So they're called "Wiener" in Germany and "Frankfurter" in Austria? Heh. Anyway, I seem to have been kinda right as well: "Deutschländer" is the term for Turks who return to their native country after spending decades living in Germany, according to this page.
Hor auf, so laut in dieser nervigen Sprache zu reden.
Stop talking so loudly in this annoying language.
("nervig" as in "getting on your nerves")
Willst du Arger, Grossmaul?
Looking for ("do you want") trouble, big mouth?
It's actually "Hör" and "Ärger" ("Arger" would be "worse", comparative form of "arg". "Hor" isn't a word in German; at least none that I'm aware of it.)
Any Deutchlanders want to correct our ignorance on these fine phrases?
Deutschländers;) - though I think that term denotes the "Germany-born" children of Turkish immigrants.
Nah, it's been through some er... improvements already. I'm actually ready to format/reinstall, just don't feel like reinstalling and -configuring a thousand apps right now
I hear crap like this all the time and can't help but wonder what kind of retard you have to be to have something like this happen?
Geez. I'm sorry I don't magically know why something stopped working. Blaming it on SP2 might have been knee-jerkish, of course. But so is assuming everyone who has something like this happen is a retard.
How many weather monitors and stock tickers do you have running?
None. Neither Ad-Aware, nor Spybot S&D, nor AVG, ClamWin, McAfee or whatever the fuck else I tried over the years ever found a single piece of malware.
Did you do periodically unplug the computer during the OS install?
No, it bluescreens all by itself during the OS install. Yes, I guess I do have an "obscure hardware configuration" (or something's broken.)
and these people will fuck up a Dell and they'll fuck up a Mac and they'll fuck up any Linux box that they ever touch because they, like you apparently, are fuck ups.
Well, that of course explains it adequately. We excrete an ethereal fuckupogenic substance that seeps into operating systems. It's purely coincidental if it lies dormant until SP2.
If "ever since SP2 all Windows Updates "fail" to install" for you, maybe you should think about re-installing the OS and then come bitch about having to reinstall your OS.
It's a deal. Bye.
It was definitely in use in the 1990 and probably much earlier; I remember a fellow student asking our English teacher what "Quartex sucks" meant. (Teacher guessed it meant "stinks".)
"it's slower than a 330-pound defensive tackle with two bad knees on a muddy field"
Oh. It was weirder when I read that as 330-baud.
"designed by orangutans without opposable thumbs"
Wouldn't they still have two opposable big toes left, though? Beat that, hoo-mahns.
Re:Best paint program UI: Microsoft Paint
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GIMP 2.2 Released
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· Score: 1
Ever used Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint? I remember drawing full-screen images with it, pixel by manually anti-aliased pixel until my eyes saw everything in terms of 320*256*32 (colours, not colour depth.) - I'd still use it for GUI elements and the like, if I could. The web comic 'Unicorn Jelly' was drawn in DPaint, too. Press "b" and grab some area of the canvas: it's a brush; press "j" for the scratchpad page; entire palette visible at all times; only one image open at a time... okay, so maybe it's clunky and primitive now, but I had to reminisce for a moment and I truly believe it'd still make a great icon editor.
Yes, I guess I 'automatically' ignored that part of the OP because it's just not something I often have a reason to do (-- though it did work each of the less-than-ten times I did it.)
Yes. Doing so right now. I do use the runas command a lot but mostly to install/remove/update software or for, well, other such administrative things.
Very few non-admin apps I use seems to "really" require root access except (though not always) for installation, although some (and a large number of games) may look like they do; what they actually want is write to their program files folders, which is, by default, off-limits to mere users. For those I do loosen the restrictions, which I suppose is better than running them as 'root' with full access to the registry etc. pp.
The only "app" I can think of right now that requires "root access" but shouldn't is Diablo II.
It is annoying, considering even modern software -- even some ported from Linux, which should know better -- assumes it can do whatever it wants. There're standard places for user-level settings both in the Windows equivalent to/home and in the registry, why not use them? *shrug*
My biggest gripe with Windows software is that some of it *still* doesn't use the OS' own %userprofile% but would rather implement its own funny profile management that typically needs to be taught where to save settings, temp files, logs, especially when you want to avoid writing to the app's own directory... and even then it's not always clear whether those are global settings pertinent to all users, profile-dependent settings, user-account-dependent settings... why? Is it too much to ask to honour the fact that there already *are* multiple user accounts, not all of them with admin privileges? Don't those look like a perfectly appropriate place for user-level settings? Is something wrong with that, or with me that I don't get it?
