Oh, like a dagger in the heart!:) Workbench was the graphical part of the Amiga system.
Was it? This keeps confusing me. I thought the Amiga GUI was part of the AmigaOS ROMs, as the "Intuition" libraries or whatever they were - with "Workbench" as an optional desktop, comparable perhaps to explorer.exe or the KDE kicker/konqueror combo. After all, you'd always get a full windowing environment even when you booted off an empty floppy/harddisk. And you could quit Workbench, but not the GUI.
But this password-less popup is for users who're already logged in as administrators (with a password, I would assume). Yet they'll work as restricted users even in that type of account until they attempt something requiring administrator privileges. Which is when Vista will ask for their approval....Right?
You don't have to be administrator all the damn time anyway, but if you absolutely insist to do it the Win 98 way then you'll have at least one more hoop to jump through.
I don't play any of these games, and this ongoing debate isn't endearing them to me either, but...honesty in a role-playing game? I would've thought experimenting, or escapism - even wish-fulfilment - were part of the appeal, and everyone would be aware of that. Those who shower female characters with gifts are no doubt indulging in their own little fantasies. In a small, modest way you can for a while feel like something you usually can't or don't dare to be - be it a wizard, or not human, or not a guy anymore... or chivalrous. *rolls eyes* What's the point when you have to play as what you're stuck with in real life? You have to do that all the time already.
Hum, not in my case. I did install a number of XP Pro OEM discs both "old" and SP2 without wiping anything at all; you don't have to install to C:\WINDOWS - or even to C:\ at all for that matter. It's hardly elegant (you've still got to take ownership of and manually remove/backup all the orphaned user profiles and such) but it won't "wipe out anything pre-existing" either. Nothing will get lost and if you're lucky most apps will still be running fine without reinstallation. Well, it's good enough for me anyway, but I'm not a business.
What I'm not getting, besides faith itself, is how one could possibly worship a God who they believe to wipe out nations, over and over again, including hundreds? Thousands? Millions? of individuals who're hardly to blame for having been born (whether there or anywhere else), nor for failing to obey the commands of an entity that is described as genocidal and that is, along with said commands, fairly easy to mistake for an invention. Every once in a while I'm being told about God's love and about Jesus caring for the sinners, and then something like your post comes along to make me think that even if I could somehow start to believe, I'd be much better off staying an atheist.
Me too, me too! Admitting my ineptitude, that is, to all these Slashdotters (who I'm sure care a lot);)
Sound Cards are easy nowadays.
Mine isn't. I'm tired of attempting to follow totally unrelated HOWTOs about ALSA, ESD, arts, OSS, JACK, portaudio, Audacity, LADSPA, Ardour and whatnot without ever making any progress because the ALSA soundcard matrix didn't mention that anything I'd record would sound like Darth Vader on helium. And while I'm too bloody incompetent to know why - I'm really not alone with soundcard issues.
Hmm. I may be missing something, but I think you're confusing Choose Your Own Adventure type multiple choice games with the more simulationist, finer-grained parser-based text adventures; the grand-parent post quoted the very first of the latter - the venerable (if primitive) Adventure/Colossal Cave from 1975 (or one of its various, er, mods.)
Popular companies were Infocom, Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9, among others; these days, the form is kept alive by enthusiasts and frequently taken into directions more experimental and/or literary than throw the axe at the dwarf then pick up the gold.
TADS and Inform, incidentally, are the two most widely used Interactive Fiction programming languages. And although that's not their intended purpose, both have also been used for multiple choice games on occasion.
If you're interested, Brass Lantern has a collection of articles for beginners. If you're not, oh well;)
You may be thinking of Josef K, the protagonist of The Trial. The protagonist of The Metamorphosis is called Gregor Samsa (which also matches 'Kafka' in a way). And it wasn't a beetle, nor a roach, but an 'ungeheures Ungeziefer' (roughly 'enormous vermin').
I'd guess it's exactly because you're not a native speaker. Chances are that you've always been fully aware that "you're", "should've" and "they're" expand to "you are" and "should have" and "they are". To a practically newborn native speaker, however, they're little more than sounds to be used in certain circumstances. That's my theory, anyway - could be bullshit.
