I would like to hear less from Nintendo about what kind of gamers will or will not enjoy their games, and more about when they are actually going to start releasing some serious titles for the Wii. A glance at their Australian release schedule (where I happen to live), for example, suggest that precious little in the way of non-franchise, serious games is coming this year.
If you take that list and remove everything that's a console download, a "classic" of some sort, a weird Japanese/manga game, a silly film tie-in, or an established Nintendo franchise (honestly, I didn't think Metroid Prime was anything more than a reasonable shooter with a frustrating control scheme myself), there's precious little to get excited about.
Where are any of the following?
- 'serious' baseball game - 'serious' tennis game - 'serious' bowling game - decent sword fighting games - a cricket game - lightgun style shooters - ordinary first person shooters - adventure games - for the first time mouse-driven adventures are a serious option on a console - the oft-rumoured light sabre Star Wars game????
Until we start seeing something, anything, new of interest other than the big franchise games (Smash Bros, Mario, Metroid, Zelda) then Nintendo can talk about who it is and isn't appealing to as much as it likes, but in reality it's wasting a golden opportunity to capitalise on the best console launch it's had since the SNES.
and yet you praise Nethack because all you have to do is
look at the controls and figure out that they use the vi commands for movement
:)
I agree with you though. Anyone off the street, so to speak, should be able to pick up a new game and figure out most of the controls within a few minutes of messing around with it. In fact, figuring the control scheme out should be part of the charm, not a horrifying ordeal.
That's right, just like how the west became industrially powerful and wealthy only by trading with the even wealthier civilisation of... oh wait, no, we DID IT OURSELVES BEFORE TRADE ON A MODERN SCALE EVEN EXISTED. That's right.
To say that a refusal to buy goods made a slave-labour prices in China is somehow harming Chinese workers is twisted capitalist b.s.
It's become quite clear that Nintendo is losing interest in remaking the same old games over and over.
It's become quite clear to me that Nintendo is losing interest in releasing games at all. For a system with the potential of the Wii, the rate at which they are releasing games this year is laughable.
How can we still have only one sword/shooter (Red Steel), one decent sport game (Madden), and ZERO decent light gun style shooters this long after release?
Try, "with no choice but" instead of "willing" in your statement and you're closer to the truth.
If a country had actual slave labour, would you argue against tariffs on products from that country too?
Things are cheap in China for a lot of reasons: - no labour standards - no environmental standards - no intellectual property standards - no rights generally - poverty and desperation amongst the poor
Allowing unfettered access to domestic markets only rewards China for doing nothing to change those things.
There has always been a big division amongst fans.
Myself, I have always loved the conspiracy arc in the x-files, and I know a lot of others who feel the same way. Although it got rather convoluted with the bees and so on, some parts of it (such as Tunguska and all that stuff with Krycek, and the shifting role of the Cancer Man/X/Deep Throat/Bill Mulder) were fascinating and were definitely what kept me tuning in week after week.
Yet some people hated that stuff, and loved the "locals tell of the mythical swamp monster... and here it is!!!!11!!!1!" type episodes, the "monster of the week" as someone called it here (also "serial killer of the week" at times). Personally I feel like those episodes were frequently poorly done, and the sfx never really carried the silly plotlines adequately. There are some notable exceptions of course (I loved the Loch Ness Monster episode, but of course that was great mostly because they never show the thing).
Of course some of the better episodes had a bit of both - a "monster of the week" which turned out to be part of the broader conspiracy arc, or segued into it.
My perception is that more hard core fans tend to prefer the aliens, casual fans prefer the wolf-man stuff. Maybe it's an attention span thing too. It will be a shame if the new episode does nothing to move the conspiracy arc forward - of course, it may well be set earlyish in the series, rather than at the end.
Dana Scully was hot initially, but over time she got older, and whinier, and then the whole hooking up with Fox, and the child and the.... oh man, totally sucked the hot right out and replaced it with booooring
If you want consistently "hot" women then try watching porn, that's what it's for.
