The article says "it overcame the built in system redundancy"... how the hell does ONE failing card in a redundant setup "overcome" the redundant backup parts/systems ??
I call "CYA kissass excuse maker" to the stand!
Someone screwed up big, and they're Covering Their Asses now.
No, dig up the books at your local book store. Its that place they sell books. You can even read them if you got the time to stay at the book store. That's how geeks used to train in the old days. Try it, its liberating to step away from the 'puter for a bit.
Is it? Can YOU personally "embargo" my home or my properties or a country's ports?
Embargo is a governmental tactic. It is used either to cripple its own people's choices, or another people's economy, or the people's own economy or a mix of the former, or whatever the rulers have in mind.
It is a collectivist tactic. Can't trade with Cuba, they're evil. But you can trade with Communist China and Communist Vietnam which have both killed more of their own people AND more Americans... directly and through proxies. But hey, who cares, right? Cheap Walmart goods are where its at... and so long as American Idol is on, who gives a shit?
Collectivist tactic all the way. And for it to work, the people have to either be brainwashed or propagandized into an advanced state of Cognitive Dissonance. They have to see the hypocrisy, and yet not believe it. It didn't work in the eastern block because people still remembered. The "cultural revolution" there wasn't as effective as it was in China. In America, the cultural revolution was even MORE refined, as it didn't kill the teachers, but merely subverted them and subjugated education to the state through subsidy and collectivization. Why killem when you can grow your own and mandate them as the monopoly on education. They and their materials are the only "legit thing". You, as the state vet ALL material taught, and vet only the stuff that is favorable to your policies. Voila, canned cultural revolution without bloodshed.
Brilliant, I might say. Embargo is a tactic, therefore, but it is one ONLY applicable by a state or other collective entity with enough resources and enough of its resources removed from responsibility for their actions. Yes, I'm referring to human lives as "resources" because to the state, humans are completely expendable and only of worth so long as they do as they're told and obey its edicts and demands. Yes, I don't hold the state in high regard... I merely respect it, as I do any weapon of mass destruction, of which the state is by far the worst. Regardless of what it calls itself... communist, fascist, socialist, monarchist... all states are collectivist in nature. The state comes first, its wellbeing is primary, regardless of whose lives it may crush. Well, so long as the individual in question doesn't stand a chance of ending up on the wrong end of that state's guns, the individual will always vote with the state's oppression of the minority in disfavor that week.
As it was said... "He who would rob Peter to pay Paul, can always depend on the support of Paul."
Why is it that when someone actually nails the idea perfectly, they get modded down in some fashion or other. The parent should be +5 insightful off topic:)
He was off topic, but also very very insightful. True workings of the market. Bad press is still good press. Like I kept saying 2 years ago, "Rather than Bash Windows, Promote Linux."
Perhaps now, some of those sales hating geeks out there will get it through their skulls that those "evil" marketing droids might know something after all:)
Any government that tells its EMPLOYERS (read: we the people are supposedly the masters of our government in a so called "free" country, right?) where to go and what to do, and how to spend THEIR resources, is NOT a free country, or a free people. It is socialism, collectivism or whatever you wish to call it form of authoritarianism.
When the collective "society" or "government" or "nation" or "state" tells people what they can or cannot do with their own lives and resources, that isn't freedom... that is the utter tyranny that we're supposed to have kicked out of America before 1791 (when it was recodified in a strong central government, an "energetic government" as Hamilton put it).
Yes siree, it is as socialistic as it gets when a government tells you what you can and can't do. If you don't create victims, and IF by your travel abroad as a "free man" you can show examples of what free men are capable of, both "good" and "evil" you may get people over there to stop NOT questioning things. To start wanting to be free. But if you aren't free, and you don't ACT free and THINK free, then how can you spread freedom. How can you spread something you don't have? When your government tells you to not do something, or denies you the right to do it, that is collectivist tyranny. I call it socialism because that's the collectivism I'm familiar with, the velvet gloved ones here in the West, and the iron fisted ones I was born under.
Actually I own a "Che is dead, get over it" and a "Che shot little kids in the back of the head" shirt. I'm not a fan of the scumbag. I almost was until I did some reading on the bastard.
