It's an RPG without the geekyness. Sims 3 is an amazing RPG in that it's completely open ended. You make your own story, do your own thing.
The game developer has all of history to play with. The worlds of IF and the world of dreams. Every genre of popular fiction is his to explore and exploit.
What we get is D&D warmed over.
The Guiding Light will end this fall after a 75 year run on radio and TV.
Will Wright was the first to see that the open-ended storytelling of an American soap opera was a viable concept for a PC game.
The Sims is a "populated world."
There are children here. Seniors. Teens. Pets.
Anyone can take center stage. You can play with the stereotypes of age and sex - or blast them to dust.
Pixar understands this - you need look no farther than Up.
Sexual role playing can be a vital and significant part of The Sims You can be crude and kinky and dangerous if you must. There is at least the option of moving beyond Hot Coffee.
The Supreme Court overturned 68% of all cases it decided to hear last year (and 74% the year before that!)
The likelihood that your case will be heard by the Supremes is really, really, small. Of the 7,000 or so petitions for cert the court receives each year, perhaps 100 will go to oral argument.
Election Day is traditionally a social event - it brings a neighborhood, a community together. The girl scouts will have baked goods on sale. There will time to meet and talk with friends. Kids will get their first taste of "voting" on their own. For seniors it is a matter of pride that they still have the wit and will and strength to participate. These things are important in a democracy.
Now look at the way linux develops...It doesn't have an attachment to the past. So a vendor doesn't have to customize the software to each distro, that's the distro maintainers' job. Distro maintainers in linux are much like the OEMs in the MS world. They're ultimately responsible for making stuff work.
The repository isn't a strength. It is a weakness.
You write - correctly - a 32 bit installer for Windows and it will be backward and forward compatible with everything from Win 3.1 to Win 7. I may exaggerate somewhat, but you will get the idea. If you have followed the rules, your program will also migrate smoothly from one version of Windows to the next.
The door is always wide open.
You can ship your game as a Disney premium in every box of Corn Flakes. Promote it on line. Sell it at WalMart.
You are not hostage to the package manager:
"We'll get there when we get there."
The Windows developer integrates production, marketing and distribution - and he is accustomed to being in the control of the entire process.
If he has a binary to be delivered, he wants the binary delivered - without the user being impeded by a lecture on free and open source.
so what happens when a site known for its great features and well-designed user-interface gets bought by a company with a phobia of both things?
Mod this one up to +10.
There is no more unwieldy a site on the web to navigate than Sourceforge.
It doesn't matter what OS you favor. It doesn't matter if you are thinking rock-solid for the end user or bleeding edge for the inner geek. Trying to extract anything useful from Sourceforge has all the joys of root canal without anesthesia.
The public face of FOSS needs something more inviting, something more along the lines of Download.com.
The loss of fingerprints is not described in the packaging of the drug...It is uncertain when the onset of fingerprint loss will take place in susceptible patients.
It's a side effect of long term use. It isn't well documented. It doesn't always happen. It isn't well-understood.
---and if you are on this drug your long term survival prospects aren't particularly good. Capecitabine
Can anyone explain why headers appear and disappear whenever I try to open a Slashdot page? I cannot think of a site of a site more inconsistent and capricious in its presentation.
Businesses are a good start because if they can get Windwos-equivalent software -- not "Windows-only-just-good-enough-for-most-users" software -- on their employees workstations then the home will follow naturally.
This is the second biggest mistake the geek can make.
The home is not the office. These are two profoundly different markets - and their divergence is older than Commander Keen.
You may have noticed the HDMI jack on your home PC's video card - and the pass through for surround-sound audio.
This isn't your Dad's VGA. This isn't your locked-down corporate desktop.
It is something the Jetsons would recognize.
Media and game play in two and three dimensions. Instant, free, world-wide, communication - voice, video, text and pictures. Shop at home.
Work at home.
But there will be nothing about the tools you use that will be distinctively Linux.
The port to Windows?
Absolutely.
The port to OSX?
More than likely.
Even when FOSS wins, Linux loses - because there is no longer any reason to migrate.
It is difficult to believe that Asus did this out of love for Redmond.
They did it out of love for sales.
Look around you.
WalMart has tried to make a go of every flavor of OEM Linux. Every form factor.
