Its not Eastenders, its not even supposed to even nod at being realistic. Star Wars is ersatz mythology. Its incongruous within that for the characters not to be handsome/beautiful or where ugly, hideously so. These are average joes on the whole. I know it sounds harsh (and frankly I'm not exactly a candidate for the next James Bond role myself) but it goes with the territory.
the Kelly Osborne lookalike's "EVIL voice" was especially weak. I won't be bothering with that. You can slop all the CGI you want over something but if the acting is flat and the cast somewhat aesthetically challenged its simply not fixable.
The BBC needs oversight in order to maintain high standards in the pursuit of freedom of speech and expression.
As the organisation stands at present it would be possible for the management to impose substantial biases if he or she wished (not that I believe they ever have actually).
Reform is needed because, well for one thing I'm sick of every single Government I've known in my lifetime suggesting the BBC were against them. The funny thing is the Opposition always the say the same thing as well. (ie. the BBC therefore dp tell the truth but I'm bored with all the whining).
Sealand would be the place. Although its doubtful they could repel invasion if the British Government decided it was worth the cost of sending a Battleship to sort them out. It exists largely because its not worth the money to kick them out as yet not because they have any special protection or protected rights.
I can't really tell from the webpage, but it seems the same as the MicroOptical HUD I have sitting on my desk. Its been around for a few years now, its certainly not brand new. Can anyone explain the ins and outs?
You have no moral right to a URL.
In the event Blightthepower Avenue was built (unlikely, but hey) I wouldn't have a right to demand a plot of land for myself without paying for it. Nor would I have the right to stop someone else building there. Same with a URL.
I say open the whole thing up and let nature take its course. "Cybersquatting" is a concern only for big business (tough) and for lawyers out to event new billable activities (tough).
Parliament was never designed to represent all British subjects. You are confusing the Crown with the Government. Australians were British subjects until 1949 for example, People in Hong Kong were until 1984, but neither could vote in our elections.
What do you mean by 'voting qualifications'? Do you mean, who had the franchise? Well... for everyone to have the vote, you are looking at about 1918 -- depends if you think differntial ages for different genders are important in which case 1928 -- they kept reforming the laws from about 1800 onward making them progressively less stringent with regard to qualification. There was never any racial discrimination though, just wealth/property and gender (in fairness, when such attitudes were common it was unlikely to be an issue anyway).
You should note that the HoLs cannot actually overpower the HoC in any meaningful sense (This has been the case since the Parliament Act of 1911). It is hard to explain what their powers were here, but they were probably not as you imagine. Their main influence stemmed from the fact they could in certain circumstances, force a General Election (which is to say, the will of the people could not be opposed -- on pain of death -- but the Lords could state that the will of the people needed to be discerned through a General Election, thus legilsation had to be sorted out after the next election). See one way to see it is that it was undemocratic, the other is that they were actually safeguarding democracy against a government that disregarded the people. Its the problem that won't go away; who watches the watchmen? If you elect the overseers, what if they disregard the people who elected them? Its one solution anyway.
In the Opening of Parliament there is a little scene where a representative of the Lords knocks on the door of the HoC. He is ignored three times before they finally let him in. The symbolism is not accidental.
Their influence today is minimal, its really if they disagree with the HoC it makes the Government look bad for the reason I've already stated, but they can't do much. If you want a live issue, a ban on fox hunting is on the cards and the Lords are against it; its about the last aristo issue there is. They will not be able to stop it though.
The problem is that the system has evolved rather been designed, so a lot of things in British politics have been modified rather than replaced as otherwise there are serious structural problems relating the monarch to the government.
Comparing countries leads to trouble, so please be assured of my respect for the American ppl etc etc, if I was comparing the systems today I would say it is my observation that a poor man can become a Prime Minister in Britain (well Blair isn't from a poor background, but the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott certainly is, we share a home town), but it seems he could never be a President in America without first becoming rich. The HoC is packed with people of humble means and from humble backgrounds.
