What you are doing is very important. When we have really powerful computers and AI, it would be possible to recreate most of you using this information, making you in, a sense, immortal. Of course, a better option would be a cryonic suspension.
Yahoo should not delete accounts of dead users. I think the best policy would be to encrypt them with Yahoo public key and release the encrypted data to relatives. That way the data is not lost irreversibly, Yahoo! privacy policy is not violated and if in the future something changes (Yahoo policy, morals of our society, etc.), the data can be decrypted.
I personally don't intend to die (I'm a transhumanist), but if I would, I really wouldn't care whether my personal e-mail are released. I mean, my family members already know about the worst things I did and they managed to accept it.:)
But Usenet posts you made when you were 14, that's a whole another story... Those must not be seen by anyone.:)
Sorry it quit, but your remarks are uncalled for. Don't take it personally. It's just that you added a slash to the end of working links (and they end with with the filename) making them both invalid. If you clicked on them in preview, they shouldn't have worked. And I know about spaces on Slashdot. It's you who don't know where you can add slashes, but I am not implying that you are a clueless newbie.:)
In regards to the rest of your post, that sounds reasonable. But even though I don't know the truth in the Tryptophan case, I tend to be very suspect of psychotic behaviour, such that was exhibited by the FDA (according to you). If Tryptophan is bad for you, why does it matter whether it was GE? If it's good, but could contain contaminants, why that stubborn refusal, even if good filtering schemes are proposed? I still fail to see that as well-documented evidence that genetic engineering was at fault.
I am very much willing to accept that GE can, in principle, cause problems. It's just that I don't see it as likely and don't realise why normal rules should not apply. I don't see why an FDA testing and approval process that works with normal drugs should fail with a GE drug. I don't understand why we consider food companies capable of handling various dangerous chemicals in making our daily meals, but incapable of exercising some due caution in making GE products.
Do you know that the last three games I bought (in pirate store in Russia) had CD jewel cases placed in resealable packages (they even had "resealable" written on them)? Since none of them require a CD in drive to play I can put the disks back and exchange them for something else for an extra charge. How is that for "customer oriented"?:)
The average number of pages in the EULA included with a pirated DVD sold in Russia: 0 (zero).
The average amount of money you are charged for changing a returned CD or DVD for another one: 1 dollar.
The average number of minutes spent discussing the return with a salesperson: 2 minutes (includes explaining which disk you want to have instead).
The probability that you'll be able to exchange the disk in a different store than you purchased it in: 30%.
The number of lawsuits against software manufacturers for violating some implied warranty, justifying the need for stronger EULA enforcement laws: 0 (zero).
The number of customers, who are willing to be fucked in the ass by software publishers, as long as (for an extra charge) lube is provided: 750 million.
Is it just me, or was the "Unofficial FAQ" raided by the RIAA, who put a goatse link there? Anyone saved a FAQ and can provide a mirror (if you are not afraid of a copyright violation lawsuit)?
This is certainly a factor. Remember, both ShareReactor (Switzerland) and ShareConnector (Netherlands), the largest ed2k link sites were closed shortly after receiving ~10000$ in donations for new servers. That amount was transformed into 50-100 grands by creative retelling and the police had the reason to become involved.
The lesson learned - keep P2P decentralized, so that there is no need to run expensive servers, as every user foots a small share of the total bandwidth bill.
I wonder if you ever use the preview function. And if you do, whether you also try clicking on links you post...
In any case, I also read that the reason for these fatalities was that "with the higher tryptophan concentration in the culture medium, the purification process had also been streamlined to reduce costs, and a purification step that used charcoal absorption to remove impurities had been omitted. This allowed another bacterial metabolite through the purification, and this contaminant of the end-product had been responsible for the toxic effects".
I fail to see how it can be called a "well documented medical risk to humans from a gene-engineered food". If this is the worst story GE-haters can dig up, I would require that from now on all food and drugs I consume be genetically engineered.
In any case, maintaining that slowly-growing file of registrations is a PITA. It doesn't need to be. First, define very clearly what is a gratuitous registration (basically registering to be able to read/download/access something). The next level is registration to post, which you also would often not care much about. Finally are the relatively useful registrations where you are buying something or where your privacy is concerned (e-mail, for example).
