Viruses are extinct? Tell that to the people who regularly use the computer lab at my old college. I am so glad I never had reason to move a disk or executeable file between those computers and my home computer...
Oddly enough, my first thought seeing the Firefly advertisements was, "gee, if you just listen to the announcer without watching the images, this show sounds a lot like how I would describe Farscape."
It really looks like an attempt to copy the format of Farscape into a different universe and storyline. wierd..
Re:How to disable Passport integration with XP
on
Passport vs. Plan 9
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· Score: 2
I've used the msconfig method quite a few times, and never had msn messenger reappear. There's a dialog that comes up when you reboot asking whether you want to keep what you changed, but you can blow right by it (the language is a little confusing, but you want to tell it *not* to pop back up again).
As for copy-paste.. I'd be leery of using it on strange command lines that are posted on Slashdot. I understand what yours does, but after the hijinks in the "bash shell prompts" article...
Re:How to disable Passport integration with XP
on
Passport vs. Plan 9
·
· Score: 2
You can also use msconfig to remove "msmsgs" from the startup list.. much less potential for mistyping.
Oddly enough, I found ASL much easier to learn than any other languages... I couldn't learn French or Italian to save my life, despite having lived in countries that spoke those languages for quite a while. ASL, on the other hand, I learned largely from watching it being used.
It's not easy to learn ANY language unless you're exposed to it regularly, though...
Speaking from experience, it's really, *really* difficult to learn sign if you are not exposed to it in your day-to-day life.
I used to know enough ASL to get myself through a basic conversation, mainly because I saw deaf people talking every weekend. Then I moved out of the area.. I'd be hard pressed to remember most simple signs these days, let alone carry out any sort of intelligible conversation.
As for the output of this method.. I'd have to say that even the broken english that would result would be a heck of a lot better than needing to fumble for a pencil and pad of paper constantly...
They don't. The RIAA acts as though contradictory evidence doesn't exist, and that their statists are the only correct ones. At least the people on the other side of the issue are willing to acknowledge the existance of other evidence, and point out reasons why that evidence is less likely to be correct.
Funny, your only gripes that have anything to do with any future content that comes out for this game is that it's not currently easy to add in new tilesets, and the lack of a z-axis in the engine. You then proceeded to gripe about more things that are entirely limited to the single-player game.
I completely agree that the game needs more tiles.. that does not, however, doom original modules to being repetitive and exactly the same. The module I'm currently working on looks nothing like other modules that use the same tileset, thanks to the use of placeables, lighting, fog, creatures, and scripting.
Most of your gripes completely ignore over two-thirds of the game.. the multiplayer, DM-run component, and the toolset. Obviously you don't care about them, and this game was obviously not targetted at you. I'm having a blast with those two parts of the game, as they are far beyond anything similiar.. and I don't really care about the single-player game that you think so poorly of.
You're obviously just talking about the single player module that shipped with the game, since that's the only way you could possibly make such broad statements about how "boring" or "repetitive" NWN's gameplay is, or how bad the story is.
Personally, I've almost entirely ignored the single player game. I'm having far more fun using the toolkit and scripting language to twist the game around what *I* (and the people I DM for) want to play. I'd think the "Linux audience" would be far more interested in that than in a simple little single-player game...
This is all true, but it doesn't alter the fact that one language can be more readable than another.
So, which human language is inherantly the most readable, oh guru?
As to your examples... some people find all caps to be inherantly *more* readable. And throwing in pseudo-random sequences doesn't change anything.. that would increase the difficulty of learning how to read the language, not any inherant "readability" of the language (if there is truly a coherant, understandable structure, something that is pretty much required for the human concept of "language").
As I've pointed out twice already, Russian is entirely unreadable by my standards. The alphabet is gibberish to me, the words mean nothing (except for "goodbye", which I picked up from somewhere), and I don't even know enough to start thinking about the grammar of the language. Does my inability to grasp this language mean anything at all to the native Russian speaker who has grown up with it, and thinks that English is equally incomprehensible?
Well that's his point, isn't it ? That a language can be intrinsically more or less readable than another language. Once you accept the possibility of an "unreadable" language, there's a legitimate question of the degree of readability.
And as I said... I could just as easily say that Russian is unreadable, simply because I can't read Russian.
Any language is unreadable if you don't know how to read it, regardless of how readable the code is. If you do know how to read it, then it is no longer an "unreadable" language, and any lack of readability is due to the writer, not the language.
How about: a good coder can write readable code in any readable language?
But I hardly think that trotting out languages that are difficult to read invalidates the statement you replied to. I could just as well say that it's impossible to write readable Russian, since I can't read Russian.
Fortunately, not all 'authors' are 'greedy author's guild bastards'. Perhaps you should check out some of the other Slashdot stories about the Author's Guild...
Well, otherwise we have flods of people posting about how horrible it is for people on Slashdot to be excited about WC3 when just recently they were complaining about Blizzard.
This way, both sides are represented in the article, making it a little less likely that such posts will be made.
Of course, there's still no way to please everyone...
