You, sir, are an ignoble boor to the nth degree which makes your post the most delectable of ironies.
I can hardly contain myself as I point out the folly of becoming incensed at an insensitive joke - mistaken, through lack of humor on your part, as an oversensitive response to a troll post meant to be insensitive.
I can't imagine how your outrage could possibly be any further displaced from your actual thought process even if you had tried this and, for that, I think you deserve a +5 Funny AND a simultaneous -5 Insightful.
Umm... what exactly is your point? The 2.6c was reduced to something like $160 and I got the Intel mobo to match it for under $45 all with shipping. Dropping to an XP 2400+ would've crushed the bus speed, limiting it to 266 which would've dropped the performance of every component except the HDD and the DVD-ROM. So, I could've saved $80 and put out for a Radeon 9600 pro instead on a 4x AGP slot and had a crappy bus speed and probably wound up with the same performance and less flexibility than I have now. How is that a good idea? As I stand now, I get good/excellent performance on most games, can play the really high-end games at a (*usually* small) sacrifice, and spent less than $500 building the system (which includes a gaming case and "performance" cooling). If I want to bump the system up to a truly high end gaming rig, I can put out for a radeon 9800 pro and a good nForce mobo. In other words, drop $360 more into it, and the thing will absolutely fly - all for around $800 and I get what some suckers put out $2000 to Alienware or FNW for. Most importantly, the way software has been evolving lately, all I need to worry about for a considerable while is the video card and my drivers.
And I'm aware of the optimization on a homogenous development platform. That's part of my point - console gamers don't have to worry about that kind of thing. They plug it in and it (usually) just works and works well. They don't fret over FPS because it's all taken care of for them. Different platform, different philosophy.
... the experience of feeling the effects of different drugs should not be robbed from people without their consent.
Erm... now, I'd be against the government or any other entrenched institution making it mandatory (nothing quite like mandatory vaccinations against "illegal" or "immoral" behavior, is there?) but give me a break! That's like saying that people should not be robbed of feeling the effects of different diseases without their consent. It could be argued that there's the difference in being infected and choosing to shoot up, but given that we don't consider children under 16 capable of making pretty much any decisions for themselves, that's not really an issue. Hell, we don't consider people intelligent and mature enough to make decisions on chemical ingestion until the ripe old totally arbitrary age of 21 here in the U.S.
If parents want to decide beforehand that their children will be immune to the addictive properties of harmful drugs like cocaine and nicotine, so be it. Parents have every right to guide their child's development in a responsible manner, so until an individual is X years old, it's not up to them.
What the hell are you talking about? I hate to rudely slap people back into the dirty capitalist world most of the developed nations live in these days, but at some point SOMEBODY is going to have to pay for SOMETHING. They need money for hardware. I'd guess redundancy and/or just better load balancing and scaling capabilities. If you've got some shiny new Sparcs laying around that you don't need, feel free to ask if they'd like them, but you can just send a mishmash of miscellaneous hardware donations off and expect anything intelligible to come out of it. Yea, I've got a P3 350 sitting here I could donate, but somehow I doubt that's going to do them much good.
Better to just donate the money and let them determine how it would best be spent. If you don't want to donate cash, Brion has also suggested that any expertise on the matter of purchasing appropriate hardware would also be a welcome donation.
Open Source does NOT skirt the requirements of capital, it just keeps those requirements at a more reasonable level and spreads them over a group where people can donate what they can / are willing to. It's not some magical tree where resources grow from nothing. Eventually, someone has to be coughing up something, even if that just means 50 devs around the world each ponying up $150 for secondhand PCs to develop a project on collaboratively. It's DISTRIBUTED capital, not magical money-tree capital that comes out of nowhere.
Because it doesn't bother them. That's the point. It's just a different play experience. If I'm playing Resident Evil and I can only save X times and only when I find a save point, it's not bad, it's different. If you don't like it, don't play it and don't pester other people about it because it doesn't bother them. I think Disney movies are utterly trite rubbish, but you don't see me hassling 6 year olds about watching them. Different product for a different audience.
Besides, the best games for consoles (and the sames games that don't lend themselves well to a keyboard) are platformers and fighting games anyway. You'll never see them taking over the computer and you'll always see RPGs and flight sims, and even FPSes ruling the PC. It's just a different play experience for a different audience. If you don't like that experience, don't play the games, but don't act like your personal preference is a guage for the quality of the games that everyone else should recognize.
And, as far as the hardware thing - I'm running with a Radeon 9000, P4 2.6c, and 512MB DDR400. It buckles under the pressure of games like Max Payne 2, Midnight Club, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic unless I cut the quality down. Funny thing. Halo on the Xbox looks and plays great. No sacrifice in quality. Again, different systems. I have a $450 game box that I sacrifice quality on whereas my girlfriend has a $170 Xbox where she doesn't have to do that. On top of that, if the buyer doesn't care about mp3s, DVDs, net access, etc., then it's no loss.
...says the guy who STILL hasn't made a point other than "I don't like console games so they must suck". Says he to a guy who owns only one console - a PSX (not PS2 - PSX) - that he hardly ever plays. Says he to a guy who just finished shopping at ebgames for some cool new computer games to play on his brand new custom game rig.
Says he about a system that introduced, what, 4 Unreal games without any significant differences? 4 or 5 Quake games with little or no distinguishing features? A system that incessantly releases a new rehash of the original Rainbow Six without any significant differences? A system that releases remakes and clones of the original Diablo on a regular basis? A system that continually redoes the same old trite AD&D rulesets with new character sprites and spell effects and packages it all up as a new game? A system that makes huge bucks by selling leftover maps and missions as "Expansion Packs" over and over again?