Now just invent a rare login (8 chars) that is not used by anyone. Visit googlewhack for suggestions.:) Remember it. Invent a very simple password that is easy to type (qwertyui is fine). Now every time you need to register, use that login, that password and login@tanya.com for your e-mail. Now you can be sure that you will remember your user details every time, you can be sure that you would be able to use the login on every site (it won't be already taken) and you don't need to record the passwords at all.
Personally I don't mind website registration all that much - it's the BBSes and forums that I really despise. Especially the various PHP forums that almost always are set to registration-required on default. Even when it's a tech support for a game publisher. I mean, I can understand trying to preserve a community dedicated to some obscure topic from trolls and spammers by requiring a registration, but why require your customers to register (and separately from the product registration) to post to support forums?
Now listent to my gubmint-approved [[il]]logic. Just because we can't realistically stop all terrorists doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything possible to stop as many of them as we can.
Therefore, spending resources on doing things that appear to be intended for eliminating "dark alleys" on the Internet is good. See?
Such drastic changes are warranted only where there is a very compelling reason. Read about things like time zones, daylight saving time, time scales and, of course, calendars. (sorry for reverse wikispam). Any changes happened only when there was a real reason for that, when a nation (or a region) needed to change, not just because some professor thought it would be a good idea. This is DOA, there is zero possibility that anyone could be persuaded to do the switch. Heck, some countries still cling to their outdated religious calendars and it's less than a century that we have a common calendar on this planet. No chances for this change at all.
And if there is no chances that this is a realistic scheme, what do we have on our hands? Blatant self-promotion, that's what. Blatant-self promotion from a retarded Christian who designs web-pages with yellow background. That should have never been posted here.
Will the Call-A-Bikes become more impenetrable, as Darwinian geek theory dictates they'll need for survival? The key to being a successful parasite is not to harm your host.:) The hack may be sufficiently benign not to harm "Die Bahn" enough for it to care.
1) NYT doesn't spam you and doesn't sell your address. Confirmed repeatedly.
2) Most people here should already have a registration with NYT and a cookie, so they don't need to worry. NYT writes enough good stories that it's worth the trouble (which I had in about 1997).
To call Far Cry "non-linear" is, at best, a mistake. You are right about everything you say about it, but it's still lighyears ahead of Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 and much better than most other games (even the paragon of free exploratory gameplay, the GTA, has a linear story overall). If we are going to call any action game non-linear, it would be Far Cry. I hope we agree on the essence of it.
I also agree about "force", but helicopters over sea are still much better than a typical HL2 corridor I described earlier (4 doors bricked up, one way caved in, the remaining door has a few planks in the way).
I agree about SoF2, there was also Flashpoint, and some other games as well, but overall it still was a significant strength of Far Cry (even without seamless transitions).
That may have been true for you, but that's just false for other people. Well, may be, I am willing to concede this point to you. Still, there are two things I want to note
On my mid-range system Far Cry textures/models look better than the other "Big Two" and I suspect that would be true for the lower end systems as well.
When I try to objectively judge the quality of HL2 urban levels (not just the textures), they are very close to Max Payne 2 (and some other shooters). There isn't anything that would really be all that impressive graphically, while Far Cry has the jungle and the sea. Doom 3 is even worse - the first half looks like any other stock sci-fi shooter (except for the lighting and character models).
At this point, I can only assume you are joking. The two main characters in the game were as cookie-cutter as they come I didn't mean the main characters. These were very basic, even though still better than Doom 3 marine or Gordon Freeman (most of whose backstory consists of Valve's hype about him being such a cool character). But I was speaking about background characters - the grunts. They were (at least to me - tastes differ) as well defined as those in AvP2. I happen to enjoy good dialog in a FPS and I didn't hear any in Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 (except for a few cutscenes to move the story forward). The NPCs in Half-Life 2 were, as I said, completely horrible, barely on the level of strippers in Duke Nukem 3D (with two preset animations).:) The NPCs in Doom 3 were not so annoyingly bad, probably because they were mostly dead... or dying.
Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 offered significantly more challenging enemies than anything in Far Cry. I dunno... you are strange, really. If you didn't have a problem with Far Cry mercs on extra hard, you must be able to stroll through Half-Life 2 without dying once... This is really hard to believe. What exactly was challenging about HL2? I finished it faster than any other FPS I ever played.
