Indeed. It's quite playable on lower end hardware, but scales very well when large piles of cash is thrown at it in the form of shiny video cards. So pretty.
However, I have to sigh when I realize that I'm impressed that I can sit on a pier and fish at 40 FPS... I guess when I used to be impressed with the water effects in Pitfall, this isn't quite so depressing to be impressed with.
You don't really need to do that much. Just buy a lot of those drinks that come in the foil pouches and line your cart with them.
A bit of foil is murder in the wrong places, depending on the type of RFID tag. Vendors want smaller passive tags, which are really easy to block, and can only be read from a very short distance. Those juice pouches work wonderfully as shielding.
I think your example was a bit more extreme... I wasn't talking about repeatedly deadening the nerves, just letting me acknowledging the signals once they've been tended to, and move on appropriately.
In my skinned knee example, I wanted to turn off the pain after I had already cleaned it. I didn't want to turn off the pain as I was sitting there in the dirt, getting infected just so I could go on pulling weeds. I want the notification, I want to know there's something wrong. Ow! My liver! But once I know, once I get proper treatment, get the right medications, etc... why do I have to endure the pain?
Why can't it be an informative sensation instead of a painful one?
I'd like a HUD explaining the condition of my major organs, skin condition, blood alcohol content, lung capacity, etc... No pain please. If something goes wrong, let me see it on the monitors. No need for nasty primal painful sensations, thanks.
"The body tell us its tired for a reason - it needs good healthy sleep, in order to keep you all in check."
I've often thought about why we still have certain primal signals. Pain from obvious sources, for instance.
I skinned my knee. I know I skinned my knee. I can see it. I'm looking right at it. I just cleaned the darn thing. Yet it still smarts like hell.
Why can't I turn off the darn pain receptors? Why, as a (okay, this next bit is questionable, but just go with it) intelligent being can't I just acknowledge those signals, and snooze them or something? I know. It hurts. Leave me alone until I get to the hospital. I know, I'm exhausted. Let me get to a bed without falling over. I know, I get the picture, send the right chemicals to the right places until I get the right treatment, but until then, just leave me alone!
My knee tells me it hurts for a reason: it needs attention so it won't get infection. Broken bones hurt so they will get mended. Neither one know they've been fixed once they've been tended to, so they continue to complain.
"The body tell us its tired for a reason - it needs good healthy sleep, in order to keep you all in check."
If this drug can keep us from actually needing to sleep, then it's just like my knee. I don't really need to sleep, but nobody's actually informed my body yet.
That stuff is great.
I have it to counteract the drowsy effects of another medication I'm taking.
It's terrific to take when I haven't gotten enough sleep the night before, and I'm completely exhausted.
Like legal speed.:)
You were just killed by Level 52 Warrior {Character Name}.
Release your spirit to the graveyard, then come back here for your corpse. [Click: free]
Instantly resurrect with 100% HP & 100% MP. [Click: $0.50]
Instantly resurrect with 1500% HP & 1500% MP for 4 minutes. [Click: $1.00]
Instantly kill {Character Name}. [Click: $3.00]
Instantly kill {Character Name}, all {Character Name}'s guild members', family members, and a few other random people for good measure. [Click: $20.00]
Haven't met her, but I've had the pleasure of meeting with him on several occasions. He's exceptionally smart, terribly friendly, and has an amazing presence when he enters a room.
There's a lot of astronauts & cosmonauts that have succumbed to the prima donna syndrome, and don't come off as being nearly as impressive.
Of course, Java can do it, don't get me wrong. However, MS has tools to allow you to debug running processes on the device remotely, through their synch app, as if the program was running right there on the desktop. Having access to breakpoints and all the other tools a debugger gives you while the program is actually running on the PDA is amazingly useful, and VS2K3 does it very well.
I agree with you about JBuilder, but unfortunately, MS has the upper hand when it comes to PocketPC devices and that mobile framework stuff.
I wish I could easily use JBuilder to write apps for a PocketPC platform that can interface with PDA BCR hardware DLLs, but C# in VS2K3 makes it really easy.
I have a copy of JBuilder 2005 still in the shrink wrap that procurement finally sent me, and I get teary eyed wishing I could use it instead. But for this sort of thing, Borland just can't come close.
"Another thing, after billions of years of goo, cells were formed, and the cells eventually turn human? We're so smart today, let's do the easiest thing the goo did alone. Let's eliminate the randomness and create a cell from scratch! Can we do it? No."
Assuming evolution did it over millions of years... You want humans to do it in 20 minutes, just a few hundred years after the cell was even discovered? If we can't do it, this proves what, exactly? What if we can in the future? If this is your benchmark for ID, will that make us gods?