No-name and the Dell brand name.
The dearly departed include Lindows, gOS, Sun Java, Xandros...
and so on endlessly.
Oh, the Merry-Go-Round broke down
It made the darndest sound,
The lights went low,
We both said "Oh!"
And the Merry-Go-Round went
"Um-pah-pah, um-pah-pah, Um-pah! Um-pah! Um-pah-pah!"
WalMart has tried every known sleazeball sales gimmick: the mini board in the maxi case: sold like a flea market BoomBox stereo.
The only customer is the ever-hopeful geek - the sheep who can be sheared as often as you like.
WalMart with its fantastic, enormous, unprecedented, purchasing power has never been able to consistently undersell OEM Windows by so much as $50.
Even when the Linux product is overstock purchased in carload lots. Sweepings off the warehouse floor.
It all comes down to this:
The Windows netbook has better specs than XP desktop of 2001 with integrated graphics. The dual core Atom with ION graphics is not far off.
The back list of MSDOS, Win 9x and Win XP titles that will run on this platform is immense.
You have a viable platform for mobile PC gaming. The legacy PC game. It works with your USB or wireless printer. Your camera.
It is the perfect compliment to your Windows laptop, your desktop replacement, your XBOX 360, your Zune.
That's your sales pitch - clear, concise, easy to understand, and it does its job damn well.
Hell, I expect there to be thousands, if not more, bugs that are not and will never be fixed in open source software, until somebody -other than those actually responsible for the code- submit a patch.
When you look at a project like Firefox, what you see is a soundly financed and internally disciplined operation - that probably isn't all that different from the inner workings of Microsoft.
Then again, I find it pretty funny that DRM, which is quite likely to introduce bug and crippling functionality, is packaged as an "experience update". From TFA (bold mine)
It's funny only until your neighbor's kids put on their NVIDIA glasses to watch - or play - "Monsters vs Aliens 2" on their family's 3D-Ready HDTV.
They are having a great time.
There isn't a monitor, HDTV, sound system or cable to be found anywhere on the market that doesn't support the protected path.
The low-res download for portable media play is part of the deal.
The geek will continue ranting on about DRM - and Microsoft will continue to rack up sales for Win 7 and the next generation XBOX.
As long as there's a >$150 price gap between a comparably equipped desktop and laptop, and we live in a world where $150 is not trivial, the desktop's not going anywhere.
I didn't say that the desktop PC was going away. It's the 70 pound behemoth that is going away.
The easily accessible and wide-open layout that makes a PC a delight to tinker with - but not so much fun for your Dad.
IR does not make the flare invisible. IR scopes have been around since WWII and are readily available and dirt cheap now. What is visible to the good guys will be visible to the bad guys - and all the bad guys need to know is where you have found cover.
I work in a restaurant and we (are supposed to) use chainmail gloves when using sharp blades to prevent accidentally chopping your fingers off.
A Travel Channel feature showed chainmail gloves and armor being used by cooks aboard a cruise ship. The cuisine may have been four-star, but this was still a real, working vessel, exposed to rough seas and rough handling. It was interesting as well to see them using induction cooktops only.
Slashdot Mirror
It strikes me that an online RPG might begin with a book: a three or four year story arc that has a clear beginning, a middle and an end.
It would be a particularly rewarding experience for those who came in and early and stayed the course.
But you could enter and exit at any point with some sense of achievement - and a unique experience of the game.
The Starter Edition will be as visible in North American retail as CP/M.
There is no intelligible reason to offer the product when XP has driven the Linux netbook off the shelves.
You say you want to play a DVD on your Win 7 netbook?
You will be shopping for an external USB drive. It will ship with a Windows player. Iomega Super DVD Writer [Technical Specifications] $30
Life goes on.
It's an RPG without the geekyness.
Sims 3 is an amazing RPG in that it's completely open ended. You make your own story, do your own thing.
The game developer has all of history to play with.
The worlds of IF and the world of dreams. Every genre of popular fiction is his to explore and exploit.
What we get is D&D warmed over.
The Guiding Light will end this fall after a 75 year run on radio and TV.
Will Wright was the first to see that the open-ended storytelling of an American soap opera was a viable concept for a PC game.
The Sims is a "populated world."
There are children here. Seniors. Teens. Pets.