Have to install to C:\? I installed the toolkit just fine on my F:\ drive, and ran it for several hours without a hitch. Don't know what the heck you're talking about...
The plot has something to do with the City of Neverwinter, and a mysterious disease. Very little other info has been given out, mostly about the background that the story is set in. Bioware s keeping the plot of this one very quiet.
Besides which, one of the main features of NWN is the editor.. Although a great deal of time is being spent on the story that will ship with the game, the thing most gamers are excited about is the ability to create their own storylines easily within the game.
As for cinematics, there has been one released... you can find it under the "multimedia" link on the NWN website. It has absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay, and no one knows what it may have to do with the game, but it's fairly decent.
If you'd check your facts, you'd find that the only sound formats supported by Dungeon Siege are MP3 and WAV. They apparently played with the idea of supporting WMA, but it used too much processing time. Not even a hint that they might have thought about OGG.
The better trolls have a grain of truth in 'em.. this isn't one.
There are "mana"-type systems for D&D 2ed and 3ed. 2ed has the "spell points" rules in the Skills and Powers rulebook, and a 3ed Sorcerer is similiar. Spell points give more of a "mana" feel, and the sorcerer has a set of slots to cast from, rather than a pre-memorized selection of one-shot spells.
I don't see how the one-shot spell system is "unacceptable", however. It's not an oversight, it's just one method of dealing with a magic user. There are published reasons to explain this system... you may not like them, but they are there. I have found that it tends to lead to much more inventive spell casting... when you can't just select the spell you'd like at will, you tend to think up creative ways to use what you've got.
In the end, who cares about lame rules? It's up to the DM whether to use them or not, based on whatever provides the best role playing experience for the set of players he's dealing with. D&D's rules were never set in stone, so they cannot be "fundamental flaws"... the rules serve the DM, not the other way around. That's why pretty much every DMG begins with rule #1: the DM is in charge.
That's why recovery companies open drives in a dust-free environment with hazmat suits on
Well, naturally, that's what they say is the reason. After all, if everyone in the world knew that deadly chemicals were contained in hard drive platters, no one would ever touch a computer again! Don't tell me you actually believe them?!?
I'm not sure about lredir, but it is possible to run FreeDOS under Dosemu directly within the linux file system now. Works like a charm, and makes it extremely easy to use files in both systems.
Slashdot Mirror
Viruses are extinct? Tell that to the people who regularly use the computer lab at my old college. I am so glad I never had reason to move a disk or executeable file between those computers and my home computer...
Oddly enough, my first thought seeing the Firefly advertisements was, "gee, if you just listen to the announcer without watching the images, this show sounds a lot like how I would describe Farscape."
It really looks like an attempt to copy the format of Farscape into a different universe and storyline. wierd..
I've used the msconfig method quite a few times, and never had msn messenger reappear. There's a dialog that comes up when you reboot asking whether you want to keep what you changed, but you can blow right by it (the language is a little confusing, but you want to tell it *not* to pop back up again).
As for copy-paste.. I'd be leery of using it on strange command lines that are posted on Slashdot. I understand what yours does, but after the hijinks in the "bash shell prompts" article...
You can also use msconfig to remove "msmsgs" from the startup list.. much less potential for mistyping.
And yet, R2 recognized Obi Wan...
Hmm, three states.. I guess it must have been at least a two-bit bit..
Oddly enough, I found ASL much easier to learn than any other languages... I couldn't learn French or Italian to save my life, despite having lived in countries that spoke those languages for quite a while. ASL, on the other hand, I learned largely from watching it being used.
It's not easy to learn ANY language unless you're exposed to it regularly, though...
"Why people just don't learn sign is beyond me."
Speaking from experience, it's really, *really* difficult to learn sign if you are not exposed to it in your day-to-day life.
I used to know enough ASL to get myself through a basic conversation, mainly because I saw deaf people talking every weekend. Then I moved out of the area.. I'd be hard pressed to remember most simple signs these days, let alone carry out any sort of intelligible conversation.
As for the output of this method.. I'd have to say that even the broken english that would result would be a heck of a lot better than needing to fumble for a pencil and pad of paper constantly...
"Don't fall into the same trap as they do."
They don't. The RIAA acts as though contradictory evidence doesn't exist, and that their statists are the only correct ones. At least the people on the other side of the issue are willing to acknowledge the existance of other evidence, and point out reasons why that evidence is less likely to be correct.
Funny, your only gripes that have anything to do with any future content that comes out for this game is that it's not currently easy to add in new tilesets, and the lack of a z-axis in the engine. You then proceeded to gripe about more things that are entirely limited to the single-player game.
I completely agree that the game needs more tiles.. that does not, however, doom original modules to being repetitive and exactly the same. The module I'm currently working on looks nothing like other modules that use the same tileset, thanks to the use of placeables, lighting, fog, creatures, and scripting.
Most of your gripes completely ignore over two-thirds of the game.. the multiplayer, DM-run component, and the toolset. Obviously you don't care about them, and this game was obviously not targetted at you. I'm having a blast with those two parts of the game, as they are far beyond anything similiar.. and I don't really care about the single-player game that you think so poorly of.
