We wouldn't be experiencing this if we weren't so "wowed" by graphics, instead of innovative gameplay. I like the original half-life because of the skeletal animation, and marine AI - not the graphics.
Unfortunately, Doom also hearlded a rush to create the latest and greatest in graphics. Now, with titles like Far-Cry out there. I no longer care to even see, much less play a new game just because it's "pretty".
I've been working on a 3D engine of my own for awhile. As of now, I'm tearing it down and rewriting it as a 2D isometric. No hardware upgrades necessary. There is no way in hell that I'm going to "upgrade" my expensive-ass GeForce FX 5200 w/128MB of memory, processor, or anything else - just so I *CAN* play a $50 game that isn't even bundled.
This could be great. Especially if it's action oriented. But I think a squad based game *could* be cooler. If happenings occured in a mission based format, then events could happen at any time while you stroll the SGC (Distress signal, unscheduled dial-ins, attacks on earth.) The game would have a longer life if extra missions/events could be downloaded from the internet.
...and don't you dare say that isn't what it's going to come to. People are going to run around the country-side/planet chasing small cute fighting animals with one word vocabularies and, ultimately, train them to fight each other.
I'm willing to say the biggest thing wasn't the fact that my parents were big on what I was doing on the computer, it was the lack of respect for my own privacy. Believe it or not, your kids opinion of you (and how much he/she will visit you;) ) depends on how much space you allow them.
Now there is a such thing as too much space. However, if you want to protect your kids from p0rn, just make it not such a big deal. If you allow your child to date, chat, and be sure to give'em the "sex talk", it isn't so interesting anymore. (In my experience, the kids with the parents who showered them with information and condoms were the ones who are still virgins.)
Most parents only care about p0rn and bombmaking, which is something you don't find unless you are curious. I would say limit your kids time online, but be fair about it. And figure out just what they do with their bandwidth. If the kid has days of music and new games all of the time -- you know what he's doing. But if you notice the harddrive is full, maybe you ought to search for video files periodically.
If you find something, *chill out*. Bringing it up isn't going to help unless you're willing to bar them from the internet forever. In the end, every lonely 15 yo kid is gonna see it, you're just dodgning the inevitable. The easier it is, the less interesting. Be curious, but don't be a nazi.
Some of you people are missing the point.
First of all, CDs/DVDs are optical, and the drives are mechanical with several moving parts. This is, for intents and purposes, solid state. These new drives are going to be a *ton* faster.
Second. The end device will probably start off as cartridge, only much faster than CDs. Most cartridges from as far back as the Magnavox Oddysey^2 work fine to this day...If you even look at a DVD/CD wrong and you're in skipsville (at the minimum). DVDs aren't famous for being scratch resistant.
So it's read only, so are DVDs/CDs. RWs are cool, yes. But the media is more expensive, and most people don't use them when you can buy spindles of blanks. I'm sure these will come in "burnable" form sooner or later too.
Back to the solid state issue: future cartridge formats may take advantage of newer technology, and build them into the discs (no more new drives after this)
I'm currently project lead of the Defiance Engine. (Also known as "Project EqTn") Which is a complete MMORPG Platform unlike any other. Our primary focus isn't graphics. While the engine is quite complex, with (intended) support for seamless indoor/outdoor environments, continous/streamed loading, land, sea, underwater, and space locales. And the most ridiculous vechicle support imaginable (I'm talking anything from a jet pack, power armor, car, tank, or mech, up to a deathstar). It's meant to run on most of today's decent hardware. But instead we're completely into gameplay. Most records/milestones set by previous/current MMORPGs will be shattered by this engine.
Planet sizes will be, well...Planetary as far as sq km go. NPCs will be much more important and numerous than in other games, and waaay more interactive.
Magic is something that we're treating very carefully, I've yet to come across a system that seamlessly allows the player to use a large repotire of "spells". But that's exactly the problem. In our game magic is much more...subjective and dynamic. The spells can be not only cast, but altered before and after casting, cast "differently" (cryptic, I know), and even countered.