Did you use anything outside of the M16 variant in FarCry? Yes, I did. Sniper gun is indispensable. Other machine guns have their distinct styles and are useful in different ways. Grenades are cool. I am not saying it had a lot of guns, but certainly more than HL2 (I agree that Doom 3 hardware rocked, but only because it was copied from the original game). You can't really use rockets outside from a few preselected points where you have infinite ammo and need to shoot down (according to the script) a particular helicopter or strider. Bug Bait was available for one level out of eleven. The crossbow was useless. Magnum useless (powerful, but why bother with it?). Grenades somewhat useful. Basically I found myself using the machinegun (or the 2nd machinegun, whatever it was) most of the time, occasionally switching to the shotgun to take out particular monsters and gravity gun to aleviate the boredom.
Then I would suggest you start over, and take a good look at Far Cry with a critical eye. I did. I started playing it again after finishing Half-Life 2. I find it better-looking and much more interesting than HL2. I am not a CryTek fanboy or a Valve hater, I just see a lot of weaknesses tha
People simply can't be objective, can they? I am all for knocking down games from unknown studios and for blindly following the megahyped big-name development powerhouses, but give me a break.
Far Cry was the first FPS game with large realistic levels. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 both had "corridor-based" linear levels.
Far Cry had the best lush vegetation (non-existant in Doom 3, scarce in Half-Life 2, and ugly in other shooters).
Far Cry was probably the first major shooter to have great use of shaders, for realistic waters, for bump-mapping and normal-mapping, for special effects, etc (most games use them now too).
Far Cry had very detailed textures and models for characters and environments. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 were not playable with high-res textures, making them look much uglier. And in any case, Far Cry was the first.
Far Cry had the best AI in an FPS ever (and it remains the best). Yes, there were bugs. Yes, you could outsmart the AI. Yes, it wasn't always 100% realistic. But compared with competition, Far Cry was Turing test material. In Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 enemies had almost no AI at all (besides basic things like pathfinding and shooting in the right direction). Haven't you seen the NOFRAG HL2 video, where a guy managed to hide from a Combine manning a turret behind a 20cm can of paint, lured him from the turret (without using his weapons at all) and then used the turret to kill that retard? Both Valve and id lied, while Crytek delivered. Enemies in Far Cry had teamwork, realistic alert modes, idle behaviour, etc.
Far Cry was one of the few shooters with non-linear gameplay (there might have been some lesser-known titles). Most of the levels had several (up to 5) logical, fun and realistic approaches to finish them. Meanwhile, Doom 3 had only one possible and obvious route. Half-Life 2 was even worse, as it only had only one way to play, but some of the required solutions were not obvious.
Technologically it is silly to deny that Far Cry was groundbreaking in a lot of respects. It had a lot of other strong points, such as good level design (as opposed to identically looking Doom 3 earlier levels or blatantly linear Half-Life 2 levels - best example was when you are in a corridor and 4 doors are bricked up, one end of the corridor cave in and the one door you need to go to is blocked with a few planks) or great characters with engaging backstories and dialogue (even though some didn't like it, it was a lot better than Doom 3 PDAs and totally lifeless and idiotic drones that pass for NPCs in Half-Life 2 using all their 2 canned lines of dialog).
I understand that you may dislike Far Cry and you have every right to do so. But please, when we try to discuss it objectively, let's just stay objective.
Do you imply that the story was better in Doom 3 or in Half-Life 2 (what, did HL2 have a story?)? Do you imply that Combine soldiers were tougher than Far Cry mercs? Or may be you were challenged by headcrab zombies more than by Tridents? LOL
As for graphics, I am running all these games on the same machine (the video card is ATI Radeon 9600 Pro) at settings which allow comfortable framerates. And frankly, Far Cry looks best. I can forgive Doom 3 its blurry textures for the lighting model, but Half-Life 2 has absolutely nothing new to offer to compensate for blurry textures (medium quality) and rather simple level modelling. I finished Half-Life 2 a few days ago and went back to Far Cry. It was very refreshing to see textures which were so crisp they almost hurt my eyes.:)
Weapons may have been typical, but at least it had some weapons worthy of using. Half-Life only had gravity gun, a shotgun and two machineguns (the rest was either totally pointless or completely useless). Frankly, I am not a weapons specialist, but I don't realise what was so "average and typical" about guns in Far Cry.