And if we can't ever do it, and we're intelligent, and we can't design a cell, does that mean that we can't intelligently design a cell, and that a cell cannot be the result of intelligent design?:)
Last week astronomers had announced that they had at last discovered a tenth planet, out beyond the orbit of Pluto. They had been searching for it for years, guided by certain orbital anomalies in the outer planets, and now they'd found it and they were all terribly pleased, and everyone was terribly happy for them and so on. The planet was named Persephone, but rapidly nicknamed Rupert after some astronomer's parrot -- there was some tediously heart-warming story attached to this -- and that was all very wonderful and lovely.
What about all those star charts and planetary motions and so? We all knew (apparently) what happened when Neptune was in Virgo, and so on, but what about when Rupert was rising? Wouldn't the whole of astrology have to be rethought? Wouldn't now perhaps be a good time to own up that it was all just a load of hogwash and instead take up pig-farming, the principles of which were founded on some kind of rational basis? If we'd known about Rupert three years ago, might President Hudson have been eating the boysenberry flavour on Thursday rather than Friday? Might Damascus still be standing? That sort of thing.
This has always been what I consider to be one of the cleverest underrated little mini-anecdotes Adams ever wrote. That and the bit about Dirk's refrigerator.
Don't forget that a lot of the hardware they bought with that budget is still around. The Vehicle Assembly Building, the launch pads, the crawlers, the designs, etc...
Doing it all again wouldn't quite be starting from scratch.
There's a couple designs out there for a mars mission using modified shuttle hardware. The tank and the solid rockets could carry other things, not just an orbiter. Stick something on there that can go to the moon, and you don't have to do much from scratch. Toss up a few containers of fuel in one launch, a vehicle on another launch, dock in orbit, and off you go for much less than 900,000,000.
Popular Science did an article very much like this one a few months back.
They did go a few steps further to describe what sorts of effects each type of explosive device could have in various situations, and how secure (or not) some of the facilities were that had some of these materials and equipment.
Some of their descriptions of the levels of security at some refinery plants were comical. Unguarded unlocked doors, minimial security staff, reports of missing plutonium containers... Scary stuff.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a new graphics solution.
You must be buzzword compliant.
I wonder if this is similar to the tool used in my microwave to track Kernel popping time.
Indeed.
It's quite playable on lower end hardware, but scales very well when large piles of cash is thrown at it in the form of shiny video cards.
So pretty.
However, I have to sigh when I realize that I'm impressed that I can sit on a pier and fish at 40 FPS...
I guess when I used to be impressed with the water effects in Pitfall, this isn't quite so depressing to be impressed with.
Enough of this talk of 'other games'. It scares and confuses me.
Must go back to using computer as dedicated WoW terminal.
*rubs eyes*
Is this review about a WoW patch or update or something?
*drools incoherently from lack of sleep*
Must not be.
*Goes back to using PC for what it was intended: a WoW terminal*
I did not know that. Very cool. Thanks
You don't really need to do that much.
Just buy a lot of those drinks that come in the foil pouches and line your cart with them.
A bit of foil is murder in the wrong places, depending on the type of RFID tag.
Vendors want smaller passive tags, which are really easy to block, and can only be read from a very short distance.
Those juice pouches work wonderfully as shielding.
I personally like it, so I don't have to follow links to sites my employers might not consider entirely work related.
*looks at current url*
games.slashdot.org.....
*doh!*
I think your example was a bit more extreme...
I wasn't talking about repeatedly deadening the nerves, just letting me acknowledging the signals once they've been tended to, and move on appropriately.
In my skinned knee example, I wanted to turn off the pain after I had already cleaned it. I didn't want to turn off the pain as I was sitting there in the dirt, getting infected just so I could go on pulling weeds.
I want the notification, I want to know there's something wrong. Ow! My liver!
But once I know, once I get proper treatment, get the right medications, etc... why do I have to endure the pain?
Why can't it be an informative sensation instead of a painful one?
I'd like a HUD explaining the condition of my major organs, skin condition, blood alcohol content, lung capacity, etc... No pain please. If something goes wrong, let me see it on the monitors. No need for nasty primal painful sensations, thanks.
"The body tell us its tired for a reason - it needs good healthy sleep, in order to keep you all in check."
I've often thought about why we still have certain primal signals.
Pain from obvious sources, for instance.
I skinned my knee. I know I skinned my knee. I can see it. I'm looking right at it. I just cleaned the darn thing. Yet it still smarts like hell.
Why can't I turn off the darn pain receptors?
Why, as a (okay, this next bit is questionable, but just go with it) intelligent being can't I just acknowledge those signals, and snooze them or something?
I know. It hurts. Leave me alone until I get to the hospital.
I know, I'm exhausted. Let me get to a bed without falling over.
I know, I get the picture, send the right chemicals to the right places until I get the right treatment, but until then, just leave me alone!
My knee tells me it hurts for a reason: it needs attention so it won't get infection.
Broken bones hurt so they will get mended.