We're accomplishing this using our(now fledgling) voice recognition engine. Ultimately voice is perfect because magic shouldn't involve both hands. The player should be allowed to run, fumble with items and the environment, or climb to safety while casting.
I personally hated NVN, Diablo, and other games that make me have to not only search for the spell, but made it difficult to pick specific targets, or use more than 10 at one time. Not to mention having to sit still...I died doing to rather frantic clicking more than once.
What *I* would probably attempt would be to setup a replication ring, and use a bigIP to make them all look like the same server. Then you get your load balancing, and scalability. I have yet to try this, but I will in the (very) near future.
Rifts is the supreme pizza with extra anchovies of the RPG world, period. *anything* can happen in Rifts. And how can you not love the magic versus technology theme???
What have I been doing with my life! I can't believe that! Do you know what this means?!?!?!? My chances of picking up a gamer chick have just gone WAAAAAY up! All I have to do is figure out what game...God I hope it isn't the sims....
"On the Moon, we have advanced far beyond rules, and manners..."
...prime example of patent abuse. It's not like the technology was stolen, or a trade secret was infringed upon. If someone mimics your product and makes it better than yours, you shouldn't be allowed to sue. That would be like the USPTO allowing Ford to sue Honda for "patent infringement". Completely unwise, in a few years, a patent suit isn't going to be too far detached from corporal punishment.
"On the Moon, nerds get their pants pulled down and are spanked with Moon rocks!""Now drop those sweat pants right now! " - Aqua Teen Hunger Force
Our Society revolves around death, from the first words about murder on the 6 o'clock news, to the war in Liberia. There are always people dying. As a natural response to longer and longer lifespans people tend to have fewer and fewer children.
People had 6+ kids back when we were an agrarian society. Now the average is 2.5, maybe even less.
In the future, it'll probably stay at 1-2.
Goverment as we know it will change completely, it will be more technolgy based, and more democratic.
It'll be harder to be a career politician for 200yrs and not have something bad happen. World Government will become much more unified and representative.
Currency may very well be one of the first things to go with increased technology. Why? Education, we may all very well spend 30, 40, or more years in school! On top of that, many won't opt to go to school longer than they have to.
Free thinking will prevail, and entertainment will be the huge "industry", if you wanna call it that. Most people will pursue a profession because they are dedicated to it, not because they wanna be paid for it. Teachers teach because they want to, students learn for the same reasons.
Drinking ages, and other pinnacle ages of increased responsibility will go up dramatically (people won't be driving anymore).
We'll be cradled by alot of technology. And space will become our concern once again, ala the 70's. Mars and the Moon will be the first to be conquered. After that we'll stagnate until we figure out the fastest way to Alpha Centauri;)
I can't believe it takes all of those people just to come up with one common sense solution....As if I was gonna march to the Provost's office and demand a lawyer because I'm a pirate...Geez
Will you take a tougher stance on the Microsoft case and not sell out for a pithy few million? (that's right, I'm bashing!) Also, what is your stance on privacy? Spam? RIAA Maddness? And a free 54Mbps Wifi network for the *entire* state, every last square inch of it!
The EqTn project team debated that long ago (if you figure out what EqTn means, email adclay1@ou.edu - without the 1)
Voice can be incorporated easily if planned for correctly. Things such as low player density (less noise), an expectation for high end systems, voice dictation, TTS, been there done that. IBM and a few other companies have some really nice systems, sure it isn't truely human, but then again, alot of characters in the game aren't either.
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect your players to have full duplex sounds. Games should be geared towards the hardcore, but usuable by the casual. And I think voice will eliminate more problems than it causes, l337 rejection, and chat-room bartering/plotting is eliminated. Finally a world were you can easily control communication...
I won't get too much further, but I will drop a big hint. By the time EqTn is done, IPV6 will be partially rolled out (seriously, it's gonna be awhile before it's "done"). But standard gaming systems will be even more ridiculus than they are now, and us slashdotters will have replaced our puters at least once. So power isn't something I'm worried about.
