Umm. That badge showing something is actually a problem. Yes, yes, I'm totally explaining your joke.
I'm totally for the dosimeters since our heroic not-quite-officers-of-the-law TSA employees are subjected to MASSIVE radiation due to the oodles and oodles of dirty nucular bombs being smuggled into the US. If the badges show anything then I'm fairly certain this will be the explanation. Why haven't they found anything? Because they do not have enough authority and the damn liberals hold our beloved TSA Nightwatch back. Illigal immigrants smuggly dirty bombs past our borders using sophisticated anal concealment methods. That's at least a pound per trip per border crossing.
The Raspberry Pi is suggested to go at this price. If it reaches a high enough sales volume. Since you are of the proper age group I will throw the approriate buzz word at you: System-on-a-chip!
The 80ies were great for learning stuff. I also then learned in classes(not in school, I got taught at NCR) how to program stuff in BASIC. Well, when I say learning programming in BASIC I actually mean playing DigDug, Thexder and possibly Leisuresuit Larry(wtf is a lubber?). I had to fix the damage done to my brain myself.
Admit it, this wasn't a run of the mill school. No school had proper computer labs in 1985.
Well, you want better results so work on how the money is spent. Simply slashing funding until the price tag fits the sub par performance of the US educational system hardly fixes that particular problem.
The goal should be to improve what is going wrong instead of making what goes wrong slightly more efficient. Simply claiming to have online courses and laptops achieves these goals does not make it true.
God nows the US hardly builds anything anymore(since that's now done in India, China, god knows where) and the only thing that truly keeps it afloat is knowledge.
TL;DR:
need maek better lrrning kidz how to smartmaking.
Well, technology does not substitute education.
That being said, being tech savvy and knowing how to conduct yourself is part of literacy in our modern world and that is best adressed at school.
I'm not a huge fan of online-courses as those tend to be nothing more than glorified interactive text books. Those do indeed not substitue a proper teacher/pupil discourse. But they can like text books supplement them
Technology is a tool and as with every job you pick the right tools to get it done. At no point in the fine article does it say how those professional politicians plan on employing technology beyond online courses. I'm with the pedagogues here. Butch Otter is a political scientist and a business man and has no experience whatsoever in teaching. Initiatives like these usually end up with shoving lots of money down the throat of Apple, Microsoft and Dell and are usually born on golf courses.
Also you don't cut costs when it comes to education. If you don't want to ensure proper education of your kids then it may not be the hassle of having this nation thing going on, now is it?
Yes, well, if the seller doesn't get at least reimbursed then I'd take this to court.
TOS do NOT supersede laws in any country of the world including the US. This is why companies are quite quite nervous to have it tested in court.
TOS is a part of a contract. And you can't have illegal contracts. This is why proper contracts have clauses that say that if parts of the contracts are invalidated by law then the others parts still apply.
We have not always been at war with Oceania and TOS can't go against the law. Even if they can go against common sense until someone has them tested in court.
It most definitely isn't a hoax.
The violin had a label naming Maurice Bourguignon in it. The interesting thing here is that this doesn't claim that it was actually built by him or even in his workshop. It was used to denote that it was at least built in the image of his style and technique. Think a modern Les Paul replica if you must.
Now I can't imagine you'll get a certified and genuine Maurice Bourguignon at a price tag of $2500. So what we have here is a clueless buyer, corporate insanity and a smashed antiquity with an interesting history. It even was assessed by an expert before the deal.
The buyer comes over like a bit of a brat. The reasoning here is "I don't believe I got an original at less than a 10th of its price. So I will smash the thing because PayPal tells me so." And thus something of value or at least interest was lost.
What really depresses me is that in this discussion people actually argued how you could make a scam based on this work. Rotten, materialistc, greedy, spineless bastards. I don't know how your brain works but I really hope this kind of senseless profiteering idiocy is nowhere near the norm or actually put in practice.
If I felt malicious I'd say never ever send anything old over the Atlantic. But unfortunately this kind of moronic assumptuous Wikipedia fueled ignorance as displayed by the smashing buyer is ubiquitious.
I wasn't aware Tomcat could now run JSF. Is this true? Tomcat has been irrelevant to me for the last 8 or so years. Back then it was only a servlet container with a funky database connection pool.
You do not have to go full monty on your first outing.
I usually take a good long look at the job and may opt for a simple JSP/JDBC solution if it is applicable. And that's where you start. There is so much you could do wrong with JSF/Hibernate it's not funny anymore. But thing is, this is true for many fully fledged development platforms. If I had a pizza for each Swing application that did IO and heavy computation in the render thread and users complaining about Java being funky, I'd be a very fat man.
