And now I have to quit caffeine. No more soda, no more coffee, no more caffinated mints. I don't want to be chained to any sort of non-critical substance (oxygen, hydrogen, and meat proteins. You know, those unavoidable things).
The game is almost exactly like Battlefield 1942, almost tit-for-tat. Battles are fought on the ground. There are two sides, obviously, with a possibilty of a third party indigenous to the area stepping in. Vehicles are sometimes available, but those who are flight-capable are rather... shifty, and difficult to control. Each battle, infact, is based on a ticket-counter-system (Thank you, BF1942).
The game is riddled with _major_ balance issues, from the five classes of warrior you can choose and their respective weapon configurations, and weapon lag. (Weapon lag is sighting a target, firing your weapon, and somehow, the target having enough time to SIDE STEP OUT OF THE WAY OF YOUR SHOT, even after it's been fired). I do have to respect the way the game is modeled, giving the player the ability to experience almost any battle, in sequence, throughout any generation of the Star Wars galaxy. That's neat.
Final opinion: The game needs serious polish, and rebalancing. If you've played Battlefield 1942, and liked it, give this a shot. 4/5? Yeah, that'll do.
On a side note: the version of DirectX that came with the game was MASSIVELY BROKEN and lead to SERIOUS STABILITY ISSUES with Windows XP. Downloading the (allegedly) same version of DirectX (9.0c) from the Microsoft website seems to have fixed the problem.
When a windows session runs long enough, eventually, it slows down so much that you have to reboot, anyway. With 98, this timeframe was, roughly, 48 hours. Windows ME lasted about ten minutes. XP can reliably stay up for about a week. Of course, within that week, 38 new worms/viruses have been released.
I'd love to see the 'reliability' of Linux or Mac OS X. I mean, look at slashdot: uptime: 79 days, 7:33, 1 user. Sure, maybe 2000 in a production environment can do that. Or 2003 Advanced Server, but I have general-use Linux boxen that say the same thing. We had a few at work that just turned a year old. Let's see ANY Windows OS do that.
Yes, I came to the same conclusion, but then, I'm also forced to ask, 11:00 AM where, exactly? I mean, sure, we can assume they mean 11:00 AM in North Korea, but I think it's a bit of a grey area, and a journalistic fumble to not be wholly specific on that particular point.
...besides, it makes it harder for us conspiracy theorists to create a plausible timeline (for supporting our nutjob arguments...)
Space and spare hardware are issues for me. As a college student living in the dorms, I kindof really have to choose what I bring to school with me. Currently, I bring my WinXP tower for game-playing (and, as of now, mass-storage), my PowerBook, and an old school ThinkPad 600E as a network appliance linux utility. Say I need more storage, I'd have trouble finding space for another box between everything else (UPS, tower, storage for books, etc). Also, my complete-computer boxes often find their way into the hands of my friends, who are computationally less fortunate, so I don't always have spare hardware to run such an appliance from. Sure, there's the ThinkPad, but it lives in a ventilated drawer, for the most part, firewalling, scanning the network, etc. If I wanted a networkable mass storage device (NAS), this would work great. Further, the disks are reconfigurable. I'm sure you could even make it into an even more reliable solution by integrating mirror-RAID across the two USB disks. Just get two enclosures, two hard disks of the same size, and, presto, mirrored network backup. And a toy, to boot! (Boot. Haha.)
Your point is valid, but, this solution would be great for me.
Even if it doesn't fit on the iMac, PowerBooks and iBooks for generations (theirs, not ours) have had illuminated apples on the covers. Their lumen-strength is directly proportional to the brightness of the display when the case is open. Obviously off when the computer is closed/suspended.
I and some other people I know PREFER the Netscape integrated AIM. It doesn't throw popups at you by default, doesn't try to automatically log you in on startup, and looks better.
What the hell are you talking about? I've been using AIM for years. It's trivial (read: very very very simple, even for a chimp) to turn off the auto-start, auto-login options. Infact, two checkboxes sit immediately over the 'Sign In!' button. It's easy:
[ ] Save password [ ] Auto-login
Just uncheck both. That's one problem solved. The other is in preferences. Under 'Start AIM when [your OS] starts'. Another simple 'clicky'. The latter of the two options you can configure when you install AIM, so there's even less trouble, there. And AIM has never thrown a popup at me.
The integrated AIM is the selling point that will get me to upgrade to Netscape 7.2 from Mozilla 1.7.
Netscape is a dead browser. It needs to be depreciated, and pushed out the door. It's always, always had lackluster support for CSS/DHTML, and it's JavaScript system, while I understand that Netscape concieved of JavaScript, the standard sadly enough became Microsoft's interpretation of it. Yes, that sucks, but when you have to write three different versions of a single script to support one page (not that JavaScript is irreplaceable, mind you), it's time to use the most common one. Given that, once we get rid of Netscape's backwards requirements, every browser should adopt a unified standard for JavaScript, so it all works. Seamlessly. It's NOT that hard to pull off. People just have to be willing to do that.