Scully's character was very complex and brought a vital part of the main dynamic of the x-files (faith/spirituality versus objectivity/rationality) to life. On matters of the paranormal, she represented science and objectivity against Mulder's sometimes irrational desire to believe. Yet on matters of spirituality, she supported religion in the face of Mulder's skepticism. Over time their roles would intertwine, invert, and revert. When Mulder left and Agent Doggett took over, Scully became the 'Mulder' type character with a belief in the paranormal and Doggett the unbeliever.
In summary: Scully was/is a great and interesting character who drove the series beyond the usual two-dimensional sci-fi claptrap. If you stopped watching because she isn't "hot" to your standards, then you are a fool of the highest order. I note that you did not make similar remarks about Duchovny's character, when he has aged quite a bit too (apart from his hands, which remain perfect).
A foreigner would get the impression that our brilliant Prime Minister is taking innovative steps to bring Australia to the bleeding edge of Internet accessibility and uptake.
The reality is that we are effectively in an election campaign, the Government is getting thrashed in the polls, and the opposition Labor Party announced an attractive broadband policy designed to lift Australia from its current woeful speeds and levels of access (256kbps is described as "broadband" in this country, and you pay upwards of $60/month for a capped allowance of 10Gb of downloads). This move by the Government is reactive at best, and a political stunt at worst. There is a widespread perception that the Prime Minister does not understand the slightest thing about broadband and the Internet.
As others have pointed out, Australia's real problem is a lack of big pipes to the rest of the world. Add to that a government-created-then-privatised monopoly (unlike the US we didn't split our telco into "baby Bells", we just privatised it, gave it all the essential infrastructure, and let it dominate/distort the hell out of the market), and you've got broadband fit for the late 1990s.
Occasionally this site just hits the "nerd" killswitch in my brain.
Honestly, could this get any nerdier? A massively multiplayer game based on playing with Lego for god's sake? I assume a Star Wars theme will be included somehow. Grown men, sitting at home on their PCs, playing with lego interactively with other grown men. I have goosebumps.
Am I alone in just not understanding this whole "virtual lego" thing? Isn't the whole point that they are a tactile, physical toy that kids (and adults) physically play with to create real objects? Why would someone want a computer simulation of that, rather than either a simulation of something real, or (gasp) real lego bricks?
Every time I see this kind of story, I have the Comic Book Guy's voice echoing in my head: "No Aquaman, you cannot marry a woman without gills... you're from two different worlds! Oh, I've wasted my life."
Cue responses pointing out that it says "News for Nerds" right there in the title...
Yes it does. Any object can, in principle, be exactly described if the exact quantum state can be determined. I am not suggesting this is likely, or even possible, for something as big and complex as a human.
I think you are missing my point. They might be identical, but they're not the same person. It is, in a sense, a philosophical question.
Put it this way. I would never go through a teleporter that would disassemble me, transmit the state of all my particles, and reassemble them at the other end in exactly the same state. There is a significant possibility that "I" would be dead - obliterated - and the person at the other end would be a new person, albeit with my memories, characteristics, and perceptions, but not me.
This does not imply that two human beings assembled out of particles in the same state are the same person. And furthermore "according to quantum mechanics" does not help your argument.
Would you argue that two particles in the same state at different points in time are the "same" particle?
Just because you can't tell two objects apart doesn't mean that they are the same, singular, object.
Precisely. GP would not be so keen to have his or her particles "reassembled" with exactly the same properties somewhere else while the originals are destroyed locally.
In discussing "teleportation" many people seem to be unable to distinguish between two things being functionally identical and two things actually being the same thing. One is called "copying", the other might amount to teleportation.
Never in the history of slashdot has one relatively ordinary product received so much publicity based on so little actual information. Honestly, it was better when this site wrote off the iPod as a doomed device:)
Meanwhile, here is a guide to pro-Apple moderator psychology to help you cope through the savage moderation clusterf*ck your post will currently be experiencing:
The Mind of the iMod:
1. I love Apple blindly
2. I will flame anyone who criticises Apple
3. I will flame anyone who criticises anyone who praises Apple
4. Because of 2 and 3 above, I can legitimately say that any post critical of Apple or Apple fan-boy-ism is "flame bait", as I myself will flame them
5. Therefore, all posts critical of Apple will be moderated flame bait
You'll no doubt get howled down by Blizzard fanboys, but I totally agree with you. Total Annihilation has a level of depth and subtlety that wasn't matched in an RTS until... well, Supreme Commander.