Get off your high horse "kid". I prefer computer gaming to console gaming anyday, but I'm certainly not so blind and stupid as to sit here and claim that the computer gaming scene is any less barren and littered with total garbage than consoles. Not only that, while I don't mind shelling out $700 for a decent set of components and then assmebling them myself, then shelling out another $200 - $300 every few years for a new video card, not everyone wants to do that.
And don't give me any shit about computer games being more innovative or intelligent either. The most "innovative" game of the last few years was probably Black and White, and it still sucked ass.
They know the game wouldn't be that hard to play if you didn't have to redo whole sections at a time.
Which translates directly to "I'm not very good at platform-style games, so I pretend that the problem is that they suck, rather than that I suck at them.
Here's a nickle, get yourself a computer capable of playing a real game...
Which translates directly to "I'm a computer-wonk nazi and don't think anyone should play a console even if that's there preference and I'd rather spend $200 every two years upgrading my video card than spend $200 every two years buying a new console system."
Christ, man. If you're going to say bad things about a game, at least have the decency to not just make stuff up about it because you're no good at it. I'm sure if you try really hard you could actually EXPLAIN why you don't like the game which might actually be HELPFUL to someone who is trying to decide whether or not it's going to appeal to them.
I was actually notified by another poster that, perhaps, not all GM/Dodge/Fords follow this convention anymore. I've owned / seen this in three Fords from 94 up - a 94 Thunderbird LX V8, a 98 Taurus V6, and my 01 Mustang GT. I also had a 96 Grand Am that did that and my gf's mother has a 96 Trans Am that I saw both orange and red in (red because we blew gasoline mist down the air intake to see if the exhaust was blocked... it did not like that at all).
As for the blinking red - I've only ever seen that in Honda, so it may not carry elsewhere. As always, YMMV.
The TEMP light won't come on until you're (almost) in trouble. That's why I'll never buy another car that doesn't have AT LEAST oil pressure and temperature guages in addition to RPM (my g-ma has a Corsica with no RPM guage and it drives me nuts). Unfortunately, that generally relegates me to sports cars/coupes which sort of limits my options since I've not got much cash.
You can run a car that's overheating for a few minutes before it really starts to hurt too much as long as you're not moving. If you're moving, you can't run it much at all. My old Probe overheated on a couple of occasions. It finally bit the big one when I couldn't get out of traffic on a hot summer day. It kept slowly climbing, and by the time I got to a place I could pull off, it was redline on the temperature and about to shut down. It damaged the head unit and one of the valves burned up leaving no compression in one cylinder which worked the other three pretty hard. I sold it to a guy that bought a hundred dollar head unit and it ran a while longer, but eventually that blew too and the block finally cracked when it overheated after losing the thermostat.
If you don't mind hassling with the computer reset (generally, let it run a minute or two, put it in gear and take it easy a little, then move out to the highway and cruise briefly and it should get everything set back up properly), you can clear an engine code yourself by simply disconnecting the battery for a few minutes. It's sort of like the mobo - if your mobo gets confused, you can pull the battery, ditto on the car. Of course, if your O2 sensor is regularly "hiccuping" maybe it needs cleaned, or even replaced? Actually, if it's an older car, go get a Haynes manual for it and you can probably figure out yourself. Cars from about '95 back generally seem to be the kind you can still work on at least somewhat. Of course, the only Isuzu I've ever seen gutted was an Impulse and that thing was a horrible pain the arse to work on. Turbo and all, electronic gizmos out the wazoo, engine crammed into the apartment. Fast as hell when it started running again.. but a serious pain in the butt.
Mmm... depending on what you have you might want to check out getting a full-on sport/speed chip from DiabloSport or Hypertech for that. They generally have software that can be purchased that lets you go whole hog on everything from ratios in the transmission (for autos) to fuel/air to spark plug timings.
You also ought to go get a Haynes manual. They're about fifteen bucks and give you pretty much every detail you could possibly ever want. They tear the car down and rebuild it and then right the book based on that. Pretty neat stuff if you've got the tools.
What are you talking about? You're complaining (and rightly so) about the OBD-II system, not the check engine light. The check engine light on OBD-I systems was great. You simply had to plug ten cent wires into the appropriate port under your steering column to get blinking check engine codes from a car with OBD-I. The only trick was buying a $14 book that had the trouble codes for your model.
The OBD-II system has nothing to do with the check engine light and everything to do with the computer. In fact, the whole thing is proprietary now right down to the Windows OS on the testing device.
And for those who don't know - OBD-II is a partially government influenced "improvement" to the trouble code system in cars. If you go to pep boys, for example, and pay them $70 for an "engine diagnostic", they stick a plug in the port under or beside your steering column and it tells them some codes. The cross-reference the codes to a list they have and know what's wrong. The entire process takes about 15 minutes (yes, Pep Boys is, in my experience, nothing but a con job). In OBD-I systems, you could get engine trouble codes (the check engine light comes on when the computer sets a "trouble code" when one of the sensors says something is Not Right) by plugging standard wires into the port. The engine light would blink a certain number of times like morse code, and you could cross-reference that to a little booklet such as a Haynes manual. This system worked just fine. OBD-II was introduced for the sole purpose of making it nearly impossible to work on your own car (the testers cost several thousand dollars and you need a new one every couple of years) and to try and push out little local shops so everyone had to go to overpriced dealerships.
...and can tell me how serious the problem is and can call me a tow truck if needed.
Uh... dude.. the check engine light is color-coded. If it's yellow or orange (color is depending on make/model - they're the same meaning), the car is telling you that there's a problem, but it's not a serious one (yet). You can continue driving, but you should go to a service center asap to be on the safe side. In fact, if there's no other signs of a problem like loss of power, rough idle, etc... you don't even really need to hurry to the service center. If I get a check engine that's orange, I usually just keep driving it for awhile to see if it goes off on its own. If not, I go get a diagnostic at the local garage for $20.
