The Getaway was just an utterly terrible game. Something's just sooo wrong when the best anyone can say in its favor is that it has a perfectly realistic map of the city. Real-life cities don't, after all, actually make for good settings for chase scenes in movies OR games. A fun TV pastime for me is to watch chase scenes in movies that take place here in San Francisco, and try to figure out what real route must have been followed.
I'd have no problem with a UK-centric game. But the map notwithstanding, the actual GAME in The Getaway was awful. Now... if Rockstar, OTOH, were to give London the GTA treatment (I believe they did once, back in the PS1 days.), I bet that people the world over, including Americans, would be lined up to buy it by the millions.
Apparently, HFS+ does. Because the first time I launch an executable I downloaded from the internet, Finder warns me and gives me the option to abort or continue. It does that wether I downloaded it with Safari or Firefox. And I presume it would so the same for Omniweb or Opera or whatever.
So why, exactly, would I need or want that functionality essentially duplicated in one browser or another, when I already have it in the Finder?
In general we are EDUCATED to avoid these things. But we've developed no natural immunity to their poisons. Nor have we even developed a dislike to them. Improperly done fugu sashimi that will kill you tastes just as delicious as the correctly prepared, and much sought after, dish that will just numb your lips. To this day, a handful of people die of fugu poison every year.
The mushrooms are an even better example. A fair number of people die from eating the wrong wild mushrooms every year. By the accounts of the lucky survivors, they taste just fine. But just half a cap of the destroying angel, which is the one that looks like the button mushroom, is certain death without immediate and intense medical treatment.
We haven't evolved ANY natural defense to either. We educate the hell out of people, though. To be licensed to prepare fugu takes YEARS of training and apprenticeship. And virtually every outdoorsy or survival book you'll see beats it over your head NOT to eat wild mushrooms. But that's ALL a function of society... not a change in our bodies.
Do hemlock, ricin, nightshade, and cyanide ring a bell?
Some poisonous mushrooms are so toxic that a single bite will destroy your liver, requiring a transplant if you want to live, and are lucky enough to get to medical help in the first place. Said mushrooms are virtually indistinguishable from the common button mushrooms in every grocery store and on every pizza.
Nature has PLENTY of toxins which we are not at all equipped to deal with. The above are just some well-known examples off the top of my head, and I haven't even mentioned a single venomous animal there.
My own bout with cancer was in the early-mid '90s. Just twenty years before that, it would not have been diagnosed as such. I would have just had some mysterious disease, would have gone untreated, and died. My diagnosis was made possible by medical imaging techniques that were invented in the '70s... made possible by the microchip becoming ubiquitous. Before CT and MRI scans, MAYBE a particularly ballsy doctor would have had a 1 in 100 chance of making the cancer diagnosis by engaging in exploratory surgery. *shudder*
But before the '80s at the earliest, chances are that I wouldn't have been a "cancer patient". I'd just be some mysteriously dead guy.
Come on... it looks from the trailer like at least one scene takes place in the warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is being stored. Maybe the toad can accidentally look into it and get liquified.
.... pretty much everyone involved with that abomination would be blacklisted, 1950's style, and never allowed to work in Hollywood again. It really was THAT terrible, IMO. Peter Cullen and Hugo Weaving may be forgiven, considering all they contributed was voiceover work. But otherwise, that should have been a career-ender. (Then again, I said the same thing of Michael Bay after Pearl Harbor... *sigh*)
Because Michael Dell is a loud-mouthed blowhard who, a few years back, was going on about how Macs were such shit that he was going to execute a hostile takeover of Apple, shut the company down, liquidate, and refund the proceeds to the shareholders.
That rubbed many in the Mac community, both inside and out of Cupertino, the wrong way something fierce. And Mac users can be just as notorious for their long memory when they've been slighted, as they are for their loyalty when you treat them well. Thus, the special enmity with dell. HP, in contrast, just sits there and sells computers, without going out of their way to antagonize anyone. So they don't draw the same kind of ire.
