obstacle. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my games to have replay value.
I have to wonder if we're going to see a huge retraction like we eventually did with the glowing reviews and embarassingly high ratings of Black & White.
As always, don't keep money at paypal that you can't afford to lose.
Yeah. After hearing all the stories about people who got screwed, who in their right mind would treat PayPal like a bank account? As soon as you receive the money, withdraw it to a real bank account. Then, if you're paranoid, transfer it to your savings account that PayPal doesn't know about.
Pinnochio-boy in the last one. Honestly I'd hoped they could find someone who wasn't made of wood.
To be fair, Kerry's campaign team and supporters fucked things up really badly as well. What the hell were they thinking, failing to respond to the continuous stream of bullshit attacks? It was like a deliberate strategy. Karl Rove, the RNC, and the Swift Boat Vets were beating the crap out of Kerry even as Bush was doing a miserable job in the debates, yet the Dems did nothing. Why?
My money is that they won't, though. *sigh*
Yeah. Hillary's acceptable as one of my Senators, but as a Presidential candidate? She's got to be kidding herself. If the Democrats decide to run her, the party is dead.
Bush CAN NOT by LAW tell them to do anything. He can ask them nicely, but he can't tell them to do shit.
Obviously your civics class didn't explore the finer points of government. The federal government controls the states with money. Where do you think the national drinking age of 21 and highway speed limit of 55 come from? Federal grants that are given on these conditions.
Anyway, Bush also directly controls the DHS and FEMA, which he can order wherever he wants.
Saying "I'm a programmer, I don't need to know how to spell" shows how little some programmers understand what it takes to be taken seriously by regular people (like those who make business decisions).
Forget "regular people"; it's necessary for communication between developers. It took me, a native English speaker, a couple reads to understand that sentence. Imagine trying to communicate with people around the world like that. Linus and all the other big-name kernel developers write very well. Unless you're working on your own all the time, good communication skills are not an option.
I enjoy Diablo 2, but it's nowhere near the same level as good RPGs. It kinda looks like an RPG, but it's an action game. Deus Ex is much more of an RPG, even though it looks like an FPS.
I'd second the Fallout/Fallout 2 recommendation. If you're willing to go old school, look at Darklands, Realms of Arkania, Daggerfall, or even the Quest for Glory series.
Would they be the first to make a successful MMORTS? I think they'd have a good chance, as long as it was done right.
That was one of my daydreams back in the golden days of UO. It would have to be simplified tactically, but more complex strategically. You'd have to choose carefully where to build walls and defense towers, but controlling every little action of your invasion force (like in Warcraft et al.) would get very tedious. Could be lots of fun to let players carve out their own kingdom. Add a serious political and economic layer, and you've got yourself an addictive game.
Much as I like intel's low prices, that won't last if they become a monopoly.
You like Intel's low prices? Pick any price point; the AMD processor will be faster than the Intel for the same price. Except for maybe the new dual-processor offerings, AMD's prices have always been significantly lower than Intel's.
There's a national "AP Computer Science" exam, so yes, in many high schools you can actually learn basic CS concepts (data structures, algorithms, etc) as well as programming. The test switched from C++ to Java a couple years ago.
When you're exposed over and over to certain ways of implementing game ideas, do you tend to think out of the box less and less?
As a (very) amateur songwriter, I'd strongly agree with that assessment. To avoid subconsciously copying what I've recently heard, I have to start listening to music that's vastly different than what I'm trying to write.
neither side have any idea what is going on with the earth.
Yes, we do. The chemical reactions that result in CFCs depleting ozone are well understood. If you didn't sleep through freshman chemistry, you probably learned about that, acid rain, the greenhouse effect, etc. It's all perfectly valid science.
If you want to debate global warming, that's a separate issue. There is no doubt that humans have done significant damage to the ozone layer.
How long has it been since you've used Linux?! Every distro I can think of will automatically fill dependencies. They also provide one central point to upgrade all your installed software. The early RPM-based distros where you had to hunt for your own packages were awful, but Linux and the BSDs are now lightyears ahead of Windows when it comes to software management.
And you'd suggest what as an alternative? The pile of broken crap that is devfs? The whole point of udev is that new devices do show up; it sounds like you have some misconfiguration issue.
Then you get into the games where people will play for five seconds and then quickload if they get shot once *cough* Max Payne *cough*. I just don't think that kind of game mechanic is immersive in the slightest.
But that's your choice. You're free to save and load (or not) whenever you want. I learned a long time ago that playing shooters like that makes them tedious and easy, so I stopped doing it. Why do you care what other people do?
Slashdot Mirror
You're wrong. You're talking about physical addiction, when psychological addiction is just as real. For example, the psychological addiction to cigarettes lasts long after the physical addiction to nicotine is broken.
The interesting thing is he can't, even if he wanted to. There are thousands of copyright holders on different bits of Linux. They've all licensed their code under the GPLv2 only. Each one would have to be contacted if Linus wanted to change the license. It's an impossible task.
On the other hand, the FSF holds the copyright on all the GNU code. They can (and probably will) switch to the new license. This could lead to a future where many people are using a BSD userland on the Linux kernel.