Trillian, which I rather like otherwise, really confuses me there.
Maybe IF isn't quite there yet. Maybe it's being held back by it's object-manipulation-centric adventure game roots and the limits of its parsers and world models.
Nothing wrong with that, but some IF really isn't "games" anymore. By that I don't mean it's "something better", just that it's got little to do with, say, the rather formulaic in-jokey mock transcripts you see posted here. Even so, this story-oriented and/or experimental IF still functions along much the same lines as a "Zork"-style dungeon romp might, and the conventions thereof may be off-putting as far as outsiders are concerned. I'm not sure about that; I'm quite familiar with them and have been for a long time -- maybe there's a certain blindness as to just how demanding and frustrating even "puzzleless" IF can be for someone who expects something as user-friendly as a book.
"Readers" unfamiliar with IF may, for example, be disappointed to realise that IF does not, in fact, understand "natural language", but merely a subset (which the IF community itself is of course perfectly familiar with); "say 'what is your name?'" for instance is almost guaranteed to fail, but the seemingly more unlikely "put everything except the wooden flute in the battered tin box then lock the box with the silver key" might well work. (No, "Thy Dungeonman" is not an accurate representation of even the most crudely written TADS or Inform game.)
But I believe there's no reason why it couldn't be considered "legitimate" literature already. I think that an engrossing story, whether it's IF, novel, movie..., is *always* "interactive" to some degree simply because it engages (provokes, inspires, soothes, angers,...) the reader; however, IF can turn the reader/player into an accomplice, can make them feel as though they were actually directly responsible for them, can adapt the story in response to their input.
Oh, I'm sure a book can do some of that -- you might identify with one of the characters, you might linger on a paragraph, re-read it, picture it, you might "take the story to bed with you" and re-arrange it in your mind... no, a book isn't as static as is sometimes said. But it's still not you who causes the story to happen, even if you are partly responsible for whatever impression it has on you.
That to me is one of the reasons why something being a game-of-sorts, or a descendant of games, doesn't have to mean it's trivial. IF is not just a simulation with a player turned loose and making choices until some objective is reached by whatever means available. (Sure, you can treat it as such, as a puzzle whose logic is to be figured out and then turned against it...)
Another reason is the way IF can experiment with the relationship between player/player character. Part of the appeal of the "game" "Rameses" is trying to see whether you can change the protagonist's behaviour and attitude -- he's a depressed, lonely student, he's feeling terribly out of place, he's dwelling on the past... and he won't turn into a carpe-diem'ing adventurer just because you want him to. I'm not saying IF is actually and/or intrinsically better at letting you experience another's mind, but it's different to kinda be half the protagonist wrestling with the other 50%. It's different to try to change and fail than to just read about somebody not trying. Or something like that.
Give IF some time and if it doesn't actually get less accessible than it already is it'll eventually be "recognised" (more).
There are a couple, yes. The three most important formats are Z-Code (interpreter: Frotz, among others), T.A.G. (interpreter: T.A.M., Windows and Linux) and Floyd (interpreter: Floyd, Windows and Linux). As for games, some are on the textfire.de webzine's "Grand Prix" (competition) page (that's comp02, there're also 03 and 04). Of these I'd recommed "Der Angstbaum" (for T.A.M.), a fantasy adventure that almost plays itself (what puzzles there are aren't very difficult); if you're into spaceships and such try Starrider (for Z-Code interpreters). Good luck!
Many games didn't age gracefully. Example: 3D games on the C64 (say: Elite, Star Wars, Cholo, Castle Master...), or adventure games and RPGs with lots of "insert disk 4, side B". But some actually had great gameplay. Paradroid, Maniac Mansion, Giana Sisters or Archon don't really need better graphics, they're great just the way they are.
Sure, modern games can have great gameplay as well. Sure, they were repetitive, and I don't see myself playing them all night. But that's good sometimes. No movies to watch, no intros to [Esc], no twenty-five key combos to memorize, no options to tweak, just "press fire to start" (if you're using an emulator, at least).
Besides, the sound wasn't horrible on the C64. Maybe it's an acquired taste, and maybe it takes some nostalgia ("it's this BREADBOX that's doing this!"), but the SID was nothing like the bleepers in similar computers. Just listen to Monty on the Run, Wizball, The Last Ninja, Warhawk, Panther... I'm not surprised there're still musicians ("music hackers"?) writing SID music.
The advent of sample-based music (Amiga) was a bit of a letdown, actually. Most of it sounds so cheap now. It tried to sound like it was more than it actually was: computer music. The SID on the other hand was... pure. Purely synthetic music with only very, very few samples.
