The site says it won't name the tracker, but it shouldn't be hard to find. Yet, after probably 10 minutes of various kinds of Googling, I can't find this anywhere.
Either the torrent has been taken down, or, more likely, there is entirely too much news about it, so I'm seeing the news instead....Not that I was actually going to download it, or anything illegal. Wink wink, nudge nudge...
The reason I'll most likely use GPLv3 for everything I write (when that license is finished) is that yes, I agree, Apple has every right to put DRM in iTunes, Microsoft has every right to put it in the Napster music store (and the Zune music store, and whatever), and the MPAA has every right to put it in DVDs.
However, they do not have the right to use my code to do it.
I personally do not support DRM. That means that I will not write code which enables people to do DRM. Which means I fully support the Tivoization clause -- TiVo is perfectly within their rights to do anything they want with my player, but I'm giving them a choice: Either write their own software, license some from somewhere else, or use mine without the DRM.
It's not really different in spirit than GPLv2, either. Microsoft has every right to build Windows, but they won't be using a single line of code from Linux to do it, not unless they want to give us the full source code to ALL of Windows. Just as you have every right to build a church, say, but don't come to the atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, or Taoists asking for donations.
The first time I played through Half-Life, it was like this. Pretty much every corpse or bullet hole, likely up to some predefined limit, stayed where you left it, even if you went forward a level and then back, or saved the game and reloaded. It was just part of the environment.
Same with Half-Life 2, by the way, although they do seem to get rid of corpses of things that spawn infinitely (like Antlions) -- although I don't remember actually seeing the corpses fading, and I imagine they try to do it when my back is turned.
Lugaru is a nice little game -- for $20, you get a game that can be beaten in a couple of hours, but aside from the length, it's the best fighting game I've ever played. And while there generally aren't many enemies, all bodies (including corpses) are solid enough that if they're moving (you throw, punch, kick, or bat them with a staff to get them to go where you want them to), they can smack into other enemies. So, two enemies running at you (one in front of the other), and you can knock the first one into the second, injuring both and knocking them to the ground.
Not to mention the sheer fun of some moves like "Death From Above" -- landing on an enemy's head, stomping them to the ground.
Keep in mind that this is a game with kung-fu bunnies and wolves. Generally, you are an anthro-bunny, fighting other anthro-bunnies or anthro-wolves. So, it's like human combat, except wolves can run insanely fast (and are viciously strong), and bunnies can jump incredibly far (think like Superman before he could fly).
Corpses in Lugaru do stay around, until you win -- and it's very realistic in a few other respects, too. For instance, if an enemy died from blunt trauma, there might be a bit of blood from where you kicked his teeth out, but it's not really a pool of blood unless you've stabbed or slashed him to death with a sword or knife.
Once you've got a corpse on the ground, you can move it either by kicking it, or by doing a "finishing punch" -- lifting it with your knee and punching it, sending it flying.
Now, you can be quite a ways away and still see an enemy, but the enemy will just walk past the corpse. Or, you can throw a corpse at them, but if you miss, they'll be completely oblivious to the corpse flying past. This probably has to do with the stealth element -- while you CAN beat enemies down with fists, swords, or staves, in some situations it's easier to sneak up behind them and slit their throat, or perform a similar "stealth" finishing move. You always have a split second between when they get the feeling something's wrong (maybe drawing a knife), but still don't know where you are, in which you can still do the one-hit stealth kill -- and in fact, since wolves will smell you from a short distance away, the only way I know of to stealth a wolf is to simply jump from out of range, land right behind them, and immediately slit their throat.
So, I'm assuming that it's because of this stealth-conscious AI -- that they might hear your footsteps or smell you if you're too close, but they'll completely ignore you at range -- that explains why if you're far enough away, they'll completely ignore their fallen comrades, whereas if you're close enough, they'll see a corpse and run to it, check it, then get panicky and start looking around for you (making it much more likely that they'll spot you). Unfortunately, this is kind of ruined by the fact that after looking for long enough, they'll forget about you and keep walking along their circular path -- eventually looping around to where they "discover" the same corpse again, panic again, still don't find you...
It does make for entertaining concepts, at least. Any body, living or not, can be used as a weapon. For instance, enemy A tries to punch you from the front as enemy B is approaching from behind... you grab enemy A's punch (in a counterattack), throwing him over your shoulder at enemy B in a bit of jujitsu, knocking enemy B over. Or, you run straight at enemy A, double-kicking him into an enemy B behind him. Or, divide and conquer -- kill enemy A, then bring his corpse with you and punch it towards enemy B. A corpse is easily the deadliest ranged weapon, because on earlier levels, it will generally knock them out, and in any case, they don't try to dodge it, whereas they can dodge or even catch a thrown knife, or if they survive it, they can pull it out of their chest (still dripping with blood) and use it against you.
My only complaint against Lugaru is that it's too short, but they are making a sequel, and I imagine that if the sequel is anywhere near as good as the original, the industry will start to take notice.
Ok, yes they are, but generally, when one party has been screwing it up badly enough, for long enough, it's at the point now where the other party can only do better, and will actively try to do better anyway.
In other words, when you think about it, "vote the bastards out" is generally a good strategy, if you don't like either of them.
Now, if the media actually wanted to show us a third party with enough power to kick these other two out... But that's not what "fair and balanced" does.
I want everyone to remember that when Google came out, there were quite a few well-known search engines out already. Google was simply better enough than the others that it took over.
If anyone is reading this, and has the resources to do it -- or maybe has some 20% time at Google -- the only real solution to MySpace (other than praying that they fix it themselves) is to offer a competing service that is so ridiculously much better than MySpace that it will do what Google did. Anyone remember Facebook? In college, not a single person used MySpace, yet everyone was in Facebook -- if Facebook was open to the public (not just people in school), it would likely kick MySpace's ass around the block.
If you examine the wrath and atrocities described in the Old Testament, you find that they are not the random acts of an "asshole God" but the consequences for man's continual defiance of God--defiances by choice.
Huh. I don't remember exactly what the Canaanites did to deserve being pretty much completely exterminated...