Many of the people in American politics seem to me to fit the profile of those who would have been made Lords in the past of Britain anyway. Is it deomcracy when your choice is curtailed? I kind of wonder, remember Saddam was elected (100% of the vote, LOL).
Can't you just imagine Dick Cheney in a powdered wig? Hehe.
Yes I was thinking that as well. The mother of all parliaments is located in London, not Washington.
I would also say things like the American civil war, a lack of universal civil rights (which required the voting right act of 1965) and even McCarthyism (which could be framed as an attack on political pluralism) suggest America is not the most stable democracy in the world.
The scale of campaign contributions to Presidential candidates and the business interests of many American politicians also questions this claim.
Now, I don't know who actually has the world's most stable democracy, and this isn't meant to be putting anyone down, but there seems no particular reason to think its the United States.
You miss the point I think
on
Less Might Be More
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· Score: 2, Insightful
For a business of any real size a computer is a trivial purchase. They just don't cost that much, especially given it is tax deductable (where I am anyway).
In assessing this cost remember how expensive something going wrong for a business is in terms of (a) the time of an employee trying to fix things, (b) lost earnings/tarnished reputation when a customer feels let down and even (c) image...notice how trendy "creative" companies always have the latest Apple hardware even if its just for word processing?
It just doesn't make any sense to scrimp on non-standard hardware. And non-standard in this sense is anything that isn't current. No business is going to want to do things that a home user might think trivial (e.g., hunt around for drivers on the web, find a keyboard for a non-standard connector, etc etc.) Unless you already have the capability it is never worth repairing when you can just replace instead.
It has nothing to do with the technical capability of the hardware and is all to do with perceived reliability (newer==less likely to fail in the next year), logistics (swiftly replace like with exact like) and image. I would push this and say that if the new iteration of hardware was actually somehow worse than the previous one in an objective sense, businesses would still throw out their old machines and buy in the new model.
Yes it is senseless, but its the way of the world and the same thing applies to company premises, company cars and even formal dress in the business environment (servicable but double-breasted when it should be single? Over/undersized lapels? Put it away and head for the nearest tailor).
How was the above comment three times more overrated than it was rated? Which is to say it only got a single +1 and then had a grand total of -3 taken off.
Pick up the junkmail.
I remember this because it was one of the most frustrating moments of my young life when I finally realised where it was needed. Of course I get more frustrated than that on the drive to work every morning alone, but I still remember it.
Chances are pretty good though, that if there IS an 05 or 06, they'll merely be re-releases with updated content that any existing UT2004 owner can snag for free.
Well of course, nuclear war could break out at any moment, but I find it helps to be positive personally and at least act is if the human race will survive the next four months until '05.
If you know someone at Trokia, can you mention that looting isn't working in Temple of Elemental Evil; theres something funny going on with SP2 or DirectX9.0c possibly (although a roll-back of either or both doesn't necessarily fix it; problem is the bug is intermitent as well). Technical support are claiming its a "gameplay" issue and outwith their balliwick, leaving fans and players feeling rather frustrated.
The bug makes the game unplayable and its causing severe consternation in some quarters of the teh interweb. Ta.
Yes. I have the nasty feeling that if they had had the Fallout 3 license then it might have been possible from the position that the 'brand recognition' outside the hardcore for the title would have been based largely on Fallout Tactics.
I found this quote rather chilling:
There's been a lot of debate since I said that we were considering real time with pause over turn based so that we could get this game made. The fact of the matter is that we're not self funded, we rely solely on publishers to fund our projects. Most publishers have flat out told us that they will not be funding any turn based games, and are not even interested in discussing them. If we can't sell a Troika post apocalyptic RPG to a publisher, it will never get made, it's as simple as that.
No more turn-based games?! Perhaps an exaggeration but it depresses me that the market is so raidly sinking. I'm a bit hazy on the specific game(s) but I'm sure I've seen hybrids that offered the player the choice. That would seem to be the equitable solution. Perhaps the coding/game balance overheads are too great.
I think this is the same series in its US franchise form.
Anyone interested, the link is here. A slightly critical review of the series here.