And no, technically, if we still had a truly free country where the government stayed the hell out of people's lives, then corporations wouldn't have this much power, because every time they did what they were started to do, their assets would be sold off, and they would be disbanded. But government gave them personhood. Blame the government and the idiots who voted.
And again, if we still had a free market of any kind, then governments would have fallen apart long ago, and people would be back to contractual agreements amongst each other. And as you know, I don't much use a bank, so they can freeze all my accounts, all they want. I stand to lose nothing. About 50 bucks or so.
Besides, if a business behaved badly, in a free market, it would lose its patrons fairly quickly since there would be no government to provide heavy barriers to entry to the little guys and favorable treatment to the big guys... but who am I kidding, this is probably the wrong forum to argue this.
It should not have existed. Communism would've fallen apart MUCH faster ideologically and it wouldn't have taken root in the West if these embargoes hadn't been in place. Isolationism means that westerners in general didn't SEE how socialistic the west has become... because they didn't visit/live there during the outright socialistic phase. In a way, the embargoes were done to keep the westerners ignorant of what was growing in their own back yard.
You probably haven't noticed all the restrictions in place to travel to Cuba, have you? USA nationals/citizens are denied a LOT of the freedom they are proclaimed to have. Technically if our government was OUR government then it wouldnt' distrust us to make up our own minds about "good" or "evil", would they?
What amazes me is WHY would the USA government have been involved in such socialistic crap such as embargoes, rather than letting the citizenry sample the good and bad of all and choose for themselves. Unless of course, one notes that a citizen is another term for a "loyal subject"... an "oath of citizenship" is the same thing as the "oath of fealty" once was.
Amusing, yes, very amusing. Too bad it takes all of us so long to learn all this.
And then the irony will be that on Windows, the exploit will crash out, in Linux it will require a more up to date version of WINE to be installed so it can run and then crash like in Windows, and in BSD it simply won't run since BSD is that old "eunuchs" stuff that won't run Windows "cross platform" 'sploits.
In the end, everyone is SAFE from attack by the sheer virtues of their software goodness that is inherent in "modern" OS's.
The only two options are A) get your hands on a rock solid router... as has been stated above, or build your own routing/NAT/firewall box using either Linux or BSD or some other Unix. When I was still in college Freesco was big (Free CISCO is what it stands for, it was a linux based router only distro that was about floppy sized and thus required little else.) I found Freesco to be remarkably useful for building small config boxes without having to do all the stripping down of a distro myself. All in all, a great setup... however not all users have either the knowhow, or the ability or desire to set aside time and learn how one's tools actually work or can be used.
I've noticed that ALL home routers at some point will require a power cycle, and not because they're bad, but because they all seem to occasionally lose their ability to provide DNS resolution. This isn't a problem on a LAN (like mine, obviously) which has a dedicated nameserver on the inside of the LAN, but for people who (like I once did) use their router as a nameserver.
The reason the governments will try to get involved, is because if the price of production goes down, these things are fairly cheap to operate compared to airliners (course those stories circulating lately that most airliners haven't been maintained properly in years explains the "low cost of jetliners" thus far.) Also, that being said, governments cannot allow semi autonomous or totally autonomous vehicles to operate without their control. This might give people the idea that they can live free, and such things have to be kept out of the mainstream. Look for some government regulation to raise the cost of airships if they prove viable when used with 21st century tech rather than 19th century tech.
I've never had the pleasure of flying on a jet airliner THROUGH a thunderstorm. I wonder how that would turn out. Hell they make people turn off their laptops and cellphones, and those cause MINOR interference, I wonder what a thunderstorm would do. Since a thunderstorm several miles away causes my speakers to crack every time it thunders.
Seriously, never been in a storm with a jetliner. Anyone have any experiences to relate?