Anyone can take center stage.
You can play with the stereotypes of age and sex - or blast them to dust.
Pixar understands this - you need look no farther than Up.
Sexual role playing can be a vital and significant part of The Sims
You can be crude and kinky and dangerous if you must. There is at least the option of moving beyond Hot Coffee.
The Supreme Court overturned 68% of all cases it decided to hear last year (and 74% the year before that!)
The likelihood that your case will be heard by the Supremes is really, really, small. Of the 7,000 or so petitions for cert the court receives each year, perhaps 100 will go to oral argument.
Election Day is traditionally a social event - it brings a neighborhood, a community together. The girl scouts will have baked goods on sale. There will time to meet and talk with friends. Kids will get their first taste of "voting" on their own. For seniors it is a matter of pride that they still have the wit and will and strength to participate. These things are important in a democracy.
Now look at the way linux develops...It doesn't have an attachment to the past. So a vendor doesn't have to customize the software to each distro, that's the distro maintainers' job. Distro maintainers in linux are much like the OEMs in the MS world. They're ultimately responsible for making stuff work.
The repository isn't a strength. It is a weakness.
You write - correctly - a 32 bit installer for Windows and it will be backward and forward compatible with everything from Win 3.1 to Win 7. I may exaggerate somewhat, but you will get the idea. If you have followed the rules, your program will also migrate smoothly from one version of Windows to the next.
The door is always wide open.
You can ship your game as a Disney premium in every box of Corn Flakes. Promote it on line. Sell it at WalMart.
You are not hostage to the package manager:
"We'll get there when we get there."
The Windows developer integrates production, marketing and distribution - and he is accustomed to being in the control of the entire process.
If he has a binary to be delivered, he wants the binary delivered - without the user being impeded by a lecture on free and open source.
If you are working for a non profit how do you have customers?
Your company has a catalog to mail.
Invoices. Product samples.
Who do you think assembles the logo branded coffee mug on your desk?
Prints your labels? Licks your stamps?
There are thousands of little jobs like these that supplement the income of the elderly, the blind and disabled.
It's sub-minimum wage. Piece work.
If you are quick and agile - all things considered - you might just make enough to budget broadband internet and cable.
If nothing more, it gets you out of the house.
so what happens when a site known for its great features and well-designed user-interface gets bought by a company with a phobia of both things?
Mod this one up to +10.
There is no more unwieldy a site on the web to navigate than Sourceforge.
It doesn't matter what OS you favor. It doesn't matter if you are thinking rock-solid for the end user or bleeding edge for the inner geek. Trying to extract anything useful from Sourceforge has all the joys of root canal without anesthesia.
The public face of FOSS needs something more inviting, something more along the lines of Download.com.
The incident happened in December 2008.
The loss of fingerprints is not described in the packaging of the drug...It is uncertain when the onset of fingerprint loss will take place in susceptible patients.
It's a side effect of long term use. It isn't well documented. It doesn't always happen. It isn't well-understood.
---and if you are on this drug your long term survival prospects aren't particularly good. Capecitabine
The letter in the Annuals of Oncology appeared online today. Fingerprints May Vanish With Cancer Drug
Can anyone explain why headers appear and disappear whenever I try to open a Slashdot page? I cannot think of a site of a site more inconsistent and capricious in its presentation.
Also excellent reasons not to use Vista and Windows 7.
Not really.
SolSuite Solitaire has been quietly - and successfully - migrating players to Vista and The Ribbon.
The solitaire player is as stereotypical a portrait of the Windows user as you'll find anywhere.
If the transition has been easy for him, it will be easy for anyone.
Businesses are a good start because if they can get Windwos-equivalent software -- not "Windows-only-just-good-enough-for-most-users" software -- on their employees workstations then the home will follow naturally.
This is the second biggest mistake the geek can make.
The home is not the office. These are two profoundly different markets - and their divergence is older than Commander Keen.
You may have noticed the HDMI jack on your home PC's video card - and the pass through for surround-sound audio.
This isn't your Dad's VGA. This isn't your locked-down corporate desktop.
It is something the Jetsons would recognize.
Media and game play in two and three dimensions. Instant, free, world-wide, communication - voice, video, text and pictures. Shop at home.
Work at home.
But there will be nothing about the tools you use that will be distinctively Linux.
