Sam and Max was a great LucasArts game with minimal graphics. George Lucas has a capacity to be wowed by technology and graphics much to the detriment of story -- look at the new Star Wars movies as Exhibit A.
Incredibly impressive digital character like Jar-Jar, yet used totally wrong -- as opposed to Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Or look how lovely Naboo is, yet how excruciating is the dialogue between Anakin and Amidala. How painful the plot.
I worry that as games become more cinematic, with massive budgets, huge staffs, and herculean marketing machines behind them, the craft of game design and the art of storytelling will get lost. It's not just LucasArts... Square with their movie and their over-rendered, RPG-lite Final Fantasy games (boring as all get out, to me) is another example of this trend.
Meh, PC gaming will always survive though, and remain the most fruitful playground for original titles, because no publisher or license is required.
I love notepad and used to use it a lot, but it had shortcomings and I fell in love with Metapad, a lightweight freeware replacement.
http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/
Getting Windows to recognize the switch (it caches notepad.exe all over the place) can be tricky and I forgot how I did it.
Unfortunately this Win98SE Unofficial update overwrote my metapad replacement. I did however download metapad again and as a quick workaround removed.txt as a registered file type, then clicked on a.txt and chose metapad as the new opener for those file types.
Other than that, I haven't had any issues with the download yet, and am looking forward to trying some new features. The Win 2000 visuals look sharper, and things are running snappier in general. I also had TweakUI installed and it's not conflicting with that at all. Gotta love TweakUI, autologon among many other features.
I am running an older Toshiba laptop with limited HD space, so I prefer 98/SE to 2000...really 98/SE is imho the best MS/OS for older pcs. I wish MS would just release it as open source (like id and doom) when 2006 hits so it can become a hobbyist OS for legacy machines and legacy games.
This is not consumer choice. Unauthorized installation of uwanted programs that track movements, bombard ads, collect personal information, and phone home... what part of illegal criminal activity don't they understand?
Oh wait, it's criminal trespass when a kid hacks into a corporate website and replaces a front page. Put them in prison, although it's the computer equivalent of a can of spraypaint.
Oh wait, it's grand larceny when some kid shares MP3s. Sue them into bankruptcy, although it's the computer equivalent of shoplifting.
But it's okay for the music industry to hack our computers, it's okay for spammers to blast porn to every kid in the country, it's okay for these bottom-dwelling pirates to essentially hijack your computer with their malware adware spyware filth.
These computer illiterate judges and these politicians and lawyers who suck the teat of corporate money deserve nothing but hatred, abuse, and scorn.
Your insane string of assumptions (why does the guy have to be a teacher? He's merely bothered by incompetent spelling; and there's no evidence that he "spends all his time correcting spelling errors") coupled with your violent threats and childlike, all-caps shouting marks as you as one who not only has no life but doesn't really need to be on slashdot either.
Sure, I wouldn't hold Japan up as some model for us to aspire to or anything. They have their own problems, namely an absolutely staggering level of sexual abuse of children and women, and a culture that blames the victims (not that the US was much different before what, the 1970s or 80s, or whenever people started talking about rape support groups and sexual abuse openly). I'm sure Japan will change in time about this, the fact that we're hearing about these problems now indicates that it is, however slowly.
Now you could say that Japan's media (widespread availability of that objectifying porn, for example) is to blame for this problem, but I think the porn is more a symptom of the larger social dysfunction. Sort of how violent American movies (and games) reflect our sometimes violent society. Reflect, but do not cause.
But war crimes? That's an absolute red herring. Armies have been villifying the enemy and butchering entire populations since time immemorial. Look at the Mongols or Tamerlane. That's mass psychology, or an artifact of war, when we're talking about why lone nuts snap.
Because the vast majority of murders are -not- even tangentially related to, inspired by, or in any way caused by "mass media images of violence" or videogames.
Here or in Japan.
They're caused by domestic disputes, mostly, followed by drug deals, or what have you.
Our murder rate soars over theirs for a number of reasons, but as you point out, NOT because our media is more violent.
Why doesn't anyone point out the real obvious culprit in these Columbine-style cases? Bullying.
Marc Andreeson needs to step away from the microphone and just admit he was little more than an average young programmer with an average piece of software that just happened to appear at a kind of golden conjunction of the times. Not unlike Bill Gates selling a DOS to IBM...
