So, why do people keep believing that "everything else advances at the exact same rate"? Because they hear statements like this in forums, and don't think to check it out themselves, usually.
No, because it's true. Just because there's a small percentage chance that rats still appear doesn't mean anything. You purposely didn't mention that all bandits level up to you, so that around level 15, they all have ebony, glass, and daedric armor. You didn't mention that Arena combatants are leveled to you, so you can become the Arena Champion (supposedly the greatest fighter in Tamriel) at level 1. The demons invading Kvatch are total wimps if you happen to go up there at level 1. You can beat the whole game below level 3, and it's a piece of cake.
You also don't mention that loot is leveled as well, so if you're a level 1 thief, it's useless to bother looking in chests or breaking into houses because you'll get nothing but crap.
Oblivion uses pretty much the same mechanism as Daggerfall (an earlier game in the series) did. It used to be that this wasn't at all uncommon for RPGs. But, the MMO games have trained people to play games a certain way, and now Oblivion is a shock to them.
Oblivion does NOT use the same mechanism as Daggerfall. Daggerfall uses some enemy leveling, but not the system that Oblivion uses. MMO games have absolutely nothing at all to do with this.
Look, here's the real world. A level 1 marine can take down Saddam in his hidey hole, as long as he looks in the right place. He doesn't have to level up first so Saddam doesn't take him out with one hit. Unpredictability is a feature of living worlds, and steady 1-70 level advancement takes away that unpredictability--that ability for just freakin ANYONE to do something important, given the right opportunity.
You don't seem to realize that you're arguing against leveled enemies here. Oscuro's mod adds the unpredictability you refer to by letting you fight badasses more powerful than you at level 1. In vanilla Oblivion, all enemies and loot are scaled to you so you never meet anybody more or less powerful than you, making it the same game no matter the level. Your level 1 marine would never be able to meet Saddam in vanilla Oblivion.
What he is complaining about sounds more like an MMO then an RPG. I don't recall being given quests to kill 500 wolves in an RPG.
I guess you haven't played Oblivion where you get to do stupid shit like kill four mountain lions outside town or collect fish scales for a fisherman or deliver a battleaxe to some morons in a cave. FedEx quests galore.
No kidding. Oblivion is totally boring after a couple of hours. My jaw dropped when Zonk actually praised Oblivion's leveling, which gives mere bandits daedric armor and lets you be Arena champ at level 1. Oblivion was a terribly bland game with reduced skills and less factions that didn't even conflict with each other like in Morrowind. You could go be the head of the Mages Guild AND the Thieves Guild. Idiotic. The stupid press didn't care as long as "SpeedTree" looked pretty--and it did after the first 50 green hills you run across. After that, it's really old.
Oblivion represents the shiney console-itis that is plaguing RPGs today, especially at Bethesda where lead designer Todd Howard actually likes first-person shooters more than RPGs, which explains a lot about Oblivion. PC games today are dumbed-down Xbox ports rather than full-fledged PC games that take advantage of the depth you can have in PC games. The last "true" RPGs I played were Wizardry 8 and Morrowind, and some people still debate Morrowind.
Well, one thing's for sure, Vista itself is premature, or it was released prematurely. Microsoft is already working on SP1 and trying to ship it later this year. A service pack in the same year of release. Ouch.
Thank you for your interesting response to "first post." Apparently, first post won't work because there are a huge number of sites on the net. Only computers can handle a task like first post.
What bothers me the most is that we had to wait until these corporate executives spoke out. What we needed, at least in the United States, was every Jill and Joe American speaking out against having their rights "managed".
I think most people outside the tech world don't care that much about DRM and don't even know what it is. They rip their music from CDs, and iTunes DRM is so liberal that they don't know music from the iTunes Store is protected. Honestly, DRM isn't as big a deal as people around here make it out to be. It's just an annoyance to gripe about, not some grand stripping of human rights.
Simple. Sudo is a way to elevate privileges for certain tasks that require them due to UNIX security restrictions, while UAC is a blanket to confirm the activities of processes that have no security awareness.
Well, it's a very big thing when the CEO of the company that makes the #1 music player and download service in the world comes out against DRM. Yahoo may have been "making moves," but it was just making moves. Apple came right out and laid their proverbial dick on the table for all the public to see.
Windows doesn't have the modern concept of application bundles. It's still living in the 1990s where program folders and their internal files are still exposed, and it uses "installers" and "uninstallers" for everything. The installers access a system-level installer service, which is the whole point of this article.
