I have ascended five times, including a tourist ^_^
I have failed to ascend many many times. I still weep when looking at my records file and seing that archeologist that died in the astral plane because I didn't realize Rodney had cursed my Unicorn horn (death by Pestilence... sigh).
Actually I think he has a point. Think of trying to do this over the, say,.com list of domains. It'd be a HUGE list, it'd take gobs of bandwidth and computer resources, and think that you'd have to keep running these checks regularly because webpages are constantly updated. Those systems aren't going to maintain themselves. If.mobi proves to be popular enough, it would indeed require a good chunk of resources, including manpower, to keep the sites in check. But I don't think there's much to worry just now, true:-)
Sure you do, but if you can get your neighbour to help you instead if breaking in and taking the guy yourself, you usually end up with a more friendly relationship between the countries governments. Respecting other countries' sovereignty is typically a good thing.
> rapidly growing feature-phone space, which is projected to
> comprise the majority of global mobile phone shipments by 2010.
I think I heard that before... something about trying to sell us something... Hmmmm, "3G" rings a bell for some reason...
As an aside, the fact that there're wizzier mobile phones capable of doing weird stuff is great because there're obviously people who like them. The leap to being the "majority of the market," however, seems to me like a bit of a leap of faith. Or maybe desire.
Ever heard of Skool Daze? The premise of the game is not as important as how the game plays. Why would anyone play an ex-convict working for the mafia? Because GTA games are fun and well made, that's why. Bizarre indeed...
1. I totally, completely, agree with you about the return policies. I'll suport consumer backslash action against retailers who don't accept returns of undamaged product.
2. That may be true for the console, but not for the PC. You can lock down what the user can do with the PC with correct user policies (which I'm sure you are capable of doing yourself, seing as you can post in Slashdot;) ). I don't recall many games lately that don't require some kind of HD install, I think the DOOM CD edition could be played directly from CD, but chances of your kid getting that from the shop are very slim:) Console control is a bit more troublesome, I'd suggest a locked cabinet with a key, when I was younger I wasn't allowed out to play unless I had finished my homework and I think it was a good measure. You can (IMO) put restrictions on game usage that are quite reasonable when you're not present.
>The conventional wisdom (I am not sure if it is true)
>is that Atari made a huge mistake in letting almost any
>third-party release games for the 2600.
Looking at my rather extensive collection of old Spectrum games, I'd say that's probably not true, but kept around for the sake of justifying the current lock-in console makers love so much.
>Is there really any function for myopia, for instance? What about colorblindness?
Semantics are interesting. The cause for those are mutations in some of the genes, but the genes themselves are not "bad". Each of the variations of a gene is called an "allele", and different alleles of a gene can vary on how they perform and, thus, be considered to be "good" or "bad". Talking about good or bad genes is conceptually incorrect, and it doesn't help anyone when these terms muddy the waters for the already convoluted definition of a gene. Talk about good or bad alleles, mutations, variations, forms, whatever, but don't call them good or bad genes.
"Cheating" is a funny word. I see it thrown around a fair bit when talking about paying for in-game gold, yet few people actually throw the same tantrums when there's no money involved.
The game won't bitch if I send 500g in-game to one of my low level characters and deck them in gear very few people at that low level will have. Yet it's only "cheating" if I give someone $X for doing the same.
You can argue about EULA and whatnot, but it's not the same "cheat" as hacking an online FPS, as you put it. Everything done in-game is perfectly acceptable in-game (in the context of the transaction, don't bother bringing the "harassing chinese farmer" red herring up because it doesn't apply), the only distinction is that you gave someone cash to send you that gold instead of saying "pretty pretty please." If you want to put a FPS analogy, it'd be the same as the company selling the game telling you that you can develop your own aimbot or have a friend code it for you if you want, but don't pay cash for someone else's aimbot program.
Conveniently skipping that pesky "EU" thing I see. Good going, you even managed to sucker a mod to give you a point.
