Seriously, I really don't know what's going on. I often progress because it seems like the aprropriate course of action, rather than out of some determination to resolve a problem or something.
For all its praise I'm not too happy with steam. The essence of which boiled down to this for me; pay $50 for a game, then download it at 30-50K/s (on a line capable of 200K/s). To add insult to injury, I have to go through Steam every time I try to play the game, which wastes a few seconds 'Preparing' for an unknown reason (I have heard that it actually connects to the server every time I play... which seems rather redundant)
In terms of the game itself, I haven't played Half Life (1), so I really don't understand what is going on, or why. Vague references from the in game charecters hint at what is going on, but I really think I would have needed to play the first game to understand
Valve needs to walk over to Bungie with a presents one day, and beg them for education on how this load/save/death thing should work. Pausing for 3-20seconds in the middle of an action sequence while the game loads the next zone doesn't make any sense and just works to break up the game play. Death also requires a reload of the previous checkpoint. This is all stuff that Bungie figgured out for Halo 2, if only Valve could watch and learn.
The physics is fun, I really enjoy the ocasional puzzle with ropes and weights, It adds a little something, especially when most of them are optional for extra ammo or health. You feel like you've accomplished a little something when it's done. There have been a few places in a game where I was requird to load a previous save in order to continue (dune buggy was under water, and couldn't be moved, I was surrounded by radioactive slime, and couldnt escape, etc) which combines with the annoying loading to break up the game play. It has however given me an opportunity to catch up on some reading.
Overall I would give the game a 3.5/5, Steam is slow, loading is slow, loading while playing is annoying, and I still don't really understand what is going on. The game physics are fun, and the graphics are decent, I just lack the background to understand why it is all as it is.
RTFA They are NOT suggesting that Kerry won, they admit rather early in each of the texts I read that the vote descrepancy was not enough to change the result of the election.
This may sound odd, but it is possible in this day in age to own a computer and not have an internet connection. I have several friends living in either northern ontario, or one of the three territories who own a decent computer, but don't have internet access. One still has an old 'party-line' phone in their house, the others just don't have the money to pay for dial & long distance charges. High Speed? Not a chance. Satelite would be the only option, and well out of their price range.
No Half-Life 2 for them, I will pass on the game for privacy concerns, and in protest.
My favourite 'feature' is being able to progress in the game without acquiring all possible items. Items that will not be available later in the game, but are required for its completion.
So a game based in a period of human history would like to present a sterotype present in that time period... In one charecter (so far), widely regarded by many NPCs to be a theif and a scoundrel...
I'm tired of whitewashing history (will I be flamed by those who would consider that a racist remark?). Bad things happen, people were enslaved, tortured, killed, etc, based on pretty much anything. It was bad, we know that, lets move on, but lets also not forget that it happened.
Game publishers, programmers and authors should be applauded for being willing to tackle issues present in the period they choose to set their work, it is a difficult and tricky business.
Perhapps users could/(should?) be warned during charecter creation that their chosen avatar will effect game play, heck, list it as a feature. If you play female some NPCs wont trade with you, if you play a white guy you won't be able to jump, if you play someone of X decent you will be better at Y, etc.
My understanding from the original article is that a court order was presented in the US to an international firm, which then complied and turned over servers in another country, to officials in that country.
Does this scare anyone else?
Could firms use this precident setting situation & other crazy recent laws (DMCA for example) to force hosting companies to turn over servers located in other countries?
Wasn't there a law passed not too long ago that gave the government the power to request information contained within many types of corporate databases (banking, insurance, car loan, etc)? Leverage that law with this case, and the current level of internationalization of many firms, and the government can get information about anyone, from just about anywhere.
Or perhapps I am wearing the tinfoil hat too tightly...
I just can't get enough of this, I love this part in particular: We take seriously our responsibility to protect our citizens from misleading or deceptive practices, and to ensure that our citizens are given the information necessary to making an informed decision.
