I'm slowly buying them because I'm such a total DS9 addict. What annoys me big time is the fact that a)they come in a big molded box. I was PLEASED that DVDs are so space saving. grrrrrrrr b)You can't skip the pathetic menu intro. WHY? I HAVE PAID FOR THIS YOU DIPSTICKS. Unfortunately my geekness overrides my grouchiness and I still buy them...
Is coffee the new spawn of satan? Anyonme who suggests its against the wishes of the lord to drink coffee should be given a white shirt with straps on the arms and put in a nice safe place with padded walls. grrrrrrrrrrrr
on the protesters thing, three time protesters got inot sizewell B in the UK. some protesters even climbed on top of the reactor building, and drew slogans on the side of it. They didnt go into the control room, and had decided ahead of time not to do that. theyt were there to protest at nuclear expansion, not security. The protesters got to several locations within the site, and onto several rooftops. This a group of 150 people (hardly stealth) and done in broad daylight. The only tools used were ladders and bits of carpet (for the barbed wire). Switch that to a nightime attack by 3 or 4 guys with silenced pistols, bolt cutters and a suitcase full of semtex. I'm pretty sure that (in the UK at least) such an attack would be a doddle. And this isnt even addressing the clasic 'fly a plane into the building' idea.
How long till CPU power requirements become a buying factor? Like many people I leave my main PC on most of the day, and also use a laptop which a distressingly short battery life (sony vaio). These days, apart from the old game of battlefield 2, I rarely find any need tor a maxxed out CPU. I'd be much more interested in a PC that would consume noticeably less power. 400W is like having 4 brightly lit rooms all day long, its just wasteful. For laptops its already a big issue, as anyting that can stretch out the meager battery lfie is good, but even for desktop PCs now, we should be hitting the point where people start asking how much it costs to run a new PC all day.
Whats wrong with the othe (non polluting) renewable energies such as wind, solar, wave etc? And then we have the real biggy:
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Yup I dared mention the phrase that strikes terror into the Bush administration. It may amaze US motorists to discover that unlike the new Hummer, European cars have actually advanced their MPG since the Ford Model T. Combine a genuine demand from customers for greener vehciles with much higher fuel taxes, and its amazing how much more efficient the average vehicle can be. Then there are all the other ways we just throw energy away. How many stores heat their storefronts with the doors open in midwinter? how many people have a 400watt PC left on 24 hours a day, and how many offices enforce the switching off of monitors and PCS overnight, or even at the weekend? Energy efficiency is considred entirely optional, because electrivity prices dont take into effect the impact of power generation on the environment. The gradual staged introduction of a meaty carbon tax would lead to a huge ramping up of research into energy efficient appliances.
As a geek, even if there was limitless energy, seeing inefficiency and waste would bug me. Thats why I can' understand why ALL new cars arent hybrids, mandated by government. I read numerous stories of people "sitting in traffic jams escaping katrina, till we ran out of gas". How about turning off the engine when stationary or *gasp* getting a hybrid?
Tthere are better, cheaper and more effective solutions to our energy problems than nuclear.
If you dont think there are legitimate concerns about nuclear energy, then you need to look a little closer:
1) proliferation - so its fine for the US and the UK to go nuclear happy, but you still reserve the right to hold a gun to the head of coutnries you dont like (such as Iran) if they try to follow suit. How does that work exactly? How will Iranian citizens feel about that policy? do we really need to generate more anti wetsern feelings there?
2) Centralisation. Nuclear requires huge concentration of power production. distributed power generation is more resiliant to attack and failure (like the USA blackouts recently), such as small scale solar and wind.
3) Security - protesters have got inot nuclear power stations often enough. you dont think AQ or some other bunch of terrorists arent planning it? I'd sleep safer at night knowing that Osama Bin Laden wasnt giving a TV interview from a nuclear power station control room.
4) Economy - nuclear generation costs a fortune. the Uk had to spend 400 million to bail out its nuclear energy industry and stop them going bankrupt. This was after the claims that nuclear would be 'too cheap to meter'. No change there.
5) Waste - heres the big one. You can probably solve the other problems, but the waste one is the biggy. You dont want to transport this stuff all over the world for security reasons, and you need somewhere to store it for a LONG time, we are talking tens of thousands of years here. Thats so long it almost seems like fantasty. If the romans had used nuclear, we'd still be guarding their waste now, long after their whole civlisation ahs crumbled. We lecture kids about not getting big debst in their teens that might take 5 years to pay off. we get scared about taking on 25 year mortagges, but we are happy to dump a serious waste problem on our descendents for the next ten thousand?
