Hadn't had chance to check Slashdot but I thought I'd reply to your post anyway.
My Integra is an 94 LS too, it's in a pretty sweet condition considering the age, inside and outside, I've seen 98-00 models in worse shape. Just wish it had VTEC, but it still seems plenty fast for normal driving, and I've got some decent (as in performance rather than looks) wheels and tyres on it.
Here in NZ it pretty much seems that classic Integras in good condition aren't likely to depreciate at all in value any more, which makes owning one quite a bonus. Other Jap classics from the late 80s/ early 90s like Corolla Levins, Skylines, Silvias, 300ZX etc are in a similar boat I've always wanted a Skyline and if I got something else to replace the Integra I might take that route (an R33 probably, definitely not one of the newer fake Skylines), though I wouldn't be able to expect the same fuel economy.
The key to the Integra's handling seems to be the light weight, that would be my concern with the Camaro at 1700kg. Maybe the suspension, increased torque and wide tires/stance can compensate for it though. The fuel economy is very impressive though without a doubt.
Good Post, I also drive a DC2 Integra coupe (not a type R though, but still they're all nice cars), and used to drive a DA3 (mk1 with pop up headlights) a few years ago. DC2 is by far the best car I've owned, the light weight (1181kg), double wishbone suspension f+r and the stiff chassis make an incredible car to drive. It's 16 years old but everything electronic works and the engine is still smooth all the way to the fuel cutoff. Nothing like dropping a couple of gears to overtake a line of trucks. The DA3 was maybe more fun in traffic though as it had a lot better visibility and handled like a go kart at low speeds, but the engine was no comparison to the DC2.
Fully agree that Honda and many other manufacturers have gone to shit recently. Nearly every car looks like an MPV, ridiculous blade runner interiors to impress housewives who want to look trendy, electronic power steering that feels like, ah, um, doesn't feel. Fully agree, the Civic Si is a very poor mans relation to the sporty cars they had 15 years ago.
NZ is the only English speaking country I've been to where the music scene isn't dominated by US or UK bands/artists. Local bands regularly make up a fair portion of the charts.
NZ's trademark sound is a Maori influenced 'pacific' flavour of reggae/dub (check out Fat Freddy's Drop), but drum & bass (and d&b influenced stuff like dubstep) is also much more popular in the mainstream than elsewhere. There's also quite a few decent homegrown alternative/rock groups, some of which have achieved international success. I have listed some of the most popular NZ originated bands/artists in the last 10 years.
Roots/Dub/Reggae
Fat Freddy's Drop
Katchafire
Salmonella Dub
The Black Seeds
Trinity Roots
International Observer
Rock/Punk/Metal etc
Stereogram
The Mint Chicks
Evermore
Minuit
The Datsuns
Head Like a Hole
Fur Patrol
8 Foot Sativa
Dawn of Azazel
Yeah I'm already over my data cap, I've been waiting a week before I can start watching Youtube videos and download again, only a couple more days to go.
It really is appalling and a backwards attitude is seen from both Telecom providers and the government here. It results in usage of search engines, smart phone apps etc that's years behind countries like the US and UK, even taking into account population differences. I'm totally disappointed to hear that this passed. The country I feel in many areas takes too much notice of what is going on in the US in legislation and corporate policy and not enough of what is going on in Norway, Sweden and Findland, for example, which have more in common with NZ in many significant ways than the US does.
From a previous/. article about undersea cables, NZ is currently poorly serviced, but a more direct, much larger link is going in directly towards the US in a couple of years (as I remember from the map) which should hopefully improve things, with NZ having better connectivity than Australia in that direction rather than the other way round. But it's still little excuse for the current setup of things.
I would agree 100% with your assessment, North Americans generally drive like 'soccer moms' as they call them compared to UK drivers, I noticed this while living in Canada.
Drivers in New Zealand though look like Michael Schumacher compared to both UK and US drivers, particularly in rural areas. The speed limits and speeds people drive at are faster here, but the big difference is corners - people in NZ know how to take corners at speed. I've seen refuse trucks overtaking rental cars round the outside of bends and pickups with trailers going faster than most of the pricks you see in Audi coupes would drive on a similar country road in the UK. It's easy to spot American/European tourists here on anything short of a freeway, even without seeing their rental car because they're the ones driving well under the de facto speed limit (which is about 68mph, including rural roads), slowing down to walking pace for every bend with a 20 car long tailback behind them.