The port to Windows?
Absolutely.
The port to OSX?
More than likely.
Even when FOSS wins, Linux loses - because there is no longer any reason to migrate.
They did it out of love for sales.
Look around you.
WalMart has tried to make a go of every flavor of OEM Linux. Every form factor.
No-name and the Dell brand name.
The dearly departed include Lindows, gOS, Sun Java, Xandros...
and so on endlessly.
Oh, the Merry-Go-Round broke down
It made the darndest sound,
The lights went low,
We both said "Oh!"
And the Merry-Go-Round went
"Um-pah-pah, um-pah-pah, Um-pah! Um-pah! Um-pah-pah!"
WalMart has tried every known sleazeball sales gimmick: the mini board in the maxi case: sold like a flea market BoomBox stereo.
The only customer is the ever-hopeful geek - the sheep who can be sheared as often as you like.
WalMart with its fantastic, enormous, unprecedented, purchasing power has never been able to consistently undersell OEM Windows by so much as $50.
Even when the Linux product is overstock purchased in carload lots. Sweepings off the warehouse floor.
It all comes down to this:
The Windows netbook has better specs than XP desktop of 2001 with integrated graphics. The dual core Atom with ION graphics is not far off.
The back list of MSDOS, Win 9x and Win XP titles that will run on this platform is immense.
You have a viable platform for mobile PC gaming. The legacy PC game. It works with your USB or wireless printer. Your camera.
It is the perfect compliment to your Windows laptop, your desktop replacement, your XBOX 360, your Zune.
That's your sales pitch - clear, concise, easy to understand, and it does its job damn well.
And therein lies the problem. I shouldn't need a great computer to run the operating system.
Define "operating system."
Define "great computer."
If raw power is there and raw power is affordable, why shouldn't the operating system make use of it?
Unless I know the target audience of your website how am I to know what these stats really mean?
Hell, I expect there to be thousands, if not more, bugs that are not and will never be fixed in open source software, until somebody -other than those actually responsible for the code- submit a patch.
When you look at a project like Firefox, what you see is a soundly financed and internally disciplined operation - that probably isn't all that different from the inner workings of Microsoft.
Then again, I find it pretty funny that DRM, which is quite likely to introduce bug and crippling functionality, is packaged as an "experience update". From TFA (bold mine)
It's funny only until your neighbor's kids put on their NVIDIA glasses to watch - or play - "Monsters vs Aliens 2" on their family's 3D-Ready HDTV.
They are having a great time.
There isn't a monitor, HDTV, sound system or cable to be found anywhere on the market that doesn't support the protected path.
The low-res download for portable media play is part of the deal.
The geek will continue ranting on about DRM - and Microsoft will continue to rack up sales for Win 7 and the next generation XBOX.
The same resolution as a very successful mobile gaming platform.
What has Microsoft ever gotten right?
Perhaps its time Slashdot trashed the stained glass window and the Borg icon. We might see fewer of these quick and lazy mod-ups.
Now, 911. This issue has been brought up against every form of VoIP since the begining. I have to ask... does it really matter that much?
Trust me on this one.
It matters a lot - and this is a lesson you do not want to learn the hard way.
"Ingested Foreign Object."
I was on the line - but I couldn't speak.
"Carbon Monoxide Poisoning."
I was on the line - but I couldn't think.
that's not true if you have a angled roof in the northeast. extreme cold does not always mean snow.
As long as there's a >$150 price gap between a comparably equipped desktop and laptop, and we live in a world where $150 is not trivial, the desktop's not going anywhere.
I didn't say that the desktop PC was going away. It's the 70 pound behemoth that is going away.
The easily accessible and wide-open layout that makes a PC a delight to tinker with - but not so much fun for your Dad.
IR does not make the flare invisible. IR scopes have been around since WWII and are readily available and dirt cheap now. What is visible to the good guys will be visible to the bad guys - and all the bad guys need to know is where you have found cover.
A Travel Channel feature showed chainmail gloves and armor being used by cooks aboard a cruise ship. The cuisine may have been four-star, but this was still a real, working vessel, exposed to rough seas and rough handling. It was interesting as well to see them using induction cooktops only.
The 1 1/2" LCD may solve the simpler problems of lighting and composition - but it is not the full sized photographic print.