I use GoG.com, but not steam since I don't run a recent copy of Windows.:) I don't see the need to maintain a top o' the line windows PC to play the few games I'd like to on there. (For the games I still love to play, there's always abandonware and DOSBox.) Playing Civ 2 in a window running Win98 as a VM is plenty of fun and doesn't require the latest gizmos.. I tend to use my equipment until it truly dies of exhaustion or old age. I re-purpose the very old and cling to the nearly old hardware.... I got off the upgrade treadmill before XP came out.:)
I'm not an MMO/FPS type gamer. The last time I slogged many hours in multiplayer was perhaps Warcraft 2 or Total Annihilation.:) Since then, I've been fond of the single player games. I guess I'm a hermit.
Diablo 3 is going to sell well because of its pedigree. But I figure if it doesn't capture what made Diablo 2 great fun (or even Diablo), Diablo 4 will never see the light of day.:)
Before Bioware got gobbled up by EA, I said the same thing. Now only Bethesda is left in my "must-buy" category. The scuttlebutt about Mass Effect 3 is making me feel like not playing it.:)
I loathed trying to fix those IRQ problems... some motherboards just didn't want to cooperate.:) I rather enjoyed the games from that era (and still play them, thanks to GoG.com) but I didn't enjoy trying to figure out what went wrong when all I wanted to do was blow something up (digitally of course.);)
Another was the companies like Diamond and so forth that took reference boards and tweaked the clock speed on them so that they weren't identifiable as a voodoo chipset due to clock differences.:) You were forced to either use those Diamond (old and buggy) drivers, or you bought an off-brand reference board from STB or someone else that didn't tweak things into oblivion.:)
You're right. I don't miss DOS at all either. I guess that's why I have moved on to console games (for the most part) and left my PC gaming back in the early 2000's (still an old windows machine.) I don't have to tweak squat. The 80's through the 2000's cured me of tweaking to play games. Now I just tweak my linux boxes.:)
Can you give an example? I don't think this became a problem until "the late days" of pc gaming: the early days of gaming were a virtual Panacea!
Well one is CGA/EGA/VGA... the other is like others have mentioned, trying to rearrange your autoexec.bat and config.sys so you'd have enough "room" to play the game. But even further back than that, different CGA cards had trouble with games, depending upon what "standard" the manufacturer used. And when the introduction of soundcards came along, you had Adlib, Soundblaster, etc. that all did things differently. And let's not forget the early days of configuring the BIOS so your soundcard didn't barf all over your parallel port, or in the early days of PCI, share the wrong IRQ and hose your system responsiveness every time a sound was played. Kids today have it SO much easier.:)
It's a good example to remember the 7th Guest. It was twitchy, tempermental, and if you got it working so you could play the game, you were ecstatic.:)
We are not talking about the 90's here, which were a chore in themselves. Mobile gaming is more akin to the original days of PC gaming, when there was a C64, Atari 800, Apple II, and TRS 80 in the mix. Sure they all used a 6502 or similar, but they were completely different. And throw the original IBM PC in there, and you've got a stew of incompatibilities that people these days have forgotten. I draw parallels to the mobile market, because Android is a standard OS, there are a metric ton of devices it runs on... rather like the 6502. The iOS world is like writing for a C64 (at the moment), and Apple is keen not to pull a Plus4 or a C16 out of their pants to keep the ecosystem stable. How long that will last is another matter... and Android can become the PC game model, stabilizing APIs that ignore the various hardware combinations in favor of a vanilla way to program for them (DirectX, OpenGL)... when (or if depending upon your cynicism) Android stabilizes the hardware choice like that, we'll see iOS and Apple in a dilemma... but additionally we'll probably see the mobile game industry head towards the "MHz matter" era of PC gaming. I think mobile gaming will eventually turn into the current PC game market... where the only thing stopping you from playing most games is horsepower.
You're right about the array of horsepower differences between machines, but in reality, most companies set a benchmark for optimal performance, and it is up to the user to get to (or exceed) that benchmark for the game to be smooth and enjoyable. Unlike the early days, the game will still play, just not as "optimal" as the developer wants it to... quite a leap from the config.sys/autoexec.bat tweaking and IRQ settings days of old.