The subsequent difference between the two men and their companies and their careers reflect Gates' ruthless drive and determination and Andreeson's lack thereof.
writeing = writing
insunate = insinuate
articals = articles
that first "your" = you're
And you want me to believe you're a published writer instead of some 13 year old Final Fantasy addict? And by the same token, if all copy is this sloppy, then how can you be surprised copy editors miss a few bits here and there?
"Three days ago I accepted Linux into my life and while I'm not yet a convert, the experience has shaken my faith in Windows."
"Three days ago I accepted Jesus Christ into my life and while I'm not yet a convert, the experience has shaken my faith in Catholicism/Judaism/Lutheranism..."
Why do OS converts, Mac evangelists, and Linux gurus always sound like religious fanatics? Computers are wonderful things, but they should not fill any sort of philosophical, spiritual, or political void in your life.
This review was total laughable garbage, a complete and total set up. Was it written by one of the developers? One whole sentence to brush off installation concerns. How many configurations did he try it on? How many different pieces of hardware were "instantly" working? And the whole thing with his mom, which constituted more than half his review. Wow, his mom was able to move the mouse around and find a button. SURPRISE, SURPRISE! His mom only wants to send email, write a letter. But she can't find Office! Listen, nerd-reject Linux shills, if you hate the Windows machines that normal people who hate computers are so used to, get them Apples. But for god's sake, quit these charades that Lindows is easy to use. Wait until she tries to buy a fax, or a printer, and hooks them up. How she gonna do that? Oh wait, she wants to install Quicken and do her taxes. Oh wait, she wants to hook up her digital camera to see some baby pictures. Oh wait...
Final Question: Why is there a giant roll of paper towels on his desk? Once mom leaves, I don't even want to know what he's up to.
Imbecile. You are a complete and total imbecile. Software and music are completely different endeavors, with some parallels but certainly far more differences. A better comparison would be computer GAMES versus album sales, since both are entertainment products by creative people, but how many free open source Linux games are topping the sales charts? None. And I'm talking about real games of depth and substance, not your brother's Tetris ripoff.
I think, in the spirit of Orrin Hatch, and the undead zombies of the RIAA, that this patent should be extended indefinitely and every asshole with an unauthorized GIF on his or her PC deserves to get their fucking hard drive wiped by the God-like police-power-holding can-do-no-wrong patent-holders.
Sometimes I hate this country. Then I look at China and laugh.
What difference does it make if the SCO website is up or down? This whole thing smells like a company set up by lawyers to try and get some money, or a dirty trick funded by Microsoft. Or both.
If I were president, and you people should thank your pagan gods I'm not, I would have taken about two or three thousand trial lawyers, forced them into landing craft, and let them lead the invasion into Iraq at gunpoint, classic human wave tactics like Iran and China used to use. Let the Iraqi machine guns take them out.
Of course that would have required Iraq to have actually prepared their defenses; it seems like they did not. However I am digressing from my main thesis, which is this: Kill all the lawyers. Especially those who free the criminals, persecute the righteous, and profit from the toil of others.
Talk about a joke job. This might be worthwhile if they made more of an effort to go after spammers, kiddie porn traffickers, and the other riff-raff. But of course, instead they'll spend all their time going after the 15-year old kids who "break into" Pentagon websites or trade Metallica MP3s, making sure to ruin the lives of these "cyberterrorists" and making the Internet safe for the RIAA and the rest of their Hollywood paymasters. Fuck this.
You want to teach a bunch of secretaries, mechanics, and truck managers how to use Linux? Average workers hate computers, they want to use them as little as possible, and forcing them to switch from one cryptic command line interface (DOS to Linux, e.g.) is only going to infuriate them and make everyone's life more difficult. But, be my guest...
Not to mention some spam content is outrageously obscene, and if you're using HTML-enabled mail on Outlook (which I had to, at my old job), you'll get filthy porno pictures, web bugs, cookies, fucking POP-UPS, all kinds of shit. We'd get this because angry customers would sign us up for it, but frankly it could end up in any little kid's inbox if they went to the wrong website or left their email addy out there hanging.
Just wait until anti-abortion activists start spamming everyone with pictures of dead babies, or terrorists start sending out gruesome pictures of dead Iraqis, and maybe those worthless luddites in government might do something. Or we'll just abandon email altogether. Sigh.
Remember when people used to cheer the THX Lucasfilm logo? That was before Phantom Menace. I hardly expect anyone to cheer the Microsoft logo, but after the first big public fiasco with Palladium, the jeers may come.