Refreshingly, more people here than in the UK seem to know how to overtake, and not just endlessly tailgate, stopping others from overtaking. Shame they don't know how to drive on freeways (undertaking is legal because lots of people never move out of the fast lane here) or indicate properly on roundabouts though.
Mod parent up - This is one of the most common misconceptions I've come across in any walk of life.
Most people really don't understand the importance and value of engine braking in general, and believe the opposite of reality, that it's bad for the car and that it uses more gas. I am so sick of tailing behind people crawling down mountain passes, breathing in 6 months driving worth of their burning brakes.
Using the engine to slow down saves gas and brake pads, and down steep hills is much safer as the car isn't waiting to run away / depending on brake pressure to stay under control.
Actually, in some arenas, you see the opposite problem: People sometimes give a "Don't worry your little head about it" answer, and fail to give any useful information while being oh-so-friendly to the n00b.
Totally, I've found exactly the same thing on several occasions. It kills the atmosphere in such places for me. It's worse than useless and gives the impression people are posting from some kind of fanboyism that they don't believe anyone else should be having problems with the things they love so much.
The fact that offensive replies can still fly, stupid questions get stupid answers (though I think this question about relativity personally is a really interesting one) and the AC system is one of the things that keeps me coming back to Slashdot. If it ever got suport nice and trolling died off I probably wouldn't read the comments anymore.
My homepage for years was an obscure PC gaming support/discussion forum I used to post on back in the early noughties until it died a slow death - almost no moderation and a constant stream of airheads asking stupid questions answered in the FAQ or stuff like "We played Team XXX and lost, we tink they r cheaters". All the regular posters were trolls posting just to wind up the idiots and fanboys in tow for the entertainment. I don't know how many imbecilic teenagers we discouraged from online gaming or asking questions in forums, but I do hope that we made a difference.
Yes, the best judge of the validity of a scientific approach is whether it's named to match popular search queries and how well websites that talk about it do self promotion.
Being owned is a shitty experience. But if a game is well designed with a decent learning curve, 'beginners' servers exist (as they did back in the day with CS), and the player doesn't have ADHD, the path to improvement should be not so hidden as to appear impossible and I do think most will persist. If that wasn't the case, why did CS become so popular (relative to other online games) during the pre-Valve and pre Steam era and slowly decline afterwards? How do you explain the success of Quakeworld and Quake 3 where this factor was even bigger? And why do some of these games still stick around with more online players than many more recent supposed successors?
If a beginner was to take up CS 1.6 today, they would find it a far more difficult and frustrating experience than in the past, despite changes made to the game, simply because nearly all the players left are high skilled. Some changes they made, such as nerfing accuracy while moving, could be argued to not be noob friendly. It makes noobs less likely to die, but less likely to get frags too. The game became a slow campfest full of peering round corners and spamming flashbangs, instead of the action movie style game of fast paced assaults it had been in the past.
[Valve] wanted to create a game with a different feel, and overall it was really smooth.
'Smooth' means hideous frame buffer mouse smoothing / lag compared to HL1 engined games? I'd bet on it. Only source players invited would seem to back that up
unanimously felt that the first three bullets of the M4 and AK in particular were too inaccurate, which took out the art and skill of "tapping"
This sounds like deja vu, but obviously even more nerfed than recoil and accuracy have already in existing versions of the game.
The less random accuracy is and the faster the game is paced, the more skilled players will dominate/ the more noob campers will get owned. Back in 1.3 you used to see players with 40/0 stats on publics taking out 5-6 of the other team every round. But that became a LOT harder afterwards with more of a luck aspect (combined with changes to slow the pace of the game). The game becomes easier for whining noobs on the Valve forums who complain that things are 'unreallistic', but less fun and more frustrating for those passionate players that made the game the success it was.