Also ~ I like the minimalism. It's sorta artistic... I see something beautiful in 2600 Moonsweeper or C64 Wizball, Last Ninja, or Robin of the Wood. I don't necessarily need everything to look "real".
And everything was a bit more innocent, there wasn't as much of a division between the googly-eyed, popsicular Nintendo fare and gritty, apocalyptic military-themed games. Though perhaps that was because you can't do that much with 160*200 pixels and 16 colours.
Ahwell. Maybe I'm just a nostalgic dweeb, not really a gamer.
Aren't used Commodores the only remaining source of SIDs for SID soundcards etc.? If SIDs are all you're after it doesn't necessarily matter if the keyboard is buried under a layer of mid-80s teenage dietary fallout...
Kornilov then goes on to declare that because of this rush Polyus was created by combining components from several current projects. The interface between Polyus and the Energia booster was adapted from the Buran Space Shuttle. The central module was adapted from a module for the Mir 2 Space Station.
I'm happy that with the newest 7.5+ versions the ad-bar is much less visible.
The "toolbar" that contains the ad disappears when you go fullscreen and does not come back when you resize or maximize the fullscreen window. And since F4, Ctrl+F8 etc. will bring back the various UI elements, it's easy to avoid the ad altogether, even in windowed mode. (At least on Windows.)
Opera isn't all that expensive, though. I've not used Opera for a long, long time until I downloaded it on a whim last week, and if my current infatuation turns out to be more than just that, I'll buy it (once I can).
M2 is cool. A fast, hassle-free, ridiculously easy to set up (if somewhat unusual) browser-integrated cross-indexing mail and news client that automatically creates views for mailing lists, contacts and so on... what's not to like? Maybe they could drop the labels/filters distinction, but as I said I've been using it for just a few days now.
And the IRC client is likely good enough for my needs. Now if only Opera wasn't eating up between 40 and 60 MB (45 at the moment with just three and unread mail open)... seems a bit much.
Slashdot Mirror
So they're called "Wiener" in Germany and "Frankfurter" in Austria? Heh. Anyway, I seem to have been kinda right as well: "Deutschländer" is the term for Turks who return to their native country after spending decades living in Germany, according to this page.
Oont vuss hahbn die-neh eltun im kreeg geh-makht?
Vilst doo er-gah, grose-mowl?
Hur owf, zoe lout in dee-zah nair-feegn shpra-khe tsu rehdn!
Dine shvants ist zoe kline, duss es neh mouse nikht merkt, venn doo zee fixt!
Not sure how you plan to pronounce any of that once you're out of teeth, but, eh, good luck..
Hor auf, so laut in dieser nervigen Sprache zu reden.
;) - though I think that term denotes the "Germany-born" children of Turkish immigrants.
Stop talking so loudly in this annoying language.
("nervig" as in "getting on your nerves")
Willst du Arger, Grossmaul?
Looking for ("do you want") trouble, big mouth?
It's actually "Hör" and "Ärger" ("Arger" would be "worse", comparative form of "arg". "Hor" isn't a word in German; at least none that I'm aware of it.)
Any Deutchlanders want to correct our ignorance on these fine phrases?
Deutschländers
Mh, I guess you were talking to the AC.
Nah, it's been through some er... improvements already. I'm actually ready to format/reinstall, just don't feel like reinstalling and -configuring a thousand apps right now
I hear crap like this all the time and can't help but wonder what kind of retard you have to be to have something like this happen?
Geez. I'm sorry I don't magically know why something stopped working. Blaming it on SP2 might have been knee-jerkish, of course. But so is assuming everyone who has something like this happen is a retard.
How many weather monitors and stock tickers do you have running?
None. Neither Ad-Aware, nor Spybot S&D, nor AVG, ClamWin, McAfee or whatever the fuck else I tried over the years ever found a single piece of malware.
Did you do periodically unplug the computer during the OS install?
No, it bluescreens all by itself during the OS install. Yes, I guess I do have an "obscure hardware configuration" (or something's broken.)
and these people will fuck up a Dell and they'll fuck up a Mac and they'll fuck up any Linux box that they ever touch because they, like you apparently, are fuck ups.
Well, that of course explains it adequately. We excrete an ethereal fuckupogenic substance that seeps into operating systems. It's purely coincidental if it lies dormant until SP2.
If "ever since SP2 all Windows Updates "fail" to install" for you, maybe you should think about re-installing the OS and then come bitch about having to reinstall your OS.
