Too much work is done creating some story that surrounds the game and not enough on the game itself. I thought we learned our lesson in the 90s with FMV games putting more importance on that, but these days we just call the FMV "non-interactive cutscenes" and do pretty much the same crap as before.
I miss the days where you hit start and BAM, you're playing the game. Maybe a small story gets told at the beginning (preferably skippable without losing anything, just some framing story that says why you're there or something) but in general you play the goddamn game and not have to worry about the designer's delusion of grandeur that he's making some awesome interactive movie (Metal Gear Solid, I'm looking DIRECTLY AT YOU, though thank goodness the scenes are skippable!).
I seriously believe that gaming has reached a terrible low point in the last five years and that it will take a crash like the one that happened in the early 80s to make it all right again. Sadly it won't happen, because today's "gamers" have been fooled into believing that this is how gaming should be.
That's because there is not much difference in even a high-quality standard def CRT with a DVD signal running to it and a HDTV with DVD or even Blu-Ray running to it when one is sitting at a proper viewing distance.
People have been seriously deluded by this whole "HD" phenomenon/hoax lately, and I'm frankly sick of it. Unless you are sitting closely and CAREFULLY watching for details, there is not a lot of difference in a quality SD CRT and even a quality LCD/Plasma. I dare you to be able to tell much difference at a decent viewing distance. What makes LCD/plasma look more "HD" to people is that these overdrive the colors making the picture look a bit (unnaturally) brighter than it should, making the picture artificially more "vivid" and thus more "clear" and "HD" to people who want to believe that it's somehow better. Also, the way the picture is drawn on LCDs and plasma (and it has nothing to do with the response time of the TV) makes any motion a blurry mess with horrible tearing artifacts everywhere. This doesn't happen on CRT even though it actually has a refresh rate due to the way it is drawn. Something about how the pixels are drawn (staying illuminated, I'll bet) on LCD/plasma makes it this way.
Is "HD" actually better? I can't argue that it isn't. The picture IS actually in "higher definition", technically. However, at this point HD technology is not sufficiently advanced over standard definition to make that much of a difference. LCDs and plasmas (and LCD computer monitors) simply have zero advantages (besides possibly power consumption) over CRT at this time for anyone to waste their money on this horrible stopgap solution pushed onto us by companies tired of people not spending any large amount of money on new televisions.
Odd that Firefox was spun off from Mozilla because Mozilla was too bloated and heavy, and now we're back around where Firefox is going to be (is?) the bloated one -- and the new Mozilla, SeaMonkey, is actually light and simple compared to Firefox.
So I've switched to SeaMonkey. So long, Firefox. I've used you since the early days when you were known as Phoenix. I shan't be using you any more, given the direction you're heading.
Amount of mercury from a clean energy plant: 0 Amount of change possible: 100%
Amount of change possible in a CFL: 0%
The argument doesn't work. You can always change an energy source to be cleaner.
I'm so happy there's a backlash. I cannot stand how they look, their humming, and the mercury in every one. It's criminal that we are changing technology for the worse these days.
Microsoft's just doing what they do best. No, not technology -- marketing. They create their own buzz and news that everything's awesomely great in Microsoftland to convince people who don't look any deeper to find the real truth.
It's simplicity over complexity. Same as people thinking all these wonderful flawed new technologies like cell phones, HDTVs, HDDVD/BluRay, and so on are better just because they are new, and they've been brainwashed to think that way and call anyone else that questions the wonderous new technology a luddite and stuck in the past somehow.
NAT (and by the way, in response to another, no, NAT is not a firewall, but generally it's done in the same place, in front of the devices/systems/computers have hooked up to them, and this is what I meant -- or are you naive enough to think that firewalls can be used on the system you're trying to protect?) done at a single entry point for one IP address is much easier to manage and is all that is necessary in most cases because in general, you do not need every single device or system to be fully connected. Sure, you can hook up multiple devices with multiple v6 IPs behind a firewall/router/whatever you want, but really, what's the point? You can basically turn your argument around and say that what might be necessary for YOUR needs isn't necessary at all for MOST needs, and the solution that is the simplest for the most needs should be the one that is implemented, and that is IPv4, not the insane complexity of v6.