When you factor the taxes / wars and occupations that need to be done in order to keep unfriendly oil producing nations under control, I'd say you're not factoring in ALL the costs. Also, given the level of abuse and control in airlines (some justify it by saying that a private air control solution wouldn't work) I'd say the price we're ALL paying for airlines is abusive. I would prefer to not have regulation (because of the slowness of the airship) and be able to have my own without having to undergo the same abuse one undergoes to buy and fly even a small twinprop. Try it sometime. You have to surrender flight plan, adhere to it, etc. Can't go sight seeing... if you deviate too far, you get some nasty company... and I figure you might even get "interrogated via alternate interrogation methods" if you upset the bastards too much.
Ironically, when the Hindenburg (which was among a tiny minority of airships that actually crashed) wrecked, a scant few people were killed, a couple injured, and the rest survived. When an airliner crashes... well, survival chances are... not quite as good. So lets get it right, if an airliner pilot wrecks the plane, you're fairly likely to DIE. If a zeppelin or something to that effect crashes, you've got a fairly good chance to tell a "wow look at me" story about your "shipwreck adventure" which is probably why the Hindenburg got such note...
Do your own research on the subject, but they actually were safer than airplanes (and significantly more economic). Either way, hopefully you'll dig up your own research on the subject.
I remember, speaking of that, a little lame ass company called 3d Realms... they put out this thing called Wolf3d... no advertising, nothing. I found a copy of the first ENTIRE episode... it was "shareware". Other 2 I had to buy or pirate. Bought'em after downloading a copy. Why? Figured such a company should make money and make more good games.
Ever since then, through 3 Doom games, 4 Quake games, and several "engine" games, I've come to expect that despite little advertising blitz, id (which is what's left of the Apogee/3drealms/iD mix) will always provide a GOOD game. I have yet to have any serious issues. Even in Quake II where I had one of the FEW unsupported soundcards, there was a console workaround IN GAME! No need to wait for a patch. Set primary sound buffer to zero (disabled I presume) and voila, sound doesn't breakup anymore. id spends less time (from the looks of it) on advertising, and more time on actually putting out a GOOD game. Results... good games, each time, every time. Even Quake III with its lack of storyline, still turned out damn good. Why? Solid game, solid gameplay. Every game I've bought from them, even on such rare hardware as the Matrox PowerVR M3d, or the Ensoniq Soundscape (ISA card) or the Turtle Beach 6 speaker sound card, or many other unusual (seemingly not "mainstream" performance gear) I've had little trouble getting their games to work and play flawlessly.
Yet, other than OTHER people raving, I saw very little advertising blitz for most of their games. Raven Software was even less so, and has turned out pearl upon pearl. Not just playable but well designed games. Quake 4 in fact was raven's game with id's engine (as has always been the case of Raven) and again, as was always the case for Raven, they turned out a pearl. Polished, playable, finishable, and LONG. In fact, that was the joy of Hexen, it was LONG. Same with Hexen 2, regardless of your skill level, the game was long, it wasn't a "pay 50 bucks, finish it in a day or two on the hardest difficulty, and then be upset that it cost you twice as much as dinner and a movie" (back then at least)...
For those who actually VOTED democrat, your remark should sting especially painfully, since the War In Iraq (The Wii, heh heh) was the number one issue! You probably don't live in a big city and had to drive behind people with bumper stickers that said "vote democrat" or "bush lied, people died". I've had to be stuck behind such cars staring at their bumpers quite often. They SWEPT Congress this time around. You cannot tell me that the fact that "Impeachment is off the table" is possible if these people weren't pandering weaklings. It isn't sensationalist, its fairly obvious to even the uninitiated. Seriously, an Impeachment, is NOT kicking out the president from his office, it is what is otherwise known as an Indictment... i.e. an official accusation of misconduct or crime... be it lying under oath or misconduct (clinton) or lying under oath and misconduct (GW). All they can expect is to be ousted from the presidency, retire on their fat tax consuming pension, lifetime secret service protection even IF the impeachment proceedings result in a conviction... and to write a blockbusting best seller. If it worked for Bill, it'll work for George and Richard.
Yet impeachment was "off the table"? Then Obama goes and votes for the so called "FISA Telecom Immunity Act"? Hmmm... nope, no pandering there... none whatsoever. Won't be any pandering no matter what so called "crucial issue to voters" they back down on, will it?