Indeed. More and more of the geek population is also going over to engineering, which focuses on the applications of science far more than the methodology.
We now have hardware review sites and political "blogs" where no one seems to understand that a 2% difference is not statistically significant. You don't need a university degree to understand the basics of science and statistics. The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is a great introduction to critical thinking.
True enough. And though I don't like HL2, it's nowhere near as bad as B&W.
And, honestly, I though that HL2 rocked.
Not trying to start a flamewar, genuinely curious: why? What did you like about it? Have you played Deus Ex (the original, not the sequel)?
I ask about Deus Ex because it was the turning point in FPSes for me. After playing DX, any normal shooter was so boring. I know that we who are disappointed with HL2 are a small minority, and I'd like to figure out why.
Not at all. IBM has made large contributions to the Linux kernel, which is explicitly licensed only under the GPLv2. No change there.
I'm glad someone else feels that way. Nearly all the game magazines and review sites are screaming "best game ever!!!", for no reason I can discern.
It has pretty graphics. It may have a cool physics engine, though it was never used to any impressive effect. It has an okay storyline. Maybe it even has an "immersive world" for people who don't remember Deus Ex. But it plays like a fucking rail shooter. With jumping puzzles. You shoot stuff, you follow the predetermined path, and you try to figure out the one and only one way to get past each obstacle. Call me old-fashioned, but I like my games to have replay value.
I have to wonder if we're going to see a huge retraction like we eventually did with the glowing reviews and embarassingly high ratings of Black & White.
Have you ever, y'know, used Linux? These days, one command will update every single package installed on your system.
Anyway, games that update automatically have been around for a long time before Steam.
Yeah. After hearing all the stories about people who got screwed, who in their right mind would treat PayPal like a bank account? As soon as you receive the money, withdraw it to a real bank account. Then, if you're paranoid, transfer it to your savings account that PayPal doesn't know about.
To be fair, Kerry's campaign team and supporters fucked things up really badly as well. What the hell were they thinking, failing to respond to the continuous stream of bullshit attacks? It was like a deliberate strategy. Karl Rove, the RNC, and the Swift Boat Vets were beating the crap out of Kerry even as Bush was doing a miserable job in the debates, yet the Dems did nothing. Why?
My money is that they won't, though. *sigh*
Yeah. Hillary's acceptable as one of my Senators, but as a Presidential candidate? She's got to be kidding herself. If the Democrats decide to run her, the party is dead.
Supreme Court justices tend to retire only for severe health reasons that prevent them from carrying out their duties. Praying for that is disgusting.
Obviously your civics class didn't explore the finer points of government. The federal government controls the states with money. Where do you think the national drinking age of 21 and highway speed limit of 55 come from? Federal grants that are given on these conditions.
Anyway, Bush also directly controls the DHS and FEMA, which he can order wherever he wants.
Good to see a fellow Bruce Cockburn fan hanging around Slashdot.
Forget "regular people"; it's necessary for communication between developers. It took me, a native English speaker, a couple reads to understand that sentence. Imagine trying to communicate with people around the world like that. Linus and all the other big-name kernel developers write very well. Unless you're working on your own all the time, good communication skills are not an option.
I'd second the Fallout/Fallout 2 recommendation. If you're willing to go old school, look at Darklands, Realms of Arkania, Daggerfall, or even the Quest for Glory series.
That was one of my daydreams back in the golden days of UO. It would have to be simplified tactically, but more complex strategically. You'd have to choose carefully where to build walls and defense towers, but controlling every little action of your invasion force (like in Warcraft et al.) would get very tedious. Could be lots of fun to let players carve out their own kingdom. Add a serious political and economic layer, and you've got yourself an addictive game.
You like Intel's low prices? Pick any price point; the AMD processor will be faster than the Intel for the same price. Except for maybe the new dual-processor offerings, AMD's prices have always been significantly lower than Intel's.
There's a national "AP Computer Science" exam, so yes, in many high schools you can actually learn basic CS concepts (data structures, algorithms, etc) as well as programming. The test switched from C++ to Java a couple years ago.
As a (very) amateur songwriter, I'd strongly agree with that assessment. To avoid subconsciously copying what I've recently heard, I have to start listening to music that's vastly different than what I'm trying to write.
Yes, we do. The chemical reactions that result in CFCs depleting ozone are well understood. If you didn't sleep through freshman chemistry, you probably learned about that, acid rain, the greenhouse effect, etc. It's all perfectly valid science.
If you want to debate global warming, that's a separate issue. There is no doubt that humans have done significant damage to the ozone layer.
It is if you download as FLACs.
How long has it been since you've used Linux?! Every distro I can think of will automatically fill dependencies. They also provide one central point to upgrade all your installed software. The early RPM-based distros where you had to hunt for your own packages were awful, but Linux and the BSDs are now lightyears ahead of Windows when it comes to software management.
No. We haven't had a declared war since World War II.
And you'd suggest what as an alternative? The pile of broken crap that is devfs? The whole point of udev is that new devices do show up; it sounds like you have some misconfiguration issue.
But that's your choice. You're free to save and load (or not) whenever you want. I learned a long time ago that playing shooters like that makes them tedious and easy, so I stopped doing it. Why do you care what other people do?