The good thing about Java in general is documentation. Javadoc is one of the best API documentation formats on this planet. All OOP best practices apply. The sheer free and Free tool set is beyond belief. Also I think the Collections framework is a piece of art.
Pity tho, that Oracle won't fully let us in on its plans for Java/Glassfish and the lot. That's the only reason I feel uncomfortable with it. I'm also not sure about the relationship of Apache and Oracle. Apache is so important to Java and if they decide they are out then we will have a dying platform on our hands. If that relationship turns even more sour then it's a sign for me to give up on it.
OTOH Bastion was implemented in.NET. Then again IL-2 Sturmovik used Java for some bits I couldn't just quite figure out.
Those are IMHO two very good platforms but Java is the more flexible one. I don't think this is a bad advice. At all.
Java/Hibernate/JSP
Java/Hibernate/JSF
Although Hibernate is tricky to get right. Especially if you only need an ORM.
Annotations and Generics made life in Java so much easier.
ASP.NET is a might fine thing too but if you also want to use it professionally then you will have to pay for each hammer, screw and nail all along the way. I can't speak for the US but in Germany it is very tough to find a big customer who actually allows for IIS. Most of them have been carpetd bombed from space with Oracle licenses. WebLogic. Hate it or despise it when all you need is a small web application. This definitely rules out ASP.NET. Those who haven't been carpet bombed with Oracle licenses tend to run on Linux. But that's just the subset of customer I have here. Server-side Microsoft is a non-event.
Client-side Microsoft is a given and there.NET(using WPF) might be the better choice..NET is not a bad platform. But you have to pay for libs you'd simply download from Apache when you are using Java.
It does have its flaws but there are a plethora of Java based frameworks out there.
The sheer amount of options you get at zero cost(some of it actually Free) and the quality of API documentation is simply astounding.
As a non-American I can assure you that the US has had darker moments throughout its history and has reinvented itsself quite often. As a nation it is like all nations neither good nor evil. It is true that it currently is in a rough shape, but so is the whole western world. But we've seen worse.
Idiocracy may seem to be prophetic, but unfortunately it is quite universal, too.
SOPA doesn't even remotely compare to what is going on in Belarus. The comparision denigrates those who are disappeared at night, a nation living under the heel of a boot and people who have to live in plain sight of that mustache.
If you want to belittle a whole nation then you should at least add some substance to your poo-flinging.
Another fun fact about Lukashenko is that he has dissidents incinerated, their ashes mixed with spunk and fecal matter and rubbed into his mustache. Which when you come to think about it explains a lot.
The man has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
The problem is that even tho the primaries are fought state by state, truly local issues are only tangentially touched.
While I agree that geospatially enhancing polls are a very good thing(and I'd expect rather surprising results) none of the candidates run on local platforms. Even if most of them seem to change their song&dance according to local customs.
Don't be so sure of that. The runners-up position for Dumbest Online Lawmaking is heavily contested. European countries are uppin teir spiel and are currently heavily training in boot camps to out-stupid the US.
Ah! It's a truly splendid sight watching nations sparring in noble contest who can shit the biggest law without rupturing the anus.
He is the last dictator on the European continent and one of the most despicable persons ever treading into a dog turd. If he died today the reaction wouldn't be as polite as with the death of Kim Jong Il. If he were on fire he would be doused by being wanked upon by any passer-by. I actually think of his mustache burning up in a kerosene propelled fire as sexually arousing.
The really intersting thing here is(hence the dog turd reference) that lukasenkos is actually the ancient Greek name for the shade of white a dog turd becomes once it has bleached sufficiently in the sunlight.
Now why would such a great man like him shun anything that has to do with freedom of speech? I can not imagine why.
While I can see how the convenience of these devices speed up spreading "ooops" moments I can't really see how this will actually help candidates. Also never have there been so many cameras in the audience. What positive power is there to leverage when it comes to tablets and smart phones? I honestly can't even come up with a very convoluted answer to that one. This is a most vapid submission.
In the current climate where it seems to be the best strategy to damage contestor instead of even offereing half-arsed simple solutions to complex problems those devices make a good attack vector for smear campaigns.
I could imagine an app that makes you guess the definition of santorum. Here's a hint: it ain't pretty.
Will it help the nation? Propably no.
The real tragedy here is that a truly suitable candidate will be put off by what's currently going on.
