My phone has never been on any other mode than "silent". I carry it in my pocket anyway, so I don't need some blaring tone to tell me someone's calling.
Provided that the car is not a crap car (Lada...) and is in good condition, and that the driver is reasonably skilled, a car is not unsafe to drive around in, in neither normal nor poor weather.
Just because a car is bigger and heavier doesn't mean it's better equipped for handling poor weather conditions. Many SUVs sold now don't even have AWD or 4WD. A 2WD SUV is worse than a 2WD car in poor weather, mostly because of the added weight and momentum.
It's not my problem if someone uses a metric fuckton of money to buy a huge house, it's theirs. People can do whatever they want with their money. Some things are just dumb, like soccer moms driving around in Ford Excursions (which in itself is a completely ridiculous vehicle).
A 5000s/ft house won't directly harm anyone. An SUV will. The SUVs have made regular cars unsafe, due to the problems in a SUV on car crash.
Why should everyone drive an SUV when they're big, slow, and less economic?
I don't have a beef with trucks, since they're primarily work-related vehicles, and because their drivers have recieved extra truck-related driving lessons. Therefore, they know how dangerous the vehicle they're driving can be to other trafficants, and because of that, they are generally more careful around them.
You're protecting yourself by driving a big-ass truck/SUV, but at the cost of the safety of the people around you.
What do you think happens when an SUV hits a regular car? The car (along with its contents) is obliterated, and the SUV is relatively unharmed. This is because the bumpers on just about all SUVs are located way above the bumpers on cars.
A car on car collision is what cars a designed to handle. They are designed to hit each other bumper to bumper. Not bumper to windshield.
If people need a truck or an SUV for moving their boat, or driving around big loads, of course they should be allowed to have a bigger and stronger vehicle, but most people don't need them.
When driving a large (sometimes very large) vehicle around normal-sized cars, you have to be extra careful. Professional truck drivers are taught this, but Susan Soccermom is not, and thereby she will be a danger to others on the road.
Hell, when I come to think about it, one of the major phone companys here are offering cheap cellphone rates, IF you are prepared to be interrupted a couple of seconds every minute to hear an ad.
TDC (TeleDanmark back then) tried this a couple of years ago here in Denmark. Every couple of minutes, your call would be interrupted by a 10-second ad.
Put mildly, it was not very popular. Not even the free calls could make up for the ads.
If I'm going above the legal speed limit in the fast lane (which is 110km/h here in Denmark) on a hiway and some schmuck in a big BMW or Audi comes up behind me and begins flashing his lights like a maniac because he thinks I'll pull out of "his lane", I will tap my brakes, and when I let him pass, he will get the one-finger salute. If you're being an asshole to me, I'll make sure to be an asshole to you, too.
Of course, since I'm a somewhat responsible driver, I won't hog the fast lane, more than absolutely neccesary. But some people seem to think that they own the road, and that pisses me off.
What the hell is wrong with bunny-hopping, strafe-jumping and circle-jumping?
Doing these things is in no way exploiting anything, and especially in the case of Quake3, it's an intentional part of the game! In fact, it takes a lot of practice to be able to strafe- and circle-jump a level without hitting walls or killing yourself. In a way, it's a kind of finger acrobatics.
If the designers didn't want people to jump around like maniacs, they would have either put in some kind of stamina system or a slight decceleration upon hitting the ground after a jump.
And exactly why do you think it's a flaw that you character doesn't get tired in the pure deathmatch games like Quake? I'm guessing it's because that's what people want. It's a part of the gameplay. If you don't want to play a game where people jump around, play a "realistic" FPS instead.
I choose to see it like this:
If it's in the game, and can be done without the help of external software, it's legal and fair game, whether it's climbing on top of tripmines (Half-Life), rocket jumping (Quake series) or queueing a Barracks and a Tanya, Chrono'ing a Construction Rig to the enemy base and deploying a Tanya in the middle of the base (Red Alert).
Macroing, aimbotting, maphacking and similar things that require the use of an external program are cheating, and if people are kicked and/or banned for using them, it's their own damn fault.
It's practially a swedish tank. The 240 is high on my "I really want this car as my first car" list. All my friends tell me that Volvos suck, but what do they know? They've obviously never driven one:)
It's a shame they're still sorta expensive, even when used. Well, at least here in Denmark, they are:(
"I would like to offer the following advice: DO NOT use MP3s to digitally reorder Lateralus. A lot of VERY IMPORTANT information is encoded on the actual cd. Ever notice how everyone who has lost or broken that cd has IMMEDIATELY gone out and bought a new copy? I know I have. It's because there are things encoded on the factory pressing of the cd that are lost in the mp3 compression process and any direct copy onto a cd-r. If you want to do it, do it right - I can't stress how important this is. Use the cda tracks as you put it together and maintain all audio fidelity using professional mixing software."