I think you don't remember the early days of gaming on the PC. Diversity of product, thousands of different combinations of software/hardware, etc. It wasn't until well into the lifecycle of Windows that gaming got a boost with APIs, then even longer than that when video cards and other hardware got compliant with those APIs so that the only thing a gamer would have to worry about was how fast his/her GPU/CPU was. Youngsters probably don't even remember when PC games had beeps and boops coming from the mono speaker in the front of their machines, while C64 gamers listened to lush sound effects and music, thanks to the SID chip. Time marches on, and mobile gaming isn't old enough to declare a winner yet.
Mobile gaming is too young to call iOS the "mature" place to develop games. People laughed at users who wanted to play games on those PCs... and now who's laughing? People are laughing at android users who want to play games... only time will tell if Google has the stones to do what Microsoft did and turn the platform into a one-size-fits-all garden...
Not a walled garden where Apple employees tell you what is appropriate for you to see on your phone (in terms of games/apps.)
Well said. I often wonder how many BSD licensed projects could benefit from a bit of contributing of downstream fixes/enhancements. That's not to say they should change the license, it just sometimes makes me wonder what if. I'm sure some do have a robust community associated with them, but I suspect there are some that simply get mooched into commercial entities... the license permits that, but the spirit of the openness of BSD is being gamed by those only interesed in lining their pockets.:-/
I don't see why people are up in arms about the AGPL. It's not overly demanding if you aren't in the game to leech code and try to resell it for profit.
Stop your revisionist history. Are there poor people? Then the War on Poverty was a failure. The banks that defrauded the rest of the financial system are just as culpable as the idiots who thought their job at Wal Mart gave them the right to have a house that cost $500k. There wasn't a one way "evil banks" bullshit.
As for the rest of your crusade, consider this. How did the United States survive before social programs? Pretty damned well, if you'd bother to notice. The problem is, people weren't accustomed to being in bondage to a system that perpetuates generational poverty... they worked hard, paid their bills, and didn't think they were entitled to anything they didn't earn by the sweat of their brow.
They ALL survived quite well and the nation prospered. So how did the Great Society and New Deal do anything positive? Their negatives FAR outweigh their positives, and if you would spare us the bleeding heart revisionism, you'd see that.
Thank you. The Constitution is pretty clear about Federal power, and I am not the only one who points out most of the things that the federal government is doing/acquiring violates their enumerated powers.
When someone is snarky for the sake of being snarky, you get what you dish out.
The "metaphor" won't shoot at you if you aren't invading countries illegally and under false pretenses. They can't shoot you if they can't get to you. And quite frankly, our foreign policy is so fucked up in the United States, I'm amazed we don't have more problems than we have now.
Like most libertarians (small "L") I am not in favor of military action for the sake of a non-concrete objective that violates both our Constitution and international law. Being in Afghanistan and Iraq did nothing but create a money siphon and a power vacuum. Witness the whole "Koran burning" incident. We're not winning hearts or minds... and when we do leave, the Taliban comes right back, backing any and all terrorist activity.... just like they did before we got there.
So the 'metaphor' still holds true, because we aren't winning the "war" on terror... we're just creating more power and less liberty under the guise of "protecting the homeland." Horse shit.
Are you high? The Great Society didn't do shit to help that. Economic growth and educational improvements (not supported by the Johnson check writing frenzy) helped move large segments of the population from poverty to productive middle class citizens.
The War on Poverty was supposed to "end poverty". How well did we do? There are still poor people, and if you believe the media, there are MORE thanks to the last few administrations... (oh, but not Obama... he inherited the mess... blah blah blah.)
I guess you think a few more people can scam houses and leave the rest of us holding the bill (because of "predatory mortgages") is a win? I hate to think what a loss in your eyes would be....
I think the point the AC was making (that you missed) is that attaching "the war on" (insert boogeyman here) is nothing more than a way to suck the money into a black hole of bureaucracy and thievery, usurp constitutional powers and generally fuck with the average person's life in ways unheard of by the Founding Fathers.
War is a metaphor (even for "Terror") to create bigger, stronger, more invasive government. Even a blind monkey fucking a football could figure that out. Not so hard to understand... or maybe for you it is.
Hello Skapare! Would you like to save 30% on your car insurance?
