There's a very good reason to run Ethernet through your house - wireless coverage. Things might be different in the States (your walls tend to be quite thin), but in Germany one AP usually isn't enough for a decently sized house. Between me and our main router/AP there's ~15 meters and several layers of concrete and foam concrete, completely killing the signal. Running CAT5 and connecting a second AP solved the problem and leaves me with decent coverage anywhere in the house.
Now if WLAN roaming actually worked...
Re:Man, people are so hype sensitive
on
BioShock Review
·
· Score: 1
Apart from the fact that it's not really original (style very Fallout-influenced, everything else but the setting obviously copied from System Shock 2), it was overhyped - people were told it was the unofficial successor to SS2. That promise spoke directly to the people who loved SS2, most of which appreciated the fact that the game was more complex than just a shooter. They were disappointed, because most of those elements have been removed from the game: Equipment doesn't break, you don't have to decide which way you want to build your character (the choice between plasmids doesn't have nearly the same impact as the choice between stats in SS2 and you'll end up with enough Adam to buy most interesting plasmids anyway), hacking is essentially free (both of cost and danger), research has been dumbed down, there's no inventory, no implants...
BioShock is nice if you expect a regular shooter. If, however, you expect the kind of nontrivial shooter/RPG hybrid the first two Shock games were, it's nothing but disappointing. It doesn't make me glad to be a gamer, it makes me sad because it's an indicator of how cerebral games á la System Shock 2 are making way for console-friendly twich-fests.
He did? When I watched someone play through the scene we didn't notice him saying it, which left us wondering why the hell we should be tempted to pick up that syringe. We might have overheard it, of course, but we definietly didn't notice it.
I wouldn't mind another SS2. Another SS2 but without deteriorating equipment, inventory management, the stat system and pretty much anything else that kept SS2 from being classified as an ego-shooter - that's less ideal. The splicing system is a rudiment.
SS2 had that, too. It can be pretty unnerving to constantly hear the infected mumble about The Many - and, when they finally attack, to hear them scream: "Kill me!"
No doubt, Splicers are creapy, but so are semi-annelids and suicidal serv-bots, not to mention the weird pseudo-normalcy of Xerxes' messages. SS2 was there first.
Actually, I like to call it System Shock 2.5: Terror From The Deep. Really, BioShock it so SS2 what TFTD was to UFO Defense/Enemy Unknown:
- setting moved underwater
- more emphasis on the bad guys using biotech
- nearly identical gameplay, save for a couple omissions
- nearly identical plot
- would have made more sense as a mission pack or mod
They wanted to remake System Shock 2 but lacked the rights. So they created a new franchise and cloned the game with a new setting and then cut several notable features such as deteriorating equipment and inventory management - maybe because they didn't want the cloning to be too obvious, maybe because that't too complicated for the modern gamer, maybe because non-PC-exclusive game never have decent inventory management. Whatever the reason, BioShock can be summed up with five words: Stale System Shock 2 remake.
Well, it is System Shock 2 with DRM and without the RPG-ish elements. I've seen it, I've played it and it definietly is a pretty blatant SS2 remake. While the copy protection scheme doesn't affect gameplay itself much, one does compare remakes to the originals closely and System Shock 2 wasn't nearly as rabidd about dictating the terms under which it culd be played.
Wuss! Real Men don't care what state their equipment is in, whether it be solid, liquid, gaseous or a frickin' plasma at the same temperature as the sun's core. You really need to grow up.
Oh, come on. You can't blow up Canadia with four nukes! The country is at least 700 million square miles big! You'd need at least a gigaton bomb in order to completely atomize that and one B-52 can't carry a gigaton of uranium all by itself!
Don't miss the riveting scene when he isn't sure whether to cut the red or the blue wire! Never-before seen action that will keep you on your seat, edges not required!
That has to be the best reason to study one's religion I've ever heard of. It also makes for interesting conversations: "I studied the holy scriptures so I could have a closer relationship with Jahweh/God/Allah." - "Well, as for me... You see, I think bacon has this in-built [i]deliciousness factor[/i]..."
If the LDS are 19th century's pseudo-scientific pseudo-religion and Scientology is the 20th century equivalent... That means we can still establich the 21st century equivalent if we are quick!
j/k, of course. The 21st century equivalent is already there; it's known as Web 2.0...
Well, much of the traditional religions' tenets emerged as useful knowledge that needed to be disseminated in some way. One example is the whole "do not eat pigs"-thing: It started as simple sanitary advice, since pig meat rots much faster in hot weather than beef, thus making it difficult to store (and easier to kill yourself by eating it).
Many of Scientology, however, does focus around "give us money for treatment/device/procedure X".
Notice how none of these evolutionary geneticists are writing about how black people got a sense of rhythm because of some remnant of their stone age past, and that the Chinese aren't good at math because the proto-Chinese used math in their mammoth hunts, etc.
Not to forget that the proto-Germans hunted animals by running over them with early cars and the proto-Swiss killed mammoths by covering them in liquid chocolate.