Hell, Microsoft still hasn't introduced 32-bit/64-bit universal binary technology...not that it matters since 64-bit Windows can barely run anything, unlike 64-bit OS X Leopard which is fully backwards compatible including 32-bit drivers. Everything about Windows development feels ancient and backwards to me.
I guess it's because UAC isn't there out of some smart architectural design that Microsoft conceived during the development of Windows, like with UNIX security privileges. It's there to mask the problems of their aging Win32 codebase that still relies on an API that was designed in the single-user days of the 1980s. So to me, UAC is a constant reminder that Windows is broken and needs a diaper to protect itself from the evil online world.
What a load of crap. OS X doesn't require your password to access System Preferences or run XCode or change your desktop background or modify your Dock (Start menu on Vista).
Mr. Crichton, you're great at plot twists and you also happen to be great at political spin. Please keep to the former so I can remain a fan of yours. I like your position on this topic but you do not end your commentary well:
He was right about the deaths of millions. Did you not read the rest of his speech? Environmentalists are happy to kill people by banning everything from pesticides to genetically engineered foods, no matter how badly starving countries need these things. Environmentalism is an urban religion for liberal atheists, and so they justify their behavior as "right" or "just" and attack you as a heretic if you step outside the established biblical doctrine.
Since his anti Global Warming book, he no longer appears to be as popular.
Among raving looney environmentalists, no, but he's still successful. If anything, he's being proven correct due to the anti-greenhouse-gases backlash that's been forming this week among prominent scientists (several more stories about it today in the media).
What they refuse to admit is that in the vast majority of the cases where a song or album is downloaded, it never would have been a sale in the first place because the person wouldn't have ordinarily bought that album or song.
The fact you don't plan to buy something doesn't mean you're entitled to have it for free. Some people just want to justify music piracy and not paying artists for their work. They want something for free, because they're freeloaders.
How dare we criticize Vista for not being backwards-compatible when Microsoft told us all along it would be backwards-compatible! You morons buying new PCs that have Vista on them against your will? DON'T YOU DARE COMPLAIN! Gad_zuki of Slashdot will come and get you.
Etiher way...we win. Oh, sure, there are dollars involved - but it's a closed system - nobody is magically creating wealth, we are just moving it around to different places.
Running around like the sky is falling isn't living. What's worse, politicians will use it to scare people and justify higher taxes for the government to "fix" the problem.
Global warming will cause an overall warming effect across the entire planet. Over the entire planet, some areas of the earth will cool significantly, some will not change at all, and others will get warmer. Weather in general will get more extreme - This means more drought, more heatwaves and yes, more freezes and freak blizzards.
You mean like the freak hurricanes we were supposed to get in 2006, as predicted by climate scientists last year? Oh, that didn't happen. Well, there's always the rise in global temperatures. Oh, yeah, the global temperature record shows no rise since 1999. Hmm. Well, let's just believe what Al Gore tells us and never question anything. It's easier that way.
Slashdot Mirror
No, because it's true. Just because there's a small percentage chance that rats still appear doesn't mean anything. You purposely didn't mention that all bandits level up to you, so that around level 15, they all have ebony, glass, and daedric armor. You didn't mention that Arena combatants are leveled to you, so you can become the Arena Champion (supposedly the greatest fighter in Tamriel) at level 1. The demons invading Kvatch are total wimps if you happen to go up there at level 1. You can beat the whole game below level 3, and it's a piece of cake.
You also don't mention that loot is leveled as well, so if you're a level 1 thief, it's useless to bother looking in chests or breaking into houses because you'll get nothing but crap.
Oblivion does NOT use the same mechanism as Daggerfall. Daggerfall uses some enemy leveling, but not the system that Oblivion uses. MMO games have absolutely nothing at all to do with this.
You don't seem to realize that you're arguing against leveled enemies here. Oscuro's mod adds the unpredictability you refer to by letting you fight badasses more powerful than you at level 1. In vanilla Oblivion, all enemies and loot are scaled to you so you never meet anybody more or less powerful than you, making it the same game no matter the level. Your level 1 marine would never be able to meet Saddam in vanilla Oblivion.
The Elder Scrolls series has done this since 1994. Try Morrowind.
I guess you haven't played Oblivion where you get to do stupid shit like kill four mountain lions outside town or collect fish scales for a fisherman or deliver a battleaxe to some morons in a cave. FedEx quests galore.