Not that I particularly like either party or any party for that matter, but still... I pity the Dems... they voted, and really thought they'd make a bigger difference than what group of liars gets to consume and hand out their tax money for the next several years.
I was born next door to your Russian friend. Hence why I can see it clearer. I got to see alot of that until the mighty "fall of the wall" and the so called "revolutions" over there. Ask your Russian friend if the same second tier Party people are now in charge in his homeland too. I'm curious. Where I lived, the same guys who ran Operations are now "Prime Minister". The guy who ran Propaganda (they called it Education like they do in the West) now runs the military... etc. The guys coming up for 'election' each year are the same assholes who used to interrogate people if they were living "beyond their means" (i.e. if they had businesses on the side or other "capitalistic" or "unapproved" methods of living.)
I find it amusing, I wonder if your friend does also.
Never said perfect. I said they did a remarkably good job of fixing things.
The reason I brought up gothic 3 and Arcanum is because both games were COMPLETELY unplayable in their retail phase. I've still got G3, but even with the year later (2 years now?) 1.6 patch, it still occasioanlly crashes out when it runs out of memory and it STILL has some things not properly implemented (armor bonus skills don't seem to work, not sure about poison making skill being learnable, fire magus skill not available to learn, etc). Someday I may finish Gothic 3, Arcanum I can barely get around to, since its arguably unplayable on my rig... and i'm running a Geforce 8 and several gigs of ram on a 32 bit system for gaming purposes (thus no incompatibility in the OS). Do the math. In fact, Arcanum was a big waste of cash IMHO, since the bastards at the store went out of business before I could return it. (I travel a lot... Comp USA was always closed when I got back in town, and then they went out of business in my area.)
Reminds me of that Warhammer Online having "content pulled to make release date". SSDD... Same Shit Different Day. Speak of the devil, eh?
Once it gets to ad hominems (as it just did) I'm thinking mayhap this subject is not worth discussing. As for the newspapers around here, you can tell their slant on a story, and if you ask questions of the individuals involved and find out ten times more than what was quoted in the paper. (As I live in a small town at the moment, I can actually verify this very easily when it is mentioned in the papers).
Generally the papers tend to overemphasize bullshit stories, and the really heavy stuff ("Federal Reserve to avoid raising rates while printing enough worthless paper money to double the national debt" would've made a hell of a headline, but was completely avoided. "Congress a bunch of pandering weaklings" would've made a hell of a headline, but was avoided. "Is your vote worth anything except validating the next cookie cutter ruler?" Lots of good thoughtful headlines could run in the papers. Discussion could be started in the so called "public fora" but the newspapers have ceased to be the "public fora" fora long time (pun intended).
As far as I'm concerned, and quite a few I've known, you're actually getting more up to date news from muckraker sites and muckraker publications. I even have an acquaintance who reads most of the stories that even manage to hit the mainstream occasionally and he reads them a few months in advance. Not even online. Newsletter subscription. Generally his are more detailed than those run by the papers on Page A24 on the next to last page... by which point most people have stopped reading, have used the paper to wrap breakables or have used it to line the bird cage.
Isn't that ironic? Back in the day they used to do "public beta testing" and "closed door alpha/beta testing". And the irony? Some games spent a year or more in public beta. I still remember Ragnarok Online doing 2 years of public beta testing. I still recall doing the battle net stress test for Diablo II. Warcraft III even ran a beta test and a bnet stress test. Why is it so hard for other people? Some do, some don't. Generally you can tell which games were playtested, even if for free, by the public at large. It also acts as a shareware test for people to enjoy and, well, you know, boast about being 'so cool' to their friends.
Most of said games end up being fairly polished and mostly free of nasty bugs. Most of the ones that DONT get playtested publically or by "for hire" playtesters, end up incomplete, crashy, or just plain shit. Of course for a public test, the publisher has to be as good and as willing as the developer, as far as I understand it... and if either of them is rushing, it ain't happenin' bub.
Slashdot Mirror
The article says "it overcame the built in system redundancy"... how the hell does ONE failing card in a redundant setup "overcome" the redundant backup parts/systems ??