But has the author ever considered actually altering text? I mean breaking (or attempting to improve) someone's english based on their intelligence.
Player: "No you idiot!!! Press the green button!"
(game logic performs an intellegence check, since
there are a 1000 buttons, and the character has no idea what the thing is...fail by 4...add a stutter and some random colors to the mix!)
Avatar: "Duhhh......press the red...no....blue...nooo...ummmm....green?"
How do you like them apples? Or how about *player* languages? Easy to implement with a speech processor. Two english speaking people, can't understand a word of each other cuz one's an elf and the other is an imp. Yet another character can make a living as a translator...
The technology will only improve, and with libraries that can convert between real languages accompanied by fast internet, those people across the pond can play too--in the same game.
Sent back from the future to save us all - Project EqTn. (I really get off on that acronym.)
I have a license, KC5LHH. And while hams aren't at the forefront, neither is the emergency broadcast service. Hams train themselves to provide a worldwide communications network under the *worst* possible conditions.
And while BPL would do much to harm broadcasts, I do think that proper power supply filtering and construction can greatly reduce/eliminate the problem.
Just don't count em out. In the event of a disaster as trivial as a hurricane/earthquake, they are quite useful. And one day when some conventional/nuclear war takes place or aliens invade, you might owe them your life.
Start your own website based off of the exploit. Students pay you, you fix their grades, you get paid, and forget about the hole being patched!!!
But then there is that darn ethics thing. Document the error and report it directly to the company. If they give you the brush, no big deal--you've done your duty. If they litigate, I think you'll have no prob getting help. And besides, the attention will start a career if that's your goal.
Make sure you can the proof of concept code though, that'll get you in trouble. The DMCA is in full effect, just document the error, and tell what is exposed. No other details.
As promised, I'm still working on a commercial project to deliver an MMORPG that addresses this and many other problems with MMORPGs. The leveling system is horrid, but hard to get rid of because characters want to compare themselves to gauge their progress.
I personally favor a skill-based approach. It's not hard to tell if a player is actually *challening* themselves. And it's really easy to tell which skills are being used, and which are rotting from disuse.
This RPG, which may be announced later this year and enter alpha around January or so, is almost entirely skill based. (using a percentage as an index, skills can actually have subskills, and are quite complex in nature.) If you spend all of your time sniping, your sniping skill will increase, but only if you continually persue harder and harder targets. Skills that aren't used often actually waste away. Depending on your character's attributes, this can be recoverd from fairly easily.
For example, if your character learns to ride a bicycle, then doesn't for a year, you can "re-learn" in seconds unless you're trying to start off with BMX racing....
But if you haven't went swimming in a while, the curve isn't so flat... You might need a few minutes at the kiddy-pool to get reacqauinted with the water....While some special forces character will start acting like a fish instantly.
In addition, your character's situation and physical condition is taken into account. If he/she is tired, sleep-deprived, *and* hungry, obviously your electrical engineering skill is gonna take a penalty. The same goes if your character isn't used to gunfire, death, etc.
Skills in gaming are best approached from a psychological standpoint. Because everyone has good and bad days. On the other end AI does play a role, and so is the wretched quest system that online games have adopted. Players are great at making their own drama, and this game will nurture that to the fullest! There are plenty of ways to incorportate moderate PvP and still counteract "grief" players.
The end result of this will be an RPG that is much more enjoyable than anything else out there. So I may as well reveal the name of the project: Project EqTn. (free character for life and 1,000,000 credits in-game for the person who figures out what that means...email zarthrag14@ou.edu minus the 1-4)
The site will be up soon, maybe next month or so. Maybe later I'll put up a release revealing some of the nifty life-changing features.
"I'm nobody, and if anyone disagrees with me, then I'm somebody, and that makes me special."