As with all nuclear power discussions, slashdot is overwhelemed with pro nuclear people dismissing everyone who opposes the technology as nutters, often in the most arrogant and dismissive way. I'm a programmer, certainly not a luddite, but I have serious and justified concerns about investing in nuclear power. Only a resoned debate will change minds on this issue.
Yeah well said. I have received a (small) bonus on a 3 year game, but nothing to write home about, and the games I write in my spare time now bring in more money than the day job. The sad thing is, the idiots running games companies think that getting graduates of minimum wage is a cost saving, whereas its a stupid business move. Those graduates have zilch experience and flounder around aimlessly, which is why big games take 3 or 4 or even more years to make. Give me a bunch of highly paid and motivated experienced coders with 2 or 3 big titles under their belt and you could watch dev time drop by 50% easily. Pity the suits arent clued up enough to realise this. Some times I think the industry is really trying as hard as it can to encourage experienced, competent engineers to leave and do their own thing.
Agreed. a big marketing budget makes a massive difference. My latest game (www.democracygame.com) has had some fantastic reviews, often beating triple A titles with multi-million pound marketing budgets, but you probably havent heard of it, let alone heard enough to want to get hold of the demo. Yet I reckon you have heard of Age Of Empires 3, FEAR and even vapourware like Duke Nukem Fornever. If you spend 5 million dollars advertising a derivative poorly made game it WILL shift quite a few units. You may not break even, but you DO soak up a lot of press attention. While companies are doing this, smaller titles with tiny or zero amrketing budgets are getting ignored, but they do exist. A good start for anyone broed with big franchise games is to bookmark www.diygames.com www.tigsource.com and www.gametunnel.com
not everyone eats at mcdonalds. I sure as hell don't. And I like the idea of there being more traceability and accountability in the food chain. I'd like to be 100% sure when I pay extra for a free-range chicken thats it really is free range, for example.
I'm not. Although I wish that project well, so far its nothing but a very ugly single page website with no games (or even games in development). There are plenty of thriving small games companies that arent just making bejewelled clones,and have finished games vailable. I could easily plug my political strategy game (www.democracygame.com) here, or the excellent LUX by sillysoft, or puppygames Ultratron, or Shorthike. The 'match 3' causal games bubble happened a few years ago and has probbaly now reached its peak. The news story now is independetly made games in other areas, such as strategy, simulation and role playing.
actuaslly google ads are even better than that. if you are searching for a type of product (say accountancy software), you will sometimes find the top 20 search researchs polluted by link farms and other spams, but every adword ad has been paid for, so you can bet your ass they are relevant. Sometimes I find myself browising the adwords rather than the search hits.
Am I the only one who is a bit depressed to find the guys who made his vacuum cleaner are now making weapons? Given the choice I'd rather my home appliances arent made by arms companies, I'm not a big fan of encouraging people to dream up more and more ways to slaughter each other. What next? the people who make my fridge manufacturing cluster bombs? screw irobot.
People dont seem to want fuel efficiency, they want a big impressive intimidating car. hence the hummer and all its wannabes. Thats how they are marketed to, its easier than marketing fuel efficiency. The situation used to be very different in the UK, here fuel is taxed heavily (although I'd argue not heavily enough). To fill up my 1.6 Peugeot 3.7 hatchback costs me just over £50 which is about $85. I can get around 350 miles for that. Fuel prices here mean there is an incentive to go with mroe efficient cars, plus car tax (paid annually) is related to engine size. above 2 litres and you start to pay higher tax. Thats why many people over here are driving smart cars or 1.2 engine vehicles. I also car pool a few days a week, partly to save fuel costs. However, sadly we are increasingly copying the USA, with more and more 4 wheel drive landrovers showing up in totally flat city commutes. a week ago I was stuck behind a 3 litre landrover, with a sticker in the window complaining about fuel tax. I bet the chimp driving it didnt even see the irony.
the rich can get richer. big deal. I dont care so much about that. Im more worried about people with no health insurance who cant afford to eat healthy food. I guess that makes me a pinko lefty communist.
My parents were very poor, but I've done quite nicely thanks. To presume there is no 'opportunity' anywhere on Earth except the USA smacks of delusion. I'd rather have opportunity plus a safety net though. Its called giving a fuck about your fellow man.
250 billion isn't a shoestring. I'm not against having a space program, but spending that amount of money on it, in comparison with the need for money in areas such as healthcare and education... I just dont see its right to complain that 'only' 250 billion was made available for space research. I'm guessing people with no health insurance living in a squalid flat and attending a screwed up school full of drug addcits, aren't rooting for a boost to NASA's budget.