.... everything (and more) that goes in my full-sized tower at work, which includes enough fans running to power a small aircraft at takeoff; to fit in the inch or so behind my monitor and be virtually silent. Thus, I can use the space that said tower would otherwise occupy for other things; and I can sleep in the same room as the Mac as well.
> I'm not against the idea of games as teaching aides, I simply haven't seen > very many effective implementations of the concept.
A couple of examples of very VERY effective educational games from my own childhood (Though you'll have to find an Apple ][ emulator to play them.)...
Rocky's Boots and Robot Odyssey.
Sure, I learned a lot of from some other educational games too. But all that Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego trivia will really only be useful if I ever find myself on Jeopardy. But if you do value said trivia, and you are downloading that Apple ][ emulator anyway, I can recommend them as highly effective. But I use the lessons that I first learned in Rocky's Boots and Robot Odyssey every day at work. And those same lessons gave me a significant head start over the other freshmen when I started college. Who would ever thought that figuring out how to make an electric boot kick some colored blocks so a raccoon would dance for me, or figuring out how to make a robot fetch a subway token, could have proven so bloody useful?!?!? But they did.
Really though... I can't emphasize enough. Apple ][ emulator, Rocky's Boots, and then Robot Odyssey. Those two are the ultimate "stealth" educational games. They're damn fun and rewarding. And they will teach your kids a solid foundation of extraordinarily valuable lessons they *WILL* thank you for later in life.
.... I have no doubt at all as to their potential effectiveness. And if I ever decide to have kids, I hope that I can work some kind of educational gaming into their upbringing. I kind of despair at the prospect though. Occasionally I wonder through the kids/educational shelves of Best Buy or the Apple Store, and I can't help but notice what a lineup of utter crap that "educational gaming" has available these days.
And it's really just sad, considering that I *DID* in fact learn a lot with educational games. But where in the world (of gaming) is Carmen Sandiego now? Where is this generation's Oregon Trail? Why is no one filling the shoes of Rocky's Boots (haha... i make funny pun) and Robot Odyssey?!?!?
... was sequels. I don't think 2010 was quite so bad as you make it out to be... though nowhere nearly as good as the first, it was okay. 2061 was so bad I had forgotten it even existed until I read one of the articles about Clarke's death. and 3001 was just utterly awful... but at least it was short.
And then there's Rama. Rendezvous With Rama is still one of my favorite Science Fiction novels. I can still picture the inside of the thing in my head... right down to that goofy message-in-a-bottle trick they used to send dispatches down from the hub to basecamp; and it's been YEARS since I read it. So when I found out that he had written sequels I was thrilled. When I found them (three, IIRC) in the local used book store, I was even more thrilled. When I *read* them... Well... Let's just say that I'm STILL a bit bitter that I'll never get that time back,
Clarke should have just stuck with writing entirely new stories. Because he was just terrible with the follow-up.
The last time *I* had the displeasure of flying the unfriendly skies; I waited in line for over an hour for a fifteen minute harassment session while the tsa knuckledraggers ransacked my carry-on, damn near felt up my privates, and accused me of being everything from a terrorist to an anarchist to a communist to a vegan to a drug-smuggler. And this was for a rinky-dink little Southwest flight from the Bay Area to SoCal. In fact, I think I took more time clearing security than I actually did in the air!
So help me... I actually took Amtrack (*shudder*) home... I was so PO'd about the trip down. They were slow and late and incompetent (as usual), but a whole lot less surly and offensive than air travel is these days.
> The fact is that Arabs do have a lot of very legitimate reasons to be mad at the west,
Consider, though, that Latin America has many MANY more reasons to be MUCH angrier at the US than anyone in the Arabic world does. We've fucked them over harder than we ever *thought* about fucking with the middle east. And we were doing it for a hundred years before your average american, save for bible scholars, even noticed that the middle east was there.
In fact, the land I'm sitting on as I type this used to belong to Mexico. And California comprises much more and much nicer land than that miserable little sliver of desert that the UN (Yes... the United Nations... rhetoric to the contrary, modern Israel is NOT the unilateral creation of the US.) decided to repossess and give back to the Israelites.