Obviousl, the only possible explanation would be that the Japanese evolved independently from us. It's just a freak coincidence that they happen to be genetically compatible. Otherwise the fine article would be wrong, which is completely and utterly ridiculous.
Journalistic ethic is a bit like computer scientists' ethic - both have the power to screw up things in a horrible fashion (they misinform people by doing their work badly, we kill jobs by doing our work well) and both more or less follow a certain thic to keep us from abusing said power (they try to monitor themselves, many universities tell first-grade CS students that developing the control systems for cruise missiles is somewhat unethical).
In the end we booth can do what we want - if you want to help develop a better cruise missile there are plenty of defense contractors who are happy to hear that; if they want to write bullshit there's plenty of maggazines, papers and TV stations who will employ them. Like the hippocratic oath, such work ethics are a nice thing to have, but in the end everyone can decide to ignore them. It's better to have them, though - by showing fledgling journalists/scientists/etc. an ideal of how they should be, some do keep aspiring to meet it. Of course they hide behind their ethic, but there often are other reporters who point out how much bullshit they're talking - a nice example for Europe's biggest tabloid would be http://bildblog.de/ [in German].
Just imagine how bad journalists would be if they were told "write anything you want as long as it sounds good" from the get-go. *shivers*
Or declare that a local directive will be enacted that states that country X does not accept OOXML as an ISO standard, leaving (if it does get through) OOXML as an "ISO standard except in Denmark". Yes, that would severely undermine the ISO's authority as a standard body, but then again - if they do approve bullshit standards...
By the way, someone really ought to buy a large patch of land and plant flowers on it in such a way that the petals form hello.jpg, right before one of those satellites photographs the area.
Huge-ass patch of land: a couple thousand dollars
Lots of flowers: a couple hundred dollars
Getting Goatse into Google Earth: priceless
There are some things in life you can't troll. For everything else there's Goatse.
Because it was to be expected that a large number of their users would run Vista - if they would have tested a pre-release version and noticed that it doesn't speak proper DHCP they could have sent Microsoft a bug report, giving them a chance to fix it.
Remember, sometimes compatibility testing ends with a mail to the developer of the other product with the subject line "Your shit needs fixing".
The kernel isn't that bad. It's everything besides the kernel that's bad. The services, bad. The UI, bad. The default configuration, bad (and the concept of storing everything in the same four files, just as bad). Drivers, often bad but Microsoft decided to almost completely let the manufacturers handle them, so it's not surprising. Default apps, bad. Kernel... actually not entirely crummy. Okay, and NTFS has its upsides (like fine-grained ACLs), too.
Windows is what happens when you take a promising kernel and a decent file system and wrap them in shit. No matter what kind of gold nugget you have on the inside, the result looks, feels and behaves like shit. If Microsoft would dump everything besides the NT kernel and start a completely new OS based on it (especially one without twenty years worth of backward compatibility hacks) and used a more sane approach to development than overstaffed fiefdoms they'd probably come up with something pretty decent.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a very good reason to run Ethernet through your house - wireless coverage. Things might be different in the States (your walls tend to be quite thin), but in Germany one AP usually isn't enough for a decently sized house. Between me and our main router/AP there's ~15 meters and several layers of concrete and foam concrete, completely killing the signal. Running CAT5 and connecting a second AP solved the problem and leaves me with decent coverage anywhere in the house.
Now if WLAN roaming actually worked...
Apart from the fact that it's not really original (style very Fallout-influenced, everything else but the setting obviously copied from System Shock 2), it was overhyped - people were told it was the unofficial successor to SS2. That promise spoke directly to the people who loved SS2, most of which appreciated the fact that the game was more complex than just a shooter. They were disappointed, because most of those elements have been removed from the game: Equipment doesn't break, you don't have to decide which way you want to build your character (the choice between plasmids doesn't have nearly the same impact as the choice between stats in SS2 and you'll end up with enough Adam to buy most interesting plasmids anyway), hacking is essentially free (both of cost and danger), research has been dumbed down, there's no inventory, no implants...
BioShock is nice if you expect a regular shooter. If, however, you expect the kind of nontrivial shooter/RPG hybrid the first two Shock games were, it's nothing but disappointing. It doesn't make me glad to be a gamer, it makes me sad because it's an indicator of how cerebral games á la System Shock 2 are making way for console-friendly twich-fests.
He did? When I watched someone play through the scene we didn't notice him saying it, which left us wondering why the hell we should be tempted to pick up that syringe. We might have overheard it, of course, but we definietly didn't notice it.
I wouldn't mind another SS2. Another SS2 but without deteriorating equipment, inventory management, the stat system and pretty much anything else that kept SS2 from being classified as an ego-shooter - that's less ideal. The splicing system is a rudiment.
SS2 had that, too. It can be pretty unnerving to constantly hear the infected mumble about The Many - and, when they finally attack, to hear them scream: "Kill me!"
No