Why don't you protect your citizens from CDs that won't play in their car stereo? Why don't you protect your citizens fair use rights to make a copy of a DVD for personal use? Why don't you protect your citizens from being mislead into beleiving that when they purchase a media product they will be able to use it as they see fit, not in the pigeon holed subset of uses envisioned by the industry?
(the views expressed in this post are my own, and not nesesarily those of my employer).
One of the foot notes in the letter (which I can now read via PDF) states that the big issue is that by default file sharing programs share the entire hard drive of the user.
I am not aware of any P2P United client doing that, eDonkey in particular shares only files you have downloaded from the network by default.
When I worked for a larger company we all used Lotus SameTime (often called sometime, as in it should work sometime), it worked quite well, and the integration between the client and corporate lists was really usefull.
IM clients are a happy comprimise between the phone and email. A phone nesesarily distracts the contactee from whatever they were doing, while many people only check for email every X minutes. An IM message doesn't have to pull them away from whatevery they are doing, and they can respond at an apropriate moment.
IM clients also provide more granular controll over your status, and display that status to others. With a phone you can answer, check call display and let voice mail handle it, or send all to voice mail. With IM you can be available, busy, do not disturb, away, etc. The fact that this is displayed to others can also allow them to make decisions on wether or not to bother you.
All in all I am glad to see greater acceptance of IM in the workplace
Actually someone threatened to sue the company I work for (based in the US) because their screen reader couldnt read our software.
Since I figgured that people interested in this story might actually have some idea what the laws were here, I thought it might be an apropriate place to ask.
I have heard of the american disabilities act and such, to whom does it actually apply?
Do all sites need to be accessible to the blind? If I write a small utility does it need to be screen-reader friendly? What is the threshold?
Are there any good resources explaining exactly what is requried of different companies from a computing standpoint (brick and mortor info is all over the place)?
This is the #1 reason we should outlaw science and start living off the land again. Seriously, study anthrapology, hunter gatherers have more free time and are generally happier than us.
I wonder why the MMO's don't spin off a virtual items divison, or at least an escrow. If the MMO was in charge of selling items revoked payments could have the affected items nullified. They could take the same % as paypal, and make a decent profit since they have most of the infastructure already. Users who wish to take part end up with a far more secure system.
Getting your ass kicked by some guy who just paid for a level whatever kickass barbarian may suck. But getting your ass kicked by someone who just didn't pay for a level whatever kickass barbarian sucks even more.
I think it is time we all faced the facts. The times when one could walk out of University with nothing more than a shiny new diploma and into a well paying job are gone. They probably aren't comming back. I particularily don't understand this mentality in CS when there are so many ways to get involved. Open Source software is more than a great way to use great software for free, it is also a great way to get your name out there. Attach it to some projects, big or small and actually contribute. No it isnt regular office experiance, but it is coding, and will seperate you from the rest of your classmates who have dont nothing more than school projects. Pick any project you use, phpBB, Apache, PHP, *nuke, whatever and get involved and get noticed. Even helping out with documentation shows some initive, and can help you stand out from the crowd.
Hmm, Why not just take it one step further, disable email world wide, no more spam. Done.
(Thats Patent #6505583342 owned by MS by the way)
The only thing worse than getting spam, is not getting a legitimate message because of a spam filter. The only thing worse than allowing a spammer to operate on your server is denying access to a legitimate individual.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, I really don't know what's going on. I often progress because it seems like the aprropriate course of action, rather than out of some determination to resolve a problem or something.