If imperialistic and oppressive foreign policy were what spawns terrorism and terrorists; then by all rights for every one suicide bomber that Israel or the US forces in Iraq suffers, there should be a good THOUSAND or so coming up from Mexico in particular and Central and South America in general. But as much as they ARE crossing the border in droves; it's not to blow themselves up and murder us, it's to WORK in our farms, factories, restaurants, and construction sites.... to build better lives for themselves and their families.
Maybe the terrorists don't "hate us for our freedoms" like the bushies claim. But it seems to me that there HAS to be a deeper cultural incompatibility that generates the level of hate and extremism. Because "crappy US foreign policy pisses them off" just doesn't cut it.
Though somewhat shocking in their methods, it has to be remembered that Japan's Kamikaze pilots were soldiers, fighting in a declared war, conducting their attacks against military targets and personnel.
There's a world of difference between a lone Kamikaze pilot flying a Zero into a battleship full of sailors, and terrorists hijacking an airliner full of civilians, and flying it into a building filled with more civilians.
"the next poor sap who picks it up" is either a friend of mine, to whom I've loaned the flashlight and I'd have explained the risk. Or it's a *thief* who's stolen the flashlight. And who the hell really CARES if he burns his face off?
Either way, there's not much need for a warning label.
Sometimes it's not the volume or weight that counts, but the footprint.
When I travel, the company only pays for coach. I get an upgrade via miles every so often. And for some destinations, the upgrade to business class is cheap enough that I'll cover the distance myself. But more often than not, I'm stuck in the cattle car in the back.
My old 12-inch powerbook fits and is usable on the fold-down tray table in coach. My 17-inch MacBook Pro does not and is not. So guess which one I take with me when I leave town.
California may be hot if you're from Alaska. Me? I moved here from Florida, and I was chilly pretty much the whole first year I lived here... clear through the summer. Remember, we have that cold ocean current coming down from the arctic controlling our weather; not the east coast's Gulf Stream.
Remember the old Mark Twain quote about how the coldest winter he ever saw was when he was in California for the summer? It's true. Sure, we'll have the occasional 90-degree heat wave. But mostly, it's in the lower 50's now, and it'll be in upper 50's and mid 60's come summer.
All the hard drives are automatically re-imaged nightly. Anything you've installed, changed, or broken, in blown away leaving a fresh demo machine in the morning. If you manage to screw things up too badly, they'll just do it mid-day if they have to.
> Yes, still a step above Best Buy, but the gap is sadly closing > (and it's not because Best Buy's improving). Maybe it's because > of the crowds.....
I think it's because the economy's improved a bit since the Apple retail stores opened. And the best of the geniuses are now working better tech jobs out of the retail sector... as high end as the Apple stores *are*, it's still retail.
Heck, in 2003-4, you could actually find some reasonably competent and knowledgeable people at Frys and CompUSA. Geek Squad even managed to hang on to some decent ones for a couple of years past that. (Free use of the Beetle, plus unlimited gas card, is quite a perk.)
Titanium and steel may very well spark in the manner he describes. But this little gem, so far as I'm concerned, renders everything he says suspect:
it was just aluminum, which doesn't burn.
Aluminum most certianly *DOES* burn. Though fairly difficult to ignite, aluminum burns ferociously and spectacularly and is notoriously difficult to extinguish, as the crew of the HMS Sheffield learned much to their dismay. The fuel of the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters is aluminum. And aluminum is the fuel component of thermite.
I think that the "scientific" opinion of anyone so clueless as to try to claim that aluminum won't burn should be discarded with the lowest grain of salt
Well, you ARE singling out Apple and bashing them for something that's pretty much standard across the entire industry. That speaks to your personal agenda, even if you were civil about it.
Oe perhaps you know of a few consumer electronics companies that DO, as standard procedure, send back the defective parts that are replaced by their warranty/service departments. I know IBM will... if you're a big iron customer, make sure it's written into your service contract, and pay them extra for the privilege. But that's not exactly their consumer electronics division (Which I don't think they even HAVE anymore.). And other than them, I've never had it happen to *me*.