If it's RED, the car is effectively telling you:
JESUS F'ING CHRIST I'M DYING HERE STOP THE GODDAMN CAR PULL OFF THE ROAD IMMEDIATELY HOLY SHIT SOMETHING IS INCREDIBLY SERIOUSLY FUCKING WRONG!
The only other level is if it turns red and starts BLINKING. Then you're seriously fucked because that usually means a pretty serious misfire and you're on the verge of blowing your cats, manifold or something else to pieces.
Honest to god... if you don't know how your check engine light works, you need to spend a little more time with TFM. I hardly expect people to know the details of it, but you really ought to at least know how the guages and lights on your dashboard work.
You are aware, I assume, that even if the electronic assitance to your brakes goes out you can use good old fashioned muscle to stop the car? Yes, it's very hard to stop a 2800 pound block of aluminum/steel on wheels if you're not used to it, but it can be done and it can even be done in an emergency if you use the (drum roll please) "emergency break" to assist you. Therefore, you CAN still brake even if the system doesn't support a driver for your power braking system yet.
Heh... my post sounds like a typical Linux/BSD zealot response to a feature question:
N00b: Hey, why doesn't Aut0Linux support power braking?
Zealot1: Who cares? Nobody needs that! It's for lusers!
It's ironic that your complaint about worst-case users and grandmas is tied to mention of industry.
Anything that produces an end product for a userbase must adapt to suit the needs of that userbase at the time that the product is being produced. If the end user is so egregiously stupid that they can't even handle e-mail without someone holding their hand, then rather than evolving toward the next great technological advance, usability must be made the next branch for improvement.
Think about it in relation to industry once. If automakers had blazed trails toward the next great evolution in automobiles, we could have cars that run a 1/4 mile in 4 seconds at nearly 200mph. Oh wait! We do! They're called funny cars! And nobody except a particular niche knows how to use and maintain them, and they're exceptionally dangerous machines. They are not refined for the general public, they are not safe, and when something goes wrong, it's often disastrous. Neutered cars like Corvettes and, for a few adventurous souls, Vipers, are fed to the public as top-of-the-line even though they're not. They're safe, (relatively) easy to use, and, for the most part, attractive to the buying public because, even if they break down it's just an inconvenience, they don't generally erupt into a fireball the size of a small house.
The computer industry will continue to evolve in much the same way. Crippled, blighted, and weak but generally consumer friendly software will drive the marketplace. In the meantime, hobbyists (Vipers and backyard mechanics) and hardcore computer geeks (funny cars and track techs) will continue to use the cutting edge workhorses that are far less refined, but far more advanced.
You missed the point, I believe. If they don't comply, that's fine. They just don't get to send messages to mail apps that DO comply. Anyone who doesn't upgrade to this can still get the spammers' messages, yes. However, anyone who DOES upgrade will get to bounce any emails saying "sorry - you didn't work the hash, screw you." I would think if Microsoft is remotely intelligent, the system would revert to a traditional whitelist if that happened or, better, they wouldn't make the crypto-puzzle based on some proprietary tech so that everyone else can implement it in their MTA as well.
But, of course, we all know how "Open Standards" work within the realm of Redmond...
At worst, I suppose Microsoft could make it's own scheme and try to push other people out, but I doubt that there are enough Microsoft MTAs out there to make that sort of system survive. If they implemented it for Microsoft-only, they'd almost have to give the option to revert to a traditional white-list when the sender can't play Microsoft's Holy Encryption Puzzle. After all. If you send someone an e-mail and outlook Express won't give it to them, just tell them that - Outlook Express won't let you look at it. I sent it, sorry. The problem is clearly on your end, call support for help.
Microsoft HATES support costs and one thing you don't do on Windows is screw with grandma's emails.
We've not had any incidents with bombs in laptops, but we will never let our guard down.
I've never had an incident with a bomb in my morning coffee either, but I check it religiously every time!
Seriously... I wouldn't expect them to stop checking laptops.. but uh.. why focus on them if they've never actually been used as a weapon before? I'd think you could swing the thing around and hit people with it like a (crappy, unbalanced) mace. That seems like a more likely use of a laptop as a weapon than it carrying a bomb. Even putting in some sort of electronic jamming equipment, as unlikely as it is to actually work, seems more likely. I do not think the $7 Rent-a-cops have gotten the hang of this whole "security" thing, yet.
For instance, how about burkas, that women from certain islamic currents have to wear and which cover the body and the face entirely ?
Maybe you understand MY point of view, but I still don't understand YOURS. I don't understand how this is an issue. If the country has such deeply rooted social problems that people can't even keep from fighting with each other over a cross or a head scarf, how is brushing the discussion under the rug supposed to solve anything? We have problems over here - the entire "debate" over homosexuality comes to mind. However, even though it's disruptive and it interferes with normal activity when people refuse to be civil about it, we don't just legislate the discussion away (people have tried to do this regarding various issues - civil and women's rights, for example. Thankfully, they failed).
You can try to legislate any issue you want right out of the picture, but that doesn't mean it goes away. In fact, it generally leads to a taboo on discussing it, even when something exceptionally bad happens as a result. Instead, you just wind up with a bunch of people who are afraid to bring it up while the same problems keep going in the background as a result. Look at what happened with McCarthy over here. Everyone was so afraid of the taboo of discussing communism, that McCarthy and his goon squad were bitchslapping innocent people left and right and nobody would speak up about it. When he finally smacked the wrong guy (one of his own), he got torn to pieces. However, the guy that did it and his family were devastated in the process and never recovered.
Maybe it's just me or a cultural difference here, but I think it is EXTREMELY unhealthy when a society tries to cover up its dirty laundry instead of opening up the discussion to try and come to a resolution. Is it hard? Hell yes. Could a lot of people get hurt in the process? Absolutely. However, a lot more people are going to be hurt if it just boils under the skin forever.