Ooooh, this is actually a scary prospect. This is a scenario where corporations threaten to shut down infrastructure in order to interfere with Congressional decision making process.
It fills me with great satisfaction when congress critters can't google for the closest ladyboy escort service on their smartphone while they are supposed to pursue this nations best interests. And yes, I intentionally imply gross negligence, rottenness and hypocrisy when talking of elected representatives.
But the line being crossed here is scary. They could also threaten a black out in favor for SOPA and the likes. We can't on the one hand complain about undue influence of corporations on the political process and on the other hand welcome it when it suits us. This is hypocrisy, too.
Now black out that Google front page already!
I'm with you on the over-the-shoulder 3D perspective thing. In most cases developers seem to love jumping puzzles which don't work with 1st person view. But even Assassin's Creed(a series I love to bits) does occasionally get it wrong(Visitazione's Tomb anyone?).
Shooters that don't auto-aim DO NOT WORK WITH COSOLE! Period. You simply can't beat the speed and precision of aiming with a mouse. Same goes for RTS. Both tend to be highly competitive or completey with a strong focus on online play.
We owe quite a lot of accessible games to the 3D gen consoles. There are times when I prefer playing games on PC with an X-Box controller. You simply lay back in your super comfy office chair after a hard days work with some beer for a spot of Bastion, Assassin's Creed or Batman. The only thing that could improve that would be a pleasant sundown on your veranda and a constant supply of fajitas and margarita. On the other hand you have the heavy duty lifting of Starcraft, Heroes of Might and Magic and current gen MMO raiding. PC gaming is in a very, very good shape. It is an accessible, low barrier platform for indies and it is very nice for srs bznss gaming. The only true downside is the diversity of systems you have to support.
Name a single platform that plays Torchlight, Bastion, Orks Must Die, Deus Ex: HR, Skyrim, Plants vs. Zombies, SC2, HoMM6, Batman: AS, Batman: AC, Ass Creed(all of them), The Witcher, Trine...
PC gaming is actually in a very good shape even if the AAA tend to be horrid console ports. It's 2012 and a PC gamer's life is good.
Yeah. A real pity. They also cancelled The Simpsons after the 8th season.
I still want the Forge, dagnabbit! Conflux wasn't any good in any shape or form.
HoMM6 is quite good, actually. It's a step up from the train-wreck that was HoMM4 and the confusion that was HoMM5. HoMM5 became quite good with Tribes of the East. The Orks had a very interesting mechanic and were possibly a bit overpowered. HoMM6 is good when you don't desperately cling onto HoMM3 and try to enjoy the game for what it is. I'd rank it somewhere near the Age of Wonders series which was flawed but quite, quite good.
I bought HoMM6 from Steam the day it was released. In the first couple of weeks I did drop to the menus screen a couple of times and this is what happened:
They had introduced an online service called "The Conflux". HoMM3 veterans will know why this was a very poor and controversial choice of name. Anyway, thsi Conflux basically serves as something that tracks your progress through the game and offers you rewards for it in form of weapons, abilities and whatnot. It also serves as something to store our save games "in teh cloud".
While you can play without the Conflux you will miss out on the rewards which help you with gameplay.
So during the single player campaign the Conflux caved in multiple times. Sometimes within 5 minutes. Since you suddenly were dropped from Conflux into the non-Conflux version you found yourself in the main menu. Unable to access your save games. Without a warning.
I'd call that worse than a CTD since I was effectively shut out of the game for a couple of minutes. How is this not DRM? How couldn't the Conflux thing run on your local machine? Why would I want to store my save games on your server? Why would I want another set of user credentials? Why, oh why of all publishers did the HoMM franchise have to end up with Ubi?
Vile, repugnant, horrid, festering, customer-hating mess that it is. If Ubi were my leg I'd hacked it off ges ago. EA is in the same ballpark. Origin...don't even get me started.
This is NOT adding value to the game. This IS DRM.
On a side note: in the current Seriious Sam you will be followed by an immortal monster if you have the pirated game. This feature is so fun and popular that the developer was asked how you could enable this in the legit version. You propably would be unable to finish the game as it can be very hard at times, but still! Neat!
I don't know if this applies to Crysis 2 or MW3 as these two are matters of extreme indifference to me, but...
A lot of games are released on console first and on PC many, many moons later. Since the PC versions are rarely better than the console versions and sometimes even worse AND you propably want to plug in a game controller anyway, so why not buy the console version? By now I'd assume that many PC gamers have caved in and bought a console. I don't think they are a minority anymore.