For that matter, look up the Law. You'll find one in particular which states that if your virgin daughter is raped, and she's not engaged, then the rapist has to pay you 50 shekels, and then has to marry that daughter, and cannot divorce.
I mean, other aspects of the law seem to at least somewhat discourage rape -- if a woman is raped in the country, where no one would hear her scream, then you kill the man, but she's innocent. But why would a merciful God want to encourage rape here? This law makes it very straightforward -- if I like a particular virgin (who is not engaged), then all I have to do is rape her and pay her father 50 shekels, then she has to marry me. What, exactly, did we do to deserve that?
Even where the responses are a direct result of a human action, it seems a bit excessive to me. The punishment for curiosity (eating the apple) is sickness, disease, evil, and eventual death. And the apple is knowledge of good and evil -- they didn't know it was evil to disobey God and eat that apple until they had already done it, and personally, I still don't find it particularly evil.
But wait! Even if that was fair, isn't God all-knowing? Doesn't he have a plan for us all... Doesn't he know the future? If so, doesn't he know exactly what we're going to do? If so, then the blame lies squarely with Him -- he placed that tree in the center of the garden, knowing that if he put that tree there, Adam and Eve would eat the fruit. Could it be that you have to put the Tree of Knowledge there if you put the Tree of Life there? Maybe so, but isn't he God -- where's that omnipotence? Can't he do anything?
God is infinitely just, but we only have His word for that. I make my own judgments, and I say that if God were held to the same standards we hold ourselves, we would conclude that he is worse than an asshole, worse than a despot, and is in fact possibly the single most sociopathic -- nay, most evil entity in existence. Consider what Saddam did, and consider what God did -- the only reason it's OK for God to do that is he's God, and I reject that reason.
In the Old Testament, man could redeem himself to God through following the law and through sacrifice. It was a process or "works" whereby what you did determined how or if you were redeemed.... So God provided a final sacrifice in the form of His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus, simply put, was born to die.
From what I can tell, Jesus was also a pretty nice guy. Consider the phrase "Let's not and say we did." And consider that God is the final authority. Why couldn't he have simply let Jesus live, and provided some less violent form of redemption? Where's that omnipotence?
Harsh? Maybe, but it's so simple
Simplicity is not an excuse for harshness. Hitler's rules were similarly simple: If you're a Jew, we kill you. Simplicity alone doesn't make it right.
So is God an "asshole God"? Yes, if you try to understand God through man's eyes.
Glad you admit that, but whose eyes am I supposed to use? The eyes of God? Maybe eyes completely blinded by faith?
Either hold God to the standards you hold men, or hold men to the standards you hold God -- or give me a really good argument for why you have such a double standard.
But when you realize that man is the one who always rebels and defies, then you see that God's actions, positive or negative, are always justified because what happens to man is the direct consequence of what man does.
Dropping the omnipotence argument for a moment, let me run with this Hitler analogy. Do you
Let me just ignore the bulk of your stupidity here -- that's really another debate. I have just one question:
Why do you think this is more important than what I just listed? Why is homosexuality more important to you than the other things I listed: economics, education, and the mess in Iraq? Is it really more important to you than the deaths of innocent people?
I am not saying we shouldn't discuss it, ever. I'm saying we have so many more important things to discuss here -- to use your own words, morality is fundamentally essential to establishing an enduring society -- and I think you'd have to be clinically insane to think that abolishing homosexuality is more important than preserving life, or improving the quality of life for everyone (even homosexuals).
The thing is, we're almost having a discussion, and I am so tempted to ruin it by pointing out that your God embraces things any sane person would despise. Genocide, rape, incest, theft, cannibalism... That's what you get when your moral absolutism is "The Word of God."
But I don't think that's even the issue, because I think that you believe in a merciful God, so I think you should see my point here.
Or am I wrong? Do you actually believe in the Biblical God? (Have you actually read the Bible; do you actually understand what an asshole the Biblical God is?)
My interpretation of "freedom" is closely derived from the dictionary definition
Key words here: "Closely derived." Not "Identical."
Most of your argument here hinges on my assumption of complete, total anarchy. I don't actually support that, but I do urge you to consider what that looks like, and how it could work, before you completely dismiss it as "chaos".
We are not telling her to do whatever she wants. We are telling her that she and her people have been oppressed
I would say that telling her she can't marry a girl is also oppressive, and for no good reason. Most of our restrictions have a good reason -- she can't kill people, she has to pay taxes, etc. But this one has no good reason other than that it offends some people's sensibilities.
Laws are created to define limits and constraints.
I'd disagree. Laws are created to protect freedoms. Again, look at murder -- it's not because we wish to constrain someone from killing. Not really. It's really to protect my right to live, and to live without being afraid of someone else killing me.
Laws should restrict lawlessness only where such lawlessness causes real damage to the freedoms we enjoy. Many laws follow this rule, but many don't. Consider, for example, laws about bicycle helmets -- while I think it's a good idea, frankly, if I choose to endanger myself by not wearing such a helmet, that's my business. It only becomes the government's problem if it endangers someone else -- for instance, drunk driving.
The problem that I'm having is that this country has become so divided, and that the current trend in legislation rests more in political and procedural game-playing, and less in actual intellectual debate.
Glad to have some actual intellectual debate here. On Slashdot, even!
And you're nothing more than an Anonymous Coward making an inane comment...
But I have to wonder, if that's a canned liberal talking point (which I did think of independently, by the way), what's the canned conservative response?
Or could it be that the point is so obviously right, the only canned responses you're going to have will come from Steven Colbert, and will contain the word "truthiness"?
I don't assume there's unrestricted freedom in the US. I do, however, have a goal of freedom as unrestricted as possible.
And I was under the impression that you have it backwards -- we have every right the state doesn't take away, it's not that the state has to explicitly list every right that it grants us. For instance, I have the right to wear boxers on Tuesday, not because the Government grants me that right, but because there's no law against it. Regarding gay marriage, why would you care enough to make a law against it?