It wasn't a bad programme, but you were rather at the mercy of the TV studio contestants, some of whom clearly had no idea about about basic tactics (ie. it was clear they had never played anything like it before) or the time period in question (some very questionable uses of shield walls in the face of cavalry kept cropping up IIRC).
Well we'll never know is SWG would have gotten off the ground without the big name. Obviously it helps from a marketing point of view. I can't think of many other space MMORPGS, but I know the downfall of Neocron wasn't because it didn't have a big name license but because of game play and balance issues. EveOnline is still going (see FP story about it currently here on slashdot) but in my view it was inordinately time consuming and frankly a little dull (spend money to play with a graphical version of Excel...hmm).
My personal feeling is that the long term survival of games is predicated on their design and gameplay. Certainly most MMORPG players I know havg moved around quite a bit when the limitations of their current game become painfully apparent. The reason everyone is looking forward to World of Warcraft is to do with the Warcraft name. But this is not because of the setting but because we know that the Warcraft 'label' (and Blizzard in general) tend to deliver good quality and well designed games.
Frankly I don't care what licenses SOE get from this point, I would be very skeptical about touching anything they bring out (exception: Evangelion, but what are the chances of that. I think I'm safe.)
Thats why it works and really it illustrates my point.
Imagine if it was Marvel Superheroes. Half a dozen spidermen and a twenty Captain Americas all of whom have killed their ninth Dr Doom of the day. Bit silly.
By and large the franchised single-player game stinks. And always has done, going back to ET on the Atari 2600 and the numerous 1980s 8-bit attempts from Ocean and the like.
Franchises are worse news still for MMORPG.
When we see a film or read a book, by and large we want to read about exceptional people who are (in scifi & fantasy anyway) usually heroic. A world of heroes just doesn't work. We can't ALL be off killing Darth Vader. We can't ALL be "the one" spoken of in prophesy. The scifi/fantasy genres don't lend themselves to being about the average man in the street (and lets face it, thats who we play every hour of every day in real life anyway).
Some argue that existing in the universe of X is fun enough. But if we look at SWG as a testcase, many said they were happy to be a humble citizen (say, a crafter or small time hunter, what have you) but it hasn't worked out that way ultimately. Every other person (before I left) was a level-grinding Jedi wannabe. And from what I've seen since, every other person just about is now actually a Jedi. Good intentions came to nought as SOE pushed the Jedi class in order to ramp up interested in putative subscribers (never mind alienating their existing player base, but thats another rant).
In the end the best MMORPGs will not be based on franchises. In a genre supposely all about imagination and open horizons we don't need or want a roadmap.
I notice already a few comments along the lines of "thats just how software development is; specs change, shit happens". But this is true of any venture in engineering, even the arts. Its about time more emphasis was placed on trying to change things for the better. The software industries need for change is great; 80% of software is either late or fails to meet the initial specification. Its clearly unacceptable, as are the crazy hours demanded. Hopefully as we in the 2nd wave (really) of software development get a bit older it will be increasingly less than acceptable for team leaders to tell us we are 'flying to Australia' (presumably Aussie coders fly to Europe or else have a relatively cushy time!). What has to be lost is the frankly self-defeating and immature hostility towards management. Sure, bad 'PHB' management is the pits. But as anyone who has worked on a project overseen by a skilled leader will know, good management makes things an awful lot better than would otherwise be the case. A bad manager makes you work, a good manager works for you. Sounds trite, but I really do believe that.
Perhaps someone had a particularly nice trip to the "original" Bethesda in Wales (near Bangor)?
Very scenic if you are bar the gouging of the landscape that went on with the slate mines (which are interesting in their own way if you are into that sort of thing).