Lawyers may make some pretty asshatted decisions. But they don't send out legal threats and cease & desists as a *JOKE*. That's the sort of thing that can get one disbarred. And if any lawyer at *Apple* pulled a stunt like this as a prank... what do you think his chances would be of surviviing the Wrath of Steve?
Evil and stupid are not the same thing. Lawyers are certainly the first, but seldom the second. Ergo, it's most likely that it's FSJ perpetrating the hoax; and not Apple legal hoaxing him.
When I was a kid, in the boy scouts, we used to play lightsabers with our flashlights. On nights when the fog's rolled in early here in SF, I've seen kids playing lightsabers with the red laser pointers that you gan get for $5 at just about any drug store. I've no doubt that as soon as the green ones get down to about $20 or so, kids are going to be just thrilled that they can be Luke Skywalker now instead of Darth Vader.
WTF are the pigs going to do then? Lock up every kid who plays Star Wars for twenty years of their lives???
Hell... I've been zapped in the face with green lasers before. I used to go out to clubs and raves all the time, and once and a while, the laser guy aims his gear a little low. Yes it's annoying and unpleasant. But you blink, turn away, and get over it. Seeking to harm the laser guy would be just petty, stupid, and priggish. But then, this *is* the police we're talking about here. They really do need to just pull the gigantic stick out of their collective ass.
That really doesn't cut it. Regardless of to whom they've subcontracted which parts of their product; in the end, it's CCP's product and CCP's responsibility. Period. Full stop.
The other reply mentions a Mac-specific WoW issue I wasn't aware of. But still, if you look at the history of how Blizzard handles and delivers cross-platform patches and expansions and compare the results from the two companies; I really don't think there's a question... CCP has been seriously deficient and very sloppy.
Slashdot Mirror
The Getaway was just an utterly terrible game. Something's just sooo wrong when the best anyone can say in its favor is that it has a perfectly realistic map of the city. Real-life cities don't, after all, actually make for good settings for chase scenes in movies OR games. A fun TV pastime for me is to watch chase scenes in movies that take place here in San Francisco, and try to figure out what real route must have been followed.
I'd have no problem with a UK-centric game. But the map notwithstanding, the actual GAME in The Getaway was awful. Now... if Rockstar, OTOH, were to give London the GTA treatment (I believe they did once, back in the PS1 days.), I bet that people the world over, including Americans, would be lined up to buy it by the millions.
cya,
john
Apparently, HFS+ does. Because the first time I launch an executable I downloaded from the internet, Finder warns me and gives me the option to abort or continue. It does that wether I downloaded it with Safari or Firefox. And I presume it would so the same for Omniweb or Opera or whatever.
So why, exactly, would I need or want that functionality essentially duplicated in one browser or another, when I already have it in the Finder?
cya,
john
> We've evolved NOT TO.
No, we haven't.
In general we are EDUCATED to avoid these things. But we've developed no natural immunity to their poisons. Nor have we even developed a dislike to them. Improperly done fugu sashimi that will kill you tastes just as delicious as the correctly prepared, and much sought after, dish that will just numb your lips. To this day, a handful of people die of fugu poison every year.
The mushrooms are an even better example. A fair number of people die from eating the wrong wild mushrooms every year. By the accounts of the lucky survivors, they taste just fine. But just half a cap of the destroying angel, which is the one that looks like the button mushroom, is certain death without immediate and intense medical treatment.
We haven't evolved ANY natural defense to either. We educate the hell out of people, though. To be licensed to prepare fugu takes YEARS of training and apprenticeship. And virtually every outdoorsy or survival book you'll see beats it over your head NOT to eat wild mushrooms. But that's ALL a function of society... not a change in our bodies.
cya,
john
Do hemlock, ricin, nightshade, and cyanide ring a bell?
Some poisonous mushrooms are so toxic that a single bite will destroy your liver, requiring a transplant if you want to live, and are lucky enough to get to medical help in the first place. Said mushrooms are virtually indistinguishable from the common button mushrooms in every grocery store and on every pizza.