It's a deal. Bye.
Considering that ever since SP2 all Windows Updates "fail" to install for me. The fun never stops.
It was definitely in use in the 1990 and probably much earlier; I remember a fellow student asking our English teacher what "Quartex sucks" meant. (Teacher guessed it meant "stinks".)
Oh. It was weirder when I read that as 330-baud.
"designed by orangutans without opposable thumbs"
Wouldn't they still have two opposable big toes left, though? Beat that, hoo-mahns.
Ever used Electronic Arts' Deluxe Paint? I remember drawing full-screen images with it, pixel by manually anti-aliased pixel until my eyes saw everything in terms of 320*256*32 (colours, not colour depth.) - I'd still use it for GUI elements and the like, if I could. The web comic 'Unicorn Jelly' was drawn in DPaint, too. Press "b" and grab some area of the canvas: it's a brush; press "j" for the scratchpad page; entire palette visible at all times; only one image open at a time... okay, so maybe it's clunky and primitive now, but I had to reminisce for a moment and I truly believe it'd still make a great icon editor.
Yes, I guess I 'automatically' ignored that part of the OP because it's just not something I often have a reason to do (-- though it did work each of the less-than-ten times I did it.)
Oh dear, it's surfing porn already. ...
Yes. Doing so right now. I do use the runas command a lot but mostly to install/remove/update software or for, well, other such administrative things.
Very few non-admin apps I use seems to "really" require root access except (though not always) for installation, although some (and a large number of games) may look like they do; what they actually want is write to their program files folders, which is, by default, off-limits to mere users. For those I do loosen the restrictions, which I suppose is better than running them as 'root' with full access to the registry etc. pp.
The only "app" I can think of right now that requires "root access" but shouldn't is Diablo II.
It is annoying, considering even modern software -- even some ported from Linux, which should know better -- assumes it can do whatever it wants. There're standard places for user-level settings both in the Windows equivalent to /home and in the registry, why not use them? *shrug*
PS: Only ever used the free version.
My biggest gripe with Windows software is that some of it *still* doesn't use the OS' own %userprofile% but would rather implement its own funny profile management that typically needs to be taught where to save settings, temp files, logs, especially when you want to avoid writing to the app's own directory... and even then it's not always clear whether those are global settings pertinent to all users, profile-dependent settings, user-account-dependent settings... why? Is it too much to ask to honour the fact that there already *are* multiple user accounts, not all of them with admin privileges? Don't those look like a perfectly appropriate place for user-level settings? Is something wrong with that, or with me that I don't get it?
Trillian, which I rather like otherwise, really confuses me there.
Nothing wrong with that, but some IF really isn't "games" anymore. By that I don't mean it's "something better", just that it's got little to do with, say, the rather formulaic in-jokey mock transcripts you see posted here. Even so, this story-oriented and/or experimental IF still functions along much the same lines as a "Zork"-style dungeon romp might, and the conventions thereof may be off-putting as far as outsiders are concerned. I'm not sure about that; I'm quite familiar with them and have been for a long time -- maybe there's a certain blindness as to just how demanding and frustrating even "puzzleless" IF can be for someone who expects something as user-friendly as a book.
"Readers" unfamiliar with IF may, for example, be disappointed to realise that IF does not, in fact, understand "natural language", but merely a subset (which the IF community itself is of course perfectly familiar with); "say 'what is your name?'" for instance is almost guaranteed to fail, but the seemingly more unlikely "put everything except the wooden flute in the battered tin box then lock the box with the silver key" might well work. (No, "Thy Dungeonman" is not an accurate representation of even the most crudely written TADS or Inform game.)
But I believe there's no reason why it couldn't be considered "legitimate" literature already. I think that an engrossing story, whether it's IF, novel, movie..., is *always* "interactive" to some degree simply because it engages (provokes, inspires, soothes, angers,...) the reader; however, IF can turn the reader/player into an accomplice, can make them feel as though they were actually directly responsible for them, can adapt the story in response to their input.
Oh, I'm sure a book can do some of that -- you might identify with one of the characters, you might linger on a paragraph, re-read it, picture it, you might "take the story to bed with you" and re-arrange it in your mind... no, a book isn't as static as is sometimes said. But it's still not you who causes the story to happen, even if you are partly responsible for whatever impression it has on you.
That to me is one of the reasons why something being a game-of-sorts, or a descendant of games, doesn't have to mean it's trivial. IF is not just a simulation with a player turned loose and making choices until some objective is reached by whatever means available. (Sure, you can treat it as such, as a puzzle whose logic is to be figured out and then turned against it...)