Maniac Mansion (and its LucasFan Remake) ~ always preferred it to Zak McKracken, Monkey Island et al. One very big house, lots of things to manipulate, NPCs to evade, trick or win over, and always something left to try. The later games felt slow and empty to me. Played on C 64, Amiga, Windows.
Populous and Powermonger ~ atmospheric early Peter Molyneux games. Loved the rain, the birds, the boats... Powermonger was beautiful (although not terribly entertaining in the long run).
Starflight I/II and Star Control II (as The Ur-Quan Masters) ~ they're very, very similar - except Starflight is older and technically more primitive, as well as more serious in tone than the often quite frivolous SC2. 2D space exploration games; artifacts, mysteries, diplomacy, banter, upgrading, mining *sigh*, trading, fighting, and a wee bit of strategy. Epic and very much not "on rails" - you decide on your own what to do when or whether to do it at all. Played on DOS, Amiga, Linux, Windows.
Mercenary: Escape from Targ/The Second City, Damocles, Mercenary III: The Dion Crisis ~ a series of 3D vector graphics space games (although most of the game takes place on the surface and inside buildings). Some annoyingly absurd puzzles, by hindsight (pick up cheese to fly faster). However, the sense of freedom, vastness and complexity they evoked was quite unusual by 80s standards, and there weren't many better games for the Commodore Plus/4 anyway. Played on Plus/4 (Mercenary), Amiga (others). Windows remake of the whole series.
On the less adventurous end of the space game spectrum: Elite, Freespace I/II, Freelancer, Wing Commander...
Ultima IV ~ A real world map, not just dungeons! Towns with trees and ponds and hidden nooks and crannies! Conversations! Secret islands and shrines hidden away in the mountains! Monsters that didn't just pop up out of nowhere! I liked this so much better than the maze-based "puzzle" RPGs of the time. And I really loved the cover art, at the time:). What a change from all the muscle-bound Conan-alikes and horned demons. Played on DOS.
Ultima V ~ The NPCs had houses! You could harvest their crops! They really went to bed at night (though never complained if they found you sleeping in it)! Played on C 64.
Archon ~ most conveniently described as a chess-inspired strategy game with one-on-one combat and unicorns, goblins, banshees and other such mythological critters. Terribly good game, almost managed to feel more ancient-in-a-good-way than chess itself. If I ever wanted a coffee table with a built in video game, this would be it. Played on Atari 600/800XL, C 64, Amiga. Dunno if the remakes are any good.
(Net-)Hack. Played on DOS, Amiga, Windows, Linux, Psion...
Moonsweeper and Beamrider ~ I never really understood why those weren't the most popular VCS games... 3D-looking 2D shooters, one smooth and pretty, the other confined to a grid not entirely unlike Tempest and with a growing number of enemies to predict, evade or shoot. Both quite atmospheric. Played on Atari 2600 and 7800.
Many "adventures", by which I used to mean "text adventures". In fact text adventures were among the first computer games I ever saw and I was fascinated by the freedom they seemed to grant the player: you could go where you want and issue any command you could think of. Neither was the case, but I had never used a computer before, was generally impress
The dolphin song, I thought, was one of the better (or more lovable) parts of a not-so-good movie, in part because it was of indeterminable seriousness somewhere between feelgood experience and mystery and in part because it felt rather Adamsy to me in that it sent up the New Agey aspects of intelligent, dimension-travelling dolphins trying to communicate with us doomed, misguided primates by turning it into a "show", just like the mice turned the search for the ultimate question into a show.
I have no idea at all if that was the intention, and I'm not sure I thought it was funny, but I did like it, and so did my friend. So that makes two...
Excuse me for veering off a little, but there's a question I keep asking people (and myself).
Is "holding pictures" meant to be metaphorical in any way? Until recently I thought "I can see it in my mind" was just a flowery way of saying "I am familiar with it". I'm quite blind inside in most mundane states of consciousness - couldn't even visualize a circle, much less whatever happy places people purport to see in meditations. Yet I could probably describe or draw familiar faces or objects as well as or better than the average non-artist.