Could it just be that console versions cannibalize PC sales? Those who bought Batman: Arkham City for console didn't have to jump through so many hoops
Most of the games I play are no pure PC games. I think only SC2 and HoMM6 have never been ported to any console. That might very well sum up all significant AAA PC/Mac exclusives this year. And I doubt that SC2 is even woth it to pirate it since it lives by online play. Ubi tried the same thing with HoMM6 and we all know how that played out.
I'd recon not taking this into account will make any claims of the effect of piracy on PC sales dubious at best.
Triple times this. Steam was so convenient during the christmas season. I can't remember when I ever bought so many games during such a short period of time.
They offered very, very good deals and Steam was on the brink of disintegrating due to punters trying to force money into their cash registers.
I THINK the indies did best. I mean, Bastion for less than 3 Eurobucks? That's fast-food money. For that kind of money it's not a steal, that's the crime of the century.
Also I had been living under a rock for hte last 5 or so years. Yeah, yeah, World of Warcraft exclusively. You may crack your jokes now. I had quite a lot of catching up to do. And I started with Batman: Arkham Asylum and Assassins Creed one. I wouldn't have gotten them from a store since those went off the shelf ages ago. I doubt I could have easily torrented them. But why should I? Went to Steam saw they offered it for a very reasonable price and simply gave them my money.
Steam is a shop that sometimes doubles as DRM. I had to deal with GFWL which is DRM that claims to double as a shop. Same goes for Origin. And of course it is a sin to use THAT particular name for THAT particular abomination. Shame on you, EA.
If Steam/GFWL/Origin goes away then I can still pirate ALL THE GAMES I BOUGHT at gay abandon. Without any bad conciousness whatsoever.
still remember those days. You either had relatively unintrusive copy protection like asking for a specifiv word in the manual or those cardboard thingies from Lucasfilm Games.
OR you had those abominations where the manufacturer introduced a fault onto the disk and the game checked for that fault. Some games allowed intallation to HD as long as they were the original install disks. Some games only allowed a limited number of installs(that was at a time when HD space was at a premium and you could have only a single digit number of games installed). Some games required you to have the original floppies inserted while playing.
Now, floppies were not very relyable. Especially when in the hands of a grubby teenager. Also on the PC the drives went wrong quite often, potentially destroying the originals.
During the early CD days there was hardly any copy protection apart from checking for the presence of the CD medium. Or having most of the game on CD because the mediums capacity was close, equal or higher than HD space. CD writers were jolly expensive so copying CDs was not trivial. The old, horrid "multimedia", "interactive movie" days.
then we went again through a "damaged medium" phase making copying impossible. Then we had the offensive BS phase were copy protection software embedded itsself deeply into the OS and in some cases even made copying music CDs virtually impossible.
Then we had this "always connected to the internet" scheme.
Now we have this "value added" DRM scheme where all your stuff is in "teh cloud". Which is basically the above disguising as something beneficial.
During any of these phases the pirated version was less hassle. ...apart from the multimedia days. But it was hardly worth it back then. Interactive movies, my ass.
Yes, the effort to make a copy back then was much higher than it is today. But I think the goal of having all of human knowledge in one spot and accessible if you choose to is a good one. Well, perhaps better protected against fire(accidental or of the book burning variety).
It's a small surprise the WWW got so big. But we do have a signal-to-noise problem. Also long term preservation isn't that great. Also knowledge still is a viable business model but this time not for individuals but for potentially immortal entities. I think the latter is the biggest problem we face right at this moment.
Copyright was intended to promote the business model of creating things you couldn't wear, eat or live in. Some time ago(after DMCA) HP who basically printed money with their printer inks wanted to use chips on the cartridges containing stuff that was protected under copyright laws. The printers were to check for the presence of these chips and refuse to print if they weren't there. So selling ink for HP printers would have been only possible by violating copyright laws. I dunno if they saw it through but to me it is an indicator that copyright law has gotten way out of hand if this is the best legal protection for ANYTHING you produce.
I can't speak for my fellow Gen-Xers(since that is one leitmotif for thw whole group...slippery as fish we are). First of all we are not properly defined or so broadly defined that we don't have one unifying identity.
Basically I THINK we somehow slid into Grunge and then only minded our own busines since life is so durn complicated if you want to do the right thing. Whatever that is. Self-conciously useless. But at least we smelled nice.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm. That badge showing something is actually a problem. Yes, yes, I'm totally explaining your joke.