It beggars belief that many 'modern' RTS games (like C&C3) STILL don't do some of the more obviously good things that TA implemented.
Starcraft was a great game, but it was simplistic and relied very heavily on the "Unit X beats unit Y but is itself beaten by unit Z" philosophy. TA and Supreme Commander are far more interesting in that virtually anything can damage virtually anything else, but in different ways and to different degrees - so the player is far freer to develop a unique strategy and attempt to actually out-think their opponent.
In my opinion Blizzard games since Warcraft II have focused too heavily on small numbers of powerful and/or unique units, often with "special" abilities which must be micromanaged by the player. As a result they border on an RPG rather than an RTS. I have much the same criticism of the "Tanya" levels from Red Alert 2 and other C&C games - playing with one powerful unit running around slaughtering things is more akin to 'Cannon Fodder' than a real RTS game.
My mom, bless her soul, doesn't quite get the concept of digital photography. She always complains that we never print them out for her, and gets completely flustered at the idea of looking at them on a computer.
I must say, I take exception to this opening. The 'concept' of digital photography is hardly that one must no longer print pictures. In fact, digital prints are fantastic quality and a very satisfying (and, relatively speaking, permanent) way to keep your pictures.
I would say that digital photography's key feature is the replacement of film with a reusable medium, and the corresponding ability to easily transfer and manipulate the pictures stored on that medium. Nothing in that description means that those pictures should not be printed.
Am I alone in finding electronic storage and display of pictures spectacularly unsatisfying? Not only do pictures look worse on a screen to my eye, the non-physical nature of the pictures also diminishes their permanence and impact. Furthermore, storing images on a computer encourages the habit of retaining hundreds or thousands of poor photographs (as there is effectively no cost for doing so) and thereby reduces the amount of time spent considering each photograph in detail and deciding which ones are worth looking at and enjoying.
...and you only just shared it with us? Many have died in vain.
Or maybe your essentially newtonian and deterministic view of reality is based on assumptions which conveniently can never be proven or disproven. You know, just like crazy religious people.
I mean, does it even occur to you that if you could, somehow, recreate the *exact* same state of affairs twice to see what would happen, then it might still be possible for two different outcomes to occur? Not because of anything measurable or predictable, but because that's just how things are?
If you think "physics" or, for that matter, "reality" is all newtonian levers and collisions then you will no doubt say that it's impossible. But if reality simply doesn't behave like that then you might be wrong, and you couldn't prove it one way or another.
To take one, limited example: what if in a given situation a whole range of outcomes happen, but the infinite number of different outcomes lead to an infinite number of different, quasi-parallel universes? Simply because your consciousness is limited to observing one of these at a time doesn't mean that it's "the only thing which could have happened", does it? However, to you, there is only one, seemingly consistent, version of reality. I'm sure there are problems with this example but perhaps it conveys the essential point.
More significantly: if everything is deterministic based on "physics", could you please tell us where the rules of physics come from, and why they are as they are and not some other way? For instance, why do massive bodies attract and not repel? Why does light travel at the speed it does? At some point there is an arbitrary "decision" as to how things work which cannot be explained by pre-determined rules - unless it's just elephants all the way down...
As with the old one, it sold a lot on consoles and PC users didn't understand.
I call bs- in my experience Goldeneye is the console shooter that PC gamers loved, if any, because unlike most others it featured much of the precision of control that we expect, as well as excellent map design. The N64 controller is unique amongst console controllers in that the long control stick allows for a very high degree of accuracy compared to, for instance, the 'analogue' controllers on a PS2.
I used to play a hell of a lot of Goldeneye with some pretty obsessed players, and the most rabid were all big Quake I/III and Unreal Tournament players.
I don't know too many Halo fanatics who are serious PC gamers, however.