And while I actually support capitalism, you are dead wrong about socialism. But we have never seen communism done right. Keep in mind, it's not a system of government, it's an economic system -- communism might work if you actually had a democracy governing it. (And China doesn't count.) Also keep in mind -- the kind of government that we see in control of communist states (China, Soviet Russia, etc) would fail just as much if it was a capitalist society (you mention California... I wonder...)
And no, I don't feel strongly about gay marriage. I think it should be a non-issue, and I find it absolutely retarded of you to keep making an issue out of it. Let's talk about real issues, like economics, education, that mess in Iraq...
My interpretation of "freedom" is closely derived from the dictionary definition -- being unconstrained. I'm assuming that's about what we mean when we say we are spreading "freedom" to the world. I mean, short of that, it's a misleading sales pitch -- you tell your poor Iraqi that with American Freedom, she doesn't have to wear a Burkha, she can do whatever she wants, no one will stone her... Then the other shoe falls: "As long as you believe." Or, "You can do anything you want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else... except that, that's wrong."
I refuse to answer your comment more directly, because either I'm misreading this, or you're fundamentally wrong:
And this framework was written under the moral and ethical limitations defined by God. To deny this is to deny historical fact.
I reject the notion that God is a historical fact, much less that it's a historical fact that He wrote moral and ethical limitations for a Constitution.
Actually, I'm entirely straight, so it's not my homosexual lover. And yes, a guy can be pro-abortion, even pro-women's rights, if there were any rights women still need to fight for.
But you just confirmed my point, which is: Yes I think it should be called marriage (if, indeed, we're going to have any kind of state-sanctioned "marriage" at all, even heterosexual ones). But I also think that's about the amount of time we should spend on it -- right there. We should not be wasting our time on "issues" like gay marriage, stem cells, abortion, or any of the other things the Right likes to direct attention to -- away from the real issues, including that bloated, corrupt, evil government.
Automotive analogies are a bad habit, but I think I should mention this:
I believe the law in Iowa is, to get a driver's license, you have to score reasonably high on a test that shows you know about driving. Things like how far before the intersection to signal, and right of way, and so on.
If you're below the age of 18, I believe it also requires that you take a Driver's Education class. Or maybe this is required at any age.
Now, consider what Driver's Ed teaches. I have never in my life actually used a real manual transmission, but I had to learn on their simulator -- the example given by the teacher was someone who had his finger sliced off, but he put it on ice and his brother drove him into town, and he got it reattached. So, in an emergency, I might have to use a manual transmission, and "It's not my area" or "It's not my interest" isn't an excuse.
Then there's interfaces. The article asks "What if Ford decided to switch the positions of the brake and the accelerator?" Or something to that effect. Well, just about every car has a different Cruise Control system, and different environmental controls (AC/heating), the hazard lights are in different places, some have the brights as a separate button, some have the gearshift as yet another handle on the steering wheel, while some have it by the armrest, sometimes the seat has some simple, physical controls on the side or under it, and sometimes it's all electronic, sometimes the gas tank can just be opened, and sometimes there's some sort of catch by the driver's seat...
Need I go on?
And we're not required to learn ALL of those, just enough that we can learn the rest as we need to. Frankly, humans are capable of this -- I don't know anyone who is completely confused by a desktop environment alone. Sit them down at Windows, Mac, or Ubuntu, and they can generally at least get to the Internet.
Let's make it simpler: A doorknob. Sometimes it's a knob that you turn, sometimes it's shaped differently, sometimes it's a handle you push down, sometimes you just grab a handle -- or some groove in the door -- and pull the whole mess to the side, sometimes you just walk up to it and it opens for you. Or locks on a door: Sometimes the key goes one way, sometimes the other, sometimes it's a deadbolt, sometimes it's a flimsy thing screwed to the door...
You are human, and presumably intelligent, or you wouldn't be using a computer for work in the first place. That means you have the capacity to learn, so "I can't" is no longer valid. And while it's not a life-or-death thing like a car, common decency means you should. And just as there is Driver's Education for a car, I think all computer users should be required to take an introductory course on how to sanely use a computer -- including things like choice of OS, choice of web browser, why not to download random EXEs, how to upgrade your drivers, how to use simple antivirus/antispyware scans, how and why to do backups (your hard disk WILL fail), etc.
I mean, I get it, there are some cases of IT treating users like idiots when it's not really their fault. However, as a user, you should first be sure that it really isn't your fault before you go looking for others to blame.
And one more thing: When dealing with techs, no matter how socially inept they may be, start off with the assumption that they've had a really bad day, and that they've had to deal with a lot of uninformed idiots, and just do whatever you can to make their job easier. That means that when I call for tech support, I already have my serial number in hand, and I've already checked their website, but I'm also going to follow their instructions to the letter (unless it's actually dangerous), even though I know they're just running through a script, and I know it won't help. And when we're done, no matter what the outcome, I thank them for their time, and tell them to have a good day (before they can follow their script and say that to me), instead of screaming at them and blaming everything on them.
Let me put it this way: Don't you think it's natural that howtos would say "On XP, do this, on OS X, do that"? Hell, it's often more like "On 98, do a, on XP/2K, do b, on OS 9, do c, on OS X, do d."
Just grab one. Ubuntu comes with Gnome, but you can install KDE, XUL, or whatever apps you want. The competing standards do not affect you as a user, nor should they affect you as a developer, other than just picking one and running with it.
That's been my experience. When Windows fails, it's usually some strange registry corruption or chunk of spyware, taking down the entire system, and generally, you won't be able to fix it -- or it will be simpler and cheaper to reinstall the OS.
When Linux fails, either it's something in hardware (Linux seems to be more sensitive to bad RAM than Windows, which I consider to be a Good Thing), or it's something easily fixable -- not even by a kernel hacker, but by a competent admin with a little shell scripting ability. Even Gentoo isn't usually that hard to fix.
When OS X fails, it's going to be some annoying little thing. You'll contact Apple about it, they'll get back to you -- sometime this century -- and in the meantime, it'll piss you off enough to want to install Linux, or even Windows (if you're lucky enough to have an Intel Mac -- mine's PPC).