This may sound like two fanboys battling over the GOTY prize, so let me just iterate two strong points of Far Cry that really warrant calling it more innovative - great AI and non-linear levels. And, of course, the fact that it was released a good 6 months before Doom 3 and 9 months before Half-Life 2.
That's the communist model.:-) OSS companies are giving as much as they think they can, while getting everything that they want. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs".
40 years ago Khruschev said: "this generation will live under communism". His forecasting skills were worse than ITC's, but we will get there, eventually. Don't lose hope.:-)
The reason for that are the moronic sheeps that permeate all spheres of human life including (first and foremost) Slashdot.:) Remember the stories about Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. Remember how everyone here wet their pants and secretly masturbated over promo screenshots? Remember how excited every masochistic slashdotter was about having to upgrade his computer to play Doom 3?
People are idiots. 3 "next-gen" FPS games were released in 2004. Half-Life 2 turned out to be the most popular, despite the fact that it has ordinary graphics, horrible story and 10 hours of gameplay. Doom 3 was the second in popularity, with an engine that looked like a dog, horrible gameplay and boring levels. And one truly innovative game with the most stunning graphics and released on schedule and without as much hype, Far Cry by Crytek, was quickly forgotten. I exaggerated a bit, but the point still stands - as long as people are willing to pay for the name, publishers would develop sequels (and licensed titles) to deliver what the public (including the public here) wants.
Oh yes I do still think so. For the simple reason that most furries do not abuse animals, just like looking at goatse doesn't make you gay. Stop these phobias. I don't know about SharpFang and, frankly, this is none of my business (not your business either), but I am not an "animal fucker", as you so eloquently put it. I can appreciate a furry picture from time to time, or even furry porn, but I have no desire whatsoever to dress in a furry suit, imagine I am a tiger or have sex with a horse. But if you are afraid about looking at furry pictures, may be you need to look again at your own sexuality?
Don't waste your time replying, I deleted Space cowboy.exe, because it was a lame AI with no imagination and no understanding of complex issues. Sorry if that malware bothered you.
Well, the.torrent does have a link to a tracker, which does provide information about IP of those peers who distribute the file. ed2k link, on the other hand, doesn't actually link to anything. It just provides information (basically the same as the.torrent - size, name, but it doesn't need to be big, because instead of providing hash for each block it provides a hash of the hashes).
The 2600 case is a precedent that a law can be twisted when powerful people need it. So yes, it's possible that ed2k link sites would get sued, but so far there wasn't a single successful lawsuit (or even a lawsuit at all). They were just raided and servers confiscated as evidence. Simon Moon is still innocent, it's just that he isn't in the position to run a link site right now.:(
Suprnova was in Hungary. They were sure they don't need to worry about American laws too. It seems they were wrong. Though I do agree that St. Petersburg, Russia is still a rather safe place to perform on the Internet activities that are considered illegal elsewhere. Speaking from experience.:-)
If you are seriously interested, though, I think it would be wise to ask people from sharereactor.ru, nnm.ru and the like, who have experience running "shady" sites and more importantly, getting ad money to finance them. May be they can offer some advice.
I wonder if my yesterday comment would be prophetic... Seriously, as I said, ed2k network is much more resistant against scare tactics, police raids, death threats and the like. And even if all servers are closed, the Kad network would still work fine and there is no legal ground to prohibit people from maintaining connections to it.