I feel like I'm watching some sort of play by play here. As Linus enumerates the various header files, I'm poppin' 'em into vim or emacs (or pico.. whatever mood strikes) and walking through them.
Shit... a few more weeks of these ridiculous SCO claims and maybe I'll know enough about the kernel to become a Linux hacker. Laugh if you will, but I didn't know anymore about C than the data types and basic syntax before this crap started. I've learned all sorts of neat stuff since then!
Thanks SCO! You've taught me in 9 months what I wouldn't let 4 years of college education beat into my thick skull!
The school is an entity comprised of government-paid indviduals such as teachers, administrators, etc. Since they are receiving compensation in return for educating youngsters from an entire community which may well represent every ideological, social, political, and religious belief on the planet, they are obligated to not show favortism. The easiest way to do that is to simply not allow them to push any belief at all.
Students are a portion of that previously mentioned community. They are NOT receiving compensation from the community as a whole and, more importantly, are NOT an organization charged with educating the younger generations. Because they do not have these obligations, they should NOT be subject to arbitrary enforcements such as this. If the students were in some way responsible for educating their fellow students and they were compensated for it, then we'd have a totally different discussion here. However, since they are individuals under no obligations to their peers, as long as they are not intentionally and actively interfering with their fellow students, the government has NO business telling them what they can and can't do or say.
If the government can just start pushing individual people around on ideological issues, what's to say they'll stop at religion? After that, they could well ban the discussion of politics in public places. Again, if they can ban INDIVIDUALS from expressing, in a passive manner, religious affiliation, THEY CAN LOGICALLY BAN ANYTHING THAT INVOLVES INDIVIDUAL CHOICE WHATSOEVER AS LONG AS THERE IS MORE THAN ONE COMPETING OPTION.
That is an absolutely frightening scenario to me. Maybe you LIKE living in a country where the government decides what's okay in its happy little sterilized world, but I'd prefer down and dirty disagreement any day as long as it meant I had the choice. I will NEVER bow to any government wish that arbitrarily eliminates any of my choices unless they have a DAMN good reason. I feel sorry for anyone who would. For all the talk of Stupid Americans giving up freedom, I'd have to say that if this has any significant popular support in France, the French are easily twice as dumb as us.
What right is this that people keep talking about?
In the U.S., and a few other countries I know of, it's generally been the case that you are ALLOWED to make a backup copy of digital media, but you do not have the RIGHT to it. That means that if you can, you may, but if they implement some assinine "protection", things like the DMCA can kick you in the nuts for making your copy.
In fact, our sister company determined, about a year and a half ago, that, according to German law, German consumers DO NOT have a right to make backup copies (only that they may if they have the option) and, therefore, they were going to proceed with the sale of "protected" compact discs. They're not going to go engaging in a business practice that's going to put them in a courtroom on the obvious losing end of a lawsuit, I can tell you that. To date, nobody has managed to prove that what they're doing infringes on anyone's rights.
The long and short of it in most places seems to be that if you buy damaged (er... protected) media, that's just too fscking bad. You don't like it, then don't buy it anymore. Unfortunately, all the little children keep running out to buy Shitney Spears and the Buttfuck Boy Band Brothers' latest garbage, keeping up sales, and keeping the gooey, DRM goodness flowing.
In other words, as usual, the people who know what's going on are being trampled by the idiots who use dollar bills to wipe their asses and can't follow a thought process more complex then the instructions on a "shake 'n bake" box.
...where losing would be critical for character development, and where things just kinda happen...
I know I'm waaayyyy late on this, but two things that immediately sprang to mind were Ogre Battle and Planescape: Torment.
In Ogre Battle, if your main character won too many battles, the people would stop liking him. Eventually, he'd lose all popular support and you'd lose the game, especially if he won mostly at night (because that made him darker). There was incentive NOT to win too many battles with the "hero".
Planescape: Torment took the "win the battle" mentality right out of the game altogether. Most battles could be avoided. The only place you really HAVE to fight is in Curst and that's only because the guards pick fights with you (since you are breaking into a prison and all). You don't even have to fight the final boss if you don't want to. While there was no incentive NOT to win most battles, you didn't get punished for losing (because your character is immortal) unless you were a REAAALLLLYYY lousy fighter (if you lose TOO much your character goes insane) and you generally didn't get much in the way of experience or loot unless it was a significant battle. There was always some new plot twist pushing you along to your next goal.
I don't think that Fight Club would make a very popular game if it was done right, just like the two above are only popular in their cult statuses. Note that I didn't say GOOD, I said POPULAR. I think, if done properly, it could be an incredible game where it was more important to follow along with the story and character development than to fight. I also think that 22 million caffiene-addled adolescent numbskulls out there are so brain-baked by stupid games like Halo and Tekken that anything that requires a more complex thought process than "push a button to solve a 'puzzle'" is doomed to cult status and low sales figures.
Call me a cynic, but I just don't think the target audience for a 'real" Fight Club game is big enough for the suits at Vivendi to make money selling to, so they're going to go after the typical numbskull crowd of moronic, over-drugged, fast food, "modern" kids. They're going to target the idiots that went to see the movie and left thinking "gee, that was booooring". I remember sitting there at the end of the movie with the guy I went to see it with and we just kind of sat there for a few minutes. Then, I turned to him and said, simply: "disturbing". He wholeheartedly agreed. It's the only movie I've not gotten up at the end of and walked right out of the theatre without a second thought. I can't say the same for most of the other dolts who left grumbling about how "dumb" it was and why there weren't more fights. Unfortunately, the dolts keep the market afloat....
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You, sir, are an ignoble boor to the nth degree which makes your post the most delectable of ironies.