My bug is simple and stupid, and very annoying. My Powerbook has f1 through f10 or so mapped to hardware functions, which is actually quite nice, and I don't know if I'd easily get used to using the fn key to trigger those functions. That is, just hitting f1 would adjust monitor brightness (I think), whereas the alternative is having fn+f1 do that. But it also means that in order to pass it through to apps, or even the OS (other than hardware controls), I have to hit fn... So, to tell Expose to show me all windows, it's fn+f9.
Well, of course that was annoying as hell, and I often used Expose to peek in case something got lost -- my virtual desktops being buggy (still waiting on Spaces), often I'll accidentally move a window to another desktop and have it somehow bury itself under everything. Also, Adium has a habit of opening popup windows of any kind under what you're doing, which is nice, but a few kind of popups in particular don't trigger any notification (no growl, no sound, no duck bouncing in the tray), so the only way to see them is to hit Expose and check under your windows every few minutes to see if, say, someone had invited you to a chat, or sent you a file, or whatever.
So I mapped Expose to cmd+semicolon. Which is very nice on Dvorak, as the semicolon is where Z is on QWERTY -- looking on your keyboard, they are right next to each other (for PC people, that "Windows" key is the cmd key). The only problem is, the OS forgets this mapping every reboot. And, this being a Powerbook, I often just let it sleep -- for weeks at a time -- until an upgrade forces me to reboot, or I feel like showing off the Ubuntu livecd (or trying to get Linux to work again), or whatever. So it's not like this is part of my morning ritual -- boot computer, login, remap Expose. No, this is pretty random, and every time, it annoys the hell out of me.
Well, I submitted a detailed report on this issue. I would paste it here, but after digging up the original email, it seems that Apple places bug reports under a blanket non-disclosure agreement -- so certainly I may not paste their response here. However, I do know how to make a detailed and helpful report.
Their response: It's a known issue, currently being worked on by engineering. On the website, the bug's state is: Dupe. The website also confirms: I submitted this bug on July 25th, 20006. Their reply -- the email basically telling me it was a dupe, and that they're working on it -- came on September 22nd, 2006. As far as I know, the issue has not been resolved.
Frankly, I'm not surprised that Apple has been deleting bug discussion -- I don't know if they actually use their bug database for anything other than reassuring consumers that they know what's going on, but I now know that their standard response to bugs (or any flaw or deficiency) is to bury their head in the sand and pretend it never happened... until they fix the problem, and then claim it was always a good idea, and always what they were planning. Remember how they toted the G5's "Intel-crushing" performance (or was it "Pentium-crushing"? Whatever), before they suddenly switched to Intel, and now they're all a
Specifically, the way to combat this is to build facilities like Cheyenne Mountain -- they wouldn't sanely put Stargate Command anywhere else.
Short of that, all Google is doing is making it easier, and not significantly so. But Google also makes it easier to stalk people, it makes it easier to plan protests (peaceful or not), or to have secret societies which are completely untraceable and incredibly dangerous.
This is the price of freedom. Freedom makes it easier for everyone to do what they want, even if what they want isn't something you like. Freedom of speech means the freedom to say "Fuck you and everything you believe in." A free Internet means the freedom to use it for everything, including, say, a terrorist strike against a major ISP. Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion, and at the very least, means the freedom to be a Satanist. Freedom means you're free to marry whoever you want, and to call it "marriage", even if you both have a penis; it also means other people are free to be openly disgusted by this.
The only freedom we don't have is the freedom to restrict our freedom. You are not free to make gay marriage a huge fucking "issue" and waste everyone's time on a no-brainer like that, when it doesn't even affect you in the first place. Or rather, you're free to talk about it as much as you like, but you are not free to legislate against it.
And leftist ideals are generally in line with freedom, sorry about that -- although I will admit that not all left-wing people support left-wing ideals -- "Think of the children" is not really a leftist ideal. But seriously, if you are a neo-conservative, that's fine, just admit you are not in favor of freedom -- or go home and re-examine your ideals and ask yourself why "some freedoms are better than others" is any less hypocritical than "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
So, back to the subject, such as it is: It's bad enough to suddenly switch from "We know they have WMDs!" to "Uh... looks like they don't, but... uhm... We're spreading freedom! That's it! That's why we invaded in the first place!"
But you do NOT get to say "We're spreading freedom!" unless you fully understand and support what freedom really means, even in the homeland.
What about the early adopters, who bought high-end video cards without HDCP, or very nice HDTVs, also witohut HDCP? They now have to pray that somebody (Sony?) sees the light and doesn't trip the "artificially cripple old HDTVs" flag.
So, because the MPAA is afraid of an attack that isn't feasable, and may never be, they are forcing early to buy new hardware (for no good reason). I can't help but wonder if this wasn't a simple money grab -- force everyone to upgrade so they pay you twice for the same hardware.
Personally, I don't mind static ads, but I hate animated ones, especially flash.
Your best bet is Google-style text ads. I never block text ads; I can always ignore those. But animations are annoying and hard to ignore, so I filter them out.
And by the way, I hope you have some other business model, in case this one fails.
Yes, very possibly, but you have to remember -- when we went from radio to film, some of the radio stars didn't make it, but now we have film stars. So it may kill particular pr0nstars, but it won't kill pr0n as a whole -- and the same is true for any of that.
I was pleasantly surprised with the HD I've seen -- pr0n and otherwise -- which has been vivid, lifelike, amazing to watch, and yet none of the detail bothered me at all. My guess is that if it looked good in DVD, it'll still look good in HD -- if they're covering up anything ugly, they're probably doing it with makeup and such, just like they would in the real world.
I don't see it as much... I can't help but look at the Annakin of Episodes 2-3 and call him an idiot. If he was trying to be "good", he wasn't trying very hard. It wasn't all to save Padme, after all -- he ended up choking her, after slaughtering the younglings.