Whilst it's laudable that companies are investing in robotics at all, it seems to me that the time has come for investment on a commercial scale in robotics for specific applications. These 'hobby' type robots are all well and good (and no doubt particularly appealing to many around here) but they don't actually DO very much of any use, and the average member of the public is not going to be all that excited by them.
Roomva and similar robots are a step in the right direction, IMHO: relatively cheap, one- or two-function robots which have an obvious and straightforward function. People can see that, understand it, and if it works well (which I gather is not really the case just yet), will want to buy it. Once there's actual profit to be had, investment will increase rapidly and voila, the real robot revolution* begins.
We seem to be at a point where we have the tech for some truly cool everyday use robots. Perhaps even something like an x-prize for robotics, with the objective being to build a cheap, mass-produce-able, functional robot to perform a specific household task, would do the trick. Some major investment from some major players could kick start a very fundamental change to the way we live.
Plus, having lots of robots around the house would be frickin cool...
As I understand it (IANAL), you are allowed to remove personal files that have no relationship to the case at hand. The RIAA can object if you try to protect files they say have a direct bearing on their case, however, they should find it an impossible task to justify why they need to see anything other than specified MP3 and/or OMDS files. Don't give them a byte more than they're entitled to.
(IAAL, albeit not in Texas, so this might not hold true there.)
Unfortunately for your scheme, the plaintiffs do not need to identify specific documents/files, and you would be required to honestly categorise and identify them yourself.
You would struggle to justify the removal of (for instance) a playlist file or log file for your MP3 playback software. Those files are clearly relevant to the question of whether you have copied or played any infringing copies of RIAA music.
Despite the mantra of 'innocent until proven guilty', once a legal action is underway in the civil system some burden is placed on a defendant vis-a-vis the production of evidence. You are not entitled to stonewall until the other side comes up with something damning: in the end the objective is to reach the truth about the matters in dispute.
The whole purpose of this exercise is to determine what you DO have. If the RIAA already knew what you had with the precision you describe, they wouldn't need to inspect the disk in the first place.
No. I should be directing these comments to you, because you are making logic errors in your argument. Oooh, poster is using logic to take apart someone who is defending Vista... fingers ready on the "moderate insightful" buttons, gentlemen...
The fact that you haven't had a crash doesn't 'refute' the author's experience. He had crashes, you didn't. These anecdotal pieces of evidence don't wipe each other out. Was the author lying to us, or making up his crash stories, simply because you never had a crash? No, that's silly. He had a bad experience with Vista, you didn't. Your story doesn't make him wrong, any more than his would make yours wrong. Only if he were lying or misrepresenting would that make his story wrong. Nice argument, but you are as illogical as the post you criticise. For example, right from the quote in the./ blurb:
This is an unstable operating system.
So, please explain to us using your devastating powers of logic why this is an acceptable conclusion to draw based on one person's experience on one set of hardware, but it is not acceptable for someone to cite a counter-example of the software running perfectly stably to highlight that, arguably, any instability is not the fault of the OS per se but rather the reviewer's improperly configured system?
No, it's not OS-X running on a homogenous and finite set of hardware. It's a fact of life on the x86 platform that the possibility exists for a vast, vast number of different hardware combinations to arise, and it is extremely unrealistic to expect that a small number of systems will not run stably. Personally I think that the heterogenous hardware environment is one of the great advantages of the platform.
The great-grandparent makes a perfectly valid point in that the counter-example cited could just as easily be used to conclude "This is a stable operating system" if we are to accept the reasoning in the article.
I love how dressing your [insert favourite./ whipping boy here] bashing up in the trappings of "logical" argument gets you modded +5 insightful, not matter whether the content is accurate or whether you are criticising an actual line of reasoning or just one you made up yourself.
I have an iPod, and I love it, but iTunes for Windows is the WORST THING EVER. Ok, maybe not ever. But at least in the last 10,000 years or so.