It's not hilarious, it's stupid and off-topic, just like you. Anyway, here's something hilarious and off-topic: the funniest April Fool's Joke I saw yesterday was the headline: Jerry Jones Fires Bill Parcells. Now that's humor, as opposed to putting "Cowboy Neale" in every damn poll ever or reciting Monty Python lines over and over, you geek.
I'm with you 100%. I stopped buying new CDs a couple years ago too, when a new one I bought wouldn't work on my PC (which is hooked into my speakers and serves as my stereo). I will never give a music company my money again. Ever.
The only CDs I buy now are used jazz and classical, which are really cheap, never copy protected, and are better than that parade of commercial pop pablum spewed forth by MTV and Clear Channel anyway.
Maybe they couldn't find anybody in India to take over the project at a token wage. Hey Scott McNealy, outsource the CEO job to Calcutta, save your company some money.
Slashdot Mirror
Better font selection in the menus, some better icons. I meant sharper in the aesthetic, not technical sense.
Sam and Max was a great LucasArts game with minimal graphics. George Lucas has a capacity to be wowed by technology and graphics much to the detriment of story -- look at the new Star Wars movies as Exhibit A. Incredibly impressive digital character like Jar-Jar, yet used totally wrong -- as opposed to Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Or look how lovely Naboo is, yet how excruciating is the dialogue between Anakin and Amidala. How painful the plot. I worry that as games become more cinematic, with massive budgets, huge staffs, and herculean marketing machines behind them, the craft of game design and the art of storytelling will get lost. It's not just LucasArts ... Square with their movie and their over-rendered, RPG-lite Final Fantasy games (boring as all get out, to me) is another example of this trend.
Meh, PC gaming will always survive though, and remain the most fruitful playground for original titles, because no publisher or license is required.
I love notepad and used to use it a lot, but it had shortcomings and I fell in love with Metapad, a lightweight freeware replacement.
.txt as a registered file type, then clicked on a .txt and chose metapad as the new opener for those file types.
http://www.liquidninja.com/metapad/
Getting Windows to recognize the switch (it caches notepad.exe all over the place) can be tricky and I forgot how I did it.
Unfortunately this Win98SE Unofficial update overwrote my metapad replacement. I did however download metapad again and as a quick workaround removed
Other than that, I haven't had any issues with the download yet, and am looking forward to trying some new features. The Win 2000 visuals look sharper, and things are running snappier in general. I also had TweakUI installed and it's not conflicting with that at all. Gotta love TweakUI, autologon among many other features.
I am running an older Toshiba laptop with limited HD space, so I prefer 98/SE to 2000...really 98/SE is imho the best MS/OS for older pcs. I wish MS would just release it as open source (like id and doom) when 2006 hits so it can become a hobbyist OS for legacy machines and legacy games.
This is not consumer choice. Unauthorized installation of uwanted programs that track movements, bombard ads, collect personal information, and phone home... what part of illegal criminal activity don't they understand?
Oh wait, it's criminal trespass when a kid hacks into a corporate website and replaces a front page. Put them in prison, although it's the computer equivalent of a can of spraypaint.
Oh wait, it's grand larceny when some kid shares MP3s. Sue them into bankruptcy, although it's the computer equivalent of shoplifting.
But it's okay for the music industry to hack our computers, it's okay for spammers to blast porn to every kid in the country, it's okay for these bottom-dwelling pirates to essentially hijack your computer with their malware adware spyware filth.
These computer illiterate judges and these politicians and lawyers who suck the teat of corporate money deserve nothing but hatred, abuse, and scorn.
BTW YOU ARE A FASCIST PIG
Now you could say that Japan's media (widespread availability of that objectifying porn, for example) is to blame for this problem, but I think the porn is more a symptom of the larger social dysfunction. Sort of how violent American movies (and games) reflect our sometimes violent society. Reflect, but do not cause.
But war crimes? That's an absolute red herring. Armies have been villifying the enemy and butchering entire populations since time immemorial. Look at the Mongols or Tamerlane. That's mass psychology, or an artifact of war, when we're talking about why lone nuts snap.
Because the vast majority of murders are -not- even tangentially related to, inspired by, or in any way caused by "mass media images of violence" or videogames.
Here or in Japan.
They're caused by domestic disputes, mostly, followed by drug deals, or what have you.
Our murder rate soars over theirs for a number of reasons, but as you point out, NOT because our media is more violent.
Why doesn't anyone point out the real obvious culprit in these Columbine-style cases? Bullying.