I call "CYA kissass excuse maker" to the stand!
Someone screwed up big, and they're Covering Their Asses now.
No, dig up the books at your local book store. Its that place they sell books. You can even read them if you got the time to stay at the book store. That's how geeks used to train in the old days. Try it, its liberating to step away from the 'puter for a bit.
Is it? Can YOU personally "embargo" my home or my properties or a country's ports?
Embargo is a governmental tactic. It is used either to cripple its own people's choices, or another people's economy, or the people's own economy or a mix of the former, or whatever the rulers have in mind.
It is a collectivist tactic. Can't trade with Cuba, they're evil. But you can trade with Communist China and Communist Vietnam which have both killed more of their own people AND more Americans... directly and through proxies. But hey, who cares, right? Cheap Walmart goods are where its at... and so long as American Idol is on, who gives a shit?
Collectivist tactic all the way. And for it to work, the people have to either be brainwashed or propagandized into an advanced state of Cognitive Dissonance. They have to see the hypocrisy, and yet not believe it. It didn't work in the eastern block because people still remembered. The "cultural revolution" there wasn't as effective as it was in China. In America, the cultural revolution was even MORE refined, as it didn't kill the teachers, but merely subverted them and subjugated education to the state through subsidy and collectivization. Why killem when you can grow your own and mandate them as the monopoly on education. They and their materials are the only "legit thing". You, as the state vet ALL material taught, and vet only the stuff that is favorable to your policies. Voila, canned cultural revolution without bloodshed.
Brilliant, I might say. Embargo is a tactic, therefore, but it is one ONLY applicable by a state or other collective entity with enough resources and enough of its resources removed from responsibility for their actions. Yes, I'm referring to human lives as "resources" because to the state, humans are completely expendable and only of worth so long as they do as they're told and obey its edicts and demands. Yes, I don't hold the state in high regard... I merely respect it, as I do any weapon of mass destruction, of which the state is by far the worst. Regardless of what it calls itself... communist, fascist, socialist, monarchist... all states are collectivist in nature. The state comes first, its wellbeing is primary, regardless of whose lives it may crush. Well, so long as the individual in question doesn't stand a chance of ending up on the wrong end of that state's guns, the individual will always vote with the state's oppression of the minority in disfavor that week.
As it was said... "He who would rob Peter to pay Paul, can always depend on the support of Paul."
Why is it that when someone actually nails the idea perfectly, they get modded down in some fashion or other. The parent should be +5 insightful off topic :)
He was off topic, but also very very insightful. True workings of the market. Bad press is still good press. Like I kept saying 2 years ago, "Rather than Bash Windows, Promote Linux."
Perhaps now, some of those sales hating geeks out there will get it through their skulls that those "evil" marketing droids might know something after all :)
No, that is EXACTLY the traits it has.
Any government that tells its EMPLOYERS (read: we the people are supposedly the masters of our government in a so called "free" country, right?) where to go and what to do, and how to spend THEIR resources, is NOT a free country, or a free people. It is socialism, collectivism or whatever you wish to call it form of authoritarianism.
When the collective "society" or "government" or "nation" or "state" tells people what they can or cannot do with their own lives and resources, that isn't freedom... that is the utter tyranny that we're supposed to have kicked out of America before 1791 (when it was recodified in a strong central government, an "energetic government" as Hamilton put it).
Yes siree, it is as socialistic as it gets when a government tells you what you can and can't do. If you don't create victims, and IF by your travel abroad as a "free man" you can show examples of what free men are capable of, both "good" and "evil" you may get people over there to stop NOT questioning things. To start wanting to be free. But if you aren't free, and you don't ACT free and THINK free, then how can you spread freedom. How can you spread something you don't have? When your government tells you to not do something, or denies you the right to do it, that is collectivist tyranny. I call it socialism because that's the collectivism I'm familiar with, the velvet gloved ones here in the West, and the iron fisted ones I was born under.
Actually I own a "Che is dead, get over it" and a "Che shot little kids in the back of the head" shirt. I'm not a fan of the scumbag. I almost was until I did some reading on the bastard.