The SNES/64 bugs in RPGs such as Zelda, Perfect Dark, etc, relating to a loss-of-savegame-information issue were more or less because of bad batteries or bad printed circuit boards inside the game themselves, not bad programming.
One of my long-standing favorite requirements with console games - relatively high quality. Seems like that's gone to the dogs, though. It's sad, it really really is.
Latest game I've been playing, though, Front Mission 4 - no bugs as of yet. I'll just keep at that one.
If Apple released a mobile phone or PDA unit, I would pick it up. Why? It's apple. It would, undoubtedly like the iPod, have seamless integration with my existing system(s) - PowerBook, lab equipment, etc.
For the record, I have friends who will atest to the fact that I thought of this back six months ago (and a few saved conversations here and there, I think).:-p
But seriously, if Apple were to cook up a Cell/PDA device, or even two seperate devices to fit those functions, I'd be very very interested in replacing my old Palm VII and my LG 250 series black flip phone (20$ Verizon workhorse).
I wish that were true anymore. Usually, that's what I'll do - tap the brakes a few times. 90% of the people who seem to love my bumper don't get it. That, or they can't see my brake lights, which would not surprise me. Usually, it's someone in an unnecssarily large pickup or a Ford Exploder or other such monstrosity.
1) Don't have a rear window washer.
2) Oil is a little too dense for the washer-fluid pump.
3) I wonder if I'd be responsible for deaths. Catch me if you can!
What's worse is - would people lose their sense of individuality?
Having infinite non-unique knowledge at your disposal removes perspective. If we all see and understand everything in the same way (programmed like a database - consider, for example 'SELECT * FROM table WHERE variable = true' will produce the same results every time, whereas asking, person to person, 'What's your favorite color?' will produce different resutls) - would we still be able to interpret what we felt about topics? Leaves room for over-analysis. We may end up very Vulcan-like (logical, cold) if such a state were to exist.
But of course, this is just my opinion and perspective on the matter. It might shift depending on what a person knows, or their experiences. But then, experiences are often tied to knowledge, too, aren't they?
My experience with MREs taught me alot of what you've mentioned. They're engineered for high-energy relief of hunger.
I was the First Sergeant for a search and rescue squadron near the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York. It got very, very cold up there, and very quickly. 1400 or so, the MREs that came in those 'natural-esque' brown waxy-paper vacu-saks were idea for the 'warmer' parts of the day, whereas those with the little add-water-to-heater-pouch-and-slide-in-packet-of-X were a Godsend at night. They (the heater packs) were also really good for heating water rations/saline pouches for victims/patients with hypothermia.
Sitting in cold weather, either on mission or bivouac, you get depressed. Having warm-ish food, of any kind, was a relief. Espicially when you could share it around with your team mates. Kindof made you feel better about the whole situation. They definitely helped.
It might have something to do with the fact that security isn't actually worth being secure unless you have to do it yourself, and as such, with most BSDs being rather secure out-of-the-box, doing it that way is a pussy way out. </SARCASM>
I have two legal names (as someone else above mentioned). My given name is Jeremiah, whereas, for as long as I can remember (unless I was in trouble, and that was only with my parents and grandmother), everyone called me 'Jeremy'. All of my school records, my health records, all of my tax returns, all have me listed as Jeremy. Of course, I just figured that this was how the government identified me. Then, while digging through a box of documents one day, I found a social security card paperclipped to a birth certificate, both with the name 'Jeremiah'. This confused me, as I have a social security card and birth certificate (dated one year after the original), with the name 'Jeremy'. Of course, by this point, I wasn't sure what to call myself. I wrote to, and called, the Social Security Administration and never got anything back. I've never actually had any problems with my name. I think it's because when you apply for anything even remotely official, and they ask for your social security number, so long as that's unique and you only use the one you have, the one bound to your name, then you should be ok. I'm sure there's a range of 'accepted variations' on names and such. Pat for Patrick, Sam for Samuel, Tim for Timothy, Tom for Thomas, Matt for Matthew, and so on. *shrug*
Slashdot Mirror
- Penguin Caffinated Mints
- Buy Pure Caffeine Pills
- Seriously Caffinated
And now I have to quit caffeine. No more soda, no more coffee, no more caffinated mints. I don't want to be chained to any sort of non-critical substance (oxygen, hydrogen, and meat proteins. You know, those unavoidable things)....espicially for a geek community.
Has anyone found any creamer, yet?
Oh, sure, I don't doubt that at all, honestly. The question is when, how often, and how much will be fixed?