And when you think about it, could he really have made the sequels any other way, given the outcome? After all, Ep.6 has the same kind of ambiguity -- Darth Vader is no longer just a Bad Guy, he's a Bad Guy with a Heart of Gold.
As for Jedi only using the force for defense, that did seem to be as true in the prequels as it was in the originals. Or am I missing something?
Slashdot Mirror
The site says it won't name the tracker, but it shouldn't be hard to find. Yet, after probably 10 minutes of various kinds of Googling, I can't find this anywhere.
...Not that I was actually going to download it, or anything illegal. Wink wink, nudge nudge...
Either the torrent has been taken down, or, more likely, there is entirely too much news about it, so I'm seeing the news instead.
The reason I'll most likely use GPLv3 for everything I write (when that license is finished) is that yes, I agree, Apple has every right to put DRM in iTunes, Microsoft has every right to put it in the Napster music store (and the Zune music store, and whatever), and the MPAA has every right to put it in DVDs.
However, they do not have the right to use my code to do it.
I personally do not support DRM. That means that I will not write code which enables people to do DRM. Which means I fully support the Tivoization clause -- TiVo is perfectly within their rights to do anything they want with my player, but I'm giving them a choice: Either write their own software, license some from somewhere else, or use mine without the DRM.
It's not really different in spirit than GPLv2, either. Microsoft has every right to build Windows, but they won't be using a single line of code from Linux to do it, not unless they want to give us the full source code to ALL of Windows. Just as you have every right to build a church, say, but don't come to the atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, or Taoists asking for donations.
The first time I played through Half-Life, it was like this. Pretty much every corpse or bullet hole, likely up to some predefined limit, stayed where you left it, even if you went forward a level and then back, or saved the game and reloaded. It was just part of the environment.
Same with Half-Life 2, by the way, although they do seem to get rid of corpses of things that spawn infinitely (like Antlions) -- although I don't remember actually seeing the corpses fading, and I imagine they try to do it when my back is turned.
Lugaru is a nice little game -- for $20, you get a game that can be beaten in a couple of hours, but aside from the length, it's the best fighting game I've ever played. And while there generally aren't many enemies, all bodies (including corpses) are solid enough that if they're moving (you throw, punch, kick, or bat them with a staff to get them to go where you want them to), they can smack into other enemies. So, two enemies running at you (one in front of the other), and you can knock the first one into the second, injuring both and knocking them to the ground.
Not to mention the sheer fun of some moves like "Death From Above" -- landing on an enemy's head, stomping them to the ground.
Keep in mind that this is a game with kung-fu bunnies and wolves. Generally, you are an anthro-bunny, fighting other anthro-bunnies or anthro-wolves. So, it's like human combat, except wolves can run insanely fast (and are viciously strong), and bunnies can jump incredibly far (think like Superman before he could fly).
Corpses in Lugaru do stay around, until you win -- and it's very realistic in a few other respects, too. For instance, if an enemy died from blunt trauma, there might be a bit of blood from where you kicked his teeth out, but it's not really a pool of blood unless you've stabbed or slashed him to death with a sword or knife.
Once you've got a corpse on the ground, you can move it either by kicking it, or by doing a "finishing punch" -- lifting it with your knee and punching it, sending it flying.
Now, you can be quite a ways away and still see an enemy, but the enemy will just walk past the corpse. Or, you can throw a corpse at them, but if you miss, they'll be completely oblivious to the corpse flying past. This probably has to do with the stealth element -- while you CAN beat enemies down with fists, swords, or staves, in some situations it's easier to sneak up behind them and slit their throat, or perform a similar "stealth" finishing move. You always have a split second between when they get the feeling something's wrong (maybe drawing a knife), but still don't know where you are, in which you can still do the one-hit stealth kill -- and in fact, since wolves will smell you from a short distance away, the only way I know of to stealth a wolf is to simply jump from out of range, land right behind them, and immediately slit their throat.
So, I'm assuming that it's because of this stealth-conscious AI -- that they might hear your footsteps or smell you if you're too close, but they'll completely ignore you at range -- that explains why if you're far enough away, they'll completely ignore their fallen comrades, whereas if you're close enough, they'll see a corpse and run to it, check it, then get panicky and start looking around for you (making it much more likely that they'll spot you). Unfortunately, this is kind of ruined by the fact that after looking for long enough, they'll forget about you and keep walking along their circular path -- eventually looping around to where they "discover" the same corpse again, panic again, still don't find you...
It does make for entertaining concepts, at least. Any body, living or not, can be used as a weapon. For instance, enemy A tries to punch you from the front as enemy B is approaching from behind... you grab enemy A's punch (in a counterattack), throwing him over your shoulder at enemy B in a bit of jujitsu, knocking enemy B over. Or, you run straight at enemy A, double-kicking him into an enemy B behind him. Or, divide and conquer -- kill enemy A, then bring his corpse with you and punch it towards enemy B. A corpse is easily the deadliest ranged weapon, because on earlier levels, it will generally knock them out, and in any case, they don't try to dodge it, whereas they can dodge or even catch a thrown knife, or if they survive it, they can pull it out of their chest (still dripping with blood) and use it against you.
My only complaint against Lugaru is that it's too short, but they are making a sequel, and I imagine that if the sequel is anywhere near as good as the original, the industry will start to take notice.
Ok, yes they are, but generally, when one party has been screwing it up badly enough, for long enough, it's at the point now where the other party can only do better, and will actively try to do better anyway.
In other words, when you think about it, "vote the bastards out" is generally a good strategy, if you don't like either of them.
Now, if the media actually wanted to show us a third party with enough power to kick these other two out... But that's not what "fair and balanced" does.
I want everyone to remember that when Google came out, there were quite a few well-known search engines out already. Google was simply better enough than the others that it took over.
If anyone is reading this, and has the resources to do it -- or maybe has some 20% time at Google -- the only real solution to MySpace (other than praying that they fix it themselves) is to offer a competing service that is so ridiculously much better than MySpace that it will do what Google did. Anyone remember Facebook? In college, not a single person used MySpace, yet everyone was in Facebook -- if Facebook was open to the public (not just people in school), it would likely kick MySpace's ass around the block.