And no, technically, if we still had a truly free country where the government stayed the hell out of people's lives, then corporations wouldn't have this much power, because every time they did what they were started to do, their assets would be sold off, and they would be disbanded. But government gave them personhood. Blame the government and the idiots who voted.
And again, if we still had a free market of any kind, then governments would have fallen apart long ago, and people would be back to contractual agreements amongst each other. And as you know, I don't much use a bank, so they can freeze all my accounts, all they want. I stand to lose nothing. About 50 bucks or so.
Besides, if a business behaved badly, in a free market, it would lose its patrons fairly quickly since there would be no government to provide heavy barriers to entry to the little guys and favorable treatment to the big guys... but who am I kidding, this is probably the wrong forum to argue this.
It should not have existed. Communism would've fallen apart MUCH faster ideologically and it wouldn't have taken root in the West if these embargoes hadn't been in place. Isolationism means that westerners in general didn't SEE how socialistic the west has become... because they didn't visit/live there during the outright socialistic phase. In a way, the embargoes were done to keep the westerners ignorant of what was growing in their own back yard.
You probably haven't noticed all the restrictions in place to travel to Cuba, have you? USA nationals/citizens are denied a LOT of the freedom they are proclaimed to have. Technically if our government was OUR government then it wouldnt' distrust us to make up our own minds about "good" or "evil", would they?
What amazes me is WHY would the USA government have been involved in such socialistic crap such as embargoes, rather than letting the citizenry sample the good and bad of all and choose for themselves. Unless of course, one notes that a citizen is another term for a "loyal subject"... an "oath of citizenship" is the same thing as the "oath of fealty" once was.
Amusing, yes, very amusing. Too bad it takes all of us so long to learn all this.
And then the irony will be that on Windows, the exploit will crash out, in Linux it will require a more up to date version of WINE to be installed so it can run and then crash like in Windows, and in BSD it simply won't run since BSD is that old "eunuchs" stuff that won't run Windows "cross platform" 'sploits.
In the end, everyone is SAFE from attack by the sheer virtues of their software goodness that is inherent in "modern" OS's.
Nope, nobody in my house used bittorent from home :)
The only two options are A) get your hands on a rock solid router... as has been stated above, or build your own routing/NAT/firewall box using either Linux or BSD or some other Unix. When I was still in college Freesco was big (Free CISCO is what it stands for, it was a linux based router only distro that was about floppy sized and thus required little else.) I found Freesco to be remarkably useful for building small config boxes without having to do all the stripping down of a distro myself. All in all, a great setup... however not all users have either the knowhow, or the ability or desire to set aside time and learn how one's tools actually work or can be used.
Democracy at work. :)
I've noticed that ALL home routers at some point will require a power cycle, and not because they're bad, but because they all seem to occasionally lose their ability to provide DNS resolution. This isn't a problem on a LAN (like mine, obviously) which has a dedicated nameserver on the inside of the LAN, but for people who (like I once did) use their router as a nameserver.
The reason the governments will try to get involved, is because if the price of production goes down, these things are fairly cheap to operate compared to airliners (course those stories circulating lately that most airliners haven't been maintained properly in years explains the "low cost of jetliners" thus far.) Also, that being said, governments cannot allow semi autonomous or totally autonomous vehicles to operate without their control. This might give people the idea that they can live free, and such things have to be kept out of the mainstream. Look for some government regulation to raise the cost of airships if they prove viable when used with 21st century tech rather than 19th century tech.
I've never had the pleasure of flying on a jet airliner THROUGH a thunderstorm. I wonder how that would turn out. Hell they make people turn off their laptops and cellphones, and those cause MINOR interference, I wonder what a thunderstorm would do. Since a thunderstorm several miles away causes my speakers to crack every time it thunders.
Seriously, never been in a storm with a jetliner. Anyone have any experiences to relate?