It is massively bloated, requires you to install the equally heinous Quicktime, tries to upgrade itself 14 times a week, doesn't conform to the Windows GUI standard AT ALL*, and tries to seize control of all of your music and video files and associate them with itself. Quicktime is apparently DESIGNED to fuck up your web browsing experience so that you no longer have the ability to download MOVs or anything in an Apple format, and instead are forced to watch it in a tiny plugin window with no real controls, which once again doesn't conform to any kind of Windows GUI standard.
There are alternatives for using an iPod (such as the reasonably excellent ml_ipod for Winamp) but there aren't any for using the iTunes store.
Please Steve, I'll consider giving you my money now that you've stripped away DRM, but for christ's sake, just make a web-only version of your store...
* seriously, how would Mac users feel if Office for Mac literally ran in a simulated Windows XP environment, complete with Windows-style widgets and the XP GUI skin layed over the top of it?
Slashdot Mirror
I would like to hear less from Nintendo about what kind of gamers will or will not enjoy their games, and more about when they are actually going to start releasing some serious titles for the Wii. A glance at their Australian release schedule (where I happen to live), for example, suggest that precious little in the way of non-franchise, serious games is coming this year.
If you take that list and remove everything that's a console download, a "classic" of some sort, a weird Japanese/manga game, a silly film tie-in, or an established Nintendo franchise (honestly, I didn't think Metroid Prime was anything more than a reasonable shooter with a frustrating control scheme myself), there's precious little to get excited about.
Where are any of the following?
- 'serious' baseball game
- 'serious' tennis game
- 'serious' bowling game
- decent sword fighting games
- a cricket game
- lightgun style shooters
- ordinary first person shooters
- adventure games - for the first time mouse-driven adventures are a serious option on a console
- the oft-rumoured light sabre Star Wars game????
Until we start seeing something, anything, new of interest other than the big franchise games (Smash Bros, Mario, Metroid, Zelda) then Nintendo can talk about who it is and isn't appealing to as much as it likes, but in reality it's wasting a golden opportunity to capitalise on the best console launch it's had since the SNES.
and yet you praise Nethack because all you have to do is
I agree with you though. Anyone off the street, so to speak, should be able to pick up a new game and figure out most of the controls within a few minutes of messing around with it. In fact, figuring the control scheme out should be part of the charm, not a horrifying ordeal.
That's right, just like how the west became industrially powerful and wealthy only by trading with the even wealthier civilisation of... oh wait, no, we DID IT OURSELVES BEFORE TRADE ON A MODERN SCALE EVEN EXISTED. That's right.
To say that a refusal to buy goods made a slave-labour prices in China is somehow harming Chinese workers is twisted capitalist b.s.
It's become quite clear to me that Nintendo is losing interest in releasing games at all. For a system with the potential of the Wii, the rate at which they are releasing games this year is laughable.
How can we still have only one sword/shooter (Red Steel), one decent sport game (Madden), and ZERO decent light gun style shooters this long after release?
Only if you have a very wide car.
Try, "with no choice but" instead of "willing" in your statement and you're closer to the truth.
If a country had actual slave labour, would you argue against tariffs on products from that country too?
Things are cheap in China for a lot of reasons:
- no labour standards
- no environmental standards
- no intellectual property standards
- no rights generally
- poverty and desperation amongst the poor
Allowing unfettered access to domestic markets only rewards China for doing nothing to change those things.
Awesome! I'd forgotten that one.
Except I believe the actual quote is: "Are you a bad enough dude to rescue Ronnie?"
Another one with awesomely poor dialogue is House of the Dead 2:
"No-one's gonna get away with this!!!"
There has always been a big division amongst fans.
Myself, I have always loved the conspiracy arc in the x-files, and I know a lot of others who feel the same way. Although it got rather convoluted with the bees and so on, some parts of it (such as Tunguska and all that stuff with Krycek, and the shifting role of the Cancer Man/X/Deep Throat/Bill Mulder) were fascinating and were definitely what kept me tuning in week after week.
Yet some people hated that stuff, and loved the "locals tell of the mythical swamp monster... and here it is!!!!11!!!1!" type episodes, the "monster of the week" as someone called it here (also "serial killer of the week" at times). Personally I feel like those episodes were frequently poorly done, and the sfx never really carried the silly plotlines adequately. There are some notable exceptions of course (I loved the Loch Ness Monster episode, but of course that was great mostly because they never show the thing).