I'm totally for the dosimeters since our heroic not-quite-officers-of-the-law TSA employees are subjected to MASSIVE radiation due to the oodles and oodles of dirty nucular bombs being smuggled into the US. If the badges show anything then I'm fairly certain this will be the explanation. Why haven't they found anything? Because they do not have enough authority and the damn liberals hold our beloved TSA Nightwatch back. Illigal immigrants smuggly dirty bombs past our borders using sophisticated anal concealment methods. That's at least a pound per trip per border crossing.
Also we need new uniforms. With skulls on them.
endofrant
The Raspberry Pi is suggested to go at this price. If it reaches a high enough sales volume. Since you are of the proper age group I will throw the approriate buzz word at you: System-on-a-chip!
The 80ies were great for learning stuff. I also then learned in classes(not in school, I got taught at NCR) how to program stuff in BASIC. Well, when I say learning programming in BASIC I actually mean playing DigDug, Thexder and possibly Leisuresuit Larry(wtf is a lubber?). I had to fix the damage done to my brain myself.
Admit it, this wasn't a run of the mill school. No school had proper computer labs in 1985.
Well, you want better results so work on how the money is spent. Simply slashing funding until the price tag fits the sub par performance of the US educational system hardly fixes that particular problem.
The goal should be to improve what is going wrong instead of making what goes wrong slightly more efficient. Simply claiming to have online courses and laptops achieves these goals does not make it true.
God nows the US hardly builds anything anymore(since that's now done in India, China, god knows where) and the only thing that truly keeps it afloat is knowledge.
TL;DR: need maek better lrrning kidz how to smartmaking.
Well, technology does not substitute education.
That being said, being tech savvy and knowing how to conduct yourself is part of literacy in our modern world and that is best adressed at school.
I'm not a huge fan of online-courses as those tend to be nothing more than glorified interactive text books. Those do indeed not substitue a proper teacher/pupil discourse. But they can like text books supplement them
Technology is a tool and as with every job you pick the right tools to get it done. At no point in the fine article does it say how those professional politicians plan on employing technology beyond online courses. I'm with the pedagogues here. Butch Otter is a political scientist and a business man and has no experience whatsoever in teaching. Initiatives like these usually end up with shoving lots of money down the throat of Apple, Microsoft and Dell and are usually born on golf courses.
Also you don't cut costs when it comes to education. If you don't want to ensure proper education of your kids then it may not be the hassle of having this nation thing going on, now is it?
Yes, well, if the seller doesn't get at least reimbursed then I'd take this to court.
TOS do NOT supersede laws in any country of the world including the US. This is why companies are quite quite nervous to have it tested in court.
TOS is a part of a contract. And you can't have illegal contracts. This is why proper contracts have clauses that say that if parts of the contracts are invalidated by law then the others parts still apply.
We have not always been at war with Oceania and TOS can't go against the law. Even if they can go against common sense until someone has them tested in court.
It most definitely isn't a hoax.
The violin had a label naming Maurice Bourguignon in it. The interesting thing here is that this doesn't claim that it was actually built by him or even in his workshop. It was used to denote that it was at least built in the image of his style and technique. Think a modern Les Paul replica if you must.
Now I can't imagine you'll get a certified and genuine Maurice Bourguignon at a price tag of $2500. So what we have here is a clueless buyer, corporate insanity and a smashed antiquity with an interesting history. It even was assessed by an expert before the deal.
The buyer comes over like a bit of a brat. The reasoning here is "I don't believe I got an original at less than a 10th of its price. So I will smash the thing because PayPal tells me so." And thus something of value or at least interest was lost.
What really depresses me is that in this discussion people actually argued how you could make a scam based on this work. Rotten, materialistc, greedy, spineless bastards. I don't know how your brain works but I really hope this kind of senseless profiteering idiocy is nowhere near the norm or actually put in practice.
If I felt malicious I'd say never ever send anything old over the Atlantic. But unfortunately this kind of moronic assumptuous Wikipedia fueled ignorance as displayed by the smashing buyer is ubiquitious.
I wasn't aware Tomcat could now run JSF. Is this true? Tomcat has been irrelevant to me for the last 8 or so years. Back then it was only a servlet container with a funky database connection pool.
You do not have to go full monty on your first outing.
.NET. Then again IL-2 Sturmovik used Java for some bits I couldn't just quite figure out.