The post I was replying to was not saying "country," it was saying "economy". In that respect, the EU is a single market, and a unified economy. Ever heard of the Euro? Yeah, I thought you may have.
Now go sit in the corner and don't come back until you've learned to follow a conversation, not just take a single post and pull replies out of your ass.
>And a smart person would know how to use the HTML ordered list
Not necessarily, you're making the common mistake of confusing knowledge with intelligence. It's probably not your fault, just a sad reflection of the education system nowadays, where mindless accumulation of knowledge is the yard stick for measuring progress.
>Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music?
Bingo! I'm no longer interested in music. There's so much noise and talk and shit about "intellectual property" and "copyright" and "theft" and whatnot that I simply disentangled myself from all that crap. I read books, I play games, I sometimes listen to Virgin Radio Classic Rock. And that's about it. I don't buy CDs, download music, or care what the whole scene is harping about.
>Are you sure a mass spectrometer would distinguish between ammonia compounds (in Urine) + Potassium Nitrate and a high grade explosive like Ammonium Nitrate?
The instrument? Yes. It all depends on what the software used to control when the detector beeps with a positive does. Let me explain.
I work at a biotech company and we do a lot of mass spec stuff. The instruments we have are extremely accurate; the Q-tof mass spectrometer, for example, can resolve the isotopic peaks of a protein fragment very easily (difference of 1 neutron), and you can get an accuracy of some 50 ppm (parts per million) between the reported mass of the molecule and the actual mass of it. Trust me, the instrument will distinguish between the different compounds, they'll come as clearly separated peaks in the spectra. They're amazingly accurate machines. The next generation of Q-tof claims it'll reach an accuracy of 1 ppm and lower.
The problem is what the software will do with the information it gets from the instrument. Is it programmed to go off when it detects specific molecules (meaning a specific mass plus the typical isotopic distribution of said molecule)? Will it go off if it detects any nitrogenated compound (these instruments can "break" large compounds when in MS/MS mode, it's the basis for protein sequencing when using Mass Spectrometers)? Will the list of "compounds that can make the alarm go off" include compounds that are typically found in places other than explosives "just in case"? The limiting step will be the rules used to report a positive, not the instrument itself. Or said in a different way, how paranoid the person making the rules really was.
Lots of crap music that sounds mostly the same keeps being marketed by the suits. One of the most heard phrases when it comes to justify downloading copyrighted music off the net: "I just download the crap that's not worth paying for."
You have to remember something, though: "Optional" upgrades are typically ignored by the punters and underused by the developers, specially third party developers. Either Nintendo pushes really hard with their own games for people to buy these expansions so that there's a reasonable userbase (which has its own share of backslash), or third parties will be very reluctant to program with their use in mind.
Or they come with the console itself, but I find that unlikely because that'd probably mean few people will actually bother with the gyro option and it'll be just a nice "gimmick," not a revolution. If they really want the remote to catch on, they can't put a traditional controller in the box.
> Though, as you play it, you'll be able to play longer and longer without breaks, I do believe.
I'm not exactly sure. Usually physical activities tend to make you more fit and let you do them for longer, but that's not the case depending on what you're flexing and how (se: RSI). Having to hold the controller in a fixed position with repeated movements of your wrists or arms may very well end up straining tendons or ligaments.
Games that use the regular D-pad and buttons, and only require the motion for key, selected moments would be the way to go (IMO) if you want to make it long and complex. If you make it necessary to constantly hold and move the thing around, the game better be playable and fun in short 10 minute bursts, as you said.
With regular controllers you can just sit on the sofa and play, arms comfortably resting while only your fingers do the work.
With a pointy device like this you're going to strain your arm a lot more. You have to somewhat keep it up, and aim, and move it, and wave it around. Every time. For every game.
Seriously, for someone who plays only from time to time it's probably not a big deal, and may even be cooler to poke around with the game in that fashion instead of the traditional one. Me? I'll stick to regular controllers, because I use them often enough.