I've often had to research a problem in order to avoid wiping an installation of windows and starting over, but often, I do it anyway. It never dawned upon me that tech support forums archive this kind of stuff. But then again, I don't know of any, which do you read?
What *really* needs to happen is for Adobe to simply support linux itself. They should be flattered that other companies are using it's software on platforms it supports. I'm not saying make it opensource, it's a bad business model. But they should release a suite of linux binaries and plugins. It isn't all that hard, and there are tons of developers out there that can help (and be employed).
The only person(s) who disagree live mostly in Redmond, WA. And it's not like listen to them. What I'm saying is, if businesses find out that people are emulating they're software, they aren't working hard enough, and they're actually losing out. In a perfect world, there would be no need for emulators.
first of all, I think it's important to keep on track with time, it's not like we don't have the technology to keep it up. Isn't it amazing that we can even develop the concepts in the first place?
Leap years have been incorporated for awhile now, it keeps the seasons from drifting to some "other" part of the calendar. (Winter in July anyone?)
Daylight savings wasn't invented to annoy people or make people appreciate the season by forcing you to be awake earlier. It saves energy by having people awake during the daylight hours. This means you're more likely to open a window than cut on a light, and go to bed while it's dark out.
While leap seconds are comparatively minute, it's just maintence. (Y2k is an example of what happens when we don't think far enough ahead).
I think modern-day timekeeping is the result of centuries of work. It started with us observing the sun, then the stars, and now the earth itself. Needless to say, timekeeping ought to be an exact science. Until we find something more reliable of deserving to serve as a time reference, we ought to keep our ears to the ground. We do happen to live here, and I think the Earth deserves to set the pace.
Re:WMD hunting-The UN works.
on
Secret Empire
·
· Score: 1
Damn straight the UN works. If this was about "freeing" people, we'd be fighting and supplying aid to the Congo, where hundreds of thousands of people have died because of war and famine.
"....What's that??? The Congo has no oil?? Well I wanna get my dad a cool b-day present. Let's kill Sadaam!" - GW
Slashdot Mirror
We wouldn't be experiencing this if we weren't so "wowed" by graphics, instead of innovative gameplay. I like the original half-life because of the skeletal animation, and marine AI - not the graphics.
Unfortunately, Doom also hearlded a rush to create the latest and greatest in graphics. Now, with titles like Far-Cry out there. I no longer care to even see, much less play a new game just because it's "pretty".
I've been working on a 3D engine of my own for awhile. As of now, I'm tearing it down and rewriting it as a 2D isometric. No hardware upgrades necessary. There is no way in hell that I'm going to "upgrade" my expensive-ass GeForce FX 5200 w/128MB of memory, processor, or anything else - just so I *CAN* play a $50 game that isn't even bundled.
This could be great. Especially if it's action oriented. But I think a squad based game *could* be cooler. If happenings occured in a mission based format, then events could happen at any time while you stroll the SGC (Distress signal, unscheduled dial-ins, attacks on earth.) The game would have a longer life if extra missions/events could be downloaded from the internet.
...and don't you dare say that isn't what it's going to come to. People are going to run around the country-side/planet chasing small cute fighting animals with one word vocabularies and, ultimately, train them to fight each other.
I'm willing to say the biggest thing wasn't the fact that my parents were big on what I was doing on the computer, it was the lack of respect for my own privacy. Believe it or not, your kids opinion of you (and how much he/she will visit you ;) ) depends on how much space you allow them.
Now there is a such thing as too much space. However, if you want to protect your kids from p0rn, just make it not such a big deal. If you allow your child to date, chat, and be sure to give'em the "sex talk", it isn't so interesting anymore. (In my experience, the kids with the parents who showered them with information and condoms were the ones who are still virgins.)
Most parents only care about p0rn and bombmaking, which is something you don't find unless you are curious. I would say limit your kids time online, but be fair about it. And figure out just what they do with their bandwidth. If the kid has days of music and new games all of the time -- you know what he's doing. But if you notice the harddrive is full, maybe you ought to search for video files periodically.