This is frustrating - it's like I'm imagination-impaired. Daydreaming means thoughts, feelings, concepts, dialogue - words, above all... not that there's anything wrong with it, but something more sensual would be nice every now and then. Same with books (or text adventures)... it's work to get anything other than "noise" out of the descriptions. And I rarely understand where the characters are.
Visual memory's similarly bad. Never ask me for directions; geography's just a jumbled mess of very faint impressions to me with precious few links between them. And reading "fixed" maps - forget about it. They never point in the right direction.
On the other hand, spelling's never been a serious problem for me.
So. Do you people actually see things in your heads? Can you picture a face/scene/object/symbol - and really look at it?
Good point, yes. Something must have happened - too much for a mere prank. I suppose it could still be construed as "something weird happened"-evidence rather than "space travel"-evidence... but yeah, the 'faith' theme took over rather abruptly (it was a government cover-up, obviously, but still). I suppose I just suspend my disbelief rather willingly when I like a movie.
Well, she had recorded hours and hours of static. That suggests something had happened in the 0 seconds of earth-time she was away.
Prior to that revelation, however, she, the scientist, finds herself in a situation not unlike that of her religious friend - she's just had a life-changing experience, she knows she's had it - yet all she has left to go by at that point is, it seems, faith. No evidence, no anything. Had everything been explained, had there been certainty, or had it been yet another little space adventure, the movie would have missed its own point. I'm not sure I agree with that point, nor is it a particularly brilliant point, but I did enjoy that movie more than any of the others in that list.
(I also find Khaaan painfully dull, for reasons I could not adequately explain, so shoot me already.)
That wasn't her dead father, btw., it was an alien lifeform masquerading as her father to "make it easier for her" (whether that makes sense or not) and, perhaps, to make it more mysterious for us. Frankly, I liked how there were but a few scant hints at an interstellar transport network, no more than a short glimpse or two of an illuminated alien city... in a way this was more impressive and felt a lot larger than the over-crowded scenery of several Star Wars films combined.
Slashdot Mirror
But this password-less popup is for users who're already logged in as administrators (with a password, I would assume). Yet they'll work as restricted users even in that type of account until they attempt something requiring administrator privileges. Which is when Vista will ask for their approval. ...Right?
You don't have to be administrator all the damn time anyway, but if you absolutely insist to do it the Win 98 way then you'll have at least one more hoop to jump through.
I don't play any of these games, and this ongoing debate isn't endearing them to me either, but ...honesty in a role-playing game? I would've thought experimenting, or escapism - even wish-fulfilment - were part of the appeal, and everyone would be aware of that. Those who shower female characters with gifts are no doubt indulging in their own little fantasies. In a small, modest way you can for a while feel like something you usually can't or don't dare to be - be it a wizard, or not human, or not a guy anymore... or chivalrous. *rolls eyes* What's the point when you have to play as what you're stuck with in real life? You have to do that all the time already.
Hum, not in my case. I did install a number of XP Pro OEM discs both "old" and SP2 without wiping anything at all; you don't have to install to C:\WINDOWS - or even to C:\ at all for that matter. It's hardly elegant (you've still got to take ownership of and manually remove/backup all the orphaned user profiles and such) but it won't "wipe out anything pre-existing" either. Nothing will get lost and if you're lucky most apps will still be running fine without reinstallation. Well, it's good enough for me anyway, but I'm not a business.
What I'm not getting, besides faith itself, is how one could possibly worship a God who they believe to wipe out nations, over and over again, including hundreds? Thousands? Millions? of individuals who're hardly to blame for having been born (whether there or anywhere else), nor for failing to obey the commands of an entity that is described as genocidal and that is, along with said commands, fairly easy to mistake for an invention. Every once in a while I'm being told about God's love and about Jesus caring for the sinners, and then something like your post comes along to make me think that even if I could somehow start to believe, I'd be much better off staying an atheist.