Hello Mr/Ms Skapare! Would you like to refinance your mortgage to less than 3%?
Hello,
I am glad I found your email from a Christian chat room. I am Mr. Nobana Igumalay from Upper Volta. I have $4 million in US dollars frozen in a bank and need an honest, trustworthy, christian person to help me retrieve it.
I know I violate the TOS, but the only thing real about my facebook profile is my name. I work at a fake factory, I went to a fake high school, and I graduated from a college that is more pun than anything else.:) If they close my account one day because of it, I've lost nothing of value except my annoying tendency to post random thoughts that make little sense.:) I have fun with it.
My relatives constantly attempt to tag my relationship to them, but I don't confirm it... There are photos of me, but that's no big deal. I don't have a real birthday on the site, and I frequently "like" opposite things. I have nothing to hide, but I am not freely discussing things about me that I don't want to be sent through the internet... I am a huge fan of both Ronald Reagan and Keith Olbermann... I support gun control and the 2nd Amendment, and I'm a liberal and a conservative.:) If the data miners are going to get any good info from me, I'll make 'em work for it.:)
Amazon knows my buying habits. I've visited Porn sites without TOR, I download Linux ISO's via bittorrent (and some old movies as well)... but I'm not running for office, so my interest in huge breasts won't come up on the campaign trail.
I'm not entirely sure how Facebook handles unconfirmed family relationships, but I've instructed my relatives to give up the family tree stuff... seems to work. And sometimes people post on my wall using my nickname. That's about the most revealing thing I've got on my FB page.
As for gmail, I don't say anything I wouldn't say in a bar or restaurant. People skimming my email will find stupid jokes, lame pictures, and questions about going to get a burrito at Chipotle... I've never been to Chipotle, but hey... I usually just ask and we go somewhere else.:)
But in all seriousness, McQuarrie was a great conceptual artist and worked on such a myriad of great things, it's a big hole to fill. But I suspect in the age of CGI and Michael Bay "Writing the script as he goes along".... we won't see McQuarrie's like again. The golden age of Hollywood didn't die with the Studio System. It died when Michael Bay was allowed behind the camera. Talk all you want about Lucas' asinine dialogue and plot holes, but Michael Bay makes Lucas' work look like fucking Shakespeare.
And the LORD spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.
The backup sensor detects all that. And it is VERY fast. You won't be ignoring the beep. Yes, it does indicate distance by the speed of the beep. It is quite apparent that you haven't used a backup sensor before. If you're not doing 80 in reverse, you can stop in time. Trust me, I have. Anything that gets in the way of the sensor will cause a beep. I've had a tiny dog set off my sensor before. Once it notifies you then you can make the decision to either continue to back or to see what it is that is behind you.
The backup sensor solves this imaginary problem of people backing over stuff, but it doesn't solve stupid. Nothing does.
The bumper of my Ram has a row of backup sensors that alert me when I get close to something. Why not mandate them? They work well, and above the back window is a sensor light that shows from what direction your obstacle is approaching. It silences the radio and beeps repeatedly if you get REALLY close.
I imagine the cost of that is minimal (even without a sensor light), and this "camera in the rearview mirror" stuff is just more crap to break and cost $500 to fix outside of the warranty. (You can get a replacement kit for $25 if your backup sensor fails.) More importantly, it isn't obtrusive and adding gobs of cash to the car's already inflated price. And the bonus? The $25 kit includes a sensor light you put in view of the rear-view mirror, or above it in the front. Simple? Yes. Which is why the government is mandating a fucking camera.
But then again, this is the government. They mandated tire pressure monitors. Which makes rotating tires a big hassle.. and judging by the bell-shaped tires on brand new cars driving around these days... it's worked SO fucking well.
Not to pick nits, but there are as many who claim the idiom is "barefaced lie" (from the British version.) Came from something in the 1700's. Some say Bold-faced lie pre-dates that, but it's in dispute. But we can agree "bold-faced lie" is pretty much not it.:)
Not to pick nits, but, in the absence of "doing it yourself" global warming "believers" accept the evidence as fact, based on the experts, who they believe to be experts (there is no "test" to say, yep, that's an expert. Credentials are one way, but as we've seen before, they can be faked) and global warming "believers" also accept the data is rigorously peer reviewed (unless the "believer" was on the peer review board, they have to believe someone else has done their due diligence.)