Those who want to download Linux distros, don't worry. Those who like to download Adobe and MS software too, as well as other juicy stuff, it may be time to jump the ship.:) Download eMule or another client and start using the eDonkey2000 network. The best thing is that you don't even need sites like FindHash or (now deceased) ShareReactor and ShareConnector - the search functions work just fine with either servers or Kad and a link can be distributed in any form a plaintext string can:
ed2k://|file|(Why The Riaa And Mpaa Are Wrong) Lawrence Lessig - Free Culture.mp3|7600415|FEF5808A7BC2C7527F1614925D7CF1 20|/
ed2k://|file|Shakespear - The Complete Works Of William Shakespere.zip|2251136|DCE09B150012755941E50F7EFCB 5CE91|/
ed2k://|file|(ebook - conspiracy,secret,cover-up) - Bush's Master Plan For The Internet.htm|14156|74DF254E9F84E6166E4DB7A3DC68E68 C|/
ed2k://|file|12 Year Old Hard Sex Child Kid Porn Fuck Kiddie.avi|13953856|F272E312749EF64411073EAF1F4E41 17|/
ed2k://|file|ebook - Holy Books Compendium - KJ Bible, Apocrypha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Koran, Book of Mormon, Egyptian Book of the Dead.pdf|25734955|ABB8746027FA36B0C472004DFFB85F99 |/
ed2k://|file|Illuminati - World Domination Handbook (1.2).pdf|178778|DDD88D12B9773FB36CA1C6A638CB391E|/
ed2k://|file|school teacher incest xxx fuck porn sex fisting oral blow job pre-teen asian big tits boobs breasts vaginal anal(1).mpeg|72037896|AA8F5CED0E1260F6BB17C442ED71 2598|/
See? You don't need to host torrents, you don't need to run trackers, you only need the size and the checksum to get the files (and someone to still share them, of course). ed2k network may not have the flashcrowd effect and you may spend a bit longer getting the latest Hollywood release than you would with BitTorrent, but ed2k is here to stay and you don't depend on link sites that much. Furthermore, legally providing an ed2k link (it's just the checksum and the file size, come on!) is much safer than serving a torrent (which contains information about users who distribute this copyrighted work without authorisation).
Slashdot Mirror
What you are doing is very important. When we have really powerful computers and AI, it would be possible to recreate most of you using this information, making you in, a sense, immortal. Of course, a better option would be a cryonic suspension.
It isn't?
Yahoo should not delete accounts of dead users. I think the best policy would be to encrypt them with Yahoo public key and release the encrypted data to relatives. That way the data is not lost irreversibly, Yahoo! privacy policy is not violated and if in the future something changes (Yahoo policy, morals of our society, etc.), the data can be decrypted.
:)
:)
I personally don't intend to die (I'm a transhumanist), but if I would, I really wouldn't care whether my personal e-mail are released. I mean, my family members already know about the worst things I did and they managed to accept it.
But Usenet posts you made when you were 14, that's a whole another story... Those must not be seen by anyone.
Sorry it quit, but your remarks are uncalled for. :)
Don't take it personally. It's just that you added a slash to the end of working links (and they end with with the filename) making them both invalid. If you clicked on them in preview, they shouldn't have worked. And I know about spaces on Slashdot. It's you who don't know where you can add slashes, but I am not implying that you are a clueless newbie.
In regards to the rest of your post, that sounds reasonable. But even though I don't know the truth in the Tryptophan case, I tend to be very suspect of psychotic behaviour, such that was exhibited by the FDA (according to you). If Tryptophan is bad for you, why does it matter whether it was GE? If it's good, but could contain contaminants, why that stubborn refusal, even if good filtering schemes are proposed? I still fail to see that as well-documented evidence that genetic engineering was at fault.
I am very much willing to accept that GE can, in principle, cause problems. It's just that I don't see it as likely and don't realise why normal rules should not apply. I don't see why an FDA testing and approval process that works with normal drugs should fail with a GE drug. I don't understand why we consider food companies capable of handling various dangerous chemicals in making our daily meals, but incapable of exercising some due caution in making GE products.
Do you know that the last three games I bought (in pirate store in Russia) had CD jewel cases placed in resealable packages (they even had "resealable" written on them)? Since none of them require a CD in drive to play I can put the disks back and exchange them for something else for an extra charge. How is that for "customer oriented"? :)
The average number of pages in the EULA included with a pirated DVD sold in Russia: 0 (zero).
The average amount of money you are charged for changing a returned CD or DVD for another one: 1 dollar.
The average number of minutes spent discussing the return with a salesperson: 2 minutes (includes explaining which disk you want to have instead).
The probability that you'll be able to exchange the disk in a different store than you purchased it in: 30%.
The number of lawsuits against software manufacturers for violating some implied warranty, justifying the need for stronger EULA enforcement laws: 0 (zero).
The number of customers, who are willing to be fucked in the ass by software publishers, as long as (for an extra charge) lube is provided: 750 million.
Is it just me, or was the "Unofficial FAQ" raided by the RIAA, who put a goatse link there? Anyone saved a FAQ and can provide a mirror (if you are not afraid of a copyright violation lawsuit)?
This is certainly a factor. Remember, both ShareReactor (Switzerland) and ShareConnector (Netherlands), the largest ed2k link sites were closed shortly after receiving ~10000$ in donations for new servers. That amount was transformed into 50-100 grands by creative retelling and the police had the reason to become involved.