And mods: I've said it before, I'll say it again. Just because you DISAGREE with me, does NOT make it flamebait. Now mod my original post back up.
And why the hell would anyone want a route to his toaster? With NAT, you specify exactly what you do and do not want exposed to the outside world. You can make it completely invisible if you want, or certain ports, or fully and completely open. With v6, you've unnecessarily exposed something that you don't exactly want open, and would have to firewall every single device connected to your "wonderful" new world of everything connected to v6.
Just because it's SHINY AND NEW and allows you to give every TV, toaster, camera, and dildo in your house an IP address doesn't make it better. Intelligent use of v4 with NAT is just fine.
(First, Slashdot: why does the Reply button for a new comment have to be a button? I want to reply in a new tab, and I can't open a new tab from a button.)
Now the main issue: What's up with the article link? hhttp:wwwwiredcomtechbizmedianews200711doubleclick doesn't look like any URL I've ever seen.
Take them outside, with the smokers. You're just as annoying as they are. I have a cell, but I'm not rude enough to stand in a store yapping away on the damn thing. If I need to make a call, I'll go outside. If I get a call, it's on vibrate, and I'll answer it on my way outside.
Sure, it might be slightly inconvenient to me at times, but at least it's not rude to others.
Because we are all overworked and thrown out of our natural rhythms. Not everyone is comfortable with getting up at 5AM to go to work; I honestly believe that "morning people" and "night people" exist, and that night people are being abused by being forced to keep the same hours as "morning people".
And we've come so far technologically and socially but we still have even more demands put on us every day. 40+ hour week can be a bit much if you have tons of other things to do during non-work hours.
We're supposed to be advancing as a society, not becoming a train wreck. Either pull back on our responsibilities or our work hours, and let us get some rest.
Except that anyone can create a repository that you can add to Synaptic (or via the commandline) to let you install anything you want. Some of these could enable and disable optional features that the official repos don't, though in general we in the Linux world generally select and deselect optional features via the program itself.
No DRM, just fancy-ass AJAX page-turning effects. You can still download a version of the book or grab individual pages with no problems (they're scanned pages).
"I have heard so many times, in so many different arguments, that you can't/shouldn't legislate morality. The reality is, all law is based on morality. Anyone that uses the argument that you shouldn't make a rule or law based on some principal of morality is simply trying to sell an incompatible principal of morality that he or she doesn't want a rule or law to forbid. "
Opera blocks each component on the entire site you're currently on. So if the site itself has some scripting and you want to enable it, go to NoScript and say Allow from (sitename). But if there is some javascript, flash, or java from an external source (ads, for example), these won't get enabled unless you also go into NoScript and select Allow From EvilAdServer. With Opera, you only get Enable and Disable, and that means everything gets enabled, which I don't want.
It's something you just need to try out with NoScript. Until Opera gets something like that, I can't use it.
Until Opera lets me turn on/off Javascript/Flash/etc per source (not per-site) like I can with Firefox and Noscript, I can't switch to Opera. NoScript is the *only* thing keeping me on Firefox.
That's my point going right over your head. I said stores "bought" copies to sell or load on computers BUT HAVE NOT SOLD THEM YET. Does Coke count stores buying Coke to sell to their customers as a "sale"? I hope not.
And flamebait my ass. Seriously, 40 MILLION copies of Vista? You seriously believe with all the negative press and reports of NO ONE buying it that there are this many copies out there?
Microsoft is lying, and buying their way out of their failure, as usual, and you all are falling for it. Microsoft needs to be punished for this sort of behavior, because they can't fail on their own as long as they have their near-monopoly and excessive wealth to prop them up.
If hoping a company would fail for breaking the normal rules of being punished for releasing an inferior product is flamebait, then fuck you, mods.
Diablo II had cutscenes? Really? I don't remember any, I must have skipped them to get to the GAMEPLAY.
Really, who the FUCK cares about a noninteractive story in a videogame? Videogames are supposed to be about having the player create actions and events by himself; anything that gets in the way of that is absolutely useless. Maybe give a small explanation about what's going on at the beginning via text, but get it out of the way quickly and let me PLAY THE GODDAMN GAME.