*shrug* oh well..
You're obviously just talking about the single player module that shipped with the game, since that's the only way you could possibly make such broad statements about how "boring" or "repetitive" NWN's gameplay is, or how bad the story is.
Personally, I've almost entirely ignored the single player game. I'm having far more fun using the toolkit and scripting language to twist the game around what *I* (and the people I DM for) want to play. I'd think the "Linux audience" would be far more interested in that than in a simple little single-player game...
This is all true, but it doesn't alter the fact that one language can be more readable than another.
So, which human language is inherantly the most readable, oh guru?
As to your examples... some people find all caps to be inherantly *more* readable. And throwing in pseudo-random sequences doesn't change anything.. that would increase the difficulty of learning how to read the language, not any inherant "readability" of the language (if there is truly a coherant, understandable structure, something that is pretty much required for the human concept of "language").
As I've pointed out twice already, Russian is entirely unreadable by my standards. The alphabet is gibberish to me, the words mean nothing (except for "goodbye", which I picked up from somewhere), and I don't even know enough to start thinking about the grammar of the language. Does my inability to grasp this language mean anything at all to the native Russian speaker who has grown up with it, and thinks that English is equally incomprehensible?
Well that's his point, isn't it ? That a language can be intrinsically more or less readable than another language. Once you accept the possibility of an "unreadable" language, there's a legitimate question of the degree of readability.
And as I said... I could just as easily say that Russian is unreadable, simply because I can't read Russian.
Any language is unreadable if you don't know how to read it, regardless of how readable the code is. If you do know how to read it, then it is no longer an "unreadable" language, and any lack of readability is due to the writer, not the language.
How about: a good coder can write readable code in any readable language?
But I hardly think that trotting out languages that are difficult to read invalidates the statement you replied to. I could just as well say that it's impossible to write readable Russian, since I can't read Russian.
If you email it to dopple-slash@milledgeville.net, I can put it up on the web for people to be able to get to it...
I'd be really interested in seeing this method, too. :)
Fortunately, not all 'authors' are 'greedy author's guild bastards'. Perhaps you should check out some of the other Slashdot stories about the Author's Guild...
Well, otherwise we have flods of people posting about how horrible it is for people on Slashdot to be excited about WC3 when just recently they were complaining about Blizzard.
This way, both sides are represented in the article, making it a little less likely that such posts will be made.
Of course, there's still no way to please everyone...
From here
Quote: Posted 06/11/02 23:36:49 (GMT) by Derek French
I believe that the EULA has changed. Due to legal reasons (as none of us are lawyers here) we still can't comment on the EULA. Ever.
Have to install to C:\? I installed the toolkit just fine on my F:\ drive, and ran it for several hours without a hitch. Don't know what the heck you're talking about...
The plot has something to do with the City of Neverwinter, and a mysterious disease. Very little other info has been given out, mostly about the background that the story is set in. Bioware s keeping the plot of this one very quiet.
Besides which, one of the main features of NWN is the editor.. Although a great deal of time is being spent on the story that will ship with the game, the thing most gamers are excited about is the ability to create their own storylines easily within the game.
As for cinematics, there has been one released... you can find it under the "multimedia" link on the NWN website. It has absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay, and no one knows what it may have to do with the game, but it's fairly decent.
You "believe"?
If you'd check your facts, you'd find that the only sound formats supported by Dungeon Siege are MP3 and WAV. They apparently played with the idea of supporting WMA, but it used too much processing time. Not even a hint that they might have thought about OGG.
The better trolls have a grain of truth in 'em.. this isn't one.
There are "mana"-type systems for D&D 2ed and 3ed. 2ed has the "spell points" rules in the Skills and Powers rulebook, and a 3ed Sorcerer is similiar. Spell points give more of a "mana" feel, and the sorcerer has a set of slots to cast from, rather than a pre-memorized selection of one-shot spells.
I don't see how the one-shot spell system is "unacceptable", however. It's not an oversight, it's just one method of dealing with a magic user. There are published reasons to explain this system... you may not like them, but they are there. I have found that it tends to lead to much more inventive spell casting... when you can't just select the spell you'd like at will, you tend to think up creative ways to use what you've got.
In the end, who cares about lame rules? It's up to the DM whether to use them or not, based on whatever provides the best role playing experience for the set of players he's dealing with. D&D's rules were never set in stone, so they cannot be "fundamental flaws"... the rules serve the DM, not the other way around. That's why pretty much every DMG begins with rule #1: the DM is in charge.
That's why recovery companies open drives in a dust-free environment with hazmat suits on
Well, naturally, that's what they say is the reason. After all, if everyone in the world knew that deadly chemicals were contained in hard drive platters, no one would ever touch a computer again! Don't tell me you actually believe them?!?
I'm not sure about lredir, but it is possible to run FreeDOS under Dosemu directly within the linux file system now. Works like a charm, and makes it extremely easy to use files in both systems.