If you find something, *chill out*. Bringing it up isn't going to help unless you're willing to bar them from the internet forever. In the end, every lonely 15 yo kid is gonna see it, you're just dodgning the inevitable. The easier it is, the less interesting. Be curious, but don't be a nazi.
Some of you people are missing the point. First of all, CDs/DVDs are optical, and the drives are mechanical with several moving parts. This is, for intents and purposes, solid state. These new drives are going to be a *ton* faster. Second. The end device will probably start off as cartridge, only much faster than CDs. Most cartridges from as far back as the Magnavox Oddysey^2 work fine to this day...If you even look at a DVD/CD wrong and you're in skipsville (at the minimum). DVDs aren't famous for being scratch resistant. So it's read only, so are DVDs/CDs. RWs are cool, yes. But the media is more expensive, and most people don't use them when you can buy spindles of blanks. I'm sure these will come in "burnable" form sooner or later too. Back to the solid state issue: future cartridge formats may take advantage of newer technology, and build them into the discs (no more new drives after this)
I'm currently project lead of the Defiance Engine. (Also known as "Project EqTn") Which is a complete MMORPG Platform unlike any other. Our primary focus isn't graphics. While the engine is quite complex, with (intended) support for seamless indoor/outdoor environments, continous/streamed loading, land, sea, underwater, and space locales. And the most ridiculous vechicle support imaginable (I'm talking anything from a jet pack, power armor, car, tank, or mech, up to a deathstar). It's meant to run on most of today's decent hardware. But instead we're completely into gameplay. Most records/milestones set by previous/current MMORPGs will be shattered by this engine.
Planet sizes will be, well...Planetary as far as sq km go. NPCs will be much more important and numerous than in other games, and waaay more interactive.
Magic is something that we're treating very carefully, I've yet to come across a system that seamlessly allows the player to use a large repotire of "spells". But that's exactly the problem. In our game magic is much more...subjective and dynamic. The spells can be not only cast, but altered before and after casting, cast "differently" (cryptic, I know), and even countered.
We're accomplishing this using our(now fledgling) voice recognition engine. Ultimately voice is perfect because magic shouldn't involve both hands. The player should be allowed to run, fumble with items and the environment, or climb to safety while casting.
I personally hated NVN, Diablo, and other games that make me have to not only search for the spell, but made it difficult to pick specific targets, or use more than 10 at one time. Not to mention having to sit still...I died doing to rather frantic clicking more than once.
What *I* would probably attempt would be to setup a replication ring, and use a bigIP to make them all look like the same server. Then you get your load balancing, and scalability. I have yet to try this, but I will in the (very) near future.
Rifts is the supreme pizza with extra anchovies of the RPG world, period. *anything* can happen in Rifts. And how can you not love the magic versus technology theme???
Now there is a nice one: "Be patriotic! Reduce the deficit! Avoid costly software licensing and use OSS!
What have I been doing with my life! I can't believe that! Do you know what this means?!?!?!? My chances of picking up a gamer chick have just gone WAAAAAY up! All I have to do is figure out what game...God I hope it isn't the sims....
"On the Moon, we have advanced far beyond rules, and manners..."
...prime example of patent abuse. It's not like the technology was stolen, or a trade secret was infringed upon. If someone mimics your product and makes it better than yours, you shouldn't be allowed to sue. That would be like the USPTO allowing Ford to sue Honda for "patent infringement". Completely unwise, in a few years, a patent suit isn't going to be too far detached from corporal punishment.
"On the Moon, nerds get their pants pulled down and are spanked with Moon rocks!" "Now drop those sweat pants right now! " - Aqua Teen Hunger Force
....would IPV6 and free broadband for everyone be asking too much???
"ph33r m3 n07, f0r ! @m the 5@vi0ur, r00tus."
Our Society revolves around death, from the first words about murder on the 6 o'clock news, to the war in Liberia. There are always people dying. As a natural response to longer and longer lifespans people tend to have fewer and fewer children.