> And what's so bad about rolling up a new character? (...) How can you make the most of those weird powers that hardly anyone else has?
I did that a lot, rolling new characters (I had 2 level 50s and a 45, a few 30s, a whole buch of 20s, and a few more under 10, the total being some 35 characters). With Issue 5, many of the things I was planning and changing for my characters went down the drain with a nerf rock tied around their necks, because I was trying those "fun" and "unusual" combinations. The game is still very playable if you follow the dev-driven pokémon powers mentality for your primary and secondary sets (gotta catch 'em all, gotta slot 'em all!), and the customization aspect has been clamped down far too hard for the re-rolling to be fun.
Blasters in general don't play all that different between them when you have to stick to your "role" of being glass cannon, controller powers aren't really that much different when you have to use them with a full primary to be any good (the handful of "defining powers" aren't really that hot post-nerf, so you have to slot up the AoE holds all controllers have, the immobilizes most controllers have, and so on), a stone tank isn't really that much different from an invulnerability tank once you spend 40 slots and 7 power choices to get your defenses up.
The day I5 hit test I happily went to the test server, deleted everything there, and started putting character after character in the copy queue to test how they'd play in the future, and one after another they fell extremely short of the game expectations. Imagine a nail, now imagine a hammer, and imagine that every copied character meant a mighty swing of the aforementioned hammer. My Ice/Fire "short range blaster"? Gone. My non-stamina, non-hasten, non-fighting pool (the cookie cutter trinity) Regen scrapper? Gone! My Invulneravility Tanker? So very gone. Gravity/FF controller? Tragic. Ice/Ice "hold 'em all" blaster? Rikti fodder. Energy/Energy "Glass Cannon" blaster? Well, what do you know, she's squarely in the devs' "vision", so she's fine! Too bad she was one of the few survivors. At the end of 3 weeks of intense testing I wasn't even mad or angry, I was merely sad to see that the game I had played and loved for over a year (since pre-release!) had been snatched away from me in one fell swoop, and one clear idea, that my only possible next stop was the cancel button.
I'm probably rambling. In short, I5 took a lot of choices out of players' hands in the name of balance, and very likely, in the name of open PvP for the upcoming expansion/standalone-game. Re-rolling is a lot less fun now, and so is tinkering with powers out of the devs' intended "vision," even those that are taken just for "fun." And when that is one of the most touted-out strong points of your game, that's a problem.
One last thing:
> Host a scavenger hunt.
I also did one of those. A pretty big one, in fact. I took over 800 screenshots all around Paragon City, with a/loc attached to it, and made a contest where people would have to enter the correct city zone and location to win a prize. When you entered the correct location for a screenshot, you got a code, and with that code you could pick up a prize in a huge prize board (28x32 squares) with over 25 million influence in prizes, a few cute things like the Winter Present Inspirations (a dozen of them), low level SO enhancements (the kind you love when you're under level 22), and even 10 Hamidon Origin Enhancements (the pre-nerfed variety). It wasn't exactly complicated (I had a step-by-step explanation, and many of these screenshots were of well known landmarks or buildings).
There were a total of 10 entries from people other than my two closest friends in the game. In 3 weeks the contest lasted, basically noone ever showed any interest. I kept an eye on the Apache logs, and the pages were just quietly sitting there on a corner. The first thing I heard from anyone regarding the contest
Slashdot Mirror
I have ascended five times, including a tourist ^_^
I have failed to ascend many many times. I still weep when looking at my records file and seing that archeologist that died in the astral plane because I didn't realize Rodney had cursed my Unicorn horn (death by Pestilence... sigh).