Bullshit.
A bit-for-bit copy of a CD to CD-r or raw PCM data will include everything on the original disc apart from the label and bar code on the inner most part of the disc.
I'm sure Lateralus is a good album, both in its original order and this new order (I've never listened to it), but he obviously has no clue whatsoever about copying CDs. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's just another hyped-up teenage fanboy who sees "hidden meanings" everywhere as well as believe all kinds of crap people tell him.
But perhaps he's right, and I'm just a cold-hearted bastard of a cynic.
Be warned, though... They are quite obsessed, and some of them have gone to extremes in their quest for silence. But their reviews are very well-written, and the forum is a great source of help and advice.
Those kinds of things are already available. I have a small clip-thingie right here. It reacts to the same signal a phone reacts to when there's an incoming call. It vibrates (quite violently) and blinks a red LED. The only problem seems to be that is a bit too sensitive. Otherwise, it's a pretty neat little gadget.
I think the GC controller is one of the best and most comfortable controllers I have used. I can literally play for hours without noticing any strain or discomfort. I have not met a single person who could honestly say the same about the Dual Shock.
Personally, I find the C-stick very usable for what it's mostly designed for: camera control. The D-pad is a bit small, but it's roughly the same size as the GBA D-pad, and nobody has had any problems with that particular D-pad. The buttons are laid out like they are for a reason. The big green A button is clearly the primary button, and it's also the most used button in all GC games. The B, X, and Y buttons are secondary buttons, and are meant to house functions that are not used as often. And due to the layout, they are very very easy to find by muscle memory, due to their unique positions and shapes. The Z button is in a somewhat awkward position, yes. But I'm guessing it's where it is, so the XYZ buttons could be arranged like XYZ coordinates in a 3D world. The shoulder buttons are just perfect, and much better than both the ones on the Xbox controller and on the Dual Shock.
The really mind-boggling thing to me is that people still think the Dual Shock is the ideal controller. People spout about how hard it is to simultaneously press the B and X buttons on a GC controller, but it's clearly just as hard or even harder to press X and Circle or Square and Triangle on a Dual Shock, even though they are right next to each other
That's why I still use my trusty El-Cheapo Panasonic discman. It cost me $25 new, and it still plays perfectly 5 years later. There has not been a single problem. No loose jack connections, no blown electronics, no problems with the motors. Nothing.
The only thing I don't like about it is the 3 second anti-shock and the fact that it only plays for ~15 hours on a set of AA batteries. Apart from those two issues, it's perfect.
I second that recommendation. Small form factor computers are very nice.
I have a Soltek Qbic myself. It's a bit quieter than the shuttles, and there's space for two optical drives. It's also a tad bigger than the shuttles, though. It's a 2.6GHz P4, 1GB PC3200 and a Geforce4 Ti4200, BTW. Very nice for gaming, and it's much easier to lug around than my old steel case.
It's also a very stackable-friendly design, and three or four of them stacked would be quite stable. They probably wouldn't take up much more space than a regular case, either.
Are you suggesting that Linux is perfectly secure out of the box? You obviously have not studied computer science or software engineering, otherwise you would know that there is no way to prevent this kind of stuff for any OS, your blessed Linux crap included.
The whole UNIX design and mentality sets a higher security baseline compared to Windows. Of course, many of the problems in recent Windows versions (the NT family) has come about because of some software being unable to run with anything but admin privs. Also, there is no use in calling Linux (or anything else) "crap". Keep it civil.
Poor in what way? Linux is more of a hassle to administer than Windows (I know because I just finished a comparison in my lab over several months.) Not sure what performance measurements you have to back up you claim that XP is "hideously slow", but then you would have to actually do some real tests to find that out.
You find Linux hard(er) to admin than Windows, most likely because you've been using Windows for quite some time now, right? A person who's used UNIX for as long as you've used Windows would find Windows very hard to admin, so that argument is somewhat moot. Of course something new and different is going to require learning new things.
