I've complained about the first two before, but here it's at least on-topic.
Rainbow Six
Ghost Recon
Need For Speed
Both Tom Clancy games were completely dumbed down, they basically took out all the stuff that made them different from the countless FPS titles. All the tactical elements are gone and so are most of the squadmates (only 2 instead of 7 in R6), not to mention that the friendlies are now ressurectable! If they called the R6 game "Gears of War: Vegas" I'd give it around 80%, but as it is I consider it to be the low point of the series*. Where's the Bill Brown music?
NFS turned from a game where you race unobtanium cars on spectacular tracks into something where you drive a riced-out civic around a boring city. They somewhat improved the situation with cars with the addition of exotics and muscle categories, but the tracks still suck. Oh, and the music here also sucks, but that's to be expected from EA.
All these games all still popular with the masses, but then, so are the Sims series and iPods.
*-I know about Lockdown, but one crappy game is forgivable, Vegas makes it clear where they want to go.
OMFG, where are you from, Soviet Russia? I hate to do this point-by-point, but there's just "so many issues..."
So it should be completely legal to provide information on how to make a silencer for a handgun?
Yes, why not. And isn't it legal anyway?
What legal use is there for a silencer?
Oh I don't know, using it at the range to judge the effects it has on projectile characteristics? Not going deaf while doing that without ear protection?
It should be completely legal for me to be able to tell you that if you screw a woodscrew into the lead core of a Slugger shotgun shell, you now have an Armor Piercing Round that will go through body armor and plate steel?
Yep. Don't you? You just told me that, so you can defend the legality or go to jail.
How about the legality of my telling everyone how they can build a landmine out of a tupperware bowl, gasoline, draino, a roofing nail, saran wrap and some miscellaneous debris for shrapnel? Shall I now go into detail about how to assemble those ingredients? You want to defend my rights to impart this information?
Absolutely. Are you new at this whole "Freedom of Speech" thing?
Does that mean that because you can pick up any newspaper and find cases where corner store cashiers have been found guilty of selling cigarettes or alcohol to underage individuals, that the laws for keeping underage individuals from purchasing these things should be gotten rid of?
Actually it's a pretty good idea, they're mostly useless anyway.
I mean, since there are people getting caught abusing the laws there must be even MORE cashiers and consumers abusing the laws... therefore by your argument the laws should be disposed of.
But back to your main point. What? How does that work? You do realize that you've just provided an example where the law doesn't work to the extent it's supposed to, while the DMCA is being used to fuck over innocent people? With the same alcohol example, if random store clerks were being sent off to PMITA prisons without any evidence that they've sold alcohol to minors, then there's most definitely something wrong and the law should be disposed of. Moving on.
In RI for example, 15 miles an hour over the speed limit means you mandatory have to appear in court, and the RI State Troopers are well known for giving breaks and writing up people for only going 14 miles an hour over.) There is abuse of the law. Both in the speeding, and the punishment. Should the laws regarding speeding be repealed then?
Well, since you asked, yes, the speeding laws should be repealed too. No, I'm not an anarchist, it's just the examples you used. But as far as its abuse goes, this is closer to the DMCA case than the previous one. If the cops are screwing people who, according to the law, shouldn't have to go to court, then again there's something wrong with either the judiciary or the executive part here.
You are pointing out how since individuals abuse the laws, that they should escape punishment, and the laws themselves should be changed, rather than punish those who are abusing the laws even harder.
I assumed that the "Just because X is illegal..." part was a general comment to something in the thread, but that's obviously a specific reply to someone. Anyway, how do you suggest that the guy who's abusing DMCA (is there anything else DMCA is good for?) is punished? The law doesn't provide any means to do that, so it has to be changed to specify the possible punishments. And since it's going to be modified, why not change it so that such abuse of the law is harder/impossible, rather than create a whole new category of crimes? In any case, the only way to fix DMCA is to nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
In his view it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the rights are granted.
Of course they're not granted, the government doesn't grant any rights. It can protect or violate them, but not decide that they were not granted to someone.