Actually I think he has a point. Think of trying to do this over the, say, .com list of domains. It'd be a HUGE list, it'd take gobs of bandwidth and computer resources, and think that you'd have to keep running these checks regularly because webpages are constantly updated. Those systems aren't going to maintain themselves. If .mobi proves to be popular enough, it would indeed require a good chunk of resources, including manpower, to keep the sites in check. But I don't think there's much to worry just now, true :-)
Sure you do, but if you can get your neighbour to help you instead if breaking in and taking the guy yourself, you usually end up with a more friendly relationship between the countries governments. Respecting other countries' sovereignty is typically a good thing.
> rapidly growing feature-phone space, which is projected to
> comprise the majority of global mobile phone shipments by 2010.
I think I heard that before... something about trying to sell us something... Hmmmm, "3G" rings a bell for some reason...
As an aside, the fact that there're wizzier mobile phones capable of doing weird stuff is great because there're obviously people who like them. The leap to being the "majority of the market," however, seems to me like a bit of a leap of faith. Or maybe desire.
Ever heard of Skool Daze? The premise of the game is not as important as how the game plays. Why would anyone play an ex-convict working for the mafia? Because GTA games are fun and well made, that's why. Bizarre indeed...
1. I totally, completely, agree with you about the return policies. I'll suport consumer backslash action against retailers who don't accept returns of undamaged product.
;) ). I don't recall many games lately that don't require some kind of HD install, I think the DOOM CD edition could be played directly from CD, but chances of your kid getting that from the shop are very slim :) Console control is a bit more troublesome, I'd suggest a locked cabinet with a key, when I was younger I wasn't allowed out to play unless I had finished my homework and I think it was a good measure. You can (IMO) put restrictions on game usage that are quite reasonable when you're not present.
2. That may be true for the console, but not for the PC. You can lock down what the user can do with the PC with correct user policies (which I'm sure you are capable of doing yourself, seing as you can post in Slashdot
>The conventional wisdom (I am not sure if it is true)
>is that Atari made a huge mistake in letting almost any
>third-party release games for the 2600.
Looking at my rather extensive collection of old Spectrum games, I'd say that's probably not true, but kept around for the sake of justifying the current lock-in console makers love so much.
>Is there really any function for myopia, for instance? What about colorblindness?
Semantics are interesting. The cause for those are mutations in some of the genes, but the genes themselves are not "bad". Each of the variations of a gene is called an "allele", and different alleles of a gene can vary on how they perform and, thus, be considered to be "good" or "bad". Talking about good or bad genes is conceptually incorrect, and it doesn't help anyone when these terms muddy the waters for the already convoluted definition of a gene. Talk about good or bad alleles, mutations, variations, forms, whatever, but don't call them good or bad genes.
>What should someone's UID have to do with the validity of what they post?
When it comes to history, lore, and general knowledge about the evolution of Slashdot itself, I'd say the UID matters quite a bit.
"Cheating" is a funny word. I see it thrown around a fair bit when talking about paying for in-game gold, yet few people actually throw the same tantrums when there's no money involved.
The game won't bitch if I send 500g in-game to one of my low level characters and deck them in gear very few people at that low level will have. Yet it's only "cheating" if I give someone $X for doing the same.
You can argue about EULA and whatnot, but it's not the same "cheat" as hacking an online FPS, as you put it. Everything done in-game is perfectly acceptable in-game (in the context of the transaction, don't bother bringing the "harassing chinese farmer" red herring up because it doesn't apply), the only distinction is that you gave someone cash to send you that gold instead of saying "pretty pretty please." If you want to put a FPS analogy, it'd be the same as the company selling the game telling you that you can develop your own aimbot or have a friend code it for you if you want, but don't pay cash for someone else's aimbot program.
Conveniently skipping that pesky "EU" thing I see. Good going, you even managed to sucker a mod to give you a point.
The post I was replying to was not saying "country," it was saying "economy". In that respect, the EU is a single market, and a unified economy. Ever heard of the Euro? Yeah, I thought you may have.
Now go sit in the corner and don't come back until you've learned to follow a conversation, not just take a single post and pull replies out of your ass.
>The US has the largest econonmy in the world by far
"By far"?