While the evidence looks strong and there are many people who claim it is correct and factual without error, anyone who is not directly involved with the process of studying global warming is a "believer" in those who do. It is the quandary most folks are in... you may accept the facts as golden, but considering they aren't your conclusions, you have a long list of things you accept on faith that make those facts golden to you (and to many others.) I am not so foolish to believe that if someone in a white lab coat says it, it must be true, but I am also not so foolish as to believe that the facts as they are presented don't depend heavily on the credibility and experimentation of those producing the facts. That is a subjective measure in many respects (I am not a climate specialist, I have to take on faith that what those specialists say is true and not hogwash, as well as those who concur with them are also knowledgable enough to be able to concur.) We can't be so smug about dismissing the term "believer" when we talk about something that we rely on others to test, experimient on, and study.
I believe the earth is getting warmer. I believe the scientists are correct, but I do not believe that we will change much of the natural warming by reducing our artificial warming habits. Half of the planet is just now getting to the point Europe and America was in the dawn of the Industrial Age. That half is going to fill in the gaps of warming emissions that the West reduces. Does that bode well for the planet? It depends. It has gotten hotter here before. Separating the naturally occuring warm up with the man-made warm up may only postpone the inevitable that the planet itself is doing (without our help, I mean.) So, let's find the future of fuels and energy. But let's not dliute ourselves into thinking we're going to turn the planet into a paradise. And more importantly, let's be sure we aren't on the path to punish those who don't follow us, because that is against the philosophy of personal liberty... they will follow if it is incentivised, not enforced.
Planes exist in real life, so do rafts. Why isn't there an outcry over the 2nd movie's "escape the plane crash with the raft"?
All I'm saying is the fridge wasn't THAT big of a deal, and if anyone can suspend disbelief about the raft, and other things that exist in the real world, they can suspend disbelief about the nuked fridge.:) It just put the nuclear age in the context of the Indiana Jones movies.:)
If you're willing to suspend disbelief on the basic premise of the movie (professor who kicks ass and finds magical artifacts, survives all sorts of danger and gets the girl... most of the time) the rest of it is just fun.
Sure fridges don't do that in the real world, but the Ark of the Covenant can't melt Nazis, the Holy Grail can't cure gunshot wounds, and an Indian mystic can't keep you alive while holding your heart. There was a prototype Nazi aircraft that made hamburger meat out of a big guy... a plane that the Nazis didn't have in 1938 (and I don't think it ever got out of the prototype stage in 1944...) the sub base in the middle of nowhere was pretty neat... very GI Joe-esque.:)
It's a fun ride... It's not accurate and not a source of National Geographic style insight...
You'd understand the fridge, if only you spoke Hovitos.
Wow... someone pissed in YOUR post-toasties, didn't they? Take a pill, and realize that on matters of taste, there is no argument... if someone thinks Gnome 3 is shit and bloated (it is, I've got proof) that doesn't mean the $4000 you spent on an overpriced Alienware machine because daddy sued another person into oblivion is now officially worthless. I mean, he'll sue another grandmother raising her grandkids and you can afford the Alienware SUX 5000, complete with alien-shaped penis on the side... I'm sure you've been secretly pining for that on the "how big is my e-penis?" web forums.
But throw enough cruft at something and the "fast" machine will feel like an 8088 trying to run Windows 2.0....
If it ain't broke... don't fix it. If a machine that is not "cutting edge" (or dare I say "old") and it still runs, why throw it out?
My machines are not cutting edge by a long shot... but I tend to use things until they finally wear out, rather than the hamsters in the upgrade wheel, tossing out perfectly good hardware for the "next big thing"....
Thinks like Windowmaker and lightweight distros are giving purpose to old machines that are still very much useful. (And I've got a stack of games for my PC that run fine on a Pentium III)....