Of course some of the better episodes had a bit of both - a "monster of the week" which turned out to be part of the broader conspiracy arc, or segued into it.
My perception is that more hard core fans tend to prefer the aliens, casual fans prefer the wolf-man stuff. Maybe it's an attention span thing too. It will be a shame if the new episode does nothing to move the conspiracy arc forward - of course, it may well be set earlyish in the series, rather than at the end.
If you want consistently "hot" women then try watching porn, that's what it's for.
Scully's character was very complex and brought a vital part of the main dynamic of the x-files (faith/spirituality versus objectivity/rationality) to life. On matters of the paranormal, she represented science and objectivity against Mulder's sometimes irrational desire to believe. Yet on matters of spirituality, she supported religion in the face of Mulder's skepticism. Over time their roles would intertwine, invert, and revert. When Mulder left and Agent Doggett took over, Scully became the 'Mulder' type character with a belief in the paranormal and Doggett the unbeliever.
In summary: Scully was/is a great and interesting character who drove the series beyond the usual two-dimensional sci-fi claptrap. If you stopped watching because she isn't "hot" to your standards, then you are a fool of the highest order. I note that you did not make similar remarks about Duchovny's character, when he has aged quite a bit too (apart from his hands, which remain perfect).
I thought the exact same thing.
A foreigner would get the impression that our brilliant Prime Minister is taking innovative steps to bring Australia to the bleeding edge of Internet accessibility and uptake.
The reality is that we are effectively in an election campaign, the Government is getting thrashed in the polls, and the opposition Labor Party announced an attractive broadband policy designed to lift Australia from its current woeful speeds and levels of access (256kbps is described as "broadband" in this country, and you pay upwards of $60/month for a capped allowance of 10Gb of downloads). This move by the Government is reactive at best, and a political stunt at worst. There is a widespread perception that the Prime Minister does not understand the slightest thing about broadband and the Internet.
As others have pointed out, Australia's real problem is a lack of big pipes to the rest of the world. Add to that a government-created-then-privatised monopoly (unlike the US we didn't split our telco into "baby Bells", we just privatised it, gave it all the essential infrastructure, and let it dominate/distort the hell out of the market), and you've got broadband fit for the late 1990s.
Unfortunately the formula only works with real numbers as inputs, not imaginary ones :)
Occasionally this site just hits the "nerd" killswitch in my brain.
Honestly, could this get any nerdier? A massively multiplayer game based on playing with Lego for god's sake? I assume a Star Wars theme will be included somehow. Grown men, sitting at home on their PCs, playing with lego interactively with other grown men. I have goosebumps.
Am I alone in just not understanding this whole "virtual lego" thing? Isn't the whole point that they are a tactile, physical toy that kids (and adults) physically play with to create real objects? Why would someone want a computer simulation of that, rather than either a simulation of something real, or (gasp) real lego bricks?
Every time I see this kind of story, I have the Comic Book Guy's voice echoing in my head: "No Aquaman, you cannot marry a woman without gills... you're from two different worlds! Oh, I've wasted my life."
Cue responses pointing out that it says "News for Nerds" right there in the title...
I think you are missing my point. They might be identical, but they're not the same person. It is, in a sense, a philosophical question.
Put it this way. I would never go through a teleporter that would disassemble me, transmit the state of all my particles, and reassemble them at the other end in exactly the same state. There is a significant possibility that "I" would be dead - obliterated - and the person at the other end would be a new person, albeit with my memories, characteristics, and perceptions, but not me.
This does not imply that two human beings assembled out of particles in the same state are the same person. And furthermore "according to quantum mechanics" does not help your argument.
Would you argue that two particles in the same state at different points in time are the "same" particle?
Precisely. GP would not be so keen to have his or her particles "reassembled" with exactly the same properties somewhere else while the originals are destroyed locally.
In discussing "teleportation" many people seem to be unable to distinguish between two things being functionally identical and two things actually being the same thing. One is called "copying", the other might amount to teleportation.