I usually take a good long look at the job and may opt for a simple JSP/JDBC solution if it is applicable. And that's where you start. There is so much you could do wrong with JSF/Hibernate it's not funny anymore. But thing is, this is true for many fully fledged development platforms. If I had a pizza for each Swing application that did IO and heavy computation in the render thread and users complaining about Java being funky, I'd be a very fat man.
The good thing about Java in general is documentation. Javadoc is one of the best API documentation formats on this planet. All OOP best practices apply. The sheer free and Free tool set is beyond belief. Also I think the Collections framework is a piece of art.
Pity tho, that Oracle won't fully let us in on its plans for Java/Glassfish and the lot. That's the only reason I feel uncomfortable with it. I'm also not sure about the relationship of Apache and Oracle. Apache is so important to Java and if they decide they are out then we will have a dying platform on our hands. If that relationship turns even more sour then it's a sign for me to give up on it.
OTOH Bastion was implemented in
Those are IMHO two very good platforms but Java is the more flexible one. I don't think this is a bad advice. At all.
Java/Hibernate/JSP Java/Hibernate/JSF Although Hibernate is tricky to get right. Especially if you only need an ORM. .NET(using WPF) might be the better choice. .NET is not a bad platform. But you have to pay for libs you'd simply download from Apache when you are using Java.
Annotations and Generics made life in Java so much easier.
ASP.NET is a might fine thing too but if you also want to use it professionally then you will have to pay for each hammer, screw and nail all along the way. I can't speak for the US but in Germany it is very tough to find a big customer who actually allows for IIS. Most of them have been carpetd bombed from space with Oracle licenses. WebLogic. Hate it or despise it when all you need is a small web application. This definitely rules out ASP.NET. Those who haven't been carpet bombed with Oracle licenses tend to run on Linux. But that's just the subset of customer I have here. Server-side Microsoft is a non-event.
Client-side Microsoft is a given and there
It does have its flaws but there are a plethora of Java based frameworks out there.
The sheer amount of options you get at zero cost(some of it actually Free) and the quality of API documentation is simply astounding.
As a non-American I can assure you that the US has had darker moments throughout its history and has reinvented itsself quite often. As a nation it is like all nations neither good nor evil. It is true that it currently is in a rough shape, but so is the whole western world. But we've seen worse.
Idiocracy may seem to be prophetic, but unfortunately it is quite universal, too.
SOPA doesn't even remotely compare to what is going on in Belarus. The comparision denigrates those who are disappeared at night, a nation living under the heel of a boot and people who have to live in plain sight of that mustache.
If you want to belittle a whole nation then you should at least add some substance to your poo-flinging.
On second thought, please don't.
Another fun fact about Lukashenko is that he has dissidents incinerated, their ashes mixed with spunk and fecal matter and rubbed into his mustache. Which when you come to think about it explains a lot.
The man has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
The problem is that even tho the primaries are fought state by state, truly local issues are only tangentially touched.
While I agree that geospatially enhancing polls are a very good thing(and I'd expect rather surprising results) none of the candidates run on local platforms. Even if most of them seem to change their song&dance according to local customs.
Don't be so sure of that. The runners-up position for Dumbest Online Lawmaking is heavily contested. European countries are uppin teir spiel and are currently heavily training in boot camps to out-stupid the US.
Ah! It's a truly splendid sight watching nations sparring in noble contest who can shit the biggest law without rupturing the anus.
He is the last dictator on the European continent and one of the most despicable persons ever treading into a dog turd. If he died today the reaction wouldn't be as polite as with the death of Kim Jong Il. If he were on fire he would be doused by being wanked upon by any passer-by. I actually think of his mustache burning up in a kerosene propelled fire as sexually arousing.
The really intersting thing here is(hence the dog turd reference) that lukasenkos is actually the ancient Greek name for the shade of white a dog turd becomes once it has bleached sufficiently in the sunlight.
Now why would such a great man like him shun anything that has to do with freedom of speech? I can not imagine why.
While I can see how the convenience of these devices speed up spreading "ooops" moments I can't really see how this will actually help candidates. Also never have there been so many cameras in the audience. What positive power is there to leverage when it comes to tablets and smart phones? I honestly can't even come up with a very convoluted answer to that one. This is a most vapid submission.
In the current climate where it seems to be the best strategy to damage contestor instead of even offereing half-arsed simple solutions to complex problems those devices make a good attack vector for smear campaigns.
I could imagine an app that makes you guess the definition of santorum. Here's a hint: it ain't pretty.
Will it help the nation? Propably no.
The real tragedy here is that a truly suitable candidate will be put off by what's currently going on.