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I use GoG.com, but not steam since I don't run a recent copy of Windows. :) I don't see the need to maintain a top o' the line windows PC to play the few games I'd like to on there. (For the games I still love to play, there's always abandonware and DOSBox.) Playing Civ 2 in a window running Win98 as a VM is plenty of fun and doesn't require the latest gizmos.. I tend to use my equipment until it truly dies of exhaustion or old age. I re-purpose the very old and cling to the nearly old hardware.... I got off the upgrade treadmill before XP came out. :)
I'm not an MMO/FPS type gamer. The last time I slogged many hours in multiplayer was perhaps Warcraft 2 or Total Annihilation. :) Since then, I've been fond of the single player games. I guess I'm a hermit.
Diablo 3 is going to sell well because of its pedigree. But I figure if it doesn't capture what made Diablo 2 great fun (or even Diablo), Diablo 4 will never see the light of day. :)
Before Bioware got gobbled up by EA, I said the same thing. Now only Bethesda is left in my "must-buy" category. The scuttlebutt about Mass Effect 3 is making me feel like not playing it. :)
I loathed trying to fix those IRQ problems... some motherboards just didn't want to cooperate. :) I rather enjoyed the games from that era (and still play them, thanks to GoG.com) but I didn't enjoy trying to figure out what went wrong when all I wanted to do was blow something up (digitally of course.) ;)
Another was the companies like Diamond and so forth that took reference boards and tweaked the clock speed on them so that they weren't identifiable as a voodoo chipset due to clock differences. :) You were forced to either use those Diamond (old and buggy) drivers, or you bought an off-brand reference board from STB or someone else that didn't tweak things into oblivion. :)
You're right. I don't miss DOS at all either. I guess that's why I have moved on to console games (for the most part) and left my PC gaming back in the early 2000's (still an old windows machine.) I don't have to tweak squat. The 80's through the 2000's cured me of tweaking to play games. Now I just tweak my linux boxes. :)
Can you give an example? I don't think this became a problem until "the late days" of pc gaming: the early days of gaming were a virtual Panacea!
Well one is CGA/EGA/VGA... the other is like others have mentioned, trying to rearrange your autoexec.bat and config.sys so you'd have enough "room" to play the game. But even further back than that, different CGA cards had trouble with games, depending upon what "standard" the manufacturer used. And when the introduction of soundcards came along, you had Adlib, Soundblaster, etc. that all did things differently. And let's not forget the early days of configuring the BIOS so your soundcard didn't barf all over your parallel port, or in the early days of PCI, share the wrong IRQ and hose your system responsiveness every time a sound was played. Kids today have it SO much easier. :)
It's a good example to remember the 7th Guest. It was twitchy, tempermental, and if you got it working so you could play the game, you were ecstatic. :)
We are not talking about the 90's here, which were a chore in themselves. Mobile gaming is more akin to the original days of PC gaming, when there was a C64, Atari 800, Apple II, and TRS 80 in the mix. Sure they all used a 6502 or similar, but they were completely different. And throw the original IBM PC in there, and you've got a stew of incompatibilities that people these days have forgotten. I draw parallels to the mobile market, because Android is a standard OS, there are a metric ton of devices it runs on... rather like the 6502. The iOS world is like writing for a C64 (at the moment), and Apple is keen not to pull a Plus4 or a C16 out of their pants to keep the ecosystem stable. How long that will last is another matter... and Android can become the PC game model, stabilizing APIs that ignore the various hardware combinations in favor of a vanilla way to program for them (DirectX, OpenGL)... when (or if depending upon your cynicism) Android stabilizes the hardware choice like that, we'll see iOS and Apple in a dilemma... but additionally we'll probably see the mobile game industry head towards the "MHz matter" era of PC gaming. I think mobile gaming will eventually turn into the current PC game market... where the only thing stopping you from playing most games is horsepower.
You're right about the array of horsepower differences between machines, but in reality, most companies set a benchmark for optimal performance, and it is up to the user to get to (or exceed) that benchmark for the game to be smooth and enjoyable. Unlike the early days, the game will still play, just not as "optimal" as the developer wants it to... quite a leap from the config.sys/autoexec.bat tweaking and IRQ settings days of old.
I think you don't remember the early days of gaming on the PC. Diversity of product, thousands of different combinations of software/hardware, etc. It wasn't until well into the lifecycle of Windows that gaming got a boost with APIs, then even longer than that when video cards and other hardware got compliant with those APIs so that the only thing a gamer would have to worry about was how fast his/her GPU/CPU was. Youngsters probably don't even remember when PC games had beeps and boops coming from the mono speaker in the front of their machines, while C64 gamers listened to lush sound effects and music, thanks to the SID chip. Time marches on, and mobile gaming isn't old enough to declare a winner yet.