Because of clumsy wording that would have included an employer in the definition of a "client," the requirement would have applied to anyone who, in the service of their employer, engaged in the stimulation of grassroots lobbying designed to influence more than 500 people, as long as the organization spent over $25,000 per quarter on the activity. Thus, anyone who was paid $25,000 per quarter to maintain a weblog with a readership of more than 500 people would have to register with Congress under section 220 if they spent all of their time encouraging the general public to contact an executive or legislative official over a matter of public policy.
Ignoring the issue with the readership, what would the registration accomplish anyway? You can already see who contributes to the politicans' campaigns, and that doesn't seem to do change anything.
Of course there is a correlation between political achievement and intelligence, even on this planet. I think if that if you calculate the coefficient, it will show a strong correlation, something around -0.92 or so.
Well, the original article they're respodning to was also bullshit, so what did you expect? Of course they're trying to sugar-coat every response, but the point is, the sky is not falling, it's exactly where it was with XP. Macrovision has been on PC since forever, I remember trying to copy a rented 6th Day DVD to a VHS (that was a long time ago, my harddrive was the size of a DVD9) through an AIW card, only for the result to be unwatchable becasue of horrible contrast and noise, added by Macrovision.
Since we're talking about the line in mathematical terms (note fucksl4shd0t's use of "y=mx+b"), you're wrong. Here's a definition from MathWorld:
A line is a straight one-dimensional figure having no thickness and extending infinitely in both directions. A line is sometimes called a straight line or, more archaically, a right line (Casey 1893), to emphasize that it has no "wiggles" anywhere along its length. While lines are intrinsically one-dimensional objects, they may be embedded in higher dimensional spaces.
Wait an extra month or two? Sure, but it'll usually be closer to your 'year' estimate. Waiting that long just won't be worth it if you can still blow through the whole game in a day. Valve screwed up, IMO, because it takes them too long to release the next episode. Sam and Max, on the other hand, managed to keep the time between the first and second episodes reasonably short, and the third one should be done even faster.
To answer your final question, the episodic format is good for the developer/publisher because it gives them some money now as oppsed to next year (or in 10 years, in the DNF case). It can make all the difference when they're running out of money to properly finish the whole game, or if they can't convince the investors to give them all the money they need for this new innovative project.
>Technically, humans are "self-replicating probes".
And they *are* a bad idea. They move to an area and multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way they can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. They're a plague.
I was browsing for some new Rainbow Six maps a while ago and came across a forum post that claimed that somebody made a hostage rescue map based on the Beslan school. My first reaction, without reading (or even opening) the thread was that it could be interesting to see. So I clicked the thread in hope of a link, but there was none! The original poster provided no links, screenshots, or anything else besides the baseless claim.
Nevertheless, it was enough to get everybody pissed off and write a few pages of insults, directed at the unknown author of the map which doesn't even exist. Inhuman, immoral, evil, you know, the standard stuff used in such cases. There was only one post in the whole thread that questioned the existence of the map, but it didn't even slow down the flames.
They claimed that it was disrespectful to those involved in the event, but I don't see how it could be (if it was done properly, but since it doesn't exist we'll never know). If it actually was a single player R6 map, you'd be playing the CT units trying to rescue the hostages and kill the terrorists. It could help remind people of what happened there, and allow them to look at the events from another perspective, and not just from the news cameras which were far from the events, but close to the dead bodies.
That's exactly what I thought, too. I use Opera, but the same applies here. I'm not going to switch back to IE immediately, even if it's better than Opera (snow, hell, etc). It's a matter of bookmarks, settings and customizations which I just wouldn't bother to move to IE unless I had to reinstall everything from scratch.
I hereby claim all the newly emerged islands as part of my own kingdom. The name, flag, and anthem are not yet finalized, but it's certain that I'll be the King.
Not anymore. I think they've dropped Front Page completely and replaced it with Expression Web or something like that, but it's still not part of the standard Office 07.
Who the hell keeps tagging this story "slownewsday"?