The lesson learned - keep P2P decentralized, so that there is no need to run expensive servers, as every user foots a small share of the total bandwidth bill.
I wonder if you ever use the preview function. And if you do, whether you also try clicking on links you post...
In any case, I also read that the reason for these fatalities was that "with the higher tryptophan concentration in the culture medium, the purification process had also been streamlined to reduce costs, and a purification step that used charcoal absorption to remove impurities had been omitted. This allowed another bacterial metabolite through the purification, and this contaminant of the end-product had been responsible for the toxic effects".
I fail to see how it can be called a "well documented medical risk to humans from a gene-engineered food". If this is the worst story GE-haters can dig up, I would require that from now on all food and drugs I consume be genetically engineered.
In any case, maintaining that slowly-growing file of registrations is a PITA.
:) Remember it. Invent a very simple password that is easy to type (qwertyui is fine). Now every time you need to register, use that login, that password and login@tanya.com for your e-mail. Now you can be sure that you will remember your user details every time, you can be sure that you would be able to use the login on every site (it won't be already taken) and you don't need to record the passwords at all.
It doesn't need to be. First, define very clearly what is a gratuitous registration (basically registering to be able to read/download/access something). The next level is registration to post, which you also would often not care much about. Finally are the relatively useful registrations where you are buying something or where your privacy is concerned (e-mail, for example).
Now just invent a rare login (8 chars) that is not used by anyone. Visit googlewhack for suggestions.
Personally I don't mind website registration all that much - it's the BBSes and forums that I really despise. Especially the various PHP forums that almost always are set to registration-required on default. Even when it's a tech support for a game publisher. I mean, I can understand trying to preserve a community dedicated to some obscure topic from trolls and spammers by requiring a registration, but why require your customers to register (and separately from the product registration) to post to support forums?
Duh! It causes 404 errors in non-GE humans. :)
Now listent to my gubmint-approved [[il]]logic. Just because we can't realistically stop all terrorists doesn't mean we shouldn't do everything possible to stop as many of them as we can.
Therefore, spending resources on doing things that appear to be intended for eliminating "dark alleys" on the Internet is good. See?
Such drastic changes are warranted only where there is a very compelling reason. Read about things like time zones, daylight saving time, time scales and, of course, calendars. (sorry for reverse wikispam). Any changes happened only when there was a real reason for that, when a nation (or a region) needed to change, not just because some professor thought it would be a good idea. This is DOA, there is zero possibility that anyone could be persuaded to do the switch. Heck, some countries still cling to their outdated religious calendars and it's less than a century that we have a common calendar on this planet. No chances for this change at all.
And if there is no chances that this is a realistic scheme, what do we have on our hands? Blatant self-promotion, that's what. Blatant-self promotion from a retarded Christian who designs web-pages with yellow background. That should have never been posted here.
Will the Call-A-Bikes become more impenetrable, as Darwinian geek theory dictates they'll need for survival? :) The hack may be sufficiently benign not to harm "Die Bahn" enough for it to care.
The key to being a successful parasite is not to harm your host.
1) NYT doesn't spam you and doesn't sell your address. Confirmed repeatedly.
2) Most people here should already have a registration with NYT and a cookie, so they don't need to worry. NYT writes enough good stories that it's worth the trouble (which I had in about 1997).
You are right about everything you say about it, but it's still lighyears ahead of Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 and much better than most other games (even the paragon of free exploratory gameplay, the GTA, has a linear story overall). If we are going to call any action game non-linear, it would be Far Cry. I hope we agree on the essence of it.
I also agree about "force", but helicopters over sea are still much better than a typical HL2 corridor I described earlier (4 doors bricked up, one way caved in, the remaining door has a few planks in the way).
I agree about SoF2, there was also Flashpoint, and some other games as well, but overall it still was a significant strength of Far Cry (even without seamless transitions).
That may have been true for you, but that's just false for other people.
Well, may be, I am willing to concede this point to you. Still, there are two things I want to note
On my mid-range system Far Cry textures/models look better than the other "Big Two" and I suspect that would be true for the lower end systems as well.
When I try to objectively judge the quality of HL2 urban levels (not just the textures), they are very close to Max Payne 2 (and some other shooters). There isn't anything that would really be all that impressive graphically, while Far Cry has the jungle and the sea. Doom 3 is even worse - the first half looks like any other stock sci-fi shooter (except for the lighting and character models).