As a former big time CS player 2000-2003, I just can't think that Valve will pull anything except a tired, graphics orientated cash-in on the now largely forgotten CS name mainly aimed at console players, full of gimmicks, biased so that noobs can't get owned, and with the gameplay feel of a 30m telescope rotating through treacle.
Yeah from a year or so of past experience working as a lawnmowing contractor, that's the fastest way to mow, at least with a push/self propelled (ie not a ride on) mower, because there is little time spent making sharp corners and the tricky perimeter area is dealt with at the start, speeding up the rest of the job.
Of course, this doesn't produce a lawn as nice looking as a vertical stripe pattern, but this requires a 180 degree hairpin turn at the end of every pass.
People that are used to a large engine like a v8 with plenty of low end torque have to adjust their habits when changing to a smaller, 4 cylinder engine which in most cases in the US is a petrol engine that gets most of its power from high revving. Turbo diesels, you are right though are much more similar in character.
Some of the reasons that people in the UK drive quite a lot:
a:) In the UK it's perfectly normal to drive long distances between major cities for things like business trips or weekends visiting relatives, e.g. London to Glasgow, a good 7-8 hours with a couple of short breaks, where as in the US it seems it would be more common to fly in similar situations.
b:) In Continental Europe, train services and public transport are far superior in just about every respect and have been the envy of the British for the last thirty years or so. In recent times things have got worse, with prices for longer train journeys reaching almost ridiculous levels if bought on the day of travel. Though in the cities buses can be pretty good, in rural areas they are awful, unless you like 1 hr journeys on bumpy roads that cost the same as the equivalent direct 20 min drive in your car.
c:) North American towns and smaller cities are far better equipped with local shops and services than their equivalents in the UK, particularly in more rural and "satellite town" areas. In the US and Canada I'd constantly be amazed by what was on offer in small towns that would in the UK just be villages with a single newsagent/minimarket, maybe a post office and a few pubs. People in the UK in places like this are used to driving 20 mins+ to a town/city in the area that's larger to get more than the most basic services or go to the supermarket. Both supermarkets and larger shopping malls in the UK are, on average, quite a lot more crowded than their equivalents in the US and Canada. My theory is that this is due to the higher costs of land, rent, and running a business on average here to due to our great population density, minimum wage laws and many restrictions on new development, leading to a consolidation of businesses into fewer, more concentrated areas - but it results in more 20-40 min drives for the significant semi-rural population.
d:) One reason why there are less cars per person in the UK, it's really expensive in the UK to keep a car road legal compared to other countries. Insurance and road tax add up to £600-£1500 per year for most drivers, for a fairly modest type of car. Insurance varies hugely depending on how sporty/big engined the car is and how young you are. You don't see 17-20 year olds driving SUVs / Jap sports coupes/ sports cars nearly as commonly as in the US or other countries because the insurance would be so expensive (it might not even be possible to buy insurance for some car/driver combinations). I think that's one reason why fatal accidents are lower here.
The most obvious changes for me are the development of Guam and Hawaii as hubs of the pacific, where in the telegraph world Hawaii was an outpost and Guam wasn't on the map. Otherwise, it's surprising how similar the two maps are, even the level of development around the coast of Africa, which, although greater now was surprisingly developed in the telegraph world.
Some other games of similar vintage that I have found very playable still to this day, and stand out in terms of depth:
Jagged Alliance (1994): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagged_Alliance_2
Turn based tactical mercenary shooter. I remember playing this in 1994, but the game largely unchanged (except for screen resolution and color depth) was still being developed in 2005.
Betrayal at Krondor (1993) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayal_at_Krondor
Fantastic RPG that doesn't feel dated at all, very atmospheric with fun turn-based combat. According to PC Gamer the 'first ever' 3d RPG, though I find that hard to believe.
Microprose Night Hawk: F-117A Stealth Fighter 2.0 (1991) http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/4553/F-117A+Stealth+Fighter+2.0.html
One of the best flight sims ever made. Sequel to 1988 "F19 stealth fighter". Very simple 3d polygon graphics, but huge amounts of content, great presentation and a sense of freedom not found in any later flightsims I've played (except for one from 1996, A-10 Cuba!). Needs a keyboard overlay.