Mobile gaming is too young to call iOS the "mature" place to develop games. People laughed at users who wanted to play games on those PCs... and now who's laughing? People are laughing at android users who want to play games... only time will tell if Google has the stones to do what Microsoft did and turn the platform into a one-size-fits-all garden...
Not a walled garden where Apple employees tell you what is appropriate for you to see on your phone (in terms of games/apps.)
Well said. I often wonder how many BSD licensed projects could benefit from a bit of contributing of downstream fixes/enhancements. That's not to say they should change the license, it just sometimes makes me wonder what if. I'm sure some do have a robust community associated with them, but I suspect there are some that simply get mooched into commercial entities... the license permits that, but the spirit of the openness of BSD is being gamed by those only interesed in lining their pockets. :-/
I don't see why people are up in arms about the AGPL. It's not overly demanding if you aren't in the game to leech code and try to resell it for profit.
Stop your revisionist history. Are there poor people? Then the War on Poverty was a failure. The banks that defrauded the rest of the financial system are just as culpable as the idiots who thought their job at Wal Mart gave them the right to have a house that cost $500k. There wasn't a one way "evil banks" bullshit.
As for the rest of your crusade, consider this. How did the United States survive before social programs? Pretty damned well, if you'd bother to notice. The problem is, people weren't accustomed to being in bondage to a system that perpetuates generational poverty... they worked hard, paid their bills, and didn't think they were entitled to anything they didn't earn by the sweat of their brow.
They ALL survived quite well and the nation prospered. So how did the Great Society and New Deal do anything positive? Their negatives FAR outweigh their positives, and if you would spare us the bleeding heart revisionism, you'd see that.
Thank you. The Constitution is pretty clear about Federal power, and I am not the only one who points out most of the things that the federal government is doing/acquiring violates their enumerated powers.
When someone is snarky for the sake of being snarky, you get what you dish out.
The "metaphor" won't shoot at you if you aren't invading countries illegally and under false pretenses. They can't shoot you if they can't get to you. And quite frankly, our foreign policy is so fucked up in the United States, I'm amazed we don't have more problems than we have now.
Like most libertarians (small "L") I am not in favor of military action for the sake of a non-concrete objective that violates both our Constitution and international law. Being in Afghanistan and Iraq did nothing but create a money siphon and a power vacuum. Witness the whole "Koran burning" incident. We're not winning hearts or minds... and when we do leave, the Taliban comes right back, backing any and all terrorist activity.... just like they did before we got there.
So the 'metaphor' still holds true, because we aren't winning the "war" on terror... we're just creating more power and less liberty under the guise of "protecting the homeland." Horse shit.
Are you high? The Great Society didn't do shit to help that. Economic growth and educational improvements (not supported by the Johnson check writing frenzy) helped move large segments of the population from poverty to productive middle class citizens.
The War on Poverty was supposed to "end poverty". How well did we do? There are still poor people, and if you believe the media, there are MORE thanks to the last few administrations... (oh, but not Obama... he inherited the mess... blah blah blah.)
I guess you think a few more people can scam houses and leave the rest of us holding the bill (because of "predatory mortgages") is a win? I hate to think what a loss in your eyes would be....
I think the point the AC was making (that you missed) is that attaching "the war on" (insert boogeyman here) is nothing more than a way to suck the money into a black hole of bureaucracy and thievery, usurp constitutional powers and generally fuck with the average person's life in ways unheard of by the Founding Fathers.
War is a metaphor (even for "Terror") to create bigger, stronger, more invasive government. Even a blind monkey fucking a football could figure that out. Not so hard to understand... or maybe for you it is.
Hello Skapare! Would you like to save 30% on your car insurance?
Hello Mr/Ms Skapare! Would you like to refinance your mortgage to less than 3%?
Hello,
I am glad I found your email from a Christian chat room. I am Mr. Nobana Igumalay from Upper Volta. I have $4 million in US dollars frozen in a bank and need an honest, trustworthy, christian person to help me retrieve it.