On my machine, Windows needs to be pampered constantly. I have to check for spyware and viruses quite often, even though I don't use IE any more. Also, it seems to lock up now whenever I try to change my IP address (which I do quite often, actually), requiring a reboot every time. There is no other fix for this than a reinstall. Sometimes I can handle it by just restarting explorer.exe, but lately it seems that the "Run..." box I can get through the Task Manager locks up my keyboard. And it's not like it's a highly tweaked system either. I've only tweaked a bit with the swap usage, that's all. It's on a 20GB partition of its own, and the only programs installed are a couple of games, Ad-Aware and AVG Antivirus.
I have never had these kinds of problems using Linux or *BSD, and even if there was some problem with TCP/IP in those systems, I could easily replace the offending program (ifconfig) or perhaps update the kernel. But I would never have to resort to a reinstall.
Half-Life was a good game, with an OK storyline. But it's still nowhere as brilliant as Duke3D or Quake.
I agree that both HL2 and Doom3 are going to be AAA titles, but I'll probably only play Doom3, mostly because HL2 is going to use STEAM (which I hate) and DirectX9 (which I really, really don't like). I'm also waiting patiently to see how well Raven is going to handle the Doom3 engine for Quake4.
Yes, the Build-based games were some of the best and most fun FPS games ever.
I still think the Quake games (especially Quakeworld and Quake 3) were and still are the best deathmatch games, simply because of the almost perfect physics. Jumps just feel right, and not awkward as in Half-Life.
But as you said, the breakable scenery in Duke3D made for some pretty cool matches. I think Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 are going to be the beginning of a wave of games with plentiful breakable object, just like in Duke3D. Max Payne had good physics, and a great movie feel to it. Too bad it wasn't a multiplayer game.
That said, UT2004 makes somewhat good use of physics. It's the only game where I've been able to shoot down a plane with a car launched by a grenade:)
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed!
My phone has never been on any other mode than "silent". I carry it in my pocket anyway, so I don't need some blaring tone to tell me someone's calling.
I consider it basic courtesy.
I hear those kinds of noises too, mostly when much of screen is updated in one go.
FWIW, my soundcard is right next to my graphics card.
Provided that the car is not a crap car (Lada...) and is in good condition, and that the driver is reasonably skilled, a car is not unsafe to drive around in, in neither normal nor poor weather.
Just because a car is bigger and heavier doesn't mean it's better equipped for handling poor weather conditions. Many SUVs sold now don't even have AWD or 4WD. A 2WD SUV is worse than a 2WD car in poor weather, mostly because of the added weight and momentum.
It's not my problem if someone uses a metric fuckton of money to buy a huge house, it's theirs. People can do whatever they want with their money. Some things are just dumb, like soccer moms driving around in Ford Excursions (which in itself is a completely ridiculous vehicle).
A 5000s/ft house won't directly harm anyone. An SUV will. The SUVs have made regular cars unsafe, due to the problems in a SUV on car crash.
Why should everyone drive an SUV when they're big, slow, and less economic?
I don't have a beef with trucks, since they're primarily work-related vehicles, and because their drivers have recieved extra truck-related driving lessons. Therefore, they know how dangerous the vehicle they're driving can be to other trafficants, and because of that, they are generally more careful around them.
That's exactly the problem!
You're protecting yourself by driving a big-ass truck/SUV, but at the cost of the safety of the people around you.
What do you think happens when an SUV hits a regular car? The car (along with its contents) is obliterated, and the SUV is relatively unharmed. This is because the bumpers on just about all SUVs are located way above the bumpers on cars.
A car on car collision is what cars a designed to handle. They are designed to hit each other bumper to bumper. Not bumper to windshield.
If people need a truck or an SUV for moving their boat, or driving around big loads, of course they should be allowed to have a bigger and stronger vehicle, but most people don't need them.
When driving a large (sometimes very large) vehicle around normal-sized cars, you have to be extra careful. Professional truck drivers are taught this, but Susan Soccermom is not, and thereby she will be a danger to others on the road.
Hell, when I come to think about it, one of the major phone companys here are offering cheap cellphone rates, IF you are prepared to be interrupted a couple of seconds every minute to hear an ad.
TDC (TeleDanmark back then) tried this a couple of years ago here in Denmark. Every couple of minutes, your call would be interrupted by a 10-second ad.
Put mildly, it was not very popular. Not even the free calls could make up for the ads.
If I'm going above the legal speed limit in the fast lane (which is 110km/h here in Denmark) on a hiway and some schmuck in a big BMW or Audi comes up behind me and begins flashing his lights like a maniac because he thinks I'll pull out of "his lane", I will tap my brakes, and when I let him pass, he will get the one-finger salute. If you're being an asshole to me, I'll make sure to be an asshole to you, too.