Most of modern "gaming", if you can even call it that, sickens me. We didn't get 30 hours of non-interactive "storyline" back in the old days, and the games were better because of it. (No, not ALL old games, but the best old games beat the best new games any day of the week, and that's not just rose-tinted nostalgia talking, despite what you think.)
Getting rid of PE in school can only be a good thing. Education is about learning, and learning good habits about exercise and such doesn't mean that you have to go and perform mindless team games or even DDR. PE only encourages the whole garbage that is team sports and makes them more important than actual education to most schools.
They want to do team sports like football and such, make it separate from actual school. It's no wonder our schools aren't worth crap for actual education; we focus more on whether we can beat Rival School X next week than actually teaching kids how to learn and how to THINK FOR THEMSELVES. Instead, we "teach" them to memorize facts, which actually teaches them nothing but how to be a robot in society.
Yes, our society has everything screwed up, in my view. Removing PE won't fix everything, but it's one of many steps in the right direction.
If people wouldn't run to their doctor every time they get a little sniffle, we wouldn't have this problem.
Let your body fight off problems on its own. Only go for help when it's really life-threatening. Your "busy" life can wait a few days while you get better.
They want their pet format to win, so they've decided that since they sold 6 blu-ray disks to HD-DVD's 3 disks last month, their crappy format that no one is buying is the winner.
Buy a clue, Sony (and the rest of the world hoping these useless formats are going to catch on anytime soon): 99.999% (pulled out of my ass, but I'm pretty sure it's VERY close to being right) of consumers will continue to buy plain ol' DVDs for a long time. Their stupid new format just isn't even on the radar of most consumers. I'd wager that people are still buying more VHS videotapes than Blu-Ray disks.
Congratulations on being the most popular format of the 37 people who have a BluRay or HD-DVD player. Now STFU while plain DVD continues kicking your ass for years to come.
Slashdot Mirror
Too much work is done creating some story that surrounds the game and not enough on the game itself. I thought we learned our lesson in the 90s with FMV games putting more importance on that, but these days we just call the FMV "non-interactive cutscenes" and do pretty much the same crap as before.
I miss the days where you hit start and BAM, you're playing the game. Maybe a small story gets told at the beginning (preferably skippable without losing anything, just some framing story that says why you're there or something) but in general you play the goddamn game and not have to worry about the designer's delusion of grandeur that he's making some awesome interactive movie (Metal Gear Solid, I'm looking DIRECTLY AT YOU, though thank goodness the scenes are skippable!).
I seriously believe that gaming has reached a terrible low point in the last five years and that it will take a crash like the one that happened in the early 80s to make it all right again. Sadly it won't happen, because today's "gamers" have been fooled into believing that this is how gaming should be.
That's because there is not much difference in even a high-quality standard def CRT with a DVD signal running to it and a HDTV with DVD or even Blu-Ray running to it when one is sitting at a proper viewing distance.
People have been seriously deluded by this whole "HD" phenomenon/hoax lately, and I'm frankly sick of it. Unless you are sitting closely and CAREFULLY watching for details, there is not a lot of difference in a quality SD CRT and even a quality LCD/Plasma. I dare you to be able to tell much difference at a decent viewing distance. What makes LCD/plasma look more "HD" to people is that these overdrive the colors making the picture look a bit (unnaturally) brighter than it should, making the picture artificially more "vivid" and thus more "clear" and "HD" to people who want to believe that it's somehow better. Also, the way the picture is drawn on LCDs and plasma (and it has nothing to do with the response time of the TV) makes any motion a blurry mess with horrible tearing artifacts everywhere. This doesn't happen on CRT even though it actually has a refresh rate due to the way it is drawn. Something about how the pixels are drawn (staying illuminated, I'll bet) on LCD/plasma makes it this way.
Is "HD" actually better? I can't argue that it isn't. The picture IS actually in "higher definition", technically. However, at this point HD technology is not sufficiently advanced over standard definition to make that much of a difference. LCDs and plasmas (and LCD computer monitors) simply have zero advantages (besides possibly power consumption) over CRT at this time for anyone to waste their money on this horrible stopgap solution pushed onto us by companies tired of people not spending any large amount of money on new televisions.
There, it had to be said.