Mine isn't. I'm tired of attempting to follow totally unrelated HOWTOs about ALSA, ESD, arts, OSS, JACK, portaudio, Audacity, LADSPA, Ardour and whatnot without ever making any progress because the ALSA soundcard matrix didn't mention that anything I'd record would sound like Darth Vader on helium. And while I'm too bloody incompetent to know why - I'm really not alone with soundcard issues.
Does "Worlds Apart" ring a bell, or am I missing something?
Hmm. I may be missing something, but I think you're confusing Choose Your Own Adventure type multiple choice games with the more simulationist, finer-grained parser-based text adventures; the grand-parent post quoted the very first of the latter - the venerable (if primitive) Adventure/Colossal Cave from 1975 (or one of its various, er, mods.)
;)
Popular companies were Infocom, Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9, among others; these days, the form is kept alive by enthusiasts and frequently taken into directions more experimental and/or literary than throw the axe at the dwarf then pick up the gold.
Baf's Guide to the IF-Archive is a good place to start searching; as is the IF Review Conspiracy. Poke around and you'll notice most good games require either a "Z-Code" or "TADS" interpreter (VM); refer to the Inform homepage for a list of UNIX Z-Code interpreters or just go with Zoom right away (link has pretty picture). As for TADS games, here're the Linux TADS 2/3 Playkit and, alternatively, a QT-based TADS 2/3 interpreter.
TADS and Inform, incidentally, are the two most widely used Interactive Fiction programming languages. And although that's not their intended purpose, both have also been used for multiple choice games on occasion.
If you're interested, Brass Lantern has a collection of articles for beginners. If you're not, oh well
Try demoplanet.tv, the homepage shown in the article. That might just be it.
You may be thinking of Josef K, the protagonist of The Trial. The protagonist of The Metamorphosis is called Gregor Samsa (which also matches 'Kafka' in a way). And it wasn't a beetle, nor a roach, but an 'ungeheures Ungeziefer' (roughly 'enormous vermin').
I'd guess it's exactly because you're not a native speaker. Chances are that you've always been fully aware that "you're", "should've" and "they're" expand to "you are" and "should have" and "they are". To a practically newborn native speaker, however, they're little more than sounds to be used in certain circumstances. That's my theory, anyway - could be bullshit.
Well, Microsoft is Google's top result for "http" for some reason and the Firefox address bar doubles as a "I'm feeling lucky!" search box.
Populous and Powermonger ~ atmospheric early Peter Molyneux games. Loved the rain, the birds, the boats... Powermonger was beautiful (although not terribly entertaining in the long run).
Starflight I/II and Star Control II (as The Ur-Quan Masters) ~ they're very, very similar - except Starflight is older and technically more primitive, as well as more serious in tone than the often quite frivolous SC2. 2D space exploration games; artifacts, mysteries, diplomacy, banter, upgrading, mining *sigh*, trading, fighting, and a wee bit of strategy. Epic and very much not "on rails" - you decide on your own what to do when or whether to do it at all. Played on DOS, Amiga, Linux, Windows.
Mercenary: Escape from Targ/The Second City, Damocles, Mercenary III: The Dion Crisis ~ a series of 3D vector graphics space games (although most of the game takes place on the surface and inside buildings). Some annoyingly absurd puzzles, by hindsight (pick up cheese to fly faster). However, the sense of freedom, vastness and complexity they evoked was quite unusual by 80s standards, and there weren't many better games for the Commodore Plus/4 anyway. Played on Plus/4 (Mercenary), Amiga (others). Windows remake of the whole series.
On the less adventurous end of the space game spectrum: Elite, Freespace I/II, Freelancer, Wing Commander...
Ultima IV ~ A real world map, not just dungeons! Towns with trees and ponds and hidden nooks and crannies! Conversations! Secret islands and shrines hidden away in the mountains! Monsters that didn't just pop up out of nowhere! I liked this so much better than the maze-based "puzzle" RPGs of the time. And I really loved the cover art, at the time :). What a change from all the muscle-bound Conan-alikes and horned demons. Played on DOS.
Ultima V ~ The NPCs had houses! You could harvest their crops! They really went to bed at night (though never complained if they found you sleeping in it)! Played on C 64.