Neither one know they've been fixed once they've been tended to, so they continue to complain.
"The body tell us its tired for a reason - it needs good healthy sleep, in order to keep you all in check."
If this drug can keep us from actually needing to sleep, then it's just like my knee. I don't really need to sleep, but nobody's actually informed my body yet.
How long till WoW vendors start selling this stuff?
That stuff is great. I have it to counteract the drowsy effects of another medication I'm taking. It's terrific to take when I haven't gotten enough sleep the night before, and I'm completely exhausted. Like legal speed. :)
You were just killed by Level 52 Warrior {Character Name}.
Release your spirit to the graveyard, then come back here for your corpse.
[Click: free]
Instantly resurrect with 100% HP & 100% MP.
[Click: $0.50]
Instantly resurrect with 1500% HP & 1500% MP for 4 minutes.
[Click: $1.00]
Instantly kill {Character Name}.
[Click: $3.00]
Instantly kill {Character Name}, all {Character Name}'s guild members', family members, and a few other random people for good measure.
[Click: $20.00]
Win the game.
[Click: $100.00]
Haven't met her, but I've had the pleasure of meeting with him on several occasions.
He's exceptionally smart, terribly friendly, and has an amazing presence when he enters a room.
There's a lot of astronauts & cosmonauts that have succumbed to the prima donna syndrome, and don't come off as being nearly as impressive.
"J2ME with a JNI wrapper?"
Of course, Java can do it, don't get me wrong. However, MS has tools to allow you to debug running processes on the device remotely, through their synch app, as if the program was running right there on the desktop.
Having access to breakpoints and all the other tools a debugger gives you while the program is actually running on the PDA is amazingly useful, and VS2K3 does it very well.
I only wish Borland had something like this.
I agree with you about JBuilder, but unfortunately, MS has the upper hand when it comes to PocketPC devices and that mobile framework stuff.
I wish I could easily use JBuilder to write apps for a PocketPC platform that can interface with PDA BCR hardware DLLs, but C# in VS2K3 makes it really easy.
I have a copy of JBuilder 2005 still in the shrink wrap that procurement finally sent me, and I get teary eyed wishing I could use it instead.
But for this sort of thing, Borland just can't come close.
"Another thing, after billions of years of goo, cells were formed, and the cells eventually turn human? We're so smart today, let's do the easiest thing the goo did alone. Let's eliminate the randomness and create a cell from scratch! Can we do it? No."
:)
Assuming evolution did it over millions of years... You want humans to do it in 20 minutes, just a few hundred years after the cell was even discovered?
If we can't do it, this proves what, exactly?
What if we can in the future? If this is your benchmark for ID, will that make us gods?
And if we can't ever do it, and we're intelligent, and we can't design a cell, does that mean that we can't intelligently design a cell, and that a cell cannot be the result of intelligent design?
You mean in his garbage file?
What about all those star charts and planetary motions and so? We all knew (apparently) what happened when Neptune was in Virgo, and so on, but what about when Rupert was rising? Wouldn't the whole of astrology have to be rethought? Wouldn't now perhaps be a good time to own up that it was all just a load of hogwash and instead take up pig-farming, the principles of which were founded on some kind of rational basis? If we'd known about Rupert three years ago, might President Hudson have been eating the boysenberry flavour on Thursday rather than Friday? Might Damascus still be standing? That sort of thing.
This has always been what I consider to be one of the cleverest underrated little mini-anecdotes Adams ever wrote. That and the bit about Dirk's refrigerator.
"There hasn't really been a noteworthy game release in the past six months on any platform."
I hadn't noticed that. Being unable to think of my PC as anything other than a dedicated WoW console, I guess it just hasn't mattered much.
Don't forget that a lot of the hardware they bought with that budget is still around.
The Vehicle Assembly Building, the launch pads, the crawlers, the designs, etc...
Doing it all again wouldn't quite be starting from scratch.
There's a couple designs out there for a mars mission using modified shuttle hardware. The tank and the solid rockets could carry other things, not just an orbiter. Stick something on there that can go to the moon, and you don't have to do much from scratch.
Toss up a few containers of fuel in one launch, a vehicle on another launch, dock in orbit, and off you go for much less than 900,000,000.
"And I didn't know what payola means, either."
You need to listen to more Billy Joel....
"U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, "Psycho", Belgians in the Congo"
Very nice. I wish I could find a copy from STII. I love the combination of the bagpipes and orchestra as you see the exterior shot of the ship.
Popular Science did an article very much like this one a few months back.
They did go a few steps further to describe what sorts of effects each type of explosive device could have in various situations, and how secure (or not) some of the facilities were that had some of these materials and equipment.
Some of their descriptions of the levels of security at some refinery plants were comical. Unguarded unlocked doors, minimial security staff, reports of missing plutonium containers...
Scary stuff.
Good point.
Forgot about that.