When you factor the taxes / wars and occupations that need to be done in order to keep unfriendly oil producing nations under control, I'd say you're not factoring in ALL the costs. Also, given the level of abuse and control in airlines (some justify it by saying that a private air control solution wouldn't work) I'd say the price we're ALL paying for airlines is abusive. I would prefer to not have regulation (because of the slowness of the airship) and be able to have my own without having to undergo the same abuse one undergoes to buy and fly even a small twinprop. Try it sometime. You have to surrender flight plan, adhere to it, etc. Can't go sight seeing... if you deviate too far, you get some nasty company... and I figure you might even get "interrogated via alternate interrogation methods" if you upset the bastards too much.
Ironically, when the Hindenburg (which was among a tiny minority of airships that actually crashed) wrecked, a scant few people were killed, a couple injured, and the rest survived. When an airliner crashes... well, survival chances are... not quite as good. So lets get it right, if an airliner pilot wrecks the plane, you're fairly likely to DIE. If a zeppelin or something to that effect crashes, you've got a fairly good chance to tell a "wow look at me" story about your "shipwreck adventure" which is probably why the Hindenburg got such note...
Do your own research on the subject, but they actually were safer than airplanes (and significantly more economic). Either way, hopefully you'll dig up your own research on the subject.
I remember, speaking of that, a little lame ass company called 3d Realms... they put out this thing called Wolf3d... no advertising, nothing. I found a copy of the first ENTIRE episode... it was "shareware". Other 2 I had to buy or pirate. Bought'em after downloading a copy. Why? Figured such a company should make money and make more good games.
Ever since then, through 3 Doom games, 4 Quake games, and several "engine" games, I've come to expect that despite little advertising blitz, id (which is what's left of the Apogee/3drealms/iD mix) will always provide a GOOD game. I have yet to have any serious issues. Even in Quake II where I had one of the FEW unsupported soundcards, there was a console workaround IN GAME! No need to wait for a patch. Set primary sound buffer to zero (disabled I presume) and voila, sound doesn't breakup anymore. id spends less time (from the looks of it) on advertising, and more time on actually putting out a GOOD game. Results... good games, each time, every time. Even Quake III with its lack of storyline, still turned out damn good. Why? Solid game, solid gameplay. Every game I've bought from them, even on such rare hardware as the Matrox PowerVR M3d, or the Ensoniq Soundscape (ISA card) or the Turtle Beach 6 speaker sound card, or many other unusual (seemingly not "mainstream" performance gear) I've had little trouble getting their games to work and play flawlessly.
Yet, other than OTHER people raving, I saw very little advertising blitz for most of their games. Raven Software was even less so, and has turned out pearl upon pearl. Not just playable but well designed games. Quake 4 in fact was raven's game with id's engine (as has always been the case of Raven) and again, as was always the case for Raven, they turned out a pearl. Polished, playable, finishable, and LONG. In fact, that was the joy of Hexen, it was LONG. Same with Hexen 2, regardless of your skill level, the game was long, it wasn't a "pay 50 bucks, finish it in a day or two on the hardest difficulty, and then be upset that it cost you twice as much as dinner and a movie" (back then at least)...
For those who actually VOTED democrat, your remark should sting especially painfully, since the War In Iraq (The Wii, heh heh) was the number one issue! You probably don't live in a big city and had to drive behind people with bumper stickers that said "vote democrat" or "bush lied, people died". I've had to be stuck behind such cars staring at their bumpers quite often. They SWEPT Congress this time around. You cannot tell me that the fact that "Impeachment is off the table" is possible if these people weren't pandering weaklings. It isn't sensationalist, its fairly obvious to even the uninitiated. Seriously, an Impeachment, is NOT kicking out the president from his office, it is what is otherwise known as an Indictment... i.e. an official accusation of misconduct or crime... be it lying under oath or misconduct (clinton) or lying under oath and misconduct (GW). All they can expect is to be ousted from the presidency, retire on their fat tax consuming pension, lifetime secret service protection even IF the impeachment proceedings result in a conviction... and to write a blockbusting best seller. If it worked for Bill, it'll work for George and Richard.
Yet impeachment was "off the table"? Then Obama goes and votes for the so called "FISA Telecom Immunity Act"? Hmmm... nope, no pandering there... none whatsoever. Won't be any pandering no matter what so called "crucial issue to voters" they back down on, will it?