For all its praise I'm not too happy with steam. The essence of which boiled down to this for me; pay $50 for a game, then download it at 30-50K/s (on a line capable of 200K/s). To add insult to injury, I have to go through Steam every time I try to play the game, which wastes a few seconds 'Preparing' for an unknown reason (I have heard that it actually connects to the server every time I play... which seems rather redundant)
In terms of the game itself, I haven't played Half Life (1), so I really don't understand what is going on, or why. Vague references from the in game charecters hint at what is going on, but I really think I would have needed to play the first game to understand
Valve needs to walk over to Bungie with a presents one day, and beg them for education on how this load/save/death thing should work. Pausing for 3-20seconds in the middle of an action sequence while the game loads the next zone doesn't make any sense and just works to break up the game play. Death also requires a reload of the previous checkpoint. This is all stuff that Bungie figgured out for Halo 2, if only Valve could watch and learn.
The physics is fun, I really enjoy the ocasional puzzle with ropes and weights, It adds a little something, especially when most of them are optional for extra ammo or health. You feel like you've accomplished a little something when it's done. There have been a few places in a game where I was requird to load a previous save in order to continue (dune buggy was under water, and couldn't be moved, I was surrounded by radioactive slime, and couldnt escape, etc) which combines with the annoying loading to break up the game play. It has however given me an opportunity to catch up on some reading.
Overall I would give the game a 3.5/5, Steam is slow, loading is slow, loading while playing is annoying, and I still don't really understand what is going on. The game physics are fun, and the graphics are decent, I just lack the background to understand why it is all as it is.
I'm running firefox 1.0, it crashes every single time I close it, PR1 exhibited the same behavior.
KDrive allows users to set up secure groups across the net, push files to the group, and selectivly share different files with different groups
RTFA They are NOT suggesting that Kerry won, they admit rather early in each of the texts I read that the vote descrepancy was not enough to change the result of the election.
They are over it.
This may sound odd, but it is possible in this day in age to own a computer and not have an internet connection. I have several friends living in either northern ontario, or one of the three territories who own a decent computer, but don't have internet access. One still has an old 'party-line' phone in their house, the others just don't have the money to pay for dial & long distance charges. High Speed? Not a chance. Satelite would be the only option, and well out of their price range.
No Half-Life 2 for them, I will pass on the game for privacy concerns, and in protest.
My favourite 'feature' is being able to progress in the game without acquiring all possible items. Items that will not be available later in the game, but are required for its completion.
Quote
"Canadian hospitals ROUTINELY close to all but emergency cases for the last couple of months of the year, when they run out of money. "
As a Canadian, having grown up with both parents active in the health care industry, i have to ask. Care to quote your source?
So a game based in a period of human history would like to present a sterotype present in that time period... In one charecter (so far), widely regarded by many NPCs to be a theif and a scoundrel...
I'm tired of whitewashing history (will I be flamed by those who would consider that a racist remark?). Bad things happen, people were enslaved, tortured, killed, etc, based on pretty much anything. It was bad, we know that, lets move on, but lets also not forget that it happened.
Game publishers, programmers and authors should be applauded for being willing to tackle issues present in the period they choose to set their work, it is a difficult and tricky business.
Perhapps users could/(should?) be warned during charecter creation that their chosen avatar will effect game play, heck, list it as a feature. If you play female some NPCs wont trade with you, if you play a white guy you won't be able to jump, if you play someone of X decent you will be better at Y, etc.
My understanding from the original article is that a court order was presented in the US to an international firm, which then complied and turned over servers in another country, to officials in that country.
Does this scare anyone else?
Could firms use this precident setting situation & other crazy recent laws (DMCA for example) to force hosting companies to turn over servers located in other countries?
Wasn't there a law passed not too long ago that gave the government the power to request information contained within many types of corporate databases (banking, insurance, car loan, etc)? Leverage that law with this case, and the current level of internationalization of many firms, and the government can get information about anyone, from just about anywhere.
Or perhapps I am wearing the tinfoil hat too tightly...
I just can't get enough of this, I love this part in particular: We take seriously our responsibility to protect our citizens from misleading or deceptive
practices, and to ensure that our citizens are given the information necessary to making an
informed decision.