I have to ask, in this day and age. why bother buying a printer? I have an old Deskjet 850C from a good while back. its kept in the spare room. Every 6 months or so some dingbat contract needs signing using real ink, and mailing to people whose lawyers still live in the 18th century. Other than that, it just collects dust in a corner. If I had a fax machine or a morse code transmitter, it would be next to thsoe other pointless relics. If my printer broke, I'd think long and hard if I ever needed a new one, or could just use the one at work twice a year. this is 2005.
theres tons more than that, firstly you missed out the rather excellent game tunnel and then there is the daily updates on tigsource and more small developers sites than you can shake a stick at, including mine: Positech Games The problem is that sites like this just dont get the traffic that gamespy and gamspot do, because none of us have the multimillion dollar advertising budgets. A clique of big name companies have decided that independent games == casual color matching games for soccer moms, and thats definitely not true. My most succesfull game was targeted at people who like complex political strategy games (nationstates / republic / civilisation), you try and persuade the likes of Real or Yahoo to publish that game? There are plenty of original and interesting titles out there, you just need to google for them a bit, instead of just walking into CompUSA.
the point of sports is to win more points than the other team. if the sport has violence, thats normally a side effect, often one that a referee will punish (like a foul in soccer). With a violent video game, often the point is to kill people, in fact the more people you kill and incapacitate, the more points. And in football, you soon realise that pain sucks. you have bruises the next day. being hit isnt fun. In a game, you get your head blown off and are back playing in 12 seconds without thinking about it. Thats a big difference between the two. One punishes agression and shows you its results, the other encourages it and hides the true results.
couldn't agree more. Who Gives a toss what the players names are or what logo is on the box. at least other games wont brainwash you into challenging everything.
depends on the game.if its EA trying to get kids hooked on their sports franchises earlier that sucks, but if its using games like this:
Democracy
That actually educate people as they entertain, thats good.
Slashdot Mirror
plenty of room in the sea for offshore usage surely?
I'm slowly buying them because I'm such a total DS9 addict. What annoys me big time is the fact that
a)they come in a big molded box. I was PLEASED that DVDs are so space saving. grrrrrrrr
b)You can't skip the pathetic menu intro. WHY? I HAVE PAID FOR THIS YOU DIPSTICKS.
Unfortunately my geekness overrides my grouchiness and I still buy them...
a bit off topic here but.... Coffee???
WHAT THE FUCK?
Is coffee the new spawn of satan? Anyonme who suggests its against the wishes of the lord to drink coffee should be given a white shirt with straps on the arms and put in a nice safe place with padded walls.
grrrrrrrrrrrr
on the protesters thing, three time protesters got inot sizewell B in the UK. some protesters even climbed on top of the reactor building, and drew slogans on the side of it.
They didnt go into the control room, and had decided ahead of time not to do that. theyt were there to protest at nuclear expansion, not security. The protesters got to several locations within the site, and onto several rooftops. This a group of 150 people (hardly stealth) and done in broad daylight. The only tools used were ladders and bits of carpet (for the barbed wire).
Switch that to a nightime attack by 3 or 4 guys with silenced pistols, bolt cutters and a suitcase full of semtex. I'm pretty sure that (in the UK at least) such an attack would be a doddle.
And this isnt even addressing the clasic 'fly a plane into the building' idea.
How long till CPU power requirements become a buying factor? Like many people I leave my main PC on most of the day, and also use a laptop which a distressingly short battery life (sony vaio). These days, apart from the old game of battlefield 2, I rarely find any need tor a maxxed out CPU. I'd be much more interested in a PC that would consume noticeably less power. 400W is like having 4 brightly lit rooms all day long, its just wasteful.
For laptops its already a big issue, as anyting that can stretch out the meager battery lfie is good, but even for desktop PCs now, we should be hitting the point where people start asking how much it costs to run a new PC all day.
which can be got from solar, wind, wave or even energy efficiency measures. Theres no need for nuclear.
Whats wrong with the othe (non polluting) renewable energies such as wind, solar, wave etc? And then we have the real biggy:
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Yup I dared mention the phrase that strikes terror into the Bush administration. It may amaze US motorists to discover that unlike the new Hummer, European cars have actually advanced their MPG since the Ford Model T. Combine a genuine demand from customers for greener vehciles with much higher fuel taxes, and its amazing how much more efficient the average vehicle can be.