Ooooh, this is actually a scary prospect. This is a scenario where corporations threaten to shut down infrastructure in order to interfere with Congressional decision making process.
It fills me with great satisfaction when congress critters can't google for the closest ladyboy escort service on their smartphone while they are supposed to pursue this nations best interests. And yes, I intentionally imply gross negligence, rottenness and hypocrisy when talking of elected representatives.
But the line being crossed here is scary. They could also threaten a black out in favor for SOPA and the likes. We can't on the one hand complain about undue influence of corporations on the political process and on the other hand welcome it when it suits us. This is hypocrisy, too.
Now black out that Google front page already!
I'm with you on the over-the-shoulder 3D perspective thing. In most cases developers seem to love jumping puzzles which don't work with 1st person view. But even Assassin's Creed(a series I love to bits) does occasionally get it wrong(Visitazione's Tomb anyone?).
Shooters that don't auto-aim DO NOT WORK WITH COSOLE! Period. You simply can't beat the speed and precision of aiming with a mouse. Same goes for RTS. Both tend to be highly competitive or completey with a strong focus on online play.
We owe quite a lot of accessible games to the 3D gen consoles. There are times when I prefer playing games on PC with an X-Box controller. You simply lay back in your super comfy office chair after a hard days work with some beer for a spot of Bastion, Assassin's Creed or Batman. The only thing that could improve that would be a pleasant sundown on your veranda and a constant supply of fajitas and margarita. On the other hand you have the heavy duty lifting of Starcraft, Heroes of Might and Magic and current gen MMO raiding. PC gaming is in a very, very good shape. It is an accessible, low barrier platform for indies and it is very nice for srs bznss gaming. The only true downside is the diversity of systems you have to support.
Name a single platform that plays Torchlight, Bastion, Orks Must Die, Deus Ex: HR, Skyrim, Plants vs. Zombies, SC2, HoMM6, Batman: AS, Batman: AC, Ass Creed(all of them), The Witcher, Trine...
PC gaming is actually in a very good shape even if the AAA tend to be horrid console ports. It's 2012 and a PC gamer's life is good.
Yeah. A real pity. They also cancelled The Simpsons after the 8th season.
I still want the Forge, dagnabbit! Conflux wasn't any good in any shape or form.
HoMM6 is quite good, actually. It's a step up from the train-wreck that was HoMM4 and the confusion that was HoMM5. HoMM5 became quite good with Tribes of the East. The Orks had a very interesting mechanic and were possibly a bit overpowered. HoMM6 is good when you don't desperately cling onto HoMM3 and try to enjoy the game for what it is. I'd rank it somewhere near the Age of Wonders series which was flawed but quite, quite good.
Ceterum autem censeo, Ubi Softem esse delendam.
I bought HoMM6 from Steam the day it was released. In the first couple of weeks I did drop to the menus screen a couple of times and this is what happened:
They had introduced an online service called "The Conflux". HoMM3 veterans will know why this was a very poor and controversial choice of name. Anyway, thsi Conflux basically serves as something that tracks your progress through the game and offers you rewards for it in form of weapons, abilities and whatnot. It also serves as something to store our save games "in teh cloud".
While you can play without the Conflux you will miss out on the rewards which help you with gameplay.
So during the single player campaign the Conflux caved in multiple times. Sometimes within 5 minutes. Since you suddenly were dropped from Conflux into the non-Conflux version you found yourself in the main menu. Unable to access your save games. Without a warning.
I'd call that worse than a CTD since I was effectively shut out of the game for a couple of minutes. How is this not DRM? How couldn't the Conflux thing run on your local machine? Why would I want to store my save games on your server? Why would I want another set of user credentials? Why, oh why of all publishers did the HoMM franchise have to end up with Ubi?
Vile, repugnant, horrid, festering, customer-hating mess that it is. If Ubi were my leg I'd hacked it off ges ago. EA is in the same ballpark. Origin...don't even get me started.
This is NOT adding value to the game. This IS DRM.
On a side note: in the current Seriious Sam you will be followed by an immortal monster if you have the pirated game. This feature is so fun and popular that the developer was asked how you could enable this in the legit version. You propably would be unable to finish the game as it can be very hard at times, but still! Neat!
I don't know if this applies to Crysis 2 or MW3 as these two are matters of extreme indifference to me, but...
A lot of games are released on console first and on PC many, many moons later. Since the PC versions are rarely better than the console versions and sometimes even worse AND you propably want to plug in a game controller anyway, so why not buy the console version? By now I'd assume that many PC gamers have caved in and bought a console. I don't think they are a minority anymore.