Huh. I don't remember exactly what the Canaanites did to deserve being pretty much completely exterminated...
For that matter, look up the Law. You'll find one in particular which states that if your virgin daughter is raped, and she's not engaged, then the rapist has to pay you 50 shekels, and then has to marry that daughter, and cannot divorce.
I mean, other aspects of the law seem to at least somewhat discourage rape -- if a woman is raped in the country, where no one would hear her scream, then you kill the man, but she's innocent. But why would a merciful God want to encourage rape here? This law makes it very straightforward -- if I like a particular virgin (who is not engaged), then all I have to do is rape her and pay her father 50 shekels, then she has to marry me. What, exactly, did we do to deserve that?
Even where the responses are a direct result of a human action, it seems a bit excessive to me. The punishment for curiosity (eating the apple) is sickness, disease, evil, and eventual death. And the apple is knowledge of good and evil -- they didn't know it was evil to disobey God and eat that apple until they had already done it, and personally, I still don't find it particularly evil.
But wait! Even if that was fair, isn't God all-knowing? Doesn't he have a plan for us all... Doesn't he know the future? If so, doesn't he know exactly what we're going to do? If so, then the blame lies squarely with Him -- he placed that tree in the center of the garden, knowing that if he put that tree there, Adam and Eve would eat the fruit. Could it be that you have to put the Tree of Knowledge there if you put the Tree of Life there? Maybe so, but isn't he God -- where's that omnipotence? Can't he do anything?
God is infinitely just, but we only have His word for that. I make my own judgments, and I say that if God were held to the same standards we hold ourselves, we would conclude that he is worse than an asshole, worse than a despot, and is in fact possibly the single most sociopathic -- nay, most evil entity in existence. Consider what Saddam did, and consider what God did -- the only reason it's OK for God to do that is he's God, and I reject that reason.
From what I can tell, Jesus was also a pretty nice guy. Consider the phrase "Let's not and say we did." And consider that God is the final authority. Why couldn't he have simply let Jesus live, and provided some less violent form of redemption? Where's that omnipotence?
Simplicity is not an excuse for harshness. Hitler's rules were similarly simple: If you're a Jew, we kill you. Simplicity alone doesn't make it right.
Glad you admit that, but whose eyes am I supposed to use? The eyes of God? Maybe eyes completely blinded by faith?
Either hold God to the standards you hold men, or hold men to the standards you hold God -- or give me a really good argument for why you have such a double standard.
Dropping the omnipotence argument for a moment, let me run with this Hitler analogy. Do you
Let me just ignore the bulk of your stupidity here -- that's really another debate. I have just one question:
Why do you think this is more important than what I just listed? Why is homosexuality more important to you than the other things I listed: economics, education, and the mess in Iraq? Is it really more important to you than the deaths of innocent people?
I am not saying we shouldn't discuss it, ever. I'm saying we have so many more important things to discuss here -- to use your own words, morality is fundamentally essential to establishing an enduring society -- and I think you'd have to be clinically insane to think that abolishing homosexuality is more important than preserving life, or improving the quality of life for everyone (even homosexuals).
The thing is, we're almost having a discussion, and I am so tempted to ruin it by pointing out that your God embraces things any sane person would despise. Genocide, rape, incest, theft, cannibalism... That's what you get when your moral absolutism is "The Word of God."
But I don't think that's even the issue, because I think that you believe in a merciful God, so I think you should see my point here.
Or am I wrong? Do you actually believe in the Biblical God? (Have you actually read the Bible; do you actually understand what an asshole the Biblical God is?)
Key words here: "Closely derived." Not "Identical."
Most of your argument here hinges on my assumption of complete, total anarchy. I don't actually support that, but I do urge you to consider what that looks like, and how it could work, before you completely dismiss it as "chaos".
I would say that telling her she can't marry a girl is also oppressive, and for no good reason. Most of our restrictions have a good reason -- she can't kill people, she has to pay taxes, etc. But this one has no good reason other than that it offends some people's sensibilities.
I'd disagree. Laws are created to protect freedoms. Again, look at murder -- it's not because we wish to constrain someone from killing. Not really. It's really to protect my right to live, and to live without being afraid of someone else killing me.
Laws should restrict lawlessness only where such lawlessness causes real damage to the freedoms we enjoy. Many laws follow this rule, but many don't. Consider, for example, laws about bicycle helmets -- while I think it's a good idea, frankly, if I choose to endanger myself by not wearing such a helmet, that's my business. It only becomes the government's problem if it endangers someone else -- for instance, drunk driving.
Glad to have some actual intellectual debate here. On Slashdot, even!
And you're nothing more than an Anonymous Coward making an inane comment...
But I have to wonder, if that's a canned liberal talking point (which I did think of independently, by the way), what's the canned conservative response?
Or could it be that the point is so obviously right, the only canned responses you're going to have will come from Steven Colbert, and will contain the word "truthiness"?
I don't assume there's unrestricted freedom in the US. I do, however, have a goal of freedom as unrestricted as possible.
And I was under the impression that you have it backwards -- we have every right the state doesn't take away, it's not that the state has to explicitly list every right that it grants us. For instance, I have the right to wear boxers on Tuesday, not because the Government grants me that right, but because there's no law against it. Regarding gay marriage, why would you care enough to make a law against it?
And while I actually support capitalism, you are dead wrong about socialism. But we have never seen communism done right. Keep in mind, it's not a system of government, it's an economic system -- communism might work if you actually had a democracy governing it. (And China doesn't count.) Also keep in mind -- the kind of government that we see in control of communist states (China, Soviet Russia, etc) would fail just as much if it was a capitalist society (you mention California... I wonder...)
And no, I don't feel strongly about gay marriage. I think it should be a non-issue, and I find it absolutely retarded of you to keep making an issue out of it. Let's talk about real issues, like economics, education, that mess in Iraq...