List of countries by GDP.
I don't think "by far" means what you think it means.
>And a smart person would know how to use the HTML ordered list
Not necessarily, you're making the common mistake of confusing knowledge with intelligence. It's probably not your fault, just a sad reflection of the education system nowadays, where mindless accumulation of knowledge is the yard stick for measuring progress.
>Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music?
Bingo! I'm no longer interested in music. There's so much noise and talk and shit about "intellectual property" and "copyright" and "theft" and whatnot that I simply disentangled myself from all that crap. I read books, I play games, I sometimes listen to Virgin Radio Classic Rock. And that's about it. I don't buy CDs, download music, or care what the whole scene is harping about.
I. Just. Don't. Care. Anymore.
>Are you sure a mass spectrometer would distinguish between ammonia compounds (in Urine) + Potassium Nitrate and a high grade explosive like Ammonium Nitrate?
The instrument? Yes. It all depends on what the software used to control when the detector beeps with a positive does. Let me explain.
I work at a biotech company and we do a lot of mass spec stuff. The instruments we have are extremely accurate; the Q-tof mass spectrometer, for example, can resolve the isotopic peaks of a protein fragment very easily (difference of 1 neutron), and you can get an accuracy of some 50 ppm (parts per million) between the reported mass of the molecule and the actual mass of it. Trust me, the instrument will distinguish between the different compounds, they'll come as clearly separated peaks in the spectra. They're amazingly accurate machines. The next generation of Q-tof claims it'll reach an accuracy of 1 ppm and lower.
The problem is what the software will do with the information it gets from the instrument. Is it programmed to go off when it detects specific molecules (meaning a specific mass plus the typical isotopic distribution of said molecule)? Will it go off if it detects any nitrogenated compound (these instruments can "break" large compounds when in MS/MS mode, it's the basis for protein sequencing when using Mass Spectrometers)? Will the list of "compounds that can make the alarm go off" include compounds that are typically found in places other than explosives "just in case"? The limiting step will be the rules used to report a positive, not the instrument itself. Or said in a different way, how paranoid the person making the rules really was.
"Running Macromedia's software is against me security policy, so I can't view it. I'd appreciate any reports on what you actually see. "
Well, for once the slashdot summary WAS accurate. Something along the lines of "nothing to see here, move along."
'We expect to see more of this on the mobile front,'
I bet you do, as you are probably already hard at work to make it happen.
Lots of crap music that sounds mostly the same keeps being marketed by the suits. One of the most heard phrases when it comes to justify downloading copyrighted music off the net: "I just download the crap that's not worth paying for."
Hmmmmm...
You have to remember something, though: "Optional" upgrades are typically ignored by the punters and underused by the developers, specially third party developers. Either Nintendo pushes really hard with their own games for people to buy these expansions so that there's a reasonable userbase (which has its own share of backslash), or third parties will be very reluctant to program with their use in mind.
Or they come with the console itself, but I find that unlikely because that'd probably mean few people will actually bother with the gyro option and it'll be just a nice "gimmick," not a revolution. If they really want the remote to catch on, they can't put a traditional controller in the box.
> Though, as you play it, you'll be able to play longer and longer without breaks, I do believe.
I'm not exactly sure. Usually physical activities tend to make you more fit and let you do them for longer, but that's not the case depending on what you're flexing and how (se: RSI). Having to hold the controller in a fixed position with repeated movements of your wrists or arms may very well end up straining tendons or ligaments.
Games that use the regular D-pad and buttons, and only require the motion for key, selected moments would be the way to go (IMO) if you want to make it long and complex. If you make it necessary to constantly hold and move the thing around, the game better be playable and fun in short 10 minute bursts, as you said.
To the two words, I can only think of one: Tired.
With regular controllers you can just sit on the sofa and play, arms comfortably resting while only your fingers do the work.
With a pointy device like this you're going to strain your arm a lot more. You have to somewhat keep it up, and aim, and move it, and wave it around. Every time. For every game.