Then there are all the other ways we just throw energy away. How many stores heat their storefronts with the doors open in midwinter? how many people have a 400watt PC left on 24 hours a day, and how many offices enforce the switching off of monitors and PCS overnight, or even at the weekend?
Energy efficiency is considred entirely optional, because electrivity prices dont take into effect the impact of power generation on the environment. The gradual staged introduction of a meaty carbon tax would lead to a huge ramping up of research into energy efficient appliances.
As a geek, even if there was limitless energy, seeing inefficiency and waste would bug me. Thats why I can' understand why ALL new cars arent hybrids, mandated by government. I read numerous stories of people "sitting in traffic jams escaping katrina, till we ran out of gas". How about turning off the engine when stationary or *gasp* getting a hybrid?
Tthere are better, cheaper and more effective solutions to our energy problems than nuclear.
If you dont think there are legitimate concerns about nuclear energy, then you need to look a little closer:
1) proliferation - so its fine for the US and the UK to go nuclear happy, but you still reserve the right to hold a gun to the head of coutnries you dont like (such as Iran) if they try to follow suit. How does that work exactly? How will Iranian citizens feel about that policy? do we really need to generate more anti wetsern feelings there?
2) Centralisation. Nuclear requires huge concentration of power production. distributed power generation is more resiliant to attack and failure (like the USA blackouts recently), such as small scale solar and wind.
3) Security - protesters have got inot nuclear power stations often enough. you dont think AQ or some other bunch of terrorists arent planning it? I'd sleep safer at night knowing that Osama Bin Laden wasnt giving a TV interview from a nuclear power station control room.
4) Economy - nuclear generation costs a fortune. the Uk had to spend 400 million to bail out its nuclear energy industry and stop them going bankrupt. This was after the claims that nuclear would be 'too cheap to meter'. No change there.
5) Waste - heres the big one. You can probably solve the other problems, but the waste one is the biggy. You dont want to transport this stuff all over the world for security reasons, and you need somewhere to store it for a LONG time, we are talking tens of thousands of years here. Thats so long it almost seems like fantasty. If the romans had used nuclear, we'd still be guarding their waste now, long after their whole civlisation ahs crumbled. We lecture kids about not getting big debst in their teens that might take 5 years to pay off. we get scared about taking on 25 year mortagges, but we are happy to dump a serious waste problem on our descendents for the next ten thousand?
As with all nuclear power discussions, slashdot is overwhelemed with pro nuclear people dismissing everyone who opposes the technology as nutters, often in the most arrogant and dismissive way. I'm a programmer, certainly not a luddite, but I have serious and justified concerns about investing in nuclear power. Only a resoned debate will change minds on this issue.
Yeah well said. I have received a (small) bonus on a 3 year game, but nothing to write home about, and the games I write in my spare time now bring in more money than the day job. The sad thing is, the idiots running games companies think that getting graduates of minimum wage is a cost saving, whereas its a stupid business move. Those graduates have zilch experience and flounder around aimlessly, which is why big games take 3 or 4 or even more years to make. Give me a bunch of highly paid and motivated experienced coders with 2 or 3 big titles under their belt and you could watch dev time drop by 50% easily. Pity the suits arent clued up enough to realise this.
Some times I think the industry is really trying as hard as it can to encourage experienced, competent engineers to leave and do their own thing.
Agreed. a big marketing budget makes a massive difference. My latest game (www.democracygame.com) has had some fantastic reviews, often beating triple A titles with multi-million pound marketing budgets, but you probably havent heard of it, let alone heard enough to want to get hold of the demo. Yet I reckon you have heard of Age Of Empires 3, FEAR and even vapourware like Duke Nukem Fornever.
If you spend 5 million dollars advertising a derivative poorly made game it WILL shift quite a few units. You may not break even, but you DO soak up a lot of press attention. While companies are doing this, smaller titles with tiny or zero amrketing budgets are getting ignored, but they do exist. A good start for anyone broed with big franchise games is to bookmark www.diygames.com www.tigsource.com and www.gametunnel.com
not everyone eats at mcdonalds. I sure as hell don't. And I like the idea of there being more traceability and accountability in the food chain. I'd like to be 100% sure when I pay extra for a free-range chicken thats it really is free range, for example.
I'm not. Although I wish that project well, so far its nothing but a very ugly single page website with no games (or even games in development). There are plenty of thriving small games companies that arent just making bejewelled clones,and have finished games vailable. I could easily plug my political strategy game (www.democracygame.com) here, or the excellent LUX by sillysoft, or puppygames Ultratron, or Shorthike.