Of course, since I'm a somewhat responsible driver, I won't hog the fast lane, more than absolutely neccesary. But some people seem to think that they own the road, and that pisses me off.
What the hell is wrong with bunny-hopping, strafe-jumping and circle-jumping?
Doing these things is in no way exploiting anything, and especially in the case of Quake3, it's an intentional part of the game! In fact, it takes a lot of practice to be able to strafe- and circle-jump a level without hitting walls or killing yourself. In a way, it's a kind of finger acrobatics.
If the designers didn't want people to jump around like maniacs, they would have either put in some kind of stamina system or a slight decceleration upon hitting the ground after a jump.
And exactly why do you think it's a flaw that you character doesn't get tired in the pure deathmatch games like Quake? I'm guessing it's because that's what people want. It's a part of the gameplay. If you don't want to play a game where people jump around, play a "realistic" FPS instead.
I choose to see it like this:
If it's in the game, and can be done without the help of external software, it's legal and fair game, whether it's climbing on top of tripmines (Half-Life), rocket jumping (Quake series) or queueing a Barracks and a Tanya, Chrono'ing a Construction Rig to the enemy base and deploying a Tanya in the middle of the base (Red Alert).
Macroing, aimbotting, maphacking and similar things that require the use of an external program are cheating, and if people are kicked and/or banned for using them, it's their own damn fault.
Dude, it's a Volvo!
:)
:(
It's practially a swedish tank. The 240 is high on my "I really want this car as my first car" list. All my friends tell me that Volvos suck, but what do they know? They've obviously never driven one
It's a shame they're still sorta expensive, even when used. Well, at least here in Denmark, they are
It's an X problem, not a Linux problem. The same problems with copy/paste exist in BSD, Solaris etc etc.
Funny... it hasn't been posted to Fark yet ;)
"I would like to offer the following advice: DO NOT use MP3s to
digitally reorder Lateralus. A lot of VERY IMPORTANT information is
encoded on the actual cd. Ever notice how everyone who has lost or
broken that cd has IMMEDIATELY gone out and bought a new copy? I know I
have. It's because there are things encoded on the factory pressing of
the cd that are lost in the mp3 compression process and any direct copy
onto a cd-r. If you want to do it, do it right - I can't stress how
important this is. Use the cda tracks as you put it together and
maintain all audio fidelity using professional mixing software."
Bullshit.
A bit-for-bit copy of a CD to CD-r or raw PCM data will include everything on the original disc apart from the label and bar code on the inner most part of the disc.
I'm sure Lateralus is a good album, both in its original order and this new order (I've never listened to it), but he obviously has no clue whatsoever about copying CDs. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's just another hyped-up teenage fanboy who sees "hidden meanings" everywhere as well as believe all kinds of crap people tell him.
But perhaps he's right, and I'm just a cold-hearted bastard of a cynic.
A warning like that would be absolutely perfect. It's short, precise and tells people exactly what they should be aware of.
OpenAL is also used by UT2004.
You might want to take a look at silentpcreview.com.
Be warned, though... They are quite obsessed, and some of them have gone to extremes in their quest for silence. But their reviews are very well-written, and the forum is a great source of help and advice.
No, not really. It is a few years old. I'm guessing the market for them kinda disappeared when the phones got their own vibrating ring.
:/
I haven't seen a new one in years, actually.
Those kinds of things are already available. I have a small clip-thingie right here. It reacts to the same signal a phone reacts to when there's an incoming call. It vibrates (quite violently) and blinks a red LED. The only problem seems to be that is a bit too sensitive. Otherwise, it's a pretty neat little gadget.
Funny, that...
I think the GC controller is one of the best and most comfortable controllers I have used. I can literally play for hours without noticing any strain or discomfort. I have not met a single person who could honestly say the same about the Dual Shock.
Personally, I find the C-stick very usable for what it's mostly designed for: camera control. The D-pad is a bit small, but it's roughly the same size as the GBA D-pad, and nobody has had any problems with that particular D-pad. The buttons are laid out like they are for a reason. The big green A button is clearly the primary button, and it's also the most used button in all GC games. The B, X, and Y buttons are secondary buttons, and are meant to house functions that are not used as often. And due to the layout, they are very very easy to find by muscle memory, due to their unique positions and shapes. The Z button is in a somewhat awkward position, yes. But I'm guessing it's where it is, so the XYZ buttons could be arranged like XYZ coordinates in a 3D world. The shoulder buttons are just perfect, and much better than both the ones on the Xbox controller and on the Dual Shock.