No kidding. Oblivion is totally boring after a couple of hours. My jaw dropped when Zonk actually praised Oblivion's leveling, which gives mere bandits daedric armor and lets you be Arena champ at level 1. Oblivion was a terribly bland game with reduced skills and less factions that didn't even conflict with each other like in Morrowind. You could go be the head of the Mages Guild AND the Thieves Guild. Idiotic. The stupid press didn't care as long as "SpeedTree" looked pretty--and it did after the first 50 green hills you run across. After that, it's really old.
Oblivion represents the shiney console-itis that is plaguing RPGs today, especially at Bethesda where lead designer Todd Howard actually likes first-person shooters more than RPGs, which explains a lot about Oblivion. PC games today are dumbed-down Xbox ports rather than full-fledged PC games that take advantage of the depth you can have in PC games. The last "true" RPGs I played were Wizardry 8 and Morrowind, and some people still debate Morrowind.
At least we've gotten the "I've posted Slashdot cliches, mod me up" post out of the way.
Well, one thing's for sure, Vista itself is premature, or it was released prematurely. Microsoft is already working on SP1 and trying to ship it later this year. A service pack in the same year of release. Ouch.
Thank you for your interesting response to "first post." Apparently, first post won't work because there are a huge number of sites on the net. Only computers can handle a task like first post.
I think most people outside the tech world don't care that much about DRM and don't even know what it is. They rip their music from CDs, and iTunes DRM is so liberal that they don't know music from the iTunes Store is protected. Honestly, DRM isn't as big a deal as people around here make it out to be. It's just an annoyance to gripe about, not some grand stripping of human rights.
Simple. Sudo is a way to elevate privileges for certain tasks that require them due to UNIX security restrictions, while UAC is a blanket to confirm the activities of processes that have no security awareness.
Well, it's a very big thing when the CEO of the company that makes the #1 music player and download service in the world comes out against DRM. Yahoo may have been "making moves," but it was just making moves. Apple came right out and laid their proverbial dick on the table for all the public to see.
Windows doesn't have the modern concept of application bundles. It's still living in the 1990s where program folders and their internal files are still exposed, and it uses "installers" and "uninstallers" for everything. The installers access a system-level installer service, which is the whole point of this article.
Hell, Microsoft still hasn't introduced 32-bit/64-bit universal binary technology...not that it matters since 64-bit Windows can barely run anything, unlike 64-bit OS X Leopard which is fully backwards compatible including 32-bit drivers. Everything about Windows development feels ancient and backwards to me.
I guess it's because UAC isn't there out of some smart architectural design that Microsoft conceived during the development of Windows, like with UNIX security privileges. It's there to mask the problems of their aging Win32 codebase that still relies on an API that was designed in the single-user days of the 1980s. So to me, UAC is a constant reminder that Windows is broken and needs a diaper to protect itself from the evil online world.
What a load of crap. OS X doesn't require your password to access System Preferences or run XCode or change your desktop background or modify your Dock (Start menu on Vista).
So the fact he was paid a lot for Gigli means you and others have the right to steal his work and make sure he's never paid for it?
If you guys reject copyright here, then you have to reject the GPL as well, since the GPL relies on copyright.
Nobody's stopping you from telling others that you believe these sorts of things are bad.
He was right about the deaths of millions. Did you not read the rest of his speech? Environmentalists are happy to kill people by banning everything from pesticides to genetically engineered foods, no matter how badly starving countries need these things. Environmentalism is an urban religion for liberal atheists, and so they justify their behavior as "right" or "just" and attack you as a heretic if you step outside the established biblical doctrine.
Among raving looney environmentalists, no, but he's still successful. If anything, he's being proven correct due to the anti-greenhouse-gases backlash that's been forming this week among prominent scientists (several more stories about it today in the media).
The fact you don't plan to buy something doesn't mean you're entitled to have it for free. Some people just want to justify music piracy and not paying artists for their work. They want something for free, because they're freeloaders.
You know, Macs can run XP now. Best of both worlds.
How dare we criticize Vista for not being backwards-compatible when Microsoft told us all along it would be backwards-compatible! You morons buying new PCs that have Vista on them against your will? DON'T YOU DARE COMPLAIN! Gad_zuki of Slashdot will come and get you.
The one. After multiple rejections. Because it didn't fit the partyline of greenhouse gases (where all the political donors are).
Running around like the sky is falling isn't living. What's worse, politicians will use it to scare people and justify higher taxes for the government to "fix" the problem.
You mean like the freak hurricanes we were supposed to get in 2006, as predicted by climate scientists last year? Oh, that didn't happen. Well, there's always the rise in global temperatures. Oh, yeah, the global temperature record shows no rise since 1999. Hmm. Well, let's just believe what Al Gore tells us and never question anything. It's easier that way.
Your momma.