Nature has PLENTY of toxins which we are not at all equipped to deal with. The above are just some well-known examples off the top of my head, and I haven't even mentioned a single venomous animal there.
cya,
john
Exactly.
My own bout with cancer was in the early-mid '90s. Just twenty years before that, it would not have been diagnosed as such. I would have just had some mysterious disease, would have gone untreated, and died. My diagnosis was made possible by medical imaging techniques that were invented in the '70s... made possible by the microchip becoming ubiquitous. Before CT and MRI scans, MAYBE a particularly ballsy doctor would have had a 1 in 100 chance of making the cancer diagnosis by engaging in exploratory surgery. *shudder*
But before the '80s at the earliest, chances are that I wouldn't have been a "cancer patient". I'd just be some mysteriously dead guy.
cya,
john
Come on... it looks from the trailer like at least one scene takes place in the warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant is being stored. Maybe the toad can accidentally look into it and get liquified.
cya,
john
.... pretty much everyone involved with that abomination would be blacklisted, 1950's style, and never allowed to work in Hollywood again. It really was THAT terrible, IMO. Peter Cullen and Hugo Weaving may be forgiven, considering all they contributed was voiceover work. But otherwise, that should have been a career-ender. (Then again, I said the same thing of Michael Bay after Pearl Harbor... *sigh*)
cya,
john
Because Michael Dell is a loud-mouthed blowhard who, a few years back, was going on about how Macs were such shit that he was going to execute a hostile takeover of Apple, shut the company down, liquidate, and refund the proceeds to the shareholders.
That rubbed many in the Mac community, both inside and out of Cupertino, the wrong way something fierce. And Mac users can be just as notorious for their long memory when they've been slighted, as they are for their loyalty when you treat them well. Thus, the special enmity with dell. HP, in contrast, just sits there and sells computers, without going out of their way to antagonize anyone. So they don't draw the same kind of ire.
cya,
john
.... everything (and more) that goes in my full-sized tower at work, which includes enough fans running to power a small aircraft at takeoff; to fit in the inch or so behind my monitor and be virtually silent. Thus, I can use the space that said tower would otherwise occupy for other things; and I can sleep in the same room as the Mac as well.
That's worth a little extra to me.
cya,
john
> I'm not against the idea of games as teaching aides, I simply haven't seen
> very many effective implementations of the concept.
A couple of examples of very VERY effective educational games from my own childhood (Though you'll have to find an Apple ][ emulator to play them.)...
Rocky's Boots and Robot Odyssey.
Sure, I learned a lot of from some other educational games too. But all that Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego trivia will really only be useful if I ever find myself on Jeopardy. But if you do value said trivia, and you are downloading that Apple ][ emulator anyway, I can recommend them as highly effective. But I use the lessons that I first learned in Rocky's Boots and Robot Odyssey every day at work. And those same lessons gave me a significant head start over the other freshmen when I started college. Who would ever thought that figuring out how to make an electric boot kick some colored blocks so a raccoon would dance for me, or figuring out how to make a robot fetch a subway token, could have proven so bloody useful?!?!? But they did.
Really though... I can't emphasize enough. Apple ][ emulator, Rocky's Boots, and then Robot Odyssey. Those two are the ultimate "stealth" educational games. They're damn fun and rewarding. And they will teach your kids a solid foundation of extraordinarily valuable lessons they *WILL* thank you for later in life.
cya,
john
.... I have no doubt at all as to their potential effectiveness. And if I ever decide to have kids, I hope that I can work some kind of educational gaming into their upbringing. I kind of despair at the prospect though. Occasionally I wonder through the kids/educational shelves of Best Buy or the Apple Store, and I can't help but notice what a lineup of utter crap that "educational gaming" has available these days.