Seriously, for someone who plays only from time to time it's probably not a big deal, and may even be cooler to poke around with the game in that fashion instead of the traditional one. Me? I'll stick to regular controllers, because I use them often enough.
> This article was a waste of time..please dont read it.
;-)
You must be new here...
> And what's so bad about rolling up a new character? (...) How can you make the most of those weird powers that hardly anyone else has?
/loc attached to it, and made a contest where people would have to enter the correct city zone and location to win a prize. When you entered the correct location for a screenshot, you got a code, and with that code you could pick up a prize in a huge prize board (28x32 squares) with over 25 million influence in prizes, a few cute things like the Winter Present Inspirations (a dozen of them), low level SO enhancements (the kind you love when you're under level 22), and even 10 Hamidon Origin Enhancements (the pre-nerfed variety). It wasn't exactly complicated (I had a step-by-step explanation, and many of these screenshots were of well known landmarks or buildings).
I did that a lot, rolling new characters (I had 2 level 50s and a 45, a few 30s, a whole buch of 20s, and a few more under 10, the total being some 35 characters). With Issue 5, many of the things I was planning and changing for my characters went down the drain with a nerf rock tied around their necks, because I was trying those "fun" and "unusual" combinations. The game is still very playable if you follow the dev-driven pokémon powers mentality for your primary and secondary sets (gotta catch 'em all, gotta slot 'em all!), and the customization aspect has been clamped down far too hard for the re-rolling to be fun.
Blasters in general don't play all that different between them when you have to stick to your "role" of being glass cannon, controller powers aren't really that much different when you have to use them with a full primary to be any good (the handful of "defining powers" aren't really that hot post-nerf, so you have to slot up the AoE holds all controllers have, the immobilizes most controllers have, and so on), a stone tank isn't really that much different from an invulnerability tank once you spend 40 slots and 7 power choices to get your defenses up.
The day I5 hit test I happily went to the test server, deleted everything there, and started putting character after character in the copy queue to test how they'd play in the future, and one after another they fell extremely short of the game expectations. Imagine a nail, now imagine a hammer, and imagine that every copied character meant a mighty swing of the aforementioned hammer. My Ice/Fire "short range blaster"? Gone. My non-stamina, non-hasten, non-fighting pool (the cookie cutter trinity) Regen scrapper? Gone! My Invulneravility Tanker? So very gone. Gravity/FF controller? Tragic. Ice/Ice "hold 'em all" blaster? Rikti fodder. Energy/Energy "Glass Cannon" blaster? Well, what do you know, she's squarely in the devs' "vision", so she's fine! Too bad she was one of the few survivors. At the end of 3 weeks of intense testing I wasn't even mad or angry, I was merely sad to see that the game I had played and loved for over a year (since pre-release!) had been snatched away from me in one fell swoop, and one clear idea, that my only possible next stop was the cancel button.
I'm probably rambling. In short, I5 took a lot of choices out of players' hands in the name of balance, and very likely, in the name of open PvP for the upcoming expansion/standalone-game. Re-rolling is a lot less fun now, and so is tinkering with powers out of the devs' intended "vision," even those that are taken just for "fun." And when that is one of the most touted-out strong points of your game, that's a problem.
One last thing:
> Host a scavenger hunt.
I also did one of those. A pretty big one, in fact. I took over 800 screenshots all around Paragon City, with a
There were a total of 10 entries from people other than my two closest friends in the game. In 3 weeks the contest lasted, basically noone ever showed any interest. I kept an eye on the Apache logs, and the pages were just quietly sitting there on a corner. The first thing I heard from anyone regarding the contest
> You might say this in jest, but I'd be interested in hearing what ethical vegetarians think about eating cruelty-free meat.
http://angryflower.com/vegeta.gif
Yes, mod me down with a redundant tag for posting at the exact same fucking time the other guy did, won't you?