;)
People had 6+ kids back when we were an agrarian society. Now the average is 2.5, maybe even less. In the future, it'll probably stay at 1-2.
Goverment as we know it will change completely, it will be more technolgy based, and more democratic. It'll be harder to be a career politician for 200yrs and not have something bad happen. World Government will become much more unified and representative.
Currency may very well be one of the first things to go with increased technology. Why? Education, we may all very well spend 30, 40, or more years in school! On top of that, many won't opt to go to school longer than they have to.
Free thinking will prevail, and entertainment will be the huge "industry", if you wanna call it that. Most people will pursue a profession because they are dedicated to it, not because they wanna be paid for it. Teachers teach because they want to, students learn for the same reasons.
Drinking ages, and other pinnacle ages of increased responsibility will go up dramatically (people won't be driving anymore).
We'll be cradled by alot of technology. And space will become our concern once again, ala the 70's. Mars and the Moon will be the first to be conquered. After that we'll stagnate until we figure out the fastest way to Alpha Centauri
I can't believe it takes all of those people just to come up with one common sense solution....As if I was gonna march to the Provost's office and demand a lawyer because I'm a pirate...Geez
Will you take a tougher stance on the Microsoft case and not sell out for a pithy few million? (that's right, I'm bashing!) Also, what is your stance on privacy? Spam? RIAA Maddness? And a free 54Mbps Wifi network for the *entire* state, every last square inch of it!
The EqTn project team debated that long ago (if you figure out what EqTn means, email adclay1@ou.edu - without the 1) Voice can be incorporated easily if planned for correctly. Things such as low player density (less noise), an expectation for high end systems, voice dictation, TTS, been there done that. IBM and a few other companies have some really nice systems, sure it isn't truely human, but then again, alot of characters in the game aren't either. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect your players to have full duplex sounds. Games should be geared towards the hardcore, but usuable by the casual. And I think voice will eliminate more problems than it causes, l337 rejection, and chat-room bartering/plotting is eliminated. Finally a world were you can easily control communication... I won't get too much further, but I will drop a big hint. By the time EqTn is done, IPV6 will be partially rolled out (seriously, it's gonna be awhile before it's "done"). But standard gaming systems will be even more ridiculus than they are now, and us slashdotters will have replaced our puters at least once. So power isn't something I'm worried about. But has the author ever considered actually altering text? I mean breaking (or attempting to improve) someone's english based on their intelligence. Player: "No you idiot!!! Press the green button!" (game logic performs an intellegence check, since there are a 1000 buttons, and the character has no idea what the thing is...fail by 4...add a stutter and some random colors to the mix!) Avatar: "Duhhh......press the red...no....blue...nooo...ummmm....green?" How do you like them apples? Or how about *player* languages? Easy to implement with a speech processor. Two english speaking people, can't understand a word of each other cuz one's an elf and the other is an imp. Yet another character can make a living as a translator... The technology will only improve, and with libraries that can convert between real languages accompanied by fast internet, those people across the pond can play too--in the same game. Sent back from the future to save us all - Project EqTn. (I really get off on that acronym.)
I have a license, KC5LHH. And while hams aren't at the forefront, neither is the emergency broadcast service. Hams train themselves to provide a worldwide communications network under the *worst* possible conditions. And while BPL would do much to harm broadcasts, I do think that proper power supply filtering and construction can greatly reduce/eliminate the problem. Just don't count em out. In the event of a disaster as trivial as a hurricane/earthquake, they are quite useful. And one day when some conventional/nuclear war takes place or aliens invade, you might owe them your life.
Start your own website based off of the exploit. Students pay you, you fix their grades, you get paid, and forget about the hole being patched!!! But then there is that darn ethics thing. Document the error and report it directly to the company. If they give you the brush, no big deal--you've done your duty. If they litigate, I think you'll have no prob getting help. And besides, the attention will start a career if that's your goal. Make sure you can the proof of concept code though, that'll get you in trouble. The DMCA is in full effect, just document the error, and tell what is exposed. No other details.