Actually I suspect its more a reference to the Bethesda pool (Beth-zatha in Hebrew) in Jerusalem, where it is stated in the Bible, Jesus healed a man ("Take up your pallet and walk") who had been ill for 38 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Its not Eastenders, its not even supposed to even nod at being realistic. Star Wars is ersatz mythology. Its incongruous within that for the characters not to be handsome/beautiful or where ugly, hideously so. These are average joes on the whole. I know it sounds harsh (and frankly I'm not exactly a candidate for the next James Bond role myself) but it goes with the territory.
the Kelly Osborne lookalike's "EVIL voice" was especially weak. I won't be bothering with that. You can slop all the CGI you want over something but if the acting is flat and the cast somewhat aesthetically challenged its simply not fixable.
The BBC needs oversight in order to maintain high standards in the pursuit of freedom of speech and expression.
As the organisation stands at present it would be possible for the management to impose substantial biases if he or she wished (not that I believe they ever have actually).
Reform is needed because, well for one thing I'm sick of every single Government I've known in my lifetime suggesting the BBC were against them. The funny thing is the Opposition always the say the same thing as well. (ie. the BBC therefore dp tell the truth but I'm bored with all the whining).
Sealand would be the place. Although its doubtful they could repel invasion if the British Government decided it was worth the cost of sending a Battleship to sort them out. It exists largely because its not worth the money to kick them out as yet not because they have any special protection or protected rights.
I can't really tell from the webpage, but it seems the same as the MicroOptical HUD I have sitting on my desk. Its been around for a few years now, its certainly not brand new. Can anyone explain the ins and outs?
You have no moral right to a URL. In the event Blightthepower Avenue was built (unlikely, but hey) I wouldn't have a right to demand a plot of land for myself without paying for it. Nor would I have the right to stop someone else building there. Same with a URL. I say open the whole thing up and let nature take its course. "Cybersquatting" is a concern only for big business (tough) and for lawyers out to event new billable activities (tough).
Parliament was never designed to represent all British subjects. You are confusing the Crown with the Government. Australians were British subjects until 1949 for example, People in Hong Kong were until 1984, but neither could vote in our elections.
What do you mean by 'voting qualifications'? Do you mean, who had the franchise? Well... for everyone to have the vote, you are looking at about 1918 -- depends if you think differntial ages for different genders are important in which case 1928 -- they kept reforming the laws from about 1800 onward making them progressively less stringent with regard to qualification. There was never any racial discrimination though, just wealth/property and gender (in fairness, when such attitudes were common it was unlikely to be an issue anyway).
You should note that the HoLs cannot actually overpower the HoC in any meaningful sense (This has been the case since the Parliament Act of 1911). It is hard to explain what their powers were here, but they were probably not as you imagine. Their main influence stemmed from the fact they could in certain circumstances, force a General Election (which is to say, the will of the people could not be opposed -- on pain of death -- but the Lords could state that the will of the people needed to be discerned through a General Election, thus legilsation had to be sorted out after the next election). See one way to see it is that it was undemocratic, the other is that they were actually safeguarding democracy against a government that disregarded the people. Its the problem that won't go away; who watches the watchmen? If you elect the overseers, what if they disregard the people who elected them? Its one solution anyway.
In the Opening of Parliament there is a little scene where a representative of the Lords knocks on the door of the HoC. He is ignored three times before they finally let him in. The symbolism is not accidental.
Their influence today is minimal, its really if they disagree with the HoC it makes the Government look bad for the reason I've already stated, but they can't do much. If you want a live issue, a ban on fox hunting is on the cards and the Lords are against it; its about the last aristo issue there is. They will not be able to stop it though.
The problem is that the system has evolved rather been designed, so a lot of things in British politics have been modified rather than replaced as otherwise there are serious structural problems relating the monarch to the government.
Comparing countries leads to trouble, so please be assured of my respect for the American ppl etc etc, if I was comparing the systems today I would say it is my observation that a poor man can become a Prime Minister in Britain (well Blair isn't from a poor background, but the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott certainly is, we share a home town), but it seems he could never be a President in America without first becoming rich. The HoC is packed with people of humble means and from humble backgrounds.
Many of the people in American politics seem to me to fit the profile of those who would have been made Lords in the past of Britain anyway. Is it deomcracy when your choice is curtailed? I kind of wonder, remember Saddam was elected (100% of the vote, LOL).