I can hardly contain myself as I point out the folly of becoming incensed at an insensitive joke - mistaken, through lack of humor on your part, as an oversensitive response to a troll post meant to be insensitive.
I can't imagine how your outrage could possibly be any further displaced from your actual thought process even if you had tried this and, for that, I think you deserve a +5 Funny AND a simultaneous -5 Insightful.
Umm... what exactly is your point? The 2.6c was reduced to something like $160 and I got the Intel mobo to match it for under $45 all with shipping. Dropping to an XP 2400+ would've crushed the bus speed, limiting it to 266 which would've dropped the performance of every component except the HDD and the DVD-ROM. So, I could've saved $80 and put out for a Radeon 9600 pro instead on a 4x AGP slot and had a crappy bus speed and probably wound up with the same performance and less flexibility than I have now. How is that a good idea? As I stand now, I get good/excellent performance on most games, can play the really high-end games at a (*usually* small) sacrifice, and spent less than $500 building the system (which includes a gaming case and "performance" cooling). If I want to bump the system up to a truly high end gaming rig, I can put out for a radeon 9800 pro and a good nForce mobo. In other words, drop $360 more into it, and the thing will absolutely fly - all for around $800 and I get what some suckers put out $2000 to Alienware or FNW for. Most importantly, the way software has been evolving lately, all I need to worry about for a considerable while is the video card and my drivers.
And I'm aware of the optimization on a homogenous development platform. That's part of my point - console gamers don't have to worry about that kind of thing. They plug it in and it (usually) just works and works well. They don't fret over FPS because it's all taken care of for them. Different platform, different philosophy.
Erm... now, I'd be against the government or any other entrenched institution making it mandatory (nothing quite like mandatory vaccinations against "illegal" or "immoral" behavior, is there?) but give me a break! That's like saying that people should not be robbed of feeling the effects of different diseases without their consent. It could be argued that there's the difference in being infected and choosing to shoot up, but given that we don't consider children under 16 capable of making pretty much any decisions for themselves, that's not really an issue. Hell, we don't consider people intelligent and mature enough to make decisions on chemical ingestion until the ripe old totally arbitrary age of 21 here in the U.S.
If parents want to decide beforehand that their children will be immune to the addictive properties of harmful drugs like cocaine and nicotine, so be it. Parents have every right to guide their child's development in a responsible manner, so until an individual is X years old, it's not up to them.
What the hell are you talking about? I hate to rudely slap people back into the dirty capitalist world most of the developed nations live in these days, but at some point SOMEBODY is going to have to pay for SOMETHING. They need money for hardware. I'd guess redundancy and/or just better load balancing and scaling capabilities. If you've got some shiny new Sparcs laying around that you don't need, feel free to ask if they'd like them, but you can just send a mishmash of miscellaneous hardware donations off and expect anything intelligible to come out of it. Yea, I've got a P3 350 sitting here I could donate, but somehow I doubt that's going to do them much good.
Better to just donate the money and let them determine how it would best be spent. If you don't want to donate cash, Brion has also suggested that any expertise on the matter of purchasing appropriate hardware would also be a welcome donation.
Open Source does NOT skirt the requirements of capital, it just keeps those requirements at a more reasonable level and spreads them over a group where people can donate what they can / are willing to. It's not some magical tree where resources grow from nothing. Eventually, someone has to be coughing up something, even if that just means 50 devs around the world each ponying up $150 for secondhand PCs to develop a project on collaboratively. It's DISTRIBUTED capital, not magical money-tree capital that comes out of nowhere.
Why do people put up with that kind of crap?
Because it doesn't bother them. That's the point. It's just a different play experience. If I'm playing Resident Evil and I can only save X times and only when I find a save point, it's not bad, it's different. If you don't like it, don't play it and don't pester other people about it because it doesn't bother them. I think Disney movies are utterly trite rubbish, but you don't see me hassling 6 year olds about watching them. Different product for a different audience.
Besides, the best games for consoles (and the sames games that don't lend themselves well to a keyboard) are platformers and fighting games anyway. You'll never see them taking over the computer and you'll always see RPGs and flight sims, and even FPSes ruling the PC. It's just a different play experience for a different audience. If you don't like that experience, don't play the games, but don't act like your personal preference is a guage for the quality of the games that everyone else should recognize.
And, as far as the hardware thing - I'm running with a Radeon 9000, P4 2.6c, and 512MB DDR400. It buckles under the pressure of games like Max Payne 2, Midnight Club, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic unless I cut the quality down. Funny thing. Halo on the Xbox looks and plays great. No sacrifice in quality. Again, different systems. I have a $450 game box that I sacrifice quality on whereas my girlfriend has a $170 Xbox where she doesn't have to do that. On top of that, if the buyer doesn't care about mp3s, DVDs, net access, etc., then it's no loss.
...says the guy who STILL hasn't made a point other than "I don't like console games so they must suck". Says he to a guy who owns only one console - a PSX (not PS2 - PSX) - that he hardly ever plays. Says he to a guy who just finished shopping at ebgames for some cool new computer games to play on his brand new custom game rig.
Says he about a system that introduced, what, 4 Unreal games without any significant differences? 4 or 5 Quake games with little or no distinguishing features? A system that incessantly releases a new rehash of the original Rainbow Six without any significant differences? A system that releases remakes and clones of the original Diablo on a regular basis? A system that continually redoes the same old trite AD&D rulesets with new character sprites and spell effects and packages it all up as a new game? A system that makes huge bucks by selling leftover maps and missions as "Expansion Packs" over and over again?
Get off your high horse "kid". I prefer computer gaming to console gaming anyday, but I'm certainly not so blind and stupid as to sit here and claim that the computer gaming scene is any less barren and littered with total garbage than consoles. Not only that, while I don't mind shelling out $700 for a decent set of components and then assmebling them myself, then shelling out another $200 - $300 every few years for a new video card, not everyone wants to do that.