Odd that Firefox was spun off from Mozilla because Mozilla was too bloated and heavy, and now we're back around where Firefox is going to be (is?) the bloated one -- and the new Mozilla, SeaMonkey, is actually light and simple compared to Firefox.
So I've switched to SeaMonkey. So long, Firefox. I've used you since the early days when you were known as Phoenix. I shan't be using you any more, given the direction you're heading.
Amount of mercury from a clean energy plant: 0
Amount of change possible: 100%
Amount of change possible in a CFL: 0%
The argument doesn't work. You can always change an energy source to be cleaner.
I'm so happy there's a backlash. I cannot stand how they look, their humming, and the mercury in every one. It's criminal that we are changing technology for the worse these days.
Microsoft's just doing what they do best. No, not technology -- marketing. They create their own buzz and news that everything's awesomely great in Microsoftland to convince people who don't look any deeper to find the real truth.
It's simplicity over complexity. Same as people thinking all these wonderful flawed new technologies like cell phones, HDTVs, HDDVD/BluRay, and so on are better just because they are new, and they've been brainwashed to think that way and call anyone else that questions the wonderous new technology a luddite and stuck in the past somehow.
NAT (and by the way, in response to another, no, NAT is not a firewall, but generally it's done in the same place, in front of the devices/systems/computers have hooked up to them, and this is what I meant -- or are you naive enough to think that firewalls can be used on the system you're trying to protect?) done at a single entry point for one IP address is much easier to manage and is all that is necessary in most cases because in general, you do not need every single device or system to be fully connected. Sure, you can hook up multiple devices with multiple v6 IPs behind a firewall/router/whatever you want, but really, what's the point? You can basically turn your argument around and say that what might be necessary for YOUR needs isn't necessary at all for MOST needs, and the solution that is the simplest for the most needs should be the one that is implemented, and that is IPv4, not the insane complexity of v6.
And mods: I've said it before, I'll say it again. Just because you DISAGREE with me, does NOT make it flamebait. Now mod my original post back up.
And why the hell would anyone want a route to his toaster? With NAT, you specify exactly what you do and do not want exposed to the outside world. You can make it completely invisible if you want, or certain ports, or fully and completely open. With v6, you've unnecessarily exposed something that you don't exactly want open, and would have to firewall every single device connected to your "wonderful" new world of everything connected to v6.
Just because it's SHINY AND NEW and allows you to give every TV, toaster, camera, and dildo in your house an IP address doesn't make it better. Intelligent use of v4 with NAT is just fine.
I knew something was up when I was walking down the street and heard "SEEEEEGAAAAAA!", then something about a fast hedgehog.
(First, Slashdot: why does the Reply button for a new comment have to be a button? I want to reply in a new tab, and I can't open a new tab from a button.)
Now the main issue: What's up with the article link? hhttp:wwwwiredcomtechbizmedianews200711doubleclick doesn't look like any URL I've ever seen.
Take them outside, with the smokers. You're just as annoying as they are. I have a cell, but I'm not rude enough to stand in a store yapping away on the damn thing. If I need to make a call, I'll go outside. If I get a call, it's on vibrate, and I'll answer it on my way outside.
Sure, it might be slightly inconvenient to me at times, but at least it's not rude to others.
Because we are all overworked and thrown out of our natural rhythms. Not everyone is comfortable with getting up at 5AM to go to work; I honestly believe that "morning people" and "night people" exist, and that night people are being abused by being forced to keep the same hours as "morning people".
And we've come so far technologically and socially but we still have even more demands put on us every day. 40+ hour week can be a bit much if you have tons of other things to do during non-work hours.
We're supposed to be advancing as a society, not becoming a train wreck. Either pull back on our responsibilities or our work hours, and let us get some rest.
Except that anyone can create a repository that you can add to Synaptic (or via the commandline) to let you install anything you want. Some of these could enable and disable optional features that the official repos don't, though in general we in the Linux world generally select and deselect optional features via the program itself.
You're thinking the Windows way. Stop it.
No DRM, just fancy-ass AJAX page-turning effects. You can still download a version of the book or grab individual pages with no problems (they're scanned pages).
it should be hard to read.