The really mind-boggling thing to me is that people still think the Dual Shock is the ideal controller. People spout about how hard it is to simultaneously press the B and X buttons on a GC controller, but it's clearly just as hard or even harder to press X and Circle or Square and Triangle on a Dual Shock, even though they are right next to each other
That's why I still use my trusty El-Cheapo Panasonic discman. It cost me $25 new, and it still plays perfectly 5 years later. There has not been a single problem. No loose jack connections, no blown electronics, no problems with the motors. Nothing.
The only thing I don't like about it is the 3 second anti-shock and the fact that it only plays for ~15 hours on a set of AA batteries. Apart from those two issues, it's perfect.
I second that recommendation. Small form factor computers are very nice.
I have a Soltek Qbic myself. It's a bit quieter than the shuttles, and there's space for two optical drives. It's also a tad bigger than the shuttles, though. It's a 2.6GHz P4, 1GB PC3200 and a Geforce4 Ti4200, BTW. Very nice for gaming, and it's much easier to lug around than my old steel case.
It's also a very stackable-friendly design, and three or four of them stacked would be quite stable. They probably wouldn't take up much more space than a regular case, either.
Anti-aliasing is switched off for some reason in those shots. I don't know why.
With AA fonts, QT and GTK2 look, very, very nice.
Example 1 (GTK2)
Example 2 (QT)
The font is Bitstream Vera Sans, with AA and subpixel hinting enabled (they might look a bit 'off' on a CRT).
Much better font rendering than Windows, IMHO.
I'll play it on a friends computer, then, since my 20GB Win2K partition is probably 'disappearing' soon.
The simple fact that Doom3 will run on Linux makes it much more likely that I will buy it instead of HL2.
(Disclaimer: I'm not the grandparent AC)
Are you suggesting that Linux is perfectly secure out of the box? You obviously have not studied computer science or software engineering, otherwise you would know that there is no way to prevent this kind of stuff for any OS, your blessed Linux crap included.
The whole UNIX design and mentality sets a higher security baseline compared to Windows. Of course, many of the problems in recent Windows versions (the NT family) has come about because of some software being unable to run with anything but admin privs. Also, there is no use in calling Linux (or anything else) "crap". Keep it civil.
Poor in what way? Linux is more of a hassle to administer than Windows (I know because I just finished a comparison in my lab over several months.) Not sure what performance measurements you have to back up you claim that XP is "hideously slow", but then you would have to actually do some real tests to find that out.
You find Linux hard(er) to admin than Windows, most likely because you've been using Windows for quite some time now, right? A person who's used UNIX for as long as you've used Windows would find Windows very hard to admin, so that argument is somewhat moot. Of course something new and different is going to require learning new things.
On my machine, Windows needs to be pampered constantly. I have to check for spyware and viruses quite often, even though I don't use IE any more. Also, it seems to lock up now whenever I try to change my IP address (which I do quite often, actually), requiring a reboot every time. There is no other fix for this than a reinstall. Sometimes I can handle it by just restarting explorer.exe, but lately it seems that the "Run..." box I can get through the Task Manager locks up my keyboard. And it's not like it's a highly tweaked system either. I've only tweaked a bit with the swap usage, that's all. It's on a 20GB partition of its own, and the only programs installed are a couple of games, Ad-Aware and AVG Antivirus.
I have never had these kinds of problems using Linux or *BSD, and even if there was some problem with TCP/IP in those systems, I could easily replace the offending program (ifconfig) or perhaps update the kernel. But I would never have to resort to a reinstall.
Half-Life was a good game, with an OK storyline. But it's still nowhere as brilliant as Duke3D or Quake.
I agree that both HL2 and Doom3 are going to be AAA titles, but I'll probably only play Doom3, mostly because HL2 is going to use STEAM (which I hate) and DirectX9 (which I really, really don't like). I'm also waiting patiently to see how well Raven is going to handle the Doom3 engine for Quake4.
Yes, the Build-based games were some of the best and most fun FPS games ever.
:)
I still think the Quake games (especially Quakeworld and Quake 3) were and still are the best deathmatch games, simply because of the almost perfect physics. Jumps just feel right, and not awkward as in Half-Life.
But as you said, the breakable scenery in Duke3D made for some pretty cool matches. I think Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 are going to be the beginning of a wave of games with plentiful breakable object, just like in Duke3D. Max Payne had good physics, and a great movie feel to it. Too bad it wasn't a multiplayer game.
That said, UT2004 makes somewhat good use of physics. It's the only game where I've been able to shoot down a plane with a car launched by a grenade