Quarantine (1994) http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/146/Quarantine.html
I still consider this futuristic taxi driving sim the most atmospheric game I've ever played. A succession of quality, varied levels, entertaining missions and a surprisingly responsive driving model. It's amazing how much of the fun and gameplay features of the 3D GTA games is found in this ancestor, the only thing really missing being the ability to get out of your taxi. You can however purchase weapons and upgrades to your taxi. Far more worth playing today than Doom or Doom 2 imo because of it's depth.
Ah the 2500+ Barton - a good CPU, I built a very similar system myself but running Win 2K (which I stubbornly held on to throughout the entire reign of XP)
The CPU overclocked to 3200+ needed such a huge fan and heatsink, I remember it sounding like a vacuum cleaner was running when the system was on.
First system I built was an AMD K6-2 with paired SIMMs and a 5.5 inch form factor Quantum 'bigfoot' HD
He appeared to have a small plastic box in his hand and after fiddling with the container he bent down and hid it under a flower box standing on the pavement. He then walked off, talking to somebody on his phone.'"
So was the small plastic box in his hand the phone he was talking on, or did he 'appear' to have something in both hands?
How would he have fiddled with the box with both hands full? Or was he fiddling with the phone? He must have fiddled with the phone in order to fiddle with the box, as if he wasn't talking on the phone when fiddling with the box he would have to fiddle with the phone afterwards in order to dial a call. Which would call into question the recorded sequence of events. It would only seem likely that he hid the box, then placed a call, and walked off while the call was going through.
The most likely hypothesis however is that the deed was carried out by a three armed perpetrator, holding the box in one hand, talking on the phone with the other, and using his extraneous appendage to "fiddle with the box".
Obviously a sign of an alien borne geocaching mind control conspiracy, the clued-in CIA and NSA providing a stand in human fall guy should it draw attention from the local bobbies.
Totally correct. This is why I don't play any recent FPS or action games, I just ignore the lot, don't even keep up to date on new games coming out anymore.
Developers just don't seem to care about the way games 'feel' anymore, it's only about how flashy the graphics are.
No matter if moving feels like swimming in treacle and aiming is like it would be after six temazepams and a bottle of whisky.
Twitch skill is seen as a bad thing nowadays as it can make people who are rubbish at computer games feel like they are rubbish at computer games.
The feel when playing a game built in the Quake 2 engine like CS 1.6 is fantastic, like the mouse is directly connected to your crosshairs. This is the only reason why there are still CS 1.6 tournaments around today - no one has released a good game since that isn't crippled for serious online competition by the graphics engine.
How much fun would table tennis be if your arm worked like aiming does in modern FPS games? I don't think anyone would play it. And that's what this is about - good gameplay is very hard to get right, but flashy graphics are an easy win that will always fool the masses.
Truly insightful post - I've never seen what is wrong with communism explained like this before and it's so obvious it's like being hit with a plank in the face. I think there are a lot of people out there who completely miss this point too.
I've always had a very bad opinion of speed cameras, they've never been shown to reduce accidents.
The best approach I've seen to speeding was in New Zealand. There speed limits are fairly high compared with most other countries and drivers use common sense on when to go slower than the speed limit.
Dangerous speeders are discouraged not so much by speed cameras (especially outside of cities), but by marked and unmarked patrol cars with onboard speed detectors - I 've been busted by one for doing 117kph along the Upper Buller Gorge in an Integra, I asked the copper about the system and he said it was effective independent of the relative movement of the vehicles. It totally beats guys at the side of the road with a speed gun - and you generally don't see much speeding because a patrol car could come around the corner at any second, and the 110kph speed limit is usually feels fast enough for all but the straightest road. But you know if you go out on the backroads at 3am, you aren't going to get snapped by a camera.