Greetings,
You have won the UK national Lottery!
I know I violate the TOS, but the only thing real about my facebook profile is my name. I work at a fake factory, I went to a fake high school, and I graduated from a college that is more pun than anything else. :) If they close my account one day because of it, I've lost nothing of value except my annoying tendency to post random thoughts that make little sense. :) I have fun with it.
My relatives constantly attempt to tag my relationship to them, but I don't confirm it... There are photos of me, but that's no big deal. I don't have a real birthday on the site, and I frequently "like" opposite things. I have nothing to hide, but I am not freely discussing things about me that I don't want to be sent through the internet... I am a huge fan of both Ronald Reagan and Keith Olbermann... I support gun control and the 2nd Amendment, and I'm a liberal and a conservative. :) If the data miners are going to get any good info from me, I'll make 'em work for it. :)
Amazon knows my buying habits. I've visited Porn sites without TOR, I download Linux ISO's via bittorrent (and some old movies as well)... but I'm not running for office, so my interest in huge breasts won't come up on the campaign trail.
I'm not entirely sure how Facebook handles unconfirmed family relationships, but I've instructed my relatives to give up the family tree stuff... seems to work. And sometimes people post on my wall using my nickname. That's about the most revealing thing I've got on my FB page.
As for gmail, I don't say anything I wouldn't say in a bar or restaurant. People skimming my email will find stupid jokes, lame pictures, and questions about going to get a burrito at Chipotle... I've never been to Chipotle, but hey... I usually just ask and we go somewhere else. :)
Children are tasty, with the right seasoning...
But in all seriousness, McQuarrie was a great conceptual artist and worked on such a myriad of great things, it's a big hole to fill. But I suspect in the age of CGI and Michael Bay "Writing the script as he goes along".... we won't see McQuarrie's like again. The golden age of Hollywood didn't die with the Studio System. It died when Michael Bay was allowed behind the camera. Talk all you want about Lucas' asinine dialogue and plot holes, but Michael Bay makes Lucas' work look like fucking Shakespeare.
Why hasn't someone dropped a bus on Michael Bay?
And the LORD spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.
1...2...5! (three sir!)
THREE!!!
The backup sensor detects all that. And it is VERY fast. You won't be ignoring the beep. Yes, it does indicate distance by the speed of the beep. It is quite apparent that you haven't used a backup sensor before. If you're not doing 80 in reverse, you can stop in time. Trust me, I have. Anything that gets in the way of the sensor will cause a beep. I've had a tiny dog set off my sensor before. Once it notifies you then you can make the decision to either continue to back or to see what it is that is behind you.
The backup sensor solves this imaginary problem of people backing over stuff, but it doesn't solve stupid. Nothing does.
You can't fix stupid. :) Maybe it's just FSM's way of thinning out the herd.
The bumper of my Ram has a row of backup sensors that alert me when I get close to something. Why not mandate them? They work well, and above the back window is a sensor light that shows from what direction your obstacle is approaching. It silences the radio and beeps repeatedly if you get REALLY close.
I imagine the cost of that is minimal (even without a sensor light), and this "camera in the rearview mirror" stuff is just more crap to break and cost $500 to fix outside of the warranty. (You can get a replacement kit for $25 if your backup sensor fails.) More importantly, it isn't obtrusive and adding gobs of cash to the car's already inflated price. And the bonus? The $25 kit includes a sensor light you put in view of the rear-view mirror, or above it in the front. Simple? Yes. Which is why the government is mandating a fucking camera.
But then again, this is the government. They mandated tire pressure monitors. Which makes rotating tires a big hassle.. and judging by the bell-shaped tires on brand new cars driving around these days... it's worked SO fucking well.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bal2.htm
It depends on who you ask. (According to this site, boldfaced was used by Shakespeare, but not boldfaced lie.)