This is exactly the stuff that belongs on slashdot, the kind of cool geeky hacks that when you do them, normal people go, WTF? With countless idiotic political flamewars, Apple pimping, and anti-MS FUD, it's stories like this that keep slashdot sane. Would you rather have another flamewar where nobody convinces anybody, but still keeps shouting their point of view till they're blue in the face? How about "Guns, good or bad?", I don't think we've had a firearms flamewar here in a while.
I realize that this isn't the first time a HP cartridge was used outside its printer, but it also isn't something most people did, or maybe even knew about.
OLED will be IMO more feasible for use in laptops before SED. OLED is already being used in small devices like mp3 players, car stereos, cameras, and stuff like that, while SED is not. Sony has a 27" 1080p TV on demonstration in Vegas, as well as many smaller models.
As you can see, they're already very thin (the one on the second pic is about as thin as the LCD on my laptop) and from my understanding of how the technology works, individual pixels will be powered proportionally to the brightness needed, so black pixels won't be drawing anything at all.
If one considers taxation stealing, it is obvious that the money, no matter how it's used, is stolen. Firefighters, roads, ponies for little cute girls, doesn't matter.
Slashdot Mirror
I know pro-consumer rants are popular around here, but how the fuck are they supposed to fix the problem when it's not clear what's causing it?
- Rainbow Six
- Ghost Recon
- Need For Speed
Both Tom Clancy games were completely dumbed down, they basically took out all the stuff that made them different from the countless FPS titles. All the tactical elements are gone and so are most of the squadmates (only 2 instead of 7 in R6), not to mention that the friendlies are now ressurectable! If they called the R6 game "Gears of War: Vegas" I'd give it around 80%, but as it is I consider it to be the low point of the series*. Where's the Bill Brown music?NFS turned from a game where you race unobtanium cars on spectacular tracks into something where you drive a riced-out civic around a boring city. They somewhat improved the situation with cars with the addition of exotics and muscle categories, but the tracks still suck. Oh, and the music here also sucks, but that's to be expected from EA.
All these games all still popular with the masses, but then, so are the Sims series and iPods.
*-I know about Lockdown, but one crappy game is forgivable, Vegas makes it clear where they want to go.
Yes, why not. And isn't it legal anyway?
Oh I don't know, using it at the range to judge the effects it has on projectile characteristics? Not going deaf while doing that without ear protection?
Yep. Don't you? You just told me that, so you can defend the legality or go to jail.
Absolutely. Are you new at this whole "Freedom of Speech" thing?
Actually it's a pretty good idea, they're mostly useless anyway.
But back to your main point. What? How does that work? You do realize that you've just provided an example where the law doesn't work to the extent it's supposed to, while the DMCA is being used to fuck over innocent people? With the same alcohol example, if random store clerks were being sent off to PMITA prisons without any evidence that they've sold alcohol to minors, then there's most definitely something wrong and the law should be disposed of. Moving on.
Well, since you asked, yes, the speeding laws should be repealed too. No, I'm not an anarchist, it's just the examples you used. But as far as its abuse goes, this is closer to the DMCA case than the previous one. If the cops are screwing people who, according to the law, shouldn't have to go to court, then again there's something wrong with either the judiciary or the executive part here.
I assumed that the "Just because X is illegal
lets skip those, they probably only did Iced Earth covers anyway.
In his view it merely says when the so-called Great Writ can be suspended, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the rights are granted.
Of course they're not granted, the government doesn't grant any rights. It can protect or violate them, but not decide that they were not granted to someone.
Ignoring the issue with the readership, what would the registration accomplish anyway? You can already see who contributes to the politicans' campaigns, and that doesn't seem to do change anything.
Of course there is a correlation between political achievement and intelligence, even on this planet. I think if that if you calculate the coefficient, it will show a strong correlation, something around -0.92 or so.
Well, the original article they're respodning to was also bullshit, so what did you expect? Of course they're trying to sugar-coat every response, but the point is, the sky is not falling, it's exactly where it was with XP. Macrovision has been on PC since forever, I remember trying to copy a rented 6th Day DVD to a VHS (that was a long time ago, my harddrive was the size of a DVD9) through an AIW card, only for the result to be unwatchable becasue of horrible contrast and noise, added by Macrovision.