My interpretation of "freedom" is closely derived from the dictionary definition -- being unconstrained. I'm assuming that's about what we mean when we say we are spreading "freedom" to the world. I mean, short of that, it's a misleading sales pitch -- you tell your poor Iraqi that with American Freedom, she doesn't have to wear a Burkha, she can do whatever she wants, no one will stone her... Then the other shoe falls: "As long as you believe." Or, "You can do anything you want, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else... except that, that's wrong."
I refuse to answer your comment more directly, because either I'm misreading this, or you're fundamentally wrong:
I reject the notion that God is a historical fact, much less that it's a historical fact that He wrote moral and ethical limitations for a Constitution.
Actually, I'm entirely straight, so it's not my homosexual lover. And yes, a guy can be pro-abortion, even pro-women's rights, if there were any rights women still need to fight for.
But you just confirmed my point, which is: Yes I think it should be called marriage (if, indeed, we're going to have any kind of state-sanctioned "marriage" at all, even heterosexual ones). But I also think that's about the amount of time we should spend on it -- right there. We should not be wasting our time on "issues" like gay marriage, stem cells, abortion, or any of the other things the Right likes to direct attention to -- away from the real issues, including that bloated, corrupt, evil government.
Automotive analogies are a bad habit, but I think I should mention this:
I believe the law in Iowa is, to get a driver's license, you have to score reasonably high on a test that shows you know about driving. Things like how far before the intersection to signal, and right of way, and so on.
If you're below the age of 18, I believe it also requires that you take a Driver's Education class. Or maybe this is required at any age.
Now, consider what Driver's Ed teaches. I have never in my life actually used a real manual transmission, but I had to learn on their simulator -- the example given by the teacher was someone who had his finger sliced off, but he put it on ice and his brother drove him into town, and he got it reattached. So, in an emergency, I might have to use a manual transmission, and "It's not my area" or "It's not my interest" isn't an excuse.
Then there's interfaces. The article asks "What if Ford decided to switch the positions of the brake and the accelerator?" Or something to that effect. Well, just about every car has a different Cruise Control system, and different environmental controls (AC/heating), the hazard lights are in different places, some have the brights as a separate button, some have the gearshift as yet another handle on the steering wheel, while some have it by the armrest, sometimes the seat has some simple, physical controls on the side or under it, and sometimes it's all electronic, sometimes the gas tank can just be opened, and sometimes there's some sort of catch by the driver's seat...
Need I go on?
And we're not required to learn ALL of those, just enough that we can learn the rest as we need to. Frankly, humans are capable of this -- I don't know anyone who is completely confused by a desktop environment alone. Sit them down at Windows, Mac, or Ubuntu, and they can generally at least get to the Internet.
Let's make it simpler: A doorknob. Sometimes it's a knob that you turn, sometimes it's shaped differently, sometimes it's a handle you push down, sometimes you just grab a handle -- or some groove in the door -- and pull the whole mess to the side, sometimes you just walk up to it and it opens for you. Or locks on a door: Sometimes the key goes one way, sometimes the other, sometimes it's a deadbolt, sometimes it's a flimsy thing screwed to the door...
You are human, and presumably intelligent, or you wouldn't be using a computer for work in the first place. That means you have the capacity to learn, so "I can't" is no longer valid. And while it's not a life-or-death thing like a car, common decency means you should. And just as there is Driver's Education for a car, I think all computer users should be required to take an introductory course on how to sanely use a computer -- including things like choice of OS, choice of web browser, why not to download random EXEs, how to upgrade your drivers, how to use simple antivirus/antispyware scans, how and why to do backups (your hard disk WILL fail), etc.
I mean, I get it, there are some cases of IT treating users like idiots when it's not really their fault. However, as a user, you should first be sure that it really isn't your fault before you go looking for others to blame.
And one more thing: When dealing with techs, no matter how socially inept they may be, start off with the assumption that they've had a really bad day, and that they've had to deal with a lot of uninformed idiots, and just do whatever you can to make their job easier. That means that when I call for tech support, I already have my serial number in hand, and I've already checked their website, but I'm also going to follow their instructions to the letter (unless it's actually dangerous), even though I know they're just running through a script, and I know it won't help. And when we're done, no matter what the outcome, I thank them for their time, and tell them to have a good day (before they can follow their script and say that to me), instead of screaming at them and blaming everything on them.
Just use Ubuntu, and go for those.
Let me put it this way: Don't you think it's natural that howtos would say "On XP, do this, on OS X, do that"? Hell, it's often more like "On 98, do a, on XP/2K, do b, on OS 9, do c, on OS X, do d."
Just grab one. Ubuntu comes with Gnome, but you can install KDE, XUL, or whatever apps you want. The competing standards do not affect you as a user, nor should they affect you as a developer, other than just picking one and running with it.
That's been my experience. When Windows fails, it's usually some strange registry corruption or chunk of spyware, taking down the entire system, and generally, you won't be able to fix it -- or it will be simpler and cheaper to reinstall the OS.
When Linux fails, either it's something in hardware (Linux seems to be more sensitive to bad RAM than Windows, which I consider to be a Good Thing), or it's something easily fixable -- not even by a kernel hacker, but by a competent admin with a little shell scripting ability. Even Gentoo isn't usually that hard to fix.
When OS X fails, it's going to be some annoying little thing. You'll contact Apple about it, they'll get back to you -- sometime this century -- and in the meantime, it'll piss you off enough to want to install Linux, or even Windows (if you're lucky enough to have an Intel Mac -- mine's PPC).
My bug is simple and stupid, and very annoying. My Powerbook has f1 through f10 or so mapped to hardware functions, which is actually quite nice, and I don't know if I'd easily get used to using the fn key to trigger those functions. That is, just hitting f1 would adjust monitor brightness (I think), whereas the alternative is having fn+f1 do that. But it also means that in order to pass it through to apps, or even the OS (other than hardware controls), I have to hit fn... So, to tell Expose to show me all windows, it's fn+f9.