And it's really just sad, considering that I *DID* in fact learn a lot with educational games. But where in the world (of gaming) is Carmen Sandiego now? Where is this generation's Oregon Trail? Why is no one filling the shoes of Rocky's Boots (haha... i make funny pun) and Robot Odyssey?!?!?
cya,
john
... was sequels. I don't think 2010 was quite so bad as you make it out to be... though nowhere nearly as good as the first, it was okay. 2061 was so bad I had forgotten it even existed until I read one of the articles about Clarke's death. and 3001 was just utterly awful... but at least it was short.
And then there's Rama. Rendezvous With Rama is still one of my favorite Science Fiction novels. I can still picture the inside of the thing in my head... right down to that goofy message-in-a-bottle trick they used to send dispatches down from the hub to basecamp; and it's been YEARS since I read it. So when I found out that he had written sequels I was thrilled. When I found them (three, IIRC) in the local used book store, I was even more thrilled. When I *read* them... Well... Let's just say that I'm STILL a bit bitter that I'll never get that time back,
Clarke should have just stuck with writing entirely new stories. Because he was just terrible with the follow-up.
cya,
john
Well that's just wonderful for you.
The last time *I* had the displeasure of flying the unfriendly skies; I waited in line for over an hour for a fifteen minute harassment session while the tsa knuckledraggers ransacked my carry-on, damn near felt up my privates, and accused me of being everything from a terrorist to an anarchist to a communist to a vegan to a drug-smuggler. And this was for a rinky-dink little Southwest flight from the Bay Area to SoCal. In fact, I think I took more time clearing security than I actually did in the air!
So help me... I actually took Amtrack (*shudder*) home... I was so PO'd about the trip down. They were slow and late and incompetent (as usual), but a whole lot less surly and offensive than air travel is these days.
cya,
john
> The fact is that Arabs do have a lot of very legitimate reasons to be mad at the west,
Consider, though, that Latin America has many MANY more reasons to be MUCH angrier at the US than anyone in the Arabic world does. We've fucked them over harder than we ever *thought* about fucking with the middle east. And we were doing it for a hundred years before your average american, save for bible scholars, even noticed that the middle east was there.
In fact, the land I'm sitting on as I type this used to belong to Mexico. And California comprises much more and much nicer land than that miserable little sliver of desert that the UN (Yes... the United Nations... rhetoric to the contrary, modern Israel is NOT the unilateral creation of the US.) decided to repossess and give back to the Israelites.
If imperialistic and oppressive foreign policy were what spawns terrorism and terrorists; then by all rights for every one suicide bomber that Israel or the US forces in Iraq suffers, there should be a good THOUSAND or so coming up from Mexico in particular and Central and South America in general. But as much as they ARE crossing the border in droves; it's not to blow themselves up and murder us, it's to WORK in our farms, factories, restaurants, and construction sites.... to build better lives for themselves and their families.
Maybe the terrorists don't "hate us for our freedoms" like the bushies claim. But it seems to me that there HAS to be a deeper cultural incompatibility that generates the level of hate and extremism. Because "crappy US foreign policy pisses them off" just doesn't cut it.
cya,
john
Though somewhat shocking in their methods, it has to be remembered that Japan's Kamikaze pilots were soldiers, fighting in a declared war, conducting their attacks against military targets and personnel.
There's a world of difference between a lone Kamikaze pilot flying a Zero into a battleship full of sailors, and terrorists hijacking an airliner full of civilians, and flying it into a building filled with more civilians.
cya,
john
"the next poor sap who picks it up" is either a friend of mine, to whom I've loaned the flashlight and I'd have explained the risk. Or it's a *thief* who's stolen the flashlight. And who the hell really CARES if he burns his face off?
Either way, there's not much need for a warning label.
cya,
john
Sometimes it's not the volume or weight that counts, but the footprint.
When I travel, the company only pays for coach. I get an upgrade via miles every so often. And for some destinations, the upgrade to business class is cheap enough that I'll cover the distance myself. But more often than not, I'm stuck in the cattle car in the back.
My old 12-inch powerbook fits and is usable on the fold-down tray table in coach. My 17-inch MacBook Pro does not and is not. So guess which one I take with me when I leave town.
cya,
john
California may be hot if you're from Alaska. Me? I moved here from Florida, and I was chilly pretty much the whole first year I lived here... clear through the summer. Remember, we have that cold ocean current coming down from the arctic controlling our weather; not the east coast's Gulf Stream.