You're a brave poster, sir or madam.
:)
Never in the history of slashdot has one relatively ordinary product received so much publicity based on so little actual information. Honestly, it was better when this site wrote off the iPod as a doomed device
Meanwhile, here is a guide to pro-Apple moderator psychology to help you cope through the savage moderation clusterf*ck your post will currently be experiencing:
The Mind of the iMod:
1. I love Apple blindly
2. I will flame anyone who criticises Apple
3. I will flame anyone who criticises anyone who praises Apple
4. Because of 2 and 3 above, I can legitimately say that any post critical of Apple or Apple fan-boy-ism is "flame bait", as I myself will flame them
5. Therefore, all posts critical of Apple will be moderated flame bait
You'll no doubt get howled down by Blizzard fanboys, but I totally agree with you. Total Annihilation has a level of depth and subtlety that wasn't matched in an RTS until... well, Supreme Commander.
It beggars belief that many 'modern' RTS games (like C&C3) STILL don't do some of the more obviously good things that TA implemented.
Starcraft was a great game, but it was simplistic and relied very heavily on the "Unit X beats unit Y but is itself beaten by unit Z" philosophy. TA and Supreme Commander are far more interesting in that virtually anything can damage virtually anything else, but in different ways and to different degrees - so the player is far freer to develop a unique strategy and attempt to actually out-think their opponent.
In my opinion Blizzard games since Warcraft II have focused too heavily on small numbers of powerful and/or unique units, often with "special" abilities which must be micromanaged by the player. As a result they border on an RPG rather than an RTS. I have much the same criticism of the "Tanya" levels from Red Alert 2 and other C&C games - playing with one powerful unit running around slaughtering things is more akin to 'Cannon Fodder' than a real RTS game.
I must say, I take exception to this opening. The 'concept' of digital photography is hardly that one must no longer print pictures. In fact, digital prints are fantastic quality and a very satisfying (and, relatively speaking, permanent) way to keep your pictures.
I would say that digital photography's key feature is the replacement of film with a reusable medium, and the corresponding ability to easily transfer and manipulate the pictures stored on that medium. Nothing in that description means that those pictures should not be printed.
Am I alone in finding electronic storage and display of pictures spectacularly unsatisfying? Not only do pictures look worse on a screen to my eye, the non-physical nature of the pictures also diminishes their permanence and impact. Furthermore, storing images on a computer encourages the habit of retaining hundreds or thousands of poor photographs (as there is effectively no cost for doing so) and thereby reduces the amount of time spent considering each photograph in detail and deciding which ones are worth looking at and enjoying.
...and you only just shared it with us? Many have died in vain.
Or maybe your essentially newtonian and deterministic view of reality is based on assumptions which conveniently can never be proven or disproven. You know, just like crazy religious people.
I mean, does it even occur to you that if you could, somehow, recreate the *exact* same state of affairs twice to see what would happen, then it might still be possible for two different outcomes to occur? Not because of anything measurable or predictable, but because that's just how things are?
If you think "physics" or, for that matter, "reality" is all newtonian levers and collisions then you will no doubt say that it's impossible. But if reality simply doesn't behave like that then you might be wrong, and you couldn't prove it one way or another.
To take one, limited example: what if in a given situation a whole range of outcomes happen, but the infinite number of different outcomes lead to an infinite number of different, quasi-parallel universes? Simply because your consciousness is limited to observing one of these at a time doesn't mean that it's "the only thing which could have happened", does it? However, to you, there is only one, seemingly consistent, version of reality. I'm sure there are problems with this example but perhaps it conveys the essential point.
More significantly: if everything is deterministic based on "physics", could you please tell us where the rules of physics come from, and why they are as they are and not some other way? For instance, why do massive bodies attract and not repel? Why does light travel at the speed it does? At some point there is an arbitrary "decision" as to how things work which cannot be explained by pre-determined rules - unless it's just elephants all the way down...