The game is almost exactly like Battlefield 1942, almost tit-for-tat. Battles are fought on the ground. There are two sides, obviously, with a possibilty of a third party indigenous to the area stepping in. Vehicles are sometimes available, but those who are flight-capable are rather... shifty, and difficult to control. Each battle, infact, is based on a ticket-counter-system (Thank you, BF1942).
The game is riddled with _major_ balance issues, from the five classes of warrior you can choose and their respective weapon configurations, and weapon lag. (Weapon lag is sighting a target, firing your weapon, and somehow, the target having enough time to SIDE STEP OUT OF THE WAY OF YOUR SHOT, even after it's been fired). I do have to respect the way the game is modeled, giving the player the ability to experience almost any battle, in sequence, throughout any generation of the Star Wars galaxy. That's neat.
Final opinion: The game needs serious polish, and rebalancing. If you've played Battlefield 1942, and liked it, give this a shot. 4/5? Yeah, that'll do.
On a side note: the version of DirectX that came with the game was MASSIVELY BROKEN and lead to SERIOUS STABILITY ISSUES with Windows XP. Downloading the (allegedly) same version of DirectX (9.0c) from the Microsoft website seems to have fixed the problem.
When a windows session runs long enough, eventually, it slows down so much that you have to reboot, anyway. With 98, this timeframe was, roughly, 48 hours. Windows ME lasted about ten minutes. XP can reliably stay up for about a week. Of course, within that week, 38 new worms/viruses have been released.
I'd love to see the 'reliability' of Linux or Mac OS X. I mean, look at slashdot: uptime: 79 days, 7:33, 1 user. Sure, maybe 2000 in a production environment can do that. Or 2003 Advanced Server, but I have general-use Linux boxen that say the same thing. We had a few at work that just turned a year old. Let's see ANY Windows OS do that.
Actually, a nuke killed them, but I suppose the virus helped. ;)
Yes, I came to the same conclusion, but then, I'm also forced to ask, 11:00 AM where, exactly? I mean, sure, we can assume they mean 11:00 AM in North Korea, but I think it's a bit of a grey area, and a journalistic fumble to not be wholly specific on that particular point.
...besides, it makes it harder for us conspiracy theorists to create a plausible timeline (for supporting our nutjob arguments...)
Space and spare hardware are issues for me. As a college student living in the dorms, I kindof really have to choose what I bring to school with me. Currently, I bring my WinXP tower for game-playing (and, as of now, mass-storage), my PowerBook, and an old school ThinkPad 600E as a network appliance linux utility. Say I need more storage, I'd have trouble finding space for another box between everything else (UPS, tower, storage for books, etc). Also, my complete-computer boxes often find their way into the hands of my friends, who are computationally less fortunate, so I don't always have spare hardware to run such an appliance from. Sure, there's the ThinkPad, but it lives in a ventilated drawer, for the most part, firewalling, scanning the network, etc. If I wanted a networkable mass storage device (NAS), this would work great. Further, the disks are reconfigurable. I'm sure you could even make it into an even more reliable solution by integrating mirror-RAID across the two USB disks. Just get two enclosures, two hard disks of the same size, and, presto, mirrored network backup. And a toy, to boot! (Boot. Haha.)
Your point is valid, but, this solution would be great for me.
Maybe because it's the only kernel worth your time to use on an embedded application? :-) (*zing!*)
Even if it doesn't fit on the iMac, PowerBooks and iBooks for generations (theirs, not ours) have had illuminated apples on the covers. Their lumen-strength is directly proportional to the brightness of the display when the case is open. Obviously off when the computer is closed/suspended.
I wonder how many "Libraries of Congress" that is, exactly.
What the hell are you talking about? I've been using AIM for years. It's trivial (read: very very very simple, even for a chimp) to turn off the auto-start, auto-login options. Infact, two checkboxes sit immediately over the 'Sign In!' button. It's easy:
- [ ] Save password [ ] Auto-login
Just uncheck both. That's one problem solved. The other is in preferences. Under 'Start AIM when [your OS] starts'. Another simple 'clicky'. The latter of the two options you can configure when you install AIM, so there's even less trouble, there. And AIM has never thrown a popup at me.The integrated AIM is the selling point that will get me to upgrade to Netscape 7.2 from Mozilla 1.7.
That's not an upgrade. It's a degeneration.
Too bad it wasn't.
Netscape is a dead browser. It needs to be depreciated, and pushed out the door. It's always, always had lackluster support for CSS/DHTML, and it's JavaScript system, while I understand that Netscape concieved of JavaScript, the standard sadly enough became Microsoft's interpretation of it. Yes, that sucks, but when you have to write three different versions of a single script to support one page (not that JavaScript is irreplaceable, mind you), it's time to use the most common one. Given that, once we get rid of Netscape's backwards requirements, every browser should adopt a unified standard for JavaScript, so it all works. Seamlessly. It's NOT that hard to pull off. People just have to be willing to do that.