Could it just be that console versions cannibalize PC sales? Those who bought Batman: Arkham City for console didn't have to jump through so many hoops
Most of the games I play are no pure PC games. I think only SC2 and HoMM6 have never been ported to any console. That might very well sum up all significant AAA PC/Mac exclusives this year. And I doubt that SC2 is even woth it to pirate it since it lives by online play. Ubi tried the same thing with HoMM6 and we all know how that played out.
I'd recon not taking this into account will make any claims of the effect of piracy on PC sales dubious at best.
Triple times this. Steam was so convenient during the christmas season. I can't remember when I ever bought so many games during such a short period of time.
They offered very, very good deals and Steam was on the brink of disintegrating due to punters trying to force money into their cash registers.
I THINK the indies did best. I mean, Bastion for less than 3 Eurobucks? That's fast-food money. For that kind of money it's not a steal, that's the crime of the century.
Also I had been living under a rock for hte last 5 or so years. Yeah, yeah, World of Warcraft exclusively. You may crack your jokes now. I had quite a lot of catching up to do. And I started with Batman: Arkham Asylum and Assassins Creed one. I wouldn't have gotten them from a store since those went off the shelf ages ago. I doubt I could have easily torrented them. But why should I? Went to Steam saw they offered it for a very reasonable price and simply gave them my money.
Steam is a shop that sometimes doubles as DRM. I had to deal with GFWL which is DRM that claims to double as a shop. Same goes for Origin. And of course it is a sin to use THAT particular name for THAT particular abomination. Shame on you, EA.
If Steam/GFWL/Origin goes away then I can still pirate ALL THE GAMES I BOUGHT at gay abandon. Without any bad conciousness whatsoever.
still remember those days. You either had relatively unintrusive copy protection like asking for a specifiv word in the manual or those cardboard thingies from Lucasfilm Games.
...apart from the multimedia days. But it was hardly worth it back then. Interactive movies, my ass.
OR you had those abominations where the manufacturer introduced a fault onto the disk and the game checked for that fault. Some games allowed intallation to HD as long as they were the original install disks. Some games only allowed a limited number of installs(that was at a time when HD space was at a premium and you could have only a single digit number of games installed). Some games required you to have the original floppies inserted while playing.
Now, floppies were not very relyable. Especially when in the hands of a grubby teenager. Also on the PC the drives went wrong quite often, potentially destroying the originals.
During the early CD days there was hardly any copy protection apart from checking for the presence of the CD medium. Or having most of the game on CD because the mediums capacity was close, equal or higher than HD space. CD writers were jolly expensive so copying CDs was not trivial. The old, horrid "multimedia", "interactive movie" days.
then we went again through a "damaged medium" phase making copying impossible. Then we had the offensive BS phase were copy protection software embedded itsself deeply into the OS and in some cases even made copying music CDs virtually impossible.
Then we had this "always connected to the internet" scheme.
Now we have this "value added" DRM scheme where all your stuff is in "teh cloud". Which is basically the above disguising as something beneficial.
During any of these phases the pirated version was less hassle.
Yes, the effort to make a copy back then was much higher than it is today. But I think the goal of having all of human knowledge in one spot and accessible if you choose to is a good one. Well, perhaps better protected against fire(accidental or of the book burning variety).
It's a small surprise the WWW got so big. But we do have a signal-to-noise problem. Also long term preservation isn't that great. Also knowledge still is a viable business model but this time not for individuals but for potentially immortal entities. I think the latter is the biggest problem we face right at this moment.
Copyright was intended to promote the business model of creating things you couldn't wear, eat or live in. Some time ago(after DMCA) HP who basically printed money with their printer inks wanted to use chips on the cartridges containing stuff that was protected under copyright laws. The printers were to check for the presence of these chips and refuse to print if they weren't there. So selling ink for HP printers would have been only possible by violating copyright laws. I dunno if they saw it through but to me it is an indicator that copyright law has gotten way out of hand if this is the best legal protection for ANYTHING you produce.
I can't speak for my fellow Gen-Xers(since that is one leitmotif for thw whole group...slippery as fish we are). First of all we are not properly defined or so broadly defined that we don't have one unifying identity.
Basically I THINK we somehow slid into Grunge and then only minded our own busines since life is so durn complicated if you want to do the right thing. Whatever that is. Self-conciously useless. But at least we smelled nice.