Yes they have a very high accident rate but a lot of this is because there are almost no motorways and intercity or rural travel generally includes steep grades, mountain passes, one lane bridges etc, and many of these roads are fairly or totally empty and pass through wilderness, encouraging higher speeds. I remember overtaking a double tanker truck climbing up a 30km twisty minor road mountain pass at 2.30am going into a blind bend because I drove the road regularly and knew that at that time of night, 4 times out of 5 I wouldn't see a single vehicle in the whole half hour drive in either direction. I was desperate to get past, and knew the risk would be in the tens of thousands to one against a head on collision and decided to go for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up - it's clearly a case of the quantity of charge charge held, the time factor of current being irrelevant
My Integra is an 94 LS too, it's in a pretty sweet condition considering the age, inside and outside, I've seen 98-00 models in worse shape. Just wish it had VTEC, but it still seems plenty fast for normal driving, and I've got some decent (as in performance rather than looks) wheels and tyres on it.
Here in NZ it pretty much seems that classic Integras in good condition aren't likely to depreciate at all in value any more, which makes owning one quite a bonus. Other Jap classics from the late 80s/ early 90s like Corolla Levins, Skylines, Silvias, 300ZX etc are in a similar boat I've always wanted a Skyline and if I got something else to replace the Integra I might take that route (an R33 probably, definitely not one of the newer fake Skylines), though I wouldn't be able to expect the same fuel economy.
The key to the Integra's handling seems to be the light weight, that would be my concern with the Camaro at 1700kg. Maybe the suspension, increased torque and wide tires/stance can compensate for it though. The fuel economy is very impressive though without a doubt.
Good Post, I also drive a DC2 Integra coupe (not a type R though, but still they're all nice cars), and used to drive a DA3 (mk1 with pop up headlights) a few years ago. DC2 is by far the best car I've owned, the light weight (1181kg), double wishbone suspension f+r and the stiff chassis make an incredible car to drive. It's 16 years old but everything electronic works and the engine is still smooth all the way to the fuel cutoff. Nothing like dropping a couple of gears to overtake a line of trucks. The DA3 was maybe more fun in traffic though as it had a lot better visibility and handled like a go kart at low speeds, but the engine was no comparison to the DC2.
Fully agree that Honda and many other manufacturers have gone to shit recently. Nearly every car looks like an MPV, ridiculous blade runner interiors to impress housewives who want to look trendy, electronic power steering that feels like, ah, um, doesn't feel. Fully agree, the Civic Si is a very poor mans relation to the sporty cars they had 15 years ago.
They should have called it Lostland then!
NZ is the only English speaking country I've been to where the music scene isn't dominated by US or UK bands/artists. Local bands regularly make up a fair portion of the charts.
NZ's trademark sound is a Maori influenced 'pacific' flavour of reggae/dub (check out Fat Freddy's Drop), but drum & bass (and d&b influenced stuff like dubstep) is also much more popular in the mainstream than elsewhere. There's also quite a few decent homegrown alternative/rock groups, some of which have achieved international success. I have listed some of the most popular NZ originated bands/artists in the last 10 years.
Roots/Dub/Reggae
Fat Freddy's Drop
Katchafire
Salmonella Dub
The Black Seeds
Trinity Roots
International Observer
Rock/Punk/Metal etc
Stereogram
The Mint Chicks
Evermore
Minuit
The Datsuns
Head Like a Hole
Fur Patrol
8 Foot Sativa
Dawn of Azazel
Drum & Bass
Concord Dawn
The Upbeats
Shapeshifter
Yeah I'm already over my data cap, I've been waiting a week before I can start watching Youtube videos and download again, only a couple more days to go.
It really is appalling and a backwards attitude is seen from both Telecom providers and the government here. It results in usage of search engines, smart phone apps etc that's years behind countries like the US and UK, even taking into account population differences. I'm totally disappointed to hear that this passed. The country I feel in many areas takes too much notice of what is going on in the US in legislation and corporate policy and not enough of what is going on in Norway, Sweden and Findland, for example, which have more in common with NZ in many significant ways than the US does.
From a previous /. article about undersea cables, NZ is currently poorly serviced, but a more direct, much larger link is going in directly towards the US in a couple of years (as I remember from the map) which should hopefully improve things, with NZ having better connectivity than Australia in that direction rather than the other way round. But it's still little excuse for the current setup of things.
I would agree 100% with your assessment, North Americans generally drive like 'soccer moms' as they call them compared to UK drivers, I noticed this while living in Canada.