:) The NPCs in Doom 3 were not so annoyingly bad, probably because they were mostly dead... or dying.
At this point, I can only assume you are joking. The two main characters in the game were as cookie-cutter as they come
I didn't mean the main characters. These were very basic, even though still better than Doom 3 marine or Gordon Freeman (most of whose backstory consists of Valve's hype about him being such a cool character). But I was speaking about background characters - the grunts. They were (at least to me - tastes differ) as well defined as those in AvP2. I happen to enjoy good dialog in a FPS and I didn't hear any in Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 (except for a few cutscenes to move the story forward). The NPCs in Half-Life 2 were, as I said, completely horrible, barely on the level of strippers in Duke Nukem 3D (with two preset animations).
Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 offered significantly more challenging enemies than anything in Far Cry. I dunno... you are strange, really. If you didn't have a problem with Far Cry mercs on extra hard, you must be able to stroll through Half-Life 2 without dying once... This is really hard to believe. What exactly was challenging about HL2? I finished it faster than any other FPS I ever played.
Did you use anything outside of the M16 variant in FarCry?
Yes, I did. Sniper gun is indispensable. Other machine guns have their distinct styles and are useful in different ways. Grenades are cool. I am not saying it had a lot of guns, but certainly more than HL2 (I agree that Doom 3 hardware rocked, but only because it was copied from the original game). You can't really use rockets outside from a few preselected points where you have infinite ammo and need to shoot down (according to the script) a particular helicopter or strider. Bug Bait was available for one level out of eleven. The crossbow was useless. Magnum useless (powerful, but why bother with it?). Grenades somewhat useful. Basically I found myself using the machinegun (or the 2nd machinegun, whatever it was) most of the time, occasionally switching to the shotgun to take out particular monsters and gravity gun to aleviate the boredom.
Then I would suggest you start over, and take a good look at Far Cry with a critical eye.
I did. I started playing it again after finishing Half-Life 2. I find it better-looking and much more interesting than HL2. I am not a CryTek fanboy or a Valve hater, I just see a lot of weaknesses tha
Far Cry was the first FPS game with large realistic levels. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 both had "corridor-based" linear levels.
Far Cry had the best lush vegetation (non-existant in Doom 3, scarce in Half-Life 2, and ugly in other shooters).
Far Cry was probably the first major shooter to have great use of shaders, for realistic waters, for bump-mapping and normal-mapping, for special effects, etc (most games use them now too).
Far Cry had very detailed textures and models for characters and environments. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 were not playable with high-res textures, making them look much uglier. And in any case, Far Cry was the first.
Far Cry had the best AI in an FPS ever (and it remains the best). Yes, there were bugs. Yes, you could outsmart the AI. Yes, it wasn't always 100% realistic. But compared with competition, Far Cry was Turing test material. In Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 enemies had almost no AI at all (besides basic things like pathfinding and shooting in the right direction). Haven't you seen the NOFRAG HL2 video, where a guy managed to hide from a Combine manning a turret behind a 20cm can of paint, lured him from the turret (without using his weapons at all) and then used the turret to kill that retard? Both Valve and id lied, while Crytek delivered. Enemies in Far Cry had teamwork, realistic alert modes, idle behaviour, etc.
Far Cry was one of the few shooters with non-linear gameplay (there might have been some lesser-known titles). Most of the levels had several (up to 5) logical, fun and realistic approaches to finish them. Meanwhile, Doom 3 had only one possible and obvious route. Half-Life 2 was even worse, as it only had only one way to play, but some of the required solutions were not obvious.
:)
Technologically it is silly to deny that Far Cry was groundbreaking in a lot of respects. It had a lot of other strong points, such as good level design (as opposed to identically looking Doom 3 earlier levels or blatantly linear Half-Life 2 levels - best example was when you are in a corridor and 4 doors are bricked up, one end of the corridor cave in and the one door you need to go to is blocked with a few planks) or great characters with engaging backstories and dialogue (even though some didn't like it, it was a lot better than Doom 3 PDAs and totally lifeless and idiotic drones that pass for NPCs in Half-Life 2 using all their 2 canned lines of dialog).
I understand that you may dislike Far Cry and you have every right to do so. But please, when we try to discuss it objectively, let's just stay objective.