And don't give me any shit about computer games being more innovative or intelligent either. The most "innovative" game of the last few years was probably Black and White, and it still sucked ass.
They know the game wouldn't be that hard to play if you didn't have to redo whole sections at a time.
Which translates directly to "I'm not very good at platform-style games, so I pretend that the problem is that they suck, rather than that I suck at them.
Here's a nickle, get yourself a computer capable of playing a real game...
Which translates directly to "I'm a computer-wonk nazi and don't think anyone should play a console even if that's there preference and I'd rather spend $200 every two years upgrading my video card than spend $200 every two years buying a new console system."
Christ, man. If you're going to say bad things about a game, at least have the decency to not just make stuff up about it because you're no good at it. I'm sure if you try really hard you could actually EXPLAIN why you don't like the game which might actually be HELPFUL to someone who is trying to decide whether or not it's going to appeal to them.
I was actually notified by another poster that, perhaps, not all GM/Dodge/Fords follow this convention anymore. I've owned / seen this in three Fords from 94 up - a 94 Thunderbird LX V8, a 98 Taurus V6, and my 01 Mustang GT. I also had a 96 Grand Am that did that and my gf's mother has a 96 Trans Am that I saw both orange and red in (red because we blew gasoline mist down the air intake to see if the exhaust was blocked... it did not like that at all).
As for the blinking red - I've only ever seen that in Honda, so it may not carry elsewhere. As always, YMMV.
The TEMP light won't come on until you're (almost) in trouble. That's why I'll never buy another car that doesn't have AT LEAST oil pressure and temperature guages in addition to RPM (my g-ma has a Corsica with no RPM guage and it drives me nuts). Unfortunately, that generally relegates me to sports cars/coupes which sort of limits my options since I've not got much cash.
You can run a car that's overheating for a few minutes before it really starts to hurt too much as long as you're not moving. If you're moving, you can't run it much at all. My old Probe overheated on a couple of occasions. It finally bit the big one when I couldn't get out of traffic on a hot summer day. It kept slowly climbing, and by the time I got to a place I could pull off, it was redline on the temperature and about to shut down. It damaged the head unit and one of the valves burned up leaving no compression in one cylinder which worked the other three pretty hard. I sold it to a guy that bought a hundred dollar head unit and it ran a while longer, but eventually that blew too and the block finally cracked when it overheated after losing the thermostat.
If you don't mind hassling with the computer reset (generally, let it run a minute or two, put it in gear and take it easy a little, then move out to the highway and cruise briefly and it should get everything set back up properly), you can clear an engine code yourself by simply disconnecting the battery for a few minutes. It's sort of like the mobo - if your mobo gets confused, you can pull the battery, ditto on the car. Of course, if your O2 sensor is regularly "hiccuping" maybe it needs cleaned, or even replaced? Actually, if it's an older car, go get a Haynes manual for it and you can probably figure out yourself. Cars from about '95 back generally seem to be the kind you can still work on at least somewhat. Of course, the only Isuzu I've ever seen gutted was an Impulse and that thing was a horrible pain the arse to work on. Turbo and all, electronic gizmos out the wazoo, engine crammed into the apartment. Fast as hell when it started running again.. but a serious pain in the butt.
Mmm... depending on what you have you might want to check out getting a full-on sport/speed chip from DiabloSport or Hypertech for that. They generally have software that can be purchased that lets you go whole hog on everything from ratios in the transmission (for autos) to fuel/air to spark plug timings.
You also ought to go get a Haynes manual. They're about fifteen bucks and give you pretty much every detail you could possibly ever want. They tear the car down and rebuild it and then right the book based on that. Pretty neat stuff if you've got the tools.
What are you talking about? You're complaining (and rightly so) about the OBD-II system, not the check engine light. The check engine light on OBD-I systems was great. You simply had to plug ten cent wires into the appropriate port under your steering column to get blinking check engine codes from a car with OBD-I. The only trick was buying a $14 book that had the trouble codes for your model.
The OBD-II system has nothing to do with the check engine light and everything to do with the computer. In fact, the whole thing is proprietary now right down to the Windows OS on the testing device.
And for those who don't know - OBD-II is a partially government influenced "improvement" to the trouble code system in cars. If you go to pep boys, for example, and pay them $70 for an "engine diagnostic", they stick a plug in the port under or beside your steering column and it tells them some codes. The cross-reference the codes to a list they have and know what's wrong. The entire process takes about 15 minutes (yes, Pep Boys is, in my experience, nothing but a con job). In OBD-I systems, you could get engine trouble codes (the check engine light comes on when the computer sets a "trouble code" when one of the sensors says something is Not Right) by plugging standard wires into the port. The engine light would blink a certain number of times like morse code, and you could cross-reference that to a little booklet such as a Haynes manual. This system worked just fine. OBD-II was introduced for the sole purpose of making it nearly impossible to work on your own car (the testers cost several thousand dollars and you need a new one every couple of years) and to try and push out little local shops so everyone had to go to overpriced dealerships.
Uh... dude.. the check engine light is color-coded. If it's yellow or orange (color is depending on make/model - they're the same meaning), the car is telling you that there's a problem, but it's not a serious one (yet). You can continue driving, but you should go to a service center asap to be on the safe side. In fact, if there's no other signs of a problem like loss of power, rough idle, etc... you don't even really need to hurry to the service center. If I get a check engine that's orange, I usually just keep driving it for awhile to see if it goes off on its own. If not, I go get a diagnostic at the local garage for $20.
If it's RED, the car is effectively telling you:
JESUS F'ING CHRIST I'M DYING HERE STOP THE GODDAMN CAR PULL OFF THE ROAD IMMEDIATELY HOLY SHIT SOMETHING IS INCREDIBLY SERIOUSLY FUCKING WRONG!