Bold-faced doesn't make sense to me, because it really doesn't convey the meaning of how obvious the lie is. :) That's why I use bald-faced lie. :)
Not to pick nits, but there are as many who claim the idiom is "barefaced lie" (from the British version.) Came from something in the 1700's. Some say Bold-faced lie pre-dates that, but it's in dispute. But we can agree "bold-faced lie" is pretty much not it. :)
Not to pick nits, but, in the absence of "doing it yourself" global warming "believers" accept the evidence as fact, based on the experts, who they believe to be experts (there is no "test" to say, yep, that's an expert. Credentials are one way, but as we've seen before, they can be faked) and global warming "believers" also accept the data is rigorously peer reviewed (unless the "believer" was on the peer review board, they have to believe someone else has done their due diligence.)
While the evidence looks strong and there are many people who claim it is correct and factual without error, anyone who is not directly involved with the process of studying global warming is a "believer" in those who do. It is the quandary most folks are in... you may accept the facts as golden, but considering they aren't your conclusions, you have a long list of things you accept on faith that make those facts golden to you (and to many others.) I am not so foolish to believe that if someone in a white lab coat says it, it must be true, but I am also not so foolish as to believe that the facts as they are presented don't depend heavily on the credibility and experimentation of those producing the facts. That is a subjective measure in many respects (I am not a climate specialist, I have to take on faith that what those specialists say is true and not hogwash, as well as those who concur with them are also knowledgable enough to be able to concur.) We can't be so smug about dismissing the term "believer" when we talk about something that we rely on others to test, experimient on, and study.
I believe the earth is getting warmer. I believe the scientists are correct, but I do not believe that we will change much of the natural warming by reducing our artificial warming habits. Half of the planet is just now getting to the point Europe and America was in the dawn of the Industrial Age. That half is going to fill in the gaps of warming emissions that the West reduces. Does that bode well for the planet? It depends. It has gotten hotter here before. Separating the naturally occuring warm up with the man-made warm up may only postpone the inevitable that the planet itself is doing (without our help, I mean.) So, let's find the future of fuels and energy. But let's not dliute ourselves into thinking we're going to turn the planet into a paradise. And more importantly, let's be sure we aren't on the path to punish those who don't follow us, because that is against the philosophy of personal liberty... they will follow if it is incentivised, not enforced.
Planes exist in real life, so do rafts. Why isn't there an outcry over the 2nd movie's "escape the plane crash with the raft"?
All I'm saying is the fridge wasn't THAT big of a deal, and if anyone can suspend disbelief about the raft, and other things that exist in the real world, they can suspend disbelief about the nuked fridge. :) It just put the nuclear age in the context of the Indiana Jones movies. :)
If you're willing to suspend disbelief on the basic premise of the movie (professor who kicks ass and finds magical artifacts, survives all sorts of danger and gets the girl... most of the time) the rest of it is just fun.
Sure fridges don't do that in the real world, but the Ark of the Covenant can't melt Nazis, the Holy Grail can't cure gunshot wounds, and an Indian mystic can't keep you alive while holding your heart. There was a prototype Nazi aircraft that made hamburger meat out of a big guy... a plane that the Nazis didn't have in 1938 (and I don't think it ever got out of the prototype stage in 1944...) the sub base in the middle of nowhere was pretty neat... very GI Joe-esque. :)
It's a fun ride... It's not accurate and not a source of National Geographic style insight...
You'd understand the fridge, if only you spoke Hovitos.
Wow... someone pissed in YOUR post-toasties, didn't they? Take a pill, and realize that on matters of taste, there is no argument... if someone thinks Gnome 3 is shit and bloated (it is, I've got proof) that doesn't mean the $4000 you spent on an overpriced Alienware machine because daddy sued another person into oblivion is now officially worthless. I mean, he'll sue another grandmother raising her grandkids and you can afford the Alienware SUX 5000, complete with alien-shaped penis on the side... I'm sure you've been secretly pining for that on the "how big is my e-penis?" web forums.
But throw enough cruft at something and the "fast" machine will feel like an 8088 trying to run Windows 2.0....
I think someone needs a hug.
If it ain't broke... don't fix it. If a machine that is not "cutting edge" (or dare I say "old") and it still runs, why throw it out?
My machines are not cutting edge by a long shot... but I tend to use things until they finally wear out, rather than the hamsters in the upgrade wheel, tossing out perfectly good hardware for the "next big thing"....
Thinks like Windowmaker and lightweight distros are giving purpose to old machines that are still very much useful. (And I've got a stack of games for my PC that run fine on a Pentium III)....