Do you imply that the story was better in Doom 3 or in Half-Life 2 (what, did HL2 have a story?)? Do you imply that Combine soldiers were tougher than Far Cry mercs? Or may be you were challenged by headcrab zombies more than by Tridents? LOL
As for graphics, I am running all these games on the same machine (the video card is ATI Radeon 9600 Pro) at settings which allow comfortable framerates. And frankly, Far Cry looks best. I can forgive Doom 3 its blurry textures for the lighting model, but Half-Life 2 has absolutely nothing new to offer to compensate for blurry textures (medium quality) and rather simple level modelling. I finished Half-Life 2 a few days ago and went back to Far Cry. It was very refreshing to see textures which were so crisp they almost hurt my eyes.
Weapons may have been typical, but at least it had some weapons worthy of using. Half-Life only had gravity gun, a shotgun and two machineguns (the rest was either totally pointless or completely useless). Frankly, I am not a weapons specialist, but I don't realise what was so "average and typical" about guns in Far Cry.
This may sound like two fanboys battling over the GOTY prize, so let me just iterate two strong points of Far Cry that really warrant calling it more innovative - great AI and non-linear levels. And, of course, the fact that it was released a good 6 months before Doom 3 and 9 months before Half-Life 2.
That's the communist model. :-) OSS companies are giving as much as they think they can, while getting everything that they want. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs".
:-)
40 years ago Khruschev said: "this generation will live under communism". His forecasting skills were worse than ITC's, but we will get there, eventually. Don't lose hope.
The reason for that are the moronic sheeps that permeate all spheres of human life including (first and foremost) Slashdot. :) Remember the stories about Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. Remember how everyone here wet their pants and secretly masturbated over promo screenshots? Remember how excited every masochistic slashdotter was about having to upgrade his computer to play Doom 3?
People are idiots. 3 "next-gen" FPS games were released in 2004. Half-Life 2 turned out to be the most popular, despite the fact that it has ordinary graphics, horrible story and 10 hours of gameplay. Doom 3 was the second in popularity, with an engine that looked like a dog, horrible gameplay and boring levels. And one truly innovative game with the most stunning graphics and released on schedule and without as much hype, Far Cry by Crytek, was quickly forgotten. I exaggerated a bit, but the point still stands - as long as people are willing to pay for the name, publishers would develop sequels (and licensed titles) to deliver what the public (including the public here) wants.
Would "workcompose" suffice?
Oh yes I do still think so. For the simple reason that most furries do not abuse animals, just like looking at goatse doesn't make you gay. Stop these phobias. I don't know about SharpFang and, frankly, this is none of my business (not your business either), but I am not an "animal fucker", as you so eloquently put it. I can appreciate a furry picture from time to time, or even furry porn, but I have no desire whatsoever to dress in a furry suit, imagine I am a tiger or have sex with a horse. But if you are afraid about looking at furry pictures, may be you need to look again at your own sexuality?
Don't waste your time replying, I deleted Space cowboy.exe, because it was a lame AI with no imagination and no understanding of complex issues. Sorry if that malware bothered you.
Well, the .torrent does have a link to a tracker, which does provide information about IP of those peers who distribute the file. ed2k link, on the other hand, doesn't actually link to anything. It just provides information (basically the same as the .torrent - size, name, but it doesn't need to be big, because instead of providing hash for each block it provides a hash of the hashes).
:(
The 2600 case is a precedent that a law can be twisted when powerful people need it. So yes, it's possible that ed2k link sites would get sued, but so far there wasn't a single successful lawsuit (or even a lawsuit at all). They were just raided and servers confiscated as evidence. Simon Moon is still innocent, it's just that he isn't in the position to run a link site right now.
Suprnova was in Hungary. They were sure they don't need to worry about American laws too. It seems they were wrong. Though I do agree that St. Petersburg, Russia is still a rather safe place to perform on the Internet activities that are considered illegal elsewhere. Speaking from experience. :-)
If you are seriously interested, though, I think it would be wise to ask people from sharereactor.ru, nnm.ru and the like, who have experience running "shady" sites and more importantly, getting ad money to finance them. May be they can offer some advice.
Those who want to download Linux distros, don't worry. Those who like to download Adobe and MS software too, as well as other juicy stuff, it may be time to jump the ship.