Drivers in New Zealand though look like Michael Schumacher compared to both UK and US drivers, particularly in rural areas. The speed limits and speeds people drive at are faster here, but the big difference is corners - people in NZ know how to take corners at speed. I've seen refuse trucks overtaking rental cars round the outside of bends and pickups with trailers going faster than most of the pricks you see in Audi coupes would drive on a similar country road in the UK. It's easy to spot American/European tourists here on anything short of a freeway, even without seeing their rental car because they're the ones driving well under the de facto speed limit (which is about 68mph, including rural roads), slowing down to walking pace for every bend with a 20 car long tailback behind them.
Refreshingly, more people here than in the UK seem to know how to overtake, and not just endlessly tailgate, stopping others from overtaking. Shame they don't know how to drive on freeways (undertaking is legal because lots of people never move out of the fast lane here) or indicate properly on roundabouts though.
Mod parent up - This is one of the most common misconceptions I've come across in any walk of life.
Most people really don't understand the importance and value of engine braking in general, and believe the opposite of reality, that it's bad for the car and that it uses more gas. I am so sick of tailing behind people crawling down mountain passes, breathing in 6 months driving worth of their burning brakes.
Using the engine to slow down saves gas and brake pads, and down steep hills is much safer as the car isn't waiting to run away / depending on brake pressure to stay under control.
Totally, I've found exactly the same thing on several occasions. It kills the atmosphere in such places for me. It's worse than useless and gives the impression people are posting from some kind of fanboyism that they don't believe anyone else should be having problems with the things they love so much.
The fact that offensive replies can still fly, stupid questions get stupid answers (though I think this question about relativity personally is a really interesting one) and the AC system is one of the things that keeps me coming back to Slashdot. If it ever got suport nice and trolling died off I probably wouldn't read the comments anymore.
My homepage for years was an obscure PC gaming support/discussion forum I used to post on back in the early noughties until it died a slow death - almost no moderation and a constant stream of airheads asking stupid questions answered in the FAQ or stuff like "We played Team XXX and lost, we tink they r cheaters". All the regular posters were trolls posting just to wind up the idiots and fanboys in tow for the entertainment. I don't know how many imbecilic teenagers we discouraged from online gaming or asking questions in forums, but I do hope that we made a difference.
Yes, the best judge of the validity of a scientific approach is whether it's named to match popular search queries and how well websites that talk about it do self promotion.
Black! Black! Black like the clouds of death that follow me into the forest of doom and hide in the wardrobe of darkness!
Ref: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRJxafiqHvw
Being owned is a shitty experience. But if a game is well designed with a decent learning curve, 'beginners' servers exist (as they did back in the day with CS), and the player doesn't have ADHD, the path to improvement should be not so hidden as to appear impossible and I do think most will persist. If that wasn't the case, why did CS become so popular (relative to other online games) during the pre-Valve and pre Steam era and slowly decline afterwards? How do you explain the success of Quakeworld and Quake 3 where this factor was even bigger? And why do some of these games still stick around with more online players than many more recent supposed successors?
If a beginner was to take up CS 1.6 today, they would find it a far more difficult and frustrating experience than in the past, despite changes made to the game, simply because nearly all the players left are high skilled. Some changes they made, such as nerfing accuracy while moving, could be argued to not be noob friendly. It makes noobs less likely to die, but less likely to get frags too. The game became a slow campfest full of peering round corners and spamming flashbangs, instead of the action movie style game of fast paced assaults it had been in the past.
'Smooth' means hideous frame buffer mouse smoothing / lag compared to HL1 engined games? I'd bet on it. Only source players invited would seem to back that up
This sounds like deja vu, but obviously even more nerfed than recoil and accuracy have already in existing versions of the game. The less random accuracy is and the faster the game is paced, the more skilled players will dominate/ the more noob campers will get owned. Back in 1.3 you used to see players with 40/0 stats on publics taking out 5-6 of the other team every round. But that became a LOT harder afterwards with more of a luck aspect (combined with changes to slow the pace of the game). The game becomes easier for whining noobs on the Valve forums who complain that things are 'unreallistic', but less fun and more frustrating for those passionate players that made the game the success it was.