Well, of course that was annoying as hell, and I often used Expose to peek in case something got lost -- my virtual desktops being buggy (still waiting on Spaces), often I'll accidentally move a window to another desktop and have it somehow bury itself under everything. Also, Adium has a habit of opening popup windows of any kind under what you're doing, which is nice, but a few kind of popups in particular don't trigger any notification (no growl, no sound, no duck bouncing in the tray), so the only way to see them is to hit Expose and check under your windows every few minutes to see if, say, someone had invited you to a chat, or sent you a file, or whatever.
So I mapped Expose to cmd+semicolon. Which is very nice on Dvorak, as the semicolon is where Z is on QWERTY -- looking on your keyboard, they are right next to each other (for PC people, that "Windows" key is the cmd key). The only problem is, the OS forgets this mapping every reboot. And, this being a Powerbook, I often just let it sleep -- for weeks at a time -- until an upgrade forces me to reboot, or I feel like showing off the Ubuntu livecd (or trying to get Linux to work again), or whatever. So it's not like this is part of my morning ritual -- boot computer, login, remap Expose. No, this is pretty random, and every time, it annoys the hell out of me.
Well, I submitted a detailed report on this issue. I would paste it here, but after digging up the original email, it seems that Apple places bug reports under a blanket non-disclosure agreement -- so certainly I may not paste their response here. However, I do know how to make a detailed and helpful report.
Their response: It's a known issue, currently being worked on by engineering. On the website, the bug's state is: Dupe. The website also confirms: I submitted this bug on July 25th, 20006. Their reply -- the email basically telling me it was a dupe, and that they're working on it -- came on September 22nd, 2006. As far as I know, the issue has not been resolved.
Frankly, I'm not surprised that Apple has been deleting bug discussion -- I don't know if they actually use their bug database for anything other than reassuring consumers that they know what's going on, but I now know that their standard response to bugs (or any flaw or deficiency) is to bury their head in the sand and pretend it never happened... until they fix the problem, and then claim it was always a good idea, and always what they were planning. Remember how they toted the G5's "Intel-crushing" performance (or was it "Pentium-crushing"? Whatever), before they suddenly switched to Intel, and now they're all a
Specifically, the way to combat this is to build facilities like Cheyenne Mountain -- they wouldn't sanely put Stargate Command anywhere else.
Short of that, all Google is doing is making it easier, and not significantly so. But Google also makes it easier to stalk people, it makes it easier to plan protests (peaceful or not), or to have secret societies which are completely untraceable and incredibly dangerous.
This is the price of freedom. Freedom makes it easier for everyone to do what they want, even if what they want isn't something you like. Freedom of speech means the freedom to say "Fuck you and everything you believe in." A free Internet means the freedom to use it for everything, including, say, a terrorist strike against a major ISP. Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion, and at the very least, means the freedom to be a Satanist. Freedom means you're free to marry whoever you want, and to call it "marriage", even if you both have a penis; it also means other people are free to be openly disgusted by this.
The only freedom we don't have is the freedom to restrict our freedom. You are not free to make gay marriage a huge fucking "issue" and waste everyone's time on a no-brainer like that, when it doesn't even affect you in the first place. Or rather, you're free to talk about it as much as you like, but you are not free to legislate against it.
And leftist ideals are generally in line with freedom, sorry about that -- although I will admit that not all left-wing people support left-wing ideals -- "Think of the children" is not really a leftist ideal. But seriously, if you are a neo-conservative, that's fine, just admit you are not in favor of freedom -- or go home and re-examine your ideals and ask yourself why "some freedoms are better than others" is any less hypocritical than "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
So, back to the subject, such as it is: It's bad enough to suddenly switch from "We know they have WMDs!" to "Uh... looks like they don't, but... uhm... We're spreading freedom! That's it! That's why we invaded in the first place!"
But you do NOT get to say "We're spreading freedom!" unless you fully understand and support what freedom really means, even in the homeland.
What about the early adopters, who bought high-end video cards without HDCP, or very nice HDTVs, also witohut HDCP? They now have to pray that somebody (Sony?) sees the light and doesn't trip the "artificially cripple old HDTVs" flag.
So, because the MPAA is afraid of an attack that isn't feasable, and may never be, they are forcing early to buy new hardware (for no good reason). I can't help but wonder if this wasn't a simple money grab -- force everyone to upgrade so they pay you twice for the same hardware.
Personally, I don't mind static ads, but I hate animated ones, especially flash.
Your best bet is Google-style text ads. I never block text ads; I can always ignore those. But animations are annoying and hard to ignore, so I filter them out.
And by the way, I hope you have some other business model, in case this one fails.
How's this better than Yahoo?
I mean, I run my own server, but I'd use Gmail instead of Yahoo in a second.
Unfortunately, Picard did meet Boothby in one episode. I can't remember which one, but I do remember that the actor looks nothing like Shatner.
Still, that probably wouldn't stop them. After all, they already recast Zepharim Cochrin, and probably more that I don't know off the top of my head.
Yes, very possibly, but you have to remember -- when we went from radio to film, some of the radio stars didn't make it, but now we have film stars. So it may kill particular pr0nstars, but it won't kill pr0n as a whole -- and the same is true for any of that.
I was pleasantly surprised with the HD I've seen -- pr0n and otherwise -- which has been vivid, lifelike, amazing to watch, and yet none of the detail bothered me at all. My guess is that if it looked good in DVD, it'll still look good in HD -- if they're covering up anything ugly, they're probably doing it with makeup and such, just like they would in the real world.
Since when is a parsec a unit of time?
I don't see it as much... I can't help but look at the Annakin of Episodes 2-3 and call him an idiot. If he was trying to be "good", he wasn't trying very hard. It wasn't all to save Padme, after all -- he ended up choking her, after slaughtering the younglings.
And when you think about it, could he really have made the sequels any other way, given the outcome? After all, Ep.6 has the same kind of ambiguity -- Darth Vader is no longer just a Bad Guy, he's a Bad Guy with a Heart of Gold.
As for Jedi only using the force for defense, that did seem to be as true in the prequels as it was in the originals. Or am I missing something?
Problem: Seeing 3 before 6 may spoil that Leah is his sister. Still, small loss, especially if she doesn't figure things out in 2.