Archon ~ most conveniently described as a chess-inspired strategy game with one-on-one combat and unicorns, goblins, banshees and other such mythological critters. Terribly good game, almost managed to feel more ancient-in-a-good-way than chess itself. If I ever wanted a coffee table with a built in video game, this would be it. Played on Atari 600/800XL, C 64, Amiga. Dunno if the remakes are any good.
(Net-)Hack. Played on DOS, Amiga, Windows, Linux, Psion...
Moonsweeper and Beamrider ~ I never really understood why those weren't the most popular VCS games... 3D-looking 2D shooters, one smooth and pretty, the other confined to a grid not entirely unlike Tempest and with a growing number of enemies to predict, evade or shoot. Both quite atmospheric. Played on Atari 2600 and 7800.
Many "adventures", by which I used to mean "text adventures". In fact text adventures were among the first computer games I ever saw and I was fascinated by the freedom they seemed to grant the player: you could go where you want and issue any command you could think of. Neither was the case, but I had never used a computer before, was generally impress
I have no idea at all if that was the intention, and I'm not sure I thought it was funny, but I did like it, and so did my friend. So that makes two...
I don't think I see what you mean. Isn't this the very institute that the "Rats of NIMH" were named after? Seems more like a... non-coincidence, then.
But not doing anything wrong (apart from that being utterly subjective) is in itself a good reason I should be allowed to do so in private.
Could be a pun: "Nix 'em". (Am I expecting too much?)
Heh. I suppose I did provoke that question... the answer would be more or less the same as for "daydreaming", of course.
Excuse me for veering off a little, but there's a question I keep asking people (and myself).
Is "holding pictures" meant to be metaphorical in any way? Until recently I thought "I can see it in my mind" was just a flowery way of saying "I am familiar with it". I'm quite blind inside in most mundane states of consciousness - couldn't even visualize a circle, much less whatever happy places people purport to see in meditations. Yet I could probably describe or draw familiar faces or objects as well as or better than the average non-artist.
This is frustrating - it's like I'm imagination-impaired. Daydreaming means thoughts, feelings, concepts, dialogue - words, above all... not that there's anything wrong with it, but something more sensual would be nice every now and then. Same with books (or text adventures)... it's work to get anything other than "noise" out of the descriptions. And I rarely understand where the characters are.
Visual memory's similarly bad. Never ask me for directions; geography's just a jumbled mess of very faint impressions to me with precious few links between them. And reading "fixed" maps - forget about it. They never point in the right direction.
On the other hand, spelling's never been a serious problem for me.
So. Do you people actually see things in your heads? Can you picture a face/scene/object/symbol - and really look at it?
The impacts of all the meteorites and otherstuff that's hitting that atmospherically unshielded rockball all the time, I think.
You're right, actually. She wasn't told this at all.
Good point, yes. Something must have happened - too much for a mere prank. I suppose it could still be construed as "something weird happened"-evidence rather than "space travel"-evidence... but yeah, the 'faith' theme took over rather abruptly (it was a government cover-up, obviously, but still). I suppose I just suspend my disbelief rather willingly when I like a movie.
Prior to that revelation, however, she, the scientist, finds herself in a situation not unlike that of her religious friend - she's just had a life-changing experience, she knows she's had it - yet all she has left to go by at that point is, it seems, faith. No evidence, no anything. Had everything been explained, had there been certainty, or had it been yet another little space adventure, the movie would have missed its own point. I'm not sure I agree with that point, nor is it a particularly brilliant point, but I did enjoy that movie more than any of the others in that list.
(I also find Khaaan painfully dull, for reasons I could not adequately explain, so shoot me already.)
That wasn't her dead father, btw., it was an alien lifeform masquerading as her father to "make it easier for her" (whether that makes sense or not) and, perhaps, to make it more mysterious for us. Frankly, I liked how there were but a few scant hints at an interstellar transport network, no more than a short glimpse or two of an illuminated alien city... in a way this was more impressive and felt a lot larger than the over-crowded scenery of several Star Wars films combined.