Remember the old Mark Twain quote about how the coldest winter he ever saw was when he was in California for the summer? It's true. Sure, we'll have the occasional 90-degree heat wave. But mostly, it's in the lower 50's now, and it'll be in upper 50's and mid 60's come summer.
cya,
john
I've a friend who used to work at an Apple store.
All the hard drives are automatically re-imaged nightly. Anything you've installed, changed, or broken, in blown away leaving a fresh demo machine in the morning. If you manage to screw things up too badly, they'll just do it mid-day if they have to.
cya,
john
> Yes, still a step above Best Buy, but the gap is sadly closing
> (and it's not because Best Buy's improving). Maybe it's because
> of the crowds.....
I think it's because the economy's improved a bit since the Apple retail stores opened. And the best of the geniuses are now working better tech jobs out of the retail sector... as high end as the Apple stores *are*, it's still retail.
Heck, in 2003-4, you could actually find some reasonably competent and knowledgeable people at Frys and CompUSA. Geek Squad even managed to hang on to some decent ones for a couple of years past that. (Free use of the Beetle, plus unlimited gas card, is quite a perk.)
cya,
john
Aluminum most certianly *DOES* burn. Though fairly difficult to ignite, aluminum burns ferociously and spectacularly and is notoriously difficult to extinguish, as the crew of the HMS Sheffield learned much to their dismay. The fuel of the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters is aluminum. And aluminum is the fuel component of thermite.
I think that the "scientific" opinion of anyone so clueless as to try to claim that aluminum won't burn should be discarded with the lowest grain of salt
cya
john
Well, you ARE singling out Apple and bashing them for something that's pretty much standard across the entire industry. That speaks to your personal agenda, even if you were civil about it.
Oe perhaps you know of a few consumer electronics companies that DO, as standard procedure, send back the defective parts that are replaced by their warranty/service departments. I know IBM will... if you're a big iron customer, make sure it's written into your service contract, and pay them extra for the privilege. But that's not exactly their consumer electronics division (Which I don't think they even HAVE anymore.). And other than them, I've never had it happen to *me*.
cya,
john
Lawyers may make some pretty asshatted decisions. But they don't send out legal threats and cease & desists as a *JOKE*. That's the sort of thing that can get one disbarred. And if any lawyer at *Apple* pulled a stunt like this as a prank... what do you think his chances would be of surviviing the Wrath of Steve?
Evil and stupid are not the same thing. Lawyers are certainly the first, but seldom the second. Ergo, it's most likely that it's FSJ perpetrating the hoax; and not Apple legal hoaxing him.
cya,
john
Exactly.
When I was a kid, in the boy scouts, we used to play lightsabers with our flashlights. On nights when the fog's rolled in early here in SF, I've seen kids playing lightsabers with the red laser pointers that you gan get for $5 at just about any drug store. I've no doubt that as soon as the green ones get down to about $20 or so, kids are going to be just thrilled that they can be Luke Skywalker now instead of Darth Vader.
WTF are the pigs going to do then? Lock up every kid who plays Star Wars for twenty years of their lives???
Hell... I've been zapped in the face with green lasers before. I used to go out to clubs and raves all the time, and once and a while, the laser guy aims his gear a little low. Yes it's annoying and unpleasant. But you blink, turn away, and get over it. Seeking to harm the laser guy would be just petty, stupid, and priggish. But then, this *is* the police we're talking about here. They really do need to just pull the gigantic stick out of their collective ass.
cya,
john
That really doesn't cut it. Regardless of to whom they've subcontracted which parts of their product; in the end, it's CCP's product and CCP's responsibility. Period. Full stop.
The other reply mentions a Mac-specific WoW issue I wasn't aware of. But still, if you look at the history of how Blizzard handles and delivers cross-platform patches and expansions and compare the results from the two companies; I really don't think there's a question... CCP has been seriously deficient and very sloppy.
cya,
john