Can't you just imagine Dick Cheney in a powdered wig? Hehe.
How about there are plenty of candidates that if nothing else are older than the United States of America?
Yes I was thinking that as well. The mother of all parliaments is located in London, not Washington.
I would also say things like the American civil war, a lack of universal civil rights (which required the voting right act of 1965) and even McCarthyism (which could be framed as an attack on political pluralism) suggest America is not the most stable democracy in the world.
The scale of campaign contributions to Presidential candidates and the business interests of many American politicians also questions this claim.
Now, I don't know who actually has the world's most stable democracy, and this isn't meant to be putting anyone down, but there seems no particular reason to think its the United States.
For a business of any real size a computer is a trivial purchase. They just don't cost that much, especially given it is tax deductable (where I am anyway).
In assessing this cost remember how expensive something going wrong for a business is in terms of (a) the time of an employee trying to fix things, (b) lost earnings/tarnished reputation when a customer feels let down and even (c) image...notice how trendy "creative" companies always have the latest Apple hardware even if its just for word processing?
It just doesn't make any sense to scrimp on non-standard hardware. And non-standard in this sense is anything that isn't current. No business is going to want to do things that a home user might think trivial (e.g., hunt around for drivers on the web, find a keyboard for a non-standard connector, etc etc.) Unless you already have the capability it is never worth repairing when you can just replace instead.
It has nothing to do with the technical capability of the hardware and is all to do with perceived reliability (newer==less likely to fail in the next year), logistics (swiftly replace like with exact like) and image. I would push this and say that if the new iteration of hardware was actually somehow worse than the previous one in an objective sense, businesses would still throw out their old machines and buy in the new model.
Yes it is senseless, but its the way of the world and the same thing applies to company premises, company cars and even formal dress in the business environment (servicable but double-breasted when it should be single? Over/undersized lapels? Put it away and head for the nearest tailor).
I'd vote for the Prohibition Party because I don't like Americans.
Just kidding.
How was the above comment three times more overrated than it was rated? Which is to say it only got a single +1 and then had a grand total of -3 taken off.
This moderation system makes absolutely no sense.
Pick up the junkmail. I remember this because it was one of the most frustrating moments of my young life when I finally realised where it was needed. Of course I get more frustrated than that on the drive to work every morning alone, but I still remember it.
Chances are pretty good though, that if there IS an 05 or 06, they'll merely be re-releases with updated content that any existing UT2004 owner can snag for free.
Well of course, nuclear war could break out at any moment, but I find it helps to be positive personally and at least act is if the human race will survive the next four months until '05.
If you know someone at Trokia, can you mention that looting isn't working in Temple of Elemental Evil; theres something funny going on with SP2 or DirectX9.0c possibly (although a roll-back of either or both doesn't necessarily fix it; problem is the bug is intermitent as well). Technical support are claiming its a "gameplay" issue and outwith their balliwick, leaving fans and players feeling rather frustrated. The bug makes the game unplayable and its causing severe consternation in some quarters of the teh interweb. Ta.
Yes. I have the nasty feeling that if they had had the Fallout 3 license then it might have been possible from the position that the 'brand recognition' outside the hardcore for the title would have been based largely on Fallout Tactics.
I found this quote rather chilling: There's been a lot of debate since I said that we were considering real time with pause over turn based so that we could get this game made. The fact of the matter is that we're not self funded, we rely solely on publishers to fund our projects. Most publishers have flat out told us that they will not be funding any turn based games, and are not even interested in discussing them. If we can't sell a Troika post apocalyptic RPG to a publisher, it will never get made, it's as simple as that. No more turn-based games?! Perhaps an exaggeration but it depresses me that the market is so raidly sinking. I'm a bit hazy on the specific game(s) but I'm sure I've seen hybrids that offered the player the choice. That would seem to be the equitable solution. Perhaps the coding/game balance overheads are too great.
I think this is the same series in its US franchise form.
Anyone interested, the link is here. A slightly critical review of the series here.