The 'match 3' causal games bubble happened a few years ago and has probbaly now reached its peak. The news story now is independetly made games in other areas, such as strategy, simulation and role playing.
actuaslly google ads are even better than that. if you are searching for a type of product (say accountancy software), you will sometimes find the top 20 search researchs polluted by link farms and other spams, but every adword ad has been paid for, so you can bet your ass they are relevant. Sometimes I find myself browising the adwords rather than the search hits.
Am I the only one who is a bit depressed to find the guys who made his vacuum cleaner are now making weapons? Given the choice I'd rather my home appliances arent made by arms companies, I'm not a big fan of encouraging people to dream up more and more ways to slaughter each other.
What next? the people who make my fridge manufacturing cluster bombs?
screw irobot.
People dont seem to want fuel efficiency, they want a big impressive intimidating car. hence the hummer and all its wannabes. Thats how they are marketed to, its easier than marketing fuel efficiency.
The situation used to be very different in the UK, here fuel is taxed heavily (although I'd argue not heavily enough). To fill up my 1.6 Peugeot 3.7 hatchback costs me just over £50 which is about $85. I can get around 350 miles for that. Fuel prices here mean there is an incentive to go with mroe efficient cars, plus car tax (paid annually) is related to engine size. above 2 litres and you start to pay higher tax. Thats why many people over here are driving smart cars or 1.2 engine vehicles. I also car pool a few days a week, partly to save fuel costs.
However, sadly we are increasingly copying the USA, with more and more 4 wheel drive landrovers showing up in totally flat city commutes. a week ago I was stuck behind a 3 litre landrover, with a sticker in the window complaining about fuel tax. I bet the chimp driving it didnt even see the irony.
the rich can get richer. big deal. I dont care so much about that. Im more worried about people with no health insurance who cant afford to eat healthy food. I guess that makes me a pinko lefty communist.
My parents were very poor, but I've done quite nicely thanks. To presume there is no 'opportunity' anywhere on Earth except the USA smacks of delusion. I'd rather have opportunity plus a safety net though. Its called giving a fuck about your fellow man.
250 billion isn't a shoestring. I'm not against having a space program, but spending that amount of money on it, in comparison with the need for money in areas such as healthcare and education... I just dont see its right to complain that 'only' 250 billion was made available for space research.
I'm guessing people with no health insurance living in a squalid flat and attending a screwed up school full of drug addcits, aren't rooting for a boost to NASA's budget.
I wish this wasn't already rated 5 so I could mod you up dude.
*massive applause*
you forgot the best one:
remove unskippable bits fom DVDs, and dont put adverts in front of the feature on a DVD I flipping PAID FOR.
I have to ask, in this day and age. why bother buying a printer? I have an old Deskjet 850C from a good while back. its kept in the spare room. Every 6 months or so some dingbat contract needs signing using real ink, and mailing to people whose lawyers still live in the 18th century. Other than that, it just collects dust in a corner. If I had a fax machine or a morse code transmitter, it would be next to thsoe other pointless relics. If my printer broke, I'd think long and hard if I ever needed a new one, or could just use the one at work twice a year.
this is 2005.
theres tons more than that, firstly you missed out the rather excellent
game tunnel and then there is the daily updates on tigsource and more small developers sites than you can shake a stick at, including mine:
Positech Games
The problem is that sites like this just dont get the traffic that gamespy and gamspot do, because none of us have the multimillion dollar advertising budgets. A clique of big name companies have decided that independent games == casual color matching games for soccer moms, and thats definitely not true. My most succesfull game was targeted at people who like complex political strategy games (nationstates / republic / civilisation), you try and persuade the likes of Real or Yahoo to publish that game?
There are plenty of original and interesting titles out there, you just need to google for them a bit, instead of just walking into CompUSA.
the point of sports is to win more points than the other team. if the sport has violence, thats normally a side effect, often one that a referee will punish (like a foul in soccer).
With a violent video game, often the point is to kill people, in fact the more people you kill and incapacitate, the more points.
And in football, you soon realise that pain sucks. you have bruises the next day. being hit isnt fun. In a game, you get your head blown off and are back playing in 12 seconds without thinking about it.
Thats a big difference between the two. One punishes agression and shows you its results, the other encourages it and hides the true results.
couldn't agree more. Who Gives a toss what the players names are or what logo is on the box. at least other games wont brainwash you into challenging everything.
depends on the game.if its EA trying to get kids hooked on their sports franchises earlier that sucks, but if its using games like this: Democracy That actually educate people as they entertain, thats good.