The SNES/64 bugs in RPGs such as Zelda, Perfect Dark, etc, relating to a loss-of-savegame-information issue were more or less because of bad batteries or bad printed circuit boards inside the game themselves, not bad programming.
One of my long-standing favorite requirements with console games - relatively high quality. Seems like that's gone to the dogs, though. It's sad, it really really is.
Latest game I've been playing, though, Front Mission 4 - no bugs as of yet. I'll just keep at that one.
If Apple released a mobile phone or PDA unit, I would pick it up. Why? It's apple. It would, undoubtedly like the iPod, have seamless integration with my existing system(s) - PowerBook, lab equipment, etc.
:-p
For the record, I have friends who will atest to the fact that I thought of this back six months ago (and a few saved conversations here and there, I think).
But seriously, if Apple were to cook up a Cell/PDA device, or even two seperate devices to fit those functions, I'd be very very interested in replacing my old Palm VII and my LG 250 series black flip phone (20$ Verizon workhorse).
I wish that were true anymore. Usually, that's what I'll do - tap the brakes a few times. 90% of the people who seem to love my bumper don't get it. That, or they can't see my brake lights, which would not surprise me. Usually, it's someone in an unnecssarily large pickup or a Ford Exploder or other such monstrosity.
1) Don't have a rear window washer.
2) Oil is a little too dense for the washer-fluid pump.
3) I wonder if I'd be responsible for deaths. Catch me if you can!
That's great, really, but what I'd rather like/need is a way to communicate with those people behind me, who like to tailgate.
Something like, 'You do not have appropriate stopping distance. Back off, or I'll test my theory by way of brakes.'
I believe Apple owns the patent to this.
Ever booted a (much older) Mac with a bad disk? Or shutdown improperly and cause loss of data? It cries!
What's worse is - would people lose their sense of individuality?
Having infinite non-unique knowledge at your disposal removes perspective. If we all see and understand everything in the same way (programmed like a database - consider, for example 'SELECT * FROM table WHERE variable = true' will produce the same results every time, whereas asking, person to person, 'What's your favorite color?' will produce different resutls) - would we still be able to interpret what we felt about topics? Leaves room for over-analysis. We may end up very Vulcan-like (logical, cold) if such a state were to exist.
But of course, this is just my opinion and perspective on the matter. It might shift depending on what a person knows, or their experiences. But then, experiences are often tied to knowledge, too, aren't they?
Interesting...
Desert Combat is a really good Battlefield 1942 mod. We've had a lot of fun playing it at school, LAN parties and such.
My experience with MREs taught me alot of what you've mentioned. They're engineered for high-energy relief of hunger.
X were a Godsend at night. They (the heater packs) were also really good for heating water rations/saline pouches for victims/patients with hypothermia.
I was the First Sergeant for a search and rescue squadron near the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York. It got very, very cold up there, and very quickly. 1400 or so, the MREs that came in those 'natural-esque' brown waxy-paper vacu-saks were idea for the 'warmer' parts of the day, whereas those with the little add-water-to-heater-pouch-and-slide-in-packet-of-
Sitting in cold weather, either on mission or bivouac, you get depressed. Having warm-ish food, of any kind, was a relief. Espicially when you could share it around with your team mates. Kindof made you feel better about the whole situation. They definitely helped.
Because BSD is dead, obviously.
It might have something to do with the fact that security isn't actually worth being secure unless you have to do it yourself, and as such, with most BSDs being rather secure out-of-the-box, doing it that way is a pussy way out. </SARCASM>
I have two legal names (as someone else above mentioned). My given name is Jeremiah, whereas, for as long as I can remember (unless I was in trouble, and that was only with my parents and grandmother), everyone called me 'Jeremy'. All of my school records, my health records, all of my tax returns, all have me listed as Jeremy. Of course, I just figured that this was how the government identified me. Then, while digging through a box of documents one day, I found a social security card paperclipped to a birth certificate, both with the name 'Jeremiah'. This confused me, as I have a social security card and birth certificate (dated one year after the original), with the name 'Jeremy'. Of course, by this point, I wasn't sure what to call myself. I wrote to, and called, the Social Security Administration and never got anything back. I've never actually had any problems with my name. I think it's because when you apply for anything even remotely official, and they ask for your social security number, so long as that's unique and you only use the one you have, the one bound to your name, then you should be ok. I'm sure there's a range of 'accepted variations' on names and such. Pat for Patrick, Sam for Samuel, Tim for Timothy, Tom for Thomas, Matt for Matthew, and so on. *shrug*
Now, everyone just calls me 'Greg', anyway.