As promised, I'm still working on a commercial project to deliver an MMORPG that addresses this and many other problems with MMORPGs. The leveling system is horrid, but hard to get rid of because characters want to compare themselves to gauge their progress. I personally favor a skill-based approach. It's not hard to tell if a player is actually *challening* themselves. And it's really easy to tell which skills are being used, and which are rotting from disuse. This RPG, which may be announced later this year and enter alpha around January or so, is almost entirely skill based. (using a percentage as an index, skills can actually have subskills, and are quite complex in nature.) If you spend all of your time sniping, your sniping skill will increase, but only if you continually persue harder and harder targets. Skills that aren't used often actually waste away. Depending on your character's attributes, this can be recoverd from fairly easily. For example, if your character learns to ride a bicycle, then doesn't for a year, you can "re-learn" in seconds unless you're trying to start off with BMX racing.... But if you haven't went swimming in a while, the curve isn't so flat... You might need a few minutes at the kiddy-pool to get reacqauinted with the water....While some special forces character will start acting like a fish instantly. In addition, your character's situation and physical condition is taken into account. If he/she is tired, sleep-deprived, *and* hungry, obviously your electrical engineering skill is gonna take a penalty. The same goes if your character isn't used to gunfire, death, etc. Skills in gaming are best approached from a psychological standpoint. Because everyone has good and bad days. On the other end AI does play a role, and so is the wretched quest system that online games have adopted. Players are great at making their own drama, and this game will nurture that to the fullest! There are plenty of ways to incorportate moderate PvP and still counteract "grief" players. The end result of this will be an RPG that is much more enjoyable than anything else out there. So I may as well reveal the name of the project: Project EqTn. (free character for life and 1,000,000 credits in-game for the person who figures out what that means...email zarthrag14@ou.edu minus the 1-4) The site will be up soon, maybe next month or so. Maybe later I'll put up a release revealing some of the nifty life-changing features. "I'm nobody, and if anyone disagrees with me, then I'm somebody, and that makes me special."
I've often had to research a problem in order to avoid wiping an installation of windows and starting over, but often, I do it anyway. It never dawned upon me that tech support forums archive this kind of stuff. But then again, I don't know of any, which do you read?
What *really* needs to happen is for Adobe to simply support linux itself. They should be flattered that other companies are using it's software on platforms it supports. I'm not saying make it opensource, it's a bad business model. But they should release a suite of linux binaries and plugins. It isn't all that hard, and there are tons of developers out there that can help (and be employed).
The only person(s) who disagree live mostly in Redmond, WA. And it's not like listen to them. What I'm saying is, if businesses find out that people are emulating they're software, they aren't working hard enough, and they're actually losing out. In a perfect world, there would be no need for emulators.
first of all, I think it's important to keep on track with time, it's not like we don't have the technology to keep it up. Isn't it amazing that we can even develop the concepts in the first place? Leap years have been incorporated for awhile now, it keeps the seasons from drifting to some "other" part of the calendar. (Winter in July anyone?) Daylight savings wasn't invented to annoy people or make people appreciate the season by forcing you to be awake earlier. It saves energy by having people awake during the daylight hours. This means you're more likely to open a window than cut on a light, and go to bed while it's dark out. While leap seconds are comparatively minute, it's just maintence. (Y2k is an example of what happens when we don't think far enough ahead). I think modern-day timekeeping is the result of centuries of work. It started with us observing the sun, then the stars, and now the earth itself. Needless to say, timekeeping ought to be an exact science. Until we find something more reliable of deserving to serve as a time reference, we ought to keep our ears to the ground. We do happen to live here, and I think the Earth deserves to set the pace.
Damn straight the UN works. If this was about "freeing" people, we'd be fighting and supplying aid to the Congo, where hundreds of thousands of people have died because of war and famine. "....What's that??? The Congo has no oil?? Well I wanna get my dad a cool b-day present. Let's kill Sadaam!" - GW