As a former big time CS player 2000-2003, I just can't think that Valve will pull anything except a tired, graphics orientated cash-in on the now largely forgotten CS name mainly aimed at console players, full of gimmicks, biased so that noobs can't get owned, and with the gameplay feel of a 30m telescope rotating through treacle.
Yeah from a year or so of past experience working as a lawnmowing contractor, that's the fastest way to mow, at least with a push/self propelled (ie not a ride on) mower, because there is little time spent making sharp corners and the tricky perimeter area is dealt with at the start, speeding up the rest of the job. Of course, this doesn't produce a lawn as nice looking as a vertical stripe pattern, but this requires a 180 degree hairpin turn at the end of every pass.
People that are used to a large engine like a v8 with plenty of low end torque have to adjust their habits when changing to a smaller, 4 cylinder engine which in most cases in the US is a petrol engine that gets most of its power from high revving. Turbo diesels, you are right though are much more similar in character.
a:) In the UK it's perfectly normal to drive long distances between major cities for things like business trips or weekends visiting relatives, e.g. London to Glasgow, a good 7-8 hours with a couple of short breaks, where as in the US it seems it would be more common to fly in similar situations.
b:) In Continental Europe, train services and public transport are far superior in just about every respect and have been the envy of the British for the last thirty years or so. In recent times things have got worse, with prices for longer train journeys reaching almost ridiculous levels if bought on the day of travel. Though in the cities buses can be pretty good, in rural areas they are awful, unless you like 1 hr journeys on bumpy roads that cost the same as the equivalent direct 20 min drive in your car.
c:) North American towns and smaller cities are far better equipped with local shops and services than their equivalents in the UK, particularly in more rural and "satellite town" areas. In the US and Canada I'd constantly be amazed by what was on offer in small towns that would in the UK just be villages with a single newsagent/minimarket, maybe a post office and a few pubs. People in the UK in places like this are used to driving 20 mins+ to a town/city in the area that's larger to get more than the most basic services or go to the supermarket. Both supermarkets and larger shopping malls in the UK are, on average, quite a lot more crowded than their equivalents in the US and Canada. My theory is that this is due to the higher costs of land, rent, and running a business on average here to due to our great population density, minimum wage laws and many restrictions on new development, leading to a consolidation of businesses into fewer, more concentrated areas - but it results in more 20-40 min drives for the significant semi-rural population.
d:) One reason why there are less cars per person in the UK, it's really expensive in the UK to keep a car road legal compared to other countries. Insurance and road tax add up to £600-£1500 per year for most drivers, for a fairly modest type of car. Insurance varies hugely depending on how sporty/big engined the car is and how young you are. You don't see 17-20 year olds driving SUVs / Jap sports coupes/ sports cars nearly as commonly as in the US or other countries because the insurance would be so expensive (it might not even be possible to buy insurance for some car/driver combinations). I think that's one reason why fatal accidents are lower here.
Good call, even though it's 6-7 years since I read that, it sprung to mind when I was looking at the map and I was planning on looking it up again.
The most obvious changes for me are the development of Guam and Hawaii as hubs of the pacific, where in the telegraph world Hawaii was an outpost and Guam wasn't on the map. Otherwise, it's surprising how similar the two maps are, even the level of development around the coast of Africa, which, although greater now was surprisingly developed in the telegraph world.
Some other games of similar vintage that I have found very playable still to this day, and stand out in terms of depth:
Jagged Alliance (1994):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagged_Alliance_2
Turn based tactical mercenary shooter. I remember playing this in 1994, but the game largely unchanged (except for screen resolution and color depth) was still being developed in 2005.
Betrayal at Krondor (1993)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betrayal_at_Krondor
Fantastic RPG that doesn't feel dated at all, very atmospheric with fun turn-based combat. According to PC Gamer the 'first ever' 3d RPG, though I find that hard to believe.
Microprose Night Hawk: F-117A Stealth Fighter 2.0 (1991)
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/4553/F-117A+Stealth+Fighter+2.0.html
One of the best flight sims ever made. Sequel to 1988 "F19 stealth fighter". Very simple 3d polygon graphics, but huge amounts of content, great presentation and a sense of freedom not found in any later flightsims I've played (except for one from 1996, A-10 Cuba!). Needs a keyboard overlay.