Why don't you protect your citizens from CDs that won't play in their car stereo? Why don't you protect your citizens fair use rights to make a copy of a DVD for personal use? Why don't you protect your citizens from being mislead into beleiving that when they purchase a media product they will be able to use it as they see fit, not in the pigeon holed subset of uses envisioned by the industry?
(the views expressed in this post are my own, and not nesesarily those of my employer).
One of the foot notes in the letter (which I can now read via PDF) states that the big issue is that by default file sharing programs share the entire hard drive of the user.
I am not aware of any P2P United client doing that, eDonkey in particular shares only files you have downloaded from the network by default.
I work for MetaMachine, authors of eDonkey. I find it rather funny that we don't have a copy of this letter...
I agree, that sounds like a great idea.
However, she is trying to push Katie.com as her own brand (or was), and will alienate all of her customers with the goats.cx pics.
When I worked for a larger company we all used Lotus SameTime (often called sometime, as in it should work sometime), it worked quite well, and the integration between the client and corporate lists was really usefull.
IM clients are a happy comprimise between the phone and email. A phone nesesarily distracts the contactee from whatever they were doing, while many people only check for email every X minutes. An IM message doesn't have to pull them away from whatevery they are doing, and they can respond at an apropriate moment.
IM clients also provide more granular controll over your status, and display that status to others. With a phone you can answer, check call display and let voice mail handle it, or send all to voice mail. With IM you can be available, busy, do not disturb, away, etc. The fact that this is displayed to others can also allow them to make decisions on wether or not to bother you.
All in all I am glad to see greater acceptance of IM in the workplace
Actually someone threatened to sue the company I work for (based in the US) because their screen reader couldnt read our software.
Since I figgured that people interested in this story might actually have some idea what the laws were here, I thought it might be an apropriate place to ask.
apology accepted
I have heard of the american disabilities act and such, to whom does it actually apply?
Do all sites need to be accessible to the blind? If I write a small utility does it need to be screen-reader friendly? What is the threshold?
Are there any good resources explaining exactly what is requried of different companies from a computing standpoint (brick and mortor info is all over the place)?
paul
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/12/business/12barco de.html?ex=1247371200&en=5150688e8ea6f850&ei=5090& partner=rssuserland
I'm glad you resisted the urge so well, perhapps your energy would have been better spent recognizing a joke.
This is the #1 reason we should outlaw science and start living off the land again. Seriously, study anthrapology, hunter gatherers have more free time and are generally happier than us.
I wonder why the MMO's don't spin off a virtual items divison, or at least an escrow. If the MMO was in charge of selling items revoked payments could have the affected items nullified. They could take the same % as paypal, and make a decent profit since they have most of the infastructure already. Users who wish to take part end up with a far more secure system.
Getting your ass kicked by some guy who just paid for a level whatever kickass barbarian may suck. But getting your ass kicked by someone who just didn't pay for a level whatever kickass barbarian sucks even more.
So what are you doing about it?
I think it is time we all faced the facts. The times when one could walk out of University with nothing more than a shiny new diploma and into a well paying job are gone. They probably aren't comming back. I particularily don't understand this mentality in CS when there are so many ways to get involved. Open Source software is more than a great way to use great software for free, it is also a great way to get your name out there. Attach it to some projects, big or small and actually contribute. No it isnt regular office experiance, but it is coding, and will seperate you from the rest of your classmates who have dont nothing more than school projects. Pick any project you use, phpBB, Apache, PHP, *nuke, whatever and get involved and get noticed. Even helping out with documentation shows some initive, and can help you stand out from the crowd.
Is it a sad day when the papers linked to on slashdot are no more credible than the comments posted in reply to them?
Hmm, Why not just take it one step further, disable email world wide, no more spam. Done.
(Thats Patent #6505583342 owned by MS by the way)
The only thing worse than getting spam, is not getting a legitimate message because of a spam filter. The only thing worse than allowing a spammer to operate on your server is denying access to a legitimate individual.