Not that I particularly like either party or any party for that matter, but still... I pity the Dems... they voted, and really thought they'd make a bigger difference than what group of liars gets to consume and hand out their tax money for the next several years.
I was born next door to your Russian friend. Hence why I can see it clearer. I got to see alot of that until the mighty "fall of the wall" and the so called "revolutions" over there. Ask your Russian friend if the same second tier Party people are now in charge in his homeland too. I'm curious. Where I lived, the same guys who ran Operations are now "Prime Minister". The guy who ran Propaganda (they called it Education like they do in the West) now runs the military... etc. The guys coming up for 'election' each year are the same assholes who used to interrogate people if they were living "beyond their means" (i.e. if they had businesses on the side or other "capitalistic" or "unapproved" methods of living.)
I find it amusing, I wonder if your friend does also.
Never said perfect. I said they did a remarkably good job of fixing things.
The reason I brought up gothic 3 and Arcanum is because both games were COMPLETELY unplayable in their retail phase. I've still got G3, but even with the year later (2 years now?) 1.6 patch, it still occasioanlly crashes out when it runs out of memory and it STILL has some things not properly implemented (armor bonus skills don't seem to work, not sure about poison making skill being learnable, fire magus skill not available to learn, etc). Someday I may finish Gothic 3, Arcanum I can barely get around to, since its arguably unplayable on my rig... and i'm running a Geforce 8 and several gigs of ram on a 32 bit system for gaming purposes (thus no incompatibility in the OS). Do the math. In fact, Arcanum was a big waste of cash IMHO, since the bastards at the store went out of business before I could return it. (I travel a lot... Comp USA was always closed when I got back in town, and then they went out of business in my area.)
Reminds me of that Warhammer Online having "content pulled to make release date". SSDD... Same Shit Different Day. Speak of the devil, eh?
Once it gets to ad hominems (as it just did) I'm thinking mayhap this subject is not worth discussing. As for the newspapers around here, you can tell their slant on a story, and if you ask questions of the individuals involved and find out ten times more than what was quoted in the paper. (As I live in a small town at the moment, I can actually verify this very easily when it is mentioned in the papers).
Generally the papers tend to overemphasize bullshit stories, and the really heavy stuff ("Federal Reserve to avoid raising rates while printing enough worthless paper money to double the national debt" would've made a hell of a headline, but was completely avoided. "Congress a bunch of pandering weaklings" would've made a hell of a headline, but was avoided. "Is your vote worth anything except validating the next cookie cutter ruler?" Lots of good thoughtful headlines could run in the papers. Discussion could be started in the so called "public fora" but the newspapers have ceased to be the "public fora" fora long time (pun intended).
As far as I'm concerned, and quite a few I've known, you're actually getting more up to date news from muckraker sites and muckraker publications. I even have an acquaintance who reads most of the stories that even manage to hit the mainstream occasionally and he reads them a few months in advance. Not even online. Newsletter subscription. Generally his are more detailed than those run by the papers on Page A24 on the next to last page... by which point most people have stopped reading, have used the paper to wrap breakables or have used it to line the bird cage.
Isn't that ironic? Back in the day they used to do "public beta testing" and "closed door alpha/beta testing". And the irony? Some games spent a year or more in public beta. I still remember Ragnarok Online doing 2 years of public beta testing. I still recall doing the battle net stress test for Diablo II. Warcraft III even ran a beta test and a bnet stress test. Why is it so hard for other people? Some do, some don't. Generally you can tell which games were playtested, even if for free, by the public at large. It also acts as a shareware test for people to enjoy and, well, you know, boast about being 'so cool' to their friends.
Most of said games end up being fairly polished and mostly free of nasty bugs. Most of the ones that DONT get playtested publically or by "for hire" playtesters, end up incomplete, crashy, or just plain shit. Of course for a public test, the publisher has to be as good and as willing as the developer, as far as I understand it... and if either of them is rushing, it ain't happenin' bub.
Most of the people I talk to face to face seem to trust newspapers to be correct as often as tabloids.
Thanks for playing.