It wasn't a bad programme, but you were rather at the mercy of the TV studio contestants, some of whom clearly had no idea about about basic tactics (ie. it was clear they had never played anything like it before) or the time period in question (some very questionable uses of shield walls in the face of cavalry kept cropping up IIRC).
Well we'll never know is SWG would have gotten off the ground without the big name. Obviously it helps from a marketing point of view. I can't think of many other space MMORPGS, but I know the downfall of Neocron wasn't because it didn't have a big name license but because of game play and balance issues. EveOnline is still going (see FP story about it currently here on slashdot) but in my view it was inordinately time consuming and frankly a little dull (spend money to play with a graphical version of Excel...hmm).
My personal feeling is that the long term survival of games is predicated on their design and gameplay. Certainly most MMORPG players I know havg moved around quite a bit when the limitations of their current game become painfully apparent. The reason everyone is looking forward to World of Warcraft is to do with the Warcraft name. But this is not because of the setting but because we know that the Warcraft 'label' (and Blizzard in general) tend to deliver good quality and well designed games.
Frankly I don't care what licenses SOE get from this point, I would be very skeptical about touching anything they bring out (exception: Evangelion, but what are the chances of that. I think I'm safe.)
Thats why it works and really it illustrates my point.
Imagine if it was Marvel Superheroes. Half a dozen spidermen and a twenty Captain Americas all of whom have killed their ninth Dr Doom of the day. Bit silly.
By and large the franchised single-player game stinks. And always has done, going back to ET on the Atari 2600 and the numerous 1980s 8-bit attempts from Ocean and the like.
Franchises are worse news still for MMORPG.
When we see a film or read a book, by and large we want to read about exceptional people who are (in scifi & fantasy anyway) usually heroic. A world of heroes just doesn't work. We can't ALL be off killing Darth Vader. We can't ALL be "the one" spoken of in prophesy. The scifi/fantasy genres don't lend themselves to being about the average man in the street (and lets face it, thats who we play every hour of every day in real life anyway).
Some argue that existing in the universe of X is fun enough. But if we look at SWG as a testcase, many said they were happy to be a humble citizen (say, a crafter or small time hunter, what have you) but it hasn't worked out that way ultimately. Every other person (before I left) was a level-grinding Jedi wannabe. And from what I've seen since, every other person just about is now actually a Jedi. Good intentions came to nought as SOE pushed the Jedi class in order to ramp up interested in putative subscribers (never mind alienating their existing player base, but thats another rant).
In the end the best MMORPGs will not be based on franchises. In a genre supposely all about imagination and open horizons we don't need or want a roadmap.
Thats round one...
I notice already a few comments along the lines of "thats just how software development is; specs change, shit happens". But this is true of any venture in engineering, even the arts. Its about time more emphasis was placed on trying to change things for the better. The software industries need for change is great; 80% of software is either late or fails to meet the initial specification. Its clearly unacceptable, as are the crazy hours demanded. Hopefully as we in the 2nd wave (really) of software development get a bit older it will be increasingly less than acceptable for team leaders to tell us we are 'flying to Australia' (presumably Aussie coders fly to Europe or else have a relatively cushy time!). What has to be lost is the frankly self-defeating and immature hostility towards management. Sure, bad 'PHB' management is the pits. But as anyone who has worked on a project overseen by a skilled leader will know, good management makes things an awful lot better than would otherwise be the case. A bad manager makes you work, a good manager works for you. Sounds trite, but I really do believe that.
Bah. Fair enough. I was kind of thinking it would be nicer if it wasn't somehow...
Perhaps someone had a particularly nice trip to the "original" Bethesda in Wales (near Bangor)?
Very scenic if you are bar the gouging of the landscape that went on with the slate mines (which are interesting in their own way if you are into that sort of thing).
Actually I suspect its more a reference to the Bethesda pool (Beth-zatha in Hebrew) in Jerusalem, where it is stated in the Bible, Jesus healed a man ("Take up your pallet and walk") who had been ill for 38 years.