"I have heard so many times, in so many different arguments, that you can't/shouldn't legislate morality. The reality is, all law is based on morality. Anyone that uses the argument that you shouldn't make a rule or law based on some principal of morality is simply trying to sell an incompatible principal of morality that he or she doesn't want a rule or law to forbid. "
Someone hasn't played Ultima V.
Opera blocks each component on the entire site you're currently on. So if the site itself has some scripting and you want to enable it, go to NoScript and say Allow from (sitename). But if there is some javascript, flash, or java from an external source (ads, for example), these won't get enabled unless you also go into NoScript and select Allow From EvilAdServer. With Opera, you only get Enable and Disable, and that means everything gets enabled, which I don't want.
It's something you just need to try out with NoScript. Until Opera gets something like that, I can't use it.
Until Opera lets me turn on/off Javascript/Flash/etc per source (not per-site) like I can with Firefox and Noscript, I can't switch to Opera. NoScript is the *only* thing keeping me on Firefox.
WHOOOOOOSH!
That's my point going right over your head. I said stores "bought" copies to sell or load on computers BUT HAVE NOT SOLD THEM YET. Does Coke count stores buying Coke to sell to their customers as a "sale"? I hope not.
And flamebait my ass. Seriously, 40 MILLION copies of Vista? You seriously believe with all the negative press and reports of NO ONE buying it that there are this many copies out there?
Microsoft is lying, and buying their way out of their failure, as usual, and you all are falling for it. Microsoft needs to be punished for this sort of behavior, because they can't fail on their own as long as they have their near-monopoly and excessive wealth to prop them up.
If hoping a company would fail for breaking the normal rules of being punished for releasing an inferior product is flamebait, then fuck you, mods.
Gates and Ballmer bought just to get this figure.
No goddamn way Vista sold that many. Maybe bought by STORES to sell or preload on computers, but actual SALES? Not even possible.
Diablo II had cutscenes? Really? I don't remember any, I must have skipped them to get to the GAMEPLAY.
Really, who the FUCK cares about a noninteractive story in a videogame? Videogames are supposed to be about having the player create actions and events by himself; anything that gets in the way of that is absolutely useless. Maybe give a small explanation about what's going on at the beginning via text, but get it out of the way quickly and let me PLAY THE GODDAMN GAME.
Most of modern "gaming", if you can even call it that, sickens me. We didn't get 30 hours of non-interactive "storyline" back in the old days, and the games were better because of it. (No, not ALL old games, but the best old games beat the best new games any day of the week, and that's not just rose-tinted nostalgia talking, despite what you think.)
Getting rid of PE in school can only be a good thing. Education is about learning, and learning good habits about exercise and such doesn't mean that you have to go and perform mindless team games or even DDR. PE only encourages the whole garbage that is team sports and makes them more important than actual education to most schools.
They want to do team sports like football and such, make it separate from actual school. It's no wonder our schools aren't worth crap for actual education; we focus more on whether we can beat Rival School X next week than actually teaching kids how to learn and how to THINK FOR THEMSELVES. Instead, we "teach" them to memorize facts, which actually teaches them nothing but how to be a robot in society.
Yes, our society has everything screwed up, in my view. Removing PE won't fix everything, but it's one of many steps in the right direction.
All the bugs in Windows are certainly featured in my decision to stay far, far away from it.
If people wouldn't run to their doctor every time they get a little sniffle, we wouldn't have this problem.
Let your body fight off problems on its own. Only go for help when it's really life-threatening. Your "busy" life can wait a few days while you get better.
for i in /usr/bin/a*; do whatis `basename "$i"`; done
They want their pet format to win, so they've decided that since they sold 6 blu-ray disks to HD-DVD's 3 disks last month, their crappy format that no one is buying is the winner.
Buy a clue, Sony (and the rest of the world hoping these useless formats are going to catch on anytime soon): 99.999% (pulled out of my ass, but I'm pretty sure it's VERY close to being right) of consumers will continue to buy plain ol' DVDs for a long time. Their stupid new format just isn't even on the radar of most consumers. I'd wager that people are still buying more VHS videotapes than Blu-Ray disks.
Congratulations on being the most popular format of the 37 people who have a BluRay or HD-DVD player. Now STFU while plain DVD continues kicking your ass for years to come.