The only other level is if it turns red and starts BLINKING. Then you're seriously fucked because that usually means a pretty serious misfire and you're on the verge of blowing your cats, manifold or something else to pieces.
Honest to god... if you don't know how your check engine light works, you need to spend a little more time with TFM. I hardly expect people to know the details of it, but you really ought to at least know how the guages and lights on your dashboard work.
You young bucks are so spoiled.
You are aware, I assume, that even if the electronic assitance to your brakes goes out you can use good old fashioned muscle to stop the car? Yes, it's very hard to stop a 2800 pound block of aluminum/steel on wheels if you're not used to it, but it can be done and it can even be done in an emergency if you use the (drum roll please) "emergency break" to assist you. Therefore, you CAN still brake even if the system doesn't support a driver for your power braking system yet.
Heh... my post sounds like a typical Linux/BSD zealot response to a feature question:
N00b: Hey, why doesn't Aut0Linux support power braking?
Zealot1: Who cares? Nobody needs that! It's for lusers!
Zealot2: j00 5Ux0R5!!!11! L1/\/Ux 15 7h3 r0x0r5!!!1!!!
N00b: Uhh... right.
I kid because I love :)
It's ironic that your complaint about worst-case users and grandmas is tied to mention of industry.
Anything that produces an end product for a userbase must adapt to suit the needs of that userbase at the time that the product is being produced. If the end user is so egregiously stupid that they can't even handle e-mail without someone holding their hand, then rather than evolving toward the next great technological advance, usability must be made the next branch for improvement.
Think about it in relation to industry once. If automakers had blazed trails toward the next great evolution in automobiles, we could have cars that run a 1/4 mile in 4 seconds at nearly 200mph. Oh wait! We do! They're called funny cars! And nobody except a particular niche knows how to use and maintain them, and they're exceptionally dangerous machines. They are not refined for the general public, they are not safe, and when something goes wrong, it's often disastrous. Neutered cars like Corvettes and, for a few adventurous souls, Vipers, are fed to the public as top-of-the-line even though they're not. They're safe, (relatively) easy to use, and, for the most part, attractive to the buying public because, even if they break down it's just an inconvenience, they don't generally erupt into a fireball the size of a small house.
The computer industry will continue to evolve in much the same way. Crippled, blighted, and weak but generally consumer friendly software will drive the marketplace. In the meantime, hobbyists (Vipers and backyard mechanics) and hardcore computer geeks (funny cars and track techs) will continue to use the cutting edge workhorses that are far less refined, but far more advanced.
You missed the point, I believe. If they don't comply, that's fine. They just don't get to send messages to mail apps that DO comply. Anyone who doesn't upgrade to this can still get the spammers' messages, yes. However, anyone who DOES upgrade will get to bounce any emails saying "sorry - you didn't work the hash, screw you." I would think if Microsoft is remotely intelligent, the system would revert to a traditional whitelist if that happened or, better, they wouldn't make the crypto-puzzle based on some proprietary tech so that everyone else can implement it in their MTA as well.
But, of course, we all know how "Open Standards" work within the realm of Redmond...
Calm down, killer. Microsoft's not THAT smart.
It Is Not A Big Secret
At worst, I suppose Microsoft could make it's own scheme and try to push other people out, but I doubt that there are enough Microsoft MTAs out there to make that sort of system survive. If they implemented it for Microsoft-only, they'd almost have to give the option to revert to a traditional white-list when the sender can't play Microsoft's Holy Encryption Puzzle. After all. If you send someone an e-mail and outlook Express won't give it to them, just tell them that - Outlook Express won't let you look at it. I sent it, sorry. The problem is clearly on your end, call support for help.
Microsoft HATES support costs and one thing you don't do on Windows is screw with grandma's emails.
We've not had any incidents with bombs in laptops, but we will never let our guard down.
I've never had an incident with a bomb in my morning coffee either, but I check it religiously every time!
Seriously... I wouldn't expect them to stop checking laptops.. but uh.. why focus on them if they've never actually been used as a weapon before? I'd think you could swing the thing around and hit people with it like a (crappy, unbalanced) mace. That seems like a more likely use of a laptop as a weapon than it carrying a bomb. Even putting in some sort of electronic jamming equipment, as unlikely as it is to actually work, seems more likely. I do not think the $7 Rent-a-cops have gotten the hang of this whole "security" thing, yet.
Its fuel froze. Repeatedly.
Well, at least it was consistent.
Ever hear of being an Entrepreneur?
Ever hear of bankruptcy?
Neener neener!
Now, I'm sure we can all be very mature about this...
For instance, how about burkas, that women from certain islamic currents have to wear and which cover the body and the face entirely ?
Maybe you understand MY point of view, but I still don't understand YOURS. I don't understand how this is an issue. If the country has such deeply rooted social problems that people can't even keep from fighting with each other over a cross or a head scarf, how is brushing the discussion under the rug supposed to solve anything? We have problems over here - the entire "debate" over homosexuality comes to mind. However, even though it's disruptive and it interferes with normal activity when people refuse to be civil about it, we don't just legislate the discussion away (people have tried to do this regarding various issues - civil and women's rights, for example. Thankfully, they failed).
You can try to legislate any issue you want right out of the picture, but that doesn't mean it goes away. In fact, it generally leads to a taboo on discussing it, even when something exceptionally bad happens as a result. Instead, you just wind up with a bunch of people who are afraid to bring it up while the same problems keep going in the background as a result. Look at what happened with McCarthy over here. Everyone was so afraid of the taboo of discussing communism, that McCarthy and his goon squad were bitchslapping innocent people left and right and nobody would speak up about it. When he finally smacked the wrong guy (one of his own), he got torn to pieces. However, the guy that did it and his family were devastated in the process and never recovered.