Talk about pedantry.
Hey, and what about Mein Kampf? Or is it considered an Austrian import?
Wait an extra month or two? Sure, but it'll usually be closer to your 'year' estimate. Waiting that long just won't be worth it if you can still blow through the whole game in a day. Valve screwed up, IMO, because it takes them too long to release the next episode. Sam and Max, on the other hand, managed to keep the time between the first and second episodes reasonably short, and the third one should be done even faster.
To answer your final question, the episodic format is good for the developer/publisher because it gives them some money now as oppsed to next year (or in 10 years, in the DNF case). It can make all the difference when they're running out of money to properly finish the whole game, or if they can't convince the investors to give them all the money they need for this new innovative project.
use Asshole::Pedantic::UseStrict;
Well, you could always use the dark frame subtraction method to fix the problem.
>Technically, humans are "self-replicating probes".
And they *are* a bad idea. They move to an area and multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way they can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. They're a plague.
I was browsing for some new Rainbow Six maps a while ago and came across a forum post that claimed that somebody made a hostage rescue map based on the Beslan school. My first reaction, without reading (or even opening) the thread was that it could be interesting to see. So I clicked the thread in hope of a link, but there was none! The original poster provided no links, screenshots, or anything else besides the baseless claim.
Nevertheless, it was enough to get everybody pissed off and write a few pages of insults, directed at the unknown author of the map which doesn't even exist. Inhuman, immoral, evil, you know, the standard stuff used in such cases. There was only one post in the whole thread that questioned the existence of the map, but it didn't even slow down the flames.
They claimed that it was disrespectful to those involved in the event, but I don't see how it could be (if it was done properly, but since it doesn't exist we'll never know). If it actually was a single player R6 map, you'd be playing the CT units trying to rescue the hostages and kill the terrorists. It could help remind people of what happened there, and allow them to look at the events from another perspective, and not just from the news cameras which were far from the events, but close to the dead bodies.
Apple claimed they held the copyright on the interface, not the trademark, as the original poster claimed.
That's exactly what I thought, too. I use Opera, but the same applies here. I'm not going to switch back to IE immediately, even if it's better than Opera (snow, hell, etc). It's a matter of bookmarks, settings and customizations which I just wouldn't bother to move to IE unless I had to reinstall everything from scratch.
The interface skin is not a trademark. Apple's just behaving like an ass, that is all.
I hereby claim all the newly emerged islands as part of my own kingdom. The name, flag, and anthem are not yet finalized, but it's certain that I'll be the King.
Not anymore. I think they've dropped Front Page completely and replaced it with Expression Web or something like that, but it's still not part of the standard Office 07.
Who the hell keeps tagging this story "slownewsday"?
This is exactly the stuff that belongs on slashdot, the kind of cool geeky hacks that when you do them, normal people go, WTF? With countless idiotic political flamewars, Apple pimping, and anti-MS FUD, it's stories like this that keep slashdot sane. Would you rather have another flamewar where nobody convinces anybody, but still keeps shouting their point of view till they're blue in the face? How about "Guns, good or bad?", I don't think we've had a firearms flamewar here in a while.
I realize that this isn't the first time a HP cartridge was used outside its printer, but it also isn't something most people did, or maybe even knew about.
OLED will be IMO more feasible for use in laptops before SED. OLED is already being used in small devices like mp3 players, car stereos, cameras, and stuff like that, while SED is not. Sony has a 27" 1080p TV on demonstration in Vegas, as well as many smaller models.
As you can see, they're already very thin (the one on the second pic is about as thin as the LCD on my laptop) and from my understanding of how the technology works, individual pixels will be powered proportionally to the brightness needed, so black pixels won't be drawing anything at all.
is the tool of the devil! Maybe this would finally kill it off completely, and as another benefit, it won't be vulnerable to IE exploits.
Nah, that would actually require some work besides sitting in the garden and trolling on wikipedia.
If one considers taxation stealing, it is obvious that the money, no matter how it's used, is stolen. Firefighters, roads, ponies for little cute girls, doesn't matter.