Another reason is the way IF can experiment with the relationship between player/player character. Part of the appeal of the "game" "Rameses" is trying to see whether you can change the protagonist's behaviour and attitude -- he's a depressed, lonely student, he's feeling terribly out of place, he's dwelling on the past... and he won't turn into a carpe-diem'ing adventurer just because you want him to. I'm not saying IF is actually and/or intrinsically better at letting you experience another's mind, but it's different to kinda be half the protagonist wrestling with the other 50%. It's different to try to change and fail than to just read about somebody not trying. Or something like that.
Give IF some time and if it doesn't actually get less accessible than it already is it'll eventually be "recognised" (more).
There are a couple, yes. The three most important formats are Z-Code (interpreter: Frotz, among others), T.A.G. (interpreter: T.A.M., Windows and Linux) and Floyd (interpreter: Floyd, Windows and Linux). As for games, some are on the textfire.de webzine's "Grand Prix" (competition) page (that's comp02, there're also 03 and 04). Of these I'd recommed "Der Angstbaum" (for T.A.M.), a fantasy adventure that almost plays itself (what puzzles there are aren't very difficult); if you're into spaceships and such try Starrider (for Z-Code interpreters). Good luck!
(Agh, now I'd delete that comment if I could..)
Many games didn't age gracefully. Example: 3D games on the C64 (say: Elite, Star Wars, Cholo, Castle Master...), or adventure games and RPGs with lots of "insert disk 4, side B". But some actually had great gameplay. Paradroid, Maniac Mansion, Giana Sisters or Archon don't really need better graphics, they're great just the way they are.
Sure, modern games can have great gameplay as well. Sure, they were repetitive, and I don't see myself playing them all night. But that's good sometimes. No movies to watch, no intros to [Esc], no twenty-five key combos to memorize, no options to tweak, just "press fire to start" (if you're using an emulator, at least).
Besides, the sound wasn't horrible on the C64. Maybe it's an acquired taste, and maybe it takes some nostalgia ("it's this BREADBOX that's doing this!"), but the SID was nothing like the bleepers in similar computers. Just listen to Monty on the Run, Wizball, The Last Ninja, Warhawk, Panther... I'm not surprised there're still musicians ("music hackers"?) writing SID music.
The advent of sample-based music (Amiga) was a bit of a letdown, actually. Most of it sounds so cheap now. It tried to sound like it was more than it actually was: computer music. The SID on the other hand was... pure. Purely synthetic music with only very, very few samples.
Also ~ I like the minimalism. It's sorta artistic... I see something beautiful in 2600 Moonsweeper or C64 Wizball, Last Ninja, or Robin of the Wood. I don't necessarily need everything to look "real".
And everything was a bit more innocent, there wasn't as much of a division between the googly-eyed, popsicular Nintendo fare and gritty, apocalyptic military-themed games. Though perhaps that was because you can't do that much with 160*200 pixels and 16 colours.
Ahwell. Maybe I'm just a nostalgic dweeb, not really a gamer.
Aren't used Commodores the only remaining source of SIDs for SID soundcards etc.? If SIDs are all you're after it doesn't necessarily matter if the keyboard is buried under a layer of mid-80s teenage dietary fallout...
(sorry, it's my first Soviet Russia joke. Also my last)
And crossovering this "battle station" with "1984", that gives us "War is Peace-2". Hm! Is that profound or am I procrastinating?
- such as making a conscious decision to imprison, mutilate, vivisect, shock, drug, kill, slice, dice and eat "other" mice?
[...] they could be killed, he said.
Ah, whew. For a moment I was worried they were being unethical or something.
The "toolbar" that contains the ad disappears when you go fullscreen and does not come back when you resize or maximize the fullscreen window. And since F4, Ctrl+F8 etc. will bring back the various UI elements, it's easy to avoid the ad altogether, even in windowed mode. (At least on Windows.)
Opera isn't all that expensive, though. I've not used Opera for a long, long time until I downloaded it on a whim last week, and if my current infatuation turns out to be more than just that, I'll buy it (once I can).
M2 is cool. A fast, hassle-free, ridiculously easy to set up (if somewhat unusual) browser-integrated cross-indexing mail and news client that automatically creates views for mailing lists, contacts and so on... what's not to like? Maybe they could drop the labels/filters distinction, but as I said I've been using it for just a few days now.
And the IRC client is likely good enough for my needs. Now if only Opera wasn't eating up between 40 and 60 MB (45 at the moment with just three and unread mail open)... seems a bit much.