Maybe it's just me or a cultural difference here, but I think it is EXTREMELY unhealthy when a society tries to cover up its dirty laundry instead of opening up the discussion to try and come to a resolution. Is it hard? Hell yes. Could a lot of people get hurt in the process? Absolutely. However, a lot more people are going to be hurt if it just boils under the skin forever.
I feel like I'm watching some sort of play by play here. As Linus enumerates the various header files, I'm poppin' 'em into vim or emacs (or pico.. whatever mood strikes) and walking through them.
Shit... a few more weeks of these ridiculous SCO claims and maybe I'll know enough about the kernel to become a Linux hacker. Laugh if you will, but I didn't know anymore about C than the data types and basic syntax before this crap started. I've learned all sorts of neat stuff since then!
Thanks SCO! You've taught me in 9 months what I wouldn't let 4 years of college education beat into my thick skull!
The school is an entity comprised of government-paid indviduals such as teachers, administrators, etc. Since they are receiving compensation in return for educating youngsters from an entire community which may well represent every ideological, social, political, and religious belief on the planet, they are obligated to not show favortism. The easiest way to do that is to simply not allow them to push any belief at all.
Students are a portion of that previously mentioned community. They are NOT receiving compensation from the community as a whole and, more importantly, are NOT an organization charged with educating the younger generations. Because they do not have these obligations, they should NOT be subject to arbitrary enforcements such as this. If the students were in some way responsible for educating their fellow students and they were compensated for it, then we'd have a totally different discussion here. However, since they are individuals under no obligations to their peers, as long as they are not intentionally and actively interfering with their fellow students, the government has NO business telling them what they can and can't do or say.
If the government can just start pushing individual people around on ideological issues, what's to say they'll stop at religion? After that, they could well ban the discussion of politics in public places. Again, if they can ban INDIVIDUALS from expressing, in a passive manner, religious affiliation, THEY CAN LOGICALLY BAN ANYTHING THAT INVOLVES INDIVIDUAL CHOICE WHATSOEVER AS LONG AS THERE IS MORE THAN ONE COMPETING OPTION.
That is an absolutely frightening scenario to me. Maybe you LIKE living in a country where the government decides what's okay in its happy little sterilized world, but I'd prefer down and dirty disagreement any day as long as it meant I had the choice. I will NEVER bow to any government wish that arbitrarily eliminates any of my choices unless they have a DAMN good reason. I feel sorry for anyone who would. For all the talk of Stupid Americans giving up freedom, I'd have to say that if this has any significant popular support in France, the French are easily twice as dumb as us.
What right is this that people keep talking about?
In the U.S., and a few other countries I know of, it's generally been the case that you are ALLOWED to make a backup copy of digital media, but you do not have the RIGHT to it. That means that if you can, you may, but if they implement some assinine "protection", things like the DMCA can kick you in the nuts for making your copy.
In fact, our sister company determined, about a year and a half ago, that, according to German law, German consumers DO NOT have a right to make backup copies (only that they may if they have the option) and, therefore, they were going to proceed with the sale of "protected" compact discs. They're not going to go engaging in a business practice that's going to put them in a courtroom on the obvious losing end of a lawsuit, I can tell you that. To date, nobody has managed to prove that what they're doing infringes on anyone's rights.
The long and short of it in most places seems to be that if you buy damaged (er... protected) media, that's just too fscking bad. You don't like it, then don't buy it anymore. Unfortunately, all the little children keep running out to buy Shitney Spears and the Buttfuck Boy Band Brothers' latest garbage, keeping up sales, and keeping the gooey, DRM goodness flowing.
In other words, as usual, the people who know what's going on are being trampled by the idiots who use dollar bills to wipe their asses and can't follow a thought process more complex then the instructions on a "shake 'n bake" box.
I know I'm waaayyyy late on this, but two things that immediately sprang to mind were Ogre Battle and Planescape: Torment.
In Ogre Battle, if your main character won too many battles, the people would stop liking him. Eventually, he'd lose all popular support and you'd lose the game, especially if he won mostly at night (because that made him darker). There was incentive NOT to win too many battles with the "hero".
Planescape: Torment took the "win the battle" mentality right out of the game altogether. Most battles could be avoided. The only place you really HAVE to fight is in Curst and that's only because the guards pick fights with you (since you are breaking into a prison and all). You don't even have to fight the final boss if you don't want to. While there was no incentive NOT to win most battles, you didn't get punished for losing (because your character is immortal) unless you were a REAAALLLLYYY lousy fighter (if you lose TOO much your character goes insane) and you generally didn't get much in the way of experience or loot unless it was a significant battle. There was always some new plot twist pushing you along to your next goal.
I don't think that Fight Club would make a very popular game if it was done right, just like the two above are only popular in their cult statuses. Note that I didn't say GOOD, I said POPULAR. I think, if done properly, it could be an incredible game where it was more important to follow along with the story and character development than to fight. I also think that 22 million caffiene-addled adolescent numbskulls out there are so brain-baked by stupid games like Halo and Tekken that anything that requires a more complex thought process than "push a button to solve a 'puzzle'" is doomed to cult status and low sales figures.
Call me a cynic, but I just don't think the target audience for a 'real" Fight Club game is big enough for the suits at Vivendi to make money selling to, so they're going to go after the typical numbskull crowd of moronic, over-drugged, fast food, "modern" kids. They're going to target the idiots that went to see the movie and left thinking "gee, that was booooring". I remember sitting there at the end of the movie with the guy I went to see it with and we just kind of sat there for a few minutes. Then, I turned to him and said, simply: "disturbing". He wholeheartedly agreed. It's the only movie I've not gotten up at the end of and walked right out of the theatre without a second thought. I can't say the same for most of the other dolts who left grumbling about how "dumb" it was and why there weren't more fights. Unfortunately, the dolts keep the market afloat....