Marc Andreeson needs to step away from the microphone and just admit he was little more than an average young programmer with an average piece of software that just happened to appear at a kind of golden conjunction of the times. Not unlike Bill Gates selling a DOS to IBM... The subsequent difference between the two men and their companies and their careers reflect Gates' ruthless drive and determination and Andreeson's lack thereof.
insunate = insinuate
articals = articles
that first "your" = you're
And you want me to believe you're a published writer instead of some 13 year old Final Fantasy addict? And by the same token, if all copy is this sloppy, then how can you be surprised copy editors miss a few bits here and there?
Stop making a fool out of yourself.
I'm sure he knows DOS is DOS. But copy editors don't always know that, and while they're supposed to check, they make mistakes too.
"Three days ago I accepted Jesus Christ into my life and while I'm not yet a convert, the experience has shaken my faith in Catholicism/Judaism/Lutheranism..."
Why do OS converts, Mac evangelists, and Linux gurus always sound like religious fanatics? Computers are wonderful things, but they should not fill any sort of philosophical, spiritual, or political void in your life.
Final Question: Why is there a giant roll of paper towels on his desk? Once mom leaves, I don't even want to know what he's up to.
He plays online roleplaying games for seven hours a day! By definition, he's already a lonely, bitter person!
Imbecile. You are a complete and total imbecile. Software and music are completely different endeavors, with some parallels but certainly far more differences. A better comparison would be computer GAMES versus album sales, since both are entertainment products by creative people, but how many free open source Linux games are topping the sales charts? None. And I'm talking about real games of depth and substance, not your brother's Tetris ripoff.
I think, in the spirit of Orrin Hatch, and the undead zombies of the RIAA, that this patent should be extended indefinitely and every asshole with an unauthorized GIF on his or her PC deserves to get their fucking hard drive wiped by the God-like police-power-holding can-do-no-wrong patent-holders.
Sometimes I hate this country. Then I look at China and laugh.
If I were president, and you people should thank your pagan gods I'm not, I would have taken about two or three thousand trial lawyers, forced them into landing craft, and let them lead the invasion into Iraq at gunpoint, classic human wave tactics like Iran and China used to use. Let the Iraqi machine guns take them out.
Of course that would have required Iraq to have actually prepared their defenses; it seems like they did not. However I am digressing from my main thesis, which is this: Kill all the lawyers. Especially those who free the criminals, persecute the righteous, and profit from the toil of others.
Talk about a joke job. This might be worthwhile if they made more of an effort to go after spammers, kiddie porn traffickers, and the other riff-raff. But of course, instead they'll spend all their time going after the 15-year old kids who "break into" Pentagon websites or trade Metallica MP3s, making sure to ruin the lives of these "cyberterrorists" and making the Internet safe for the RIAA and the rest of their Hollywood paymasters. Fuck this.
You want to teach a bunch of secretaries, mechanics, and truck managers how to use Linux? Average workers hate computers, they want to use them as little as possible, and forcing them to switch from one cryptic command line interface (DOS to Linux, e.g.) is only going to infuriate them and make everyone's life more difficult. But, be my guest...
Just wait until anti-abortion activists start spamming everyone with pictures of dead babies, or terrorists start sending out gruesome pictures of dead Iraqis, and maybe those worthless luddites in government might do something. Or we'll just abandon email altogether. Sigh.
The Trouble Alert!
Spam clogging Bat Computer!
Summon Aqua-Man.
You stupid troll you're
an inefficient spammer
one post at a time.
Remember when people used to cheer the THX Lucasfilm logo? That was before Phantom Menace. I hardly expect anyone to cheer the Microsoft logo, but after the first big public fiasco with Palladium, the jeers may come.
It's not hilarious, it's stupid and off-topic, just like you. Anyway, here's something hilarious and off-topic: the funniest April Fool's Joke I saw yesterday was the headline: Jerry Jones Fires Bill Parcells. Now that's humor, as opposed to putting "Cowboy Neale" in every damn poll ever or reciting Monty Python lines over and over, you geek.
I'm with you 100%. I stopped buying new CDs a couple years ago too, when a new one I bought wouldn't work on my PC (which is hooked into my speakers and serves as my stereo). I will never give a music company my money again. Ever. The only CDs I buy now are used jazz and classical, which are really cheap, never copy protected, and are better than that parade of commercial pop pablum spewed forth by MTV and Clear Channel anyway.
Maybe they couldn't find anybody in India to take over the project at a token wage. Hey Scott McNealy, outsource the CEO job to Calcutta, save your company some money.