Quarantine (1994)
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/146/Quarantine.html
I still consider this futuristic taxi driving sim the most atmospheric game I've ever played. A succession of quality, varied levels, entertaining missions and a surprisingly responsive driving model. It's amazing how much of the fun and gameplay features of the 3D GTA games is found in this ancestor, the only thing really missing being the ability to get out of your taxi. You can however purchase weapons and upgrades to your taxi. Far more worth playing today than Doom or Doom 2 imo because of it's depth.
Ah the 2500+ Barton - a good CPU, I built a very similar system myself but running Win 2K (which I stubbornly held on to throughout the entire reign of XP) The CPU overclocked to 3200+ needed such a huge fan and heatsink, I remember it sounding like a vacuum cleaner was running when the system was on. First system I built was an AMD K6-2 with paired SIMMs and a 5.5 inch form factor Quantum 'bigfoot' HD
So was the small plastic box in his hand the phone he was talking on, or did he 'appear' to have something in both hands?
How would he have fiddled with the box with both hands full? Or was he fiddling with the phone? He must have fiddled with the phone in order to fiddle with the box, as if he wasn't talking on the phone when fiddling with the box he would have to fiddle with the phone afterwards in order to dial a call. Which would call into question the recorded sequence of events. It would only seem likely that he hid the box, then placed a call, and walked off while the call was going through.
The most likely hypothesis however is that the deed was carried out by a three armed perpetrator, holding the box in one hand, talking on the phone with the other, and using his extraneous appendage to "fiddle with the box".
Obviously a sign of an alien borne geocaching mind control conspiracy, the clued-in CIA and NSA providing a stand in human fall guy should it draw attention from the local bobbies.
Developers just don't seem to care about the way games 'feel' anymore, it's only about how flashy the graphics are.
No matter if moving feels like swimming in treacle and aiming is like it would be after six temazepams and a bottle of whisky.
Twitch skill is seen as a bad thing nowadays as it can make people who are rubbish at computer games feel like they are rubbish at computer games.
The feel when playing a game built in the Quake 2 engine like CS 1.6 is fantastic, like the mouse is directly connected to your crosshairs. This is the only reason why there are still CS 1.6 tournaments around today - no one has released a good game since that isn't crippled for serious online competition by the graphics engine.
How much fun would table tennis be if your arm worked like aiming does in modern FPS games? I don't think anyone would play it. And that's what this is about - good gameplay is very hard to get right, but flashy graphics are an easy win that will always fool the masses.
Truly insightful post - I've never seen what is wrong with communism explained like this before and it's so obvious it's like being hit with a plank in the face. I think there are a lot of people out there who completely miss this point too.
I've always had a very bad opinion of speed cameras, they've never been shown to reduce accidents. The best approach I've seen to speeding was in New Zealand. There speed limits are fairly high compared with most other countries and drivers use common sense on when to go slower than the speed limit. Dangerous speeders are discouraged not so much by speed cameras (especially outside of cities), but by marked and unmarked patrol cars with onboard speed detectors - I 've been busted by one for doing 117kph along the Upper Buller Gorge in an Integra, I asked the copper about the system and he said it was effective independent of the relative movement of the vehicles. It totally beats guys at the side of the road with a speed gun - and you generally don't see much speeding because a patrol car could come around the corner at any second, and the 110kph speed limit is usually feels fast enough for all but the straightest road. But you know if you go out on the backroads at 3am, you aren't going to get snapped by a camera. Yes they have a very high accident rate but a lot of this is because there are almost no motorways and intercity or rural travel generally includes steep grades, mountain passes, one lane bridges etc, and many of these roads are fairly or totally empty and pass through wilderness, encouraging higher speeds. I remember overtaking a double tanker truck climbing up a 30km twisty minor road mountain pass at 2.30am going into a blind bend because I drove the road regularly and knew that at that time of night, 4 times out of 5 I wouldn't see a single vehicle in the whole half hour drive in either direction. I was desperate to get past, and knew the risk would be in the tens of thousands to one against a head on collision and decided to go for it.
No, but Uranus is hiding Q*bert!