I call bs- in my experience Goldeneye is the console shooter that PC gamers loved, if any, because unlike most others it featured much of the precision of control that we expect, as well as excellent map design. The N64 controller is unique amongst console controllers in that the long control stick allows for a very high degree of accuracy compared to, for instance, the 'analogue' controllers on a PS2.
I used to play a hell of a lot of Goldeneye with some pretty obsessed players, and the most rabid were all big Quake I/III and Unreal Tournament players.
I don't know too many Halo fanatics who are serious PC gamers, however.
Whilst it's laudable that companies are investing in robotics at all, it seems to me that the time has come for investment on a commercial scale in robotics for specific applications. These 'hobby' type robots are all well and good (and no doubt particularly appealing to many around here) but they don't actually DO very much of any use, and the average member of the public is not going to be all that excited by them.
Roomva and similar robots are a step in the right direction, IMHO: relatively cheap, one- or two-function robots which have an obvious and straightforward function. People can see that, understand it, and if it works well (which I gather is not really the case just yet), will want to buy it. Once there's actual profit to be had, investment will increase rapidly and voila, the real robot revolution* begins.
We seem to be at a point where we have the tech for some truly cool everyday use robots. Perhaps even something like an x-prize for robotics, with the objective being to build a cheap, mass-produce-able, functional robot to perform a specific household task, would do the trick. Some major investment from some major players could kick start a very fundamental change to the way we live.
Plus, having lots of robots around the house would be frickin cool...
* the good kind, not the humanity-crushing kind
(IAAL, albeit not in Texas, so this might not hold true there.)
Unfortunately for your scheme, the plaintiffs do not need to identify specific documents/files, and you would be required to honestly categorise and identify them yourself.
You would struggle to justify the removal of (for instance) a playlist file or log file for your MP3 playback software. Those files are clearly relevant to the question of whether you have copied or played any infringing copies of RIAA music.
Despite the mantra of 'innocent until proven guilty', once a legal action is underway in the civil system some burden is placed on a defendant vis-a-vis the production of evidence. You are not entitled to stonewall until the other side comes up with something damning: in the end the objective is to reach the truth about the matters in dispute.
The whole purpose of this exercise is to determine what you DO have. If the RIAA already knew what you had with the precision you describe, they wouldn't need to inspect the disk in the first place.
Is that like a chastity belt? Or maybe an adult diaper?
So, please explain to us using your devastating powers of logic why this is an acceptable conclusion to draw based on one person's experience on one set of hardware, but it is not acceptable for someone to cite a counter-example of the software running perfectly stably to highlight that, arguably, any instability is not the fault of the OS per se but rather the reviewer's improperly configured system?
No, it's not OS-X running on a homogenous and finite set of hardware. It's a fact of life on the x86 platform that the possibility exists for a vast, vast number of different hardware combinations to arise, and it is extremely unrealistic to expect that a small number of systems will not run stably. Personally I think that the heterogenous hardware environment is one of the great advantages of the platform.
The great-grandparent makes a perfectly valid point in that the counter-example cited could just as easily be used to conclude "This is a stable operating system" if we are to accept the reasoning in the article.
I love how dressing your [insert favourite
I have an iPod, and I love it, but iTunes for Windows is the WORST THING EVER. Ok, maybe not ever. But at least in the last 10,000 years or so.
It is massively bloated, requires you to install the equally heinous Quicktime, tries to upgrade itself 14 times a week, doesn't conform to the Windows GUI standard AT ALL*, and tries to seize control of all of your music and video files and associate them with itself. Quicktime is apparently DESIGNED to fuck up your web browsing experience so that you no longer have the ability to download MOVs or anything in an Apple format, and instead are forced to watch it in a tiny plugin window with no real controls, which once again doesn't conform to any kind of Windows GUI standard.
There are alternatives for using an iPod (such as the reasonably excellent ml_ipod for Winamp) but there aren't any for using the iTunes store.
Please Steve, I'll consider giving you my money now that you've stripped away DRM, but for christ's sake, just make a web-only version of your store...
* seriously, how would Mac users feel if Office for Mac literally ran in a simulated Windows XP environment, complete with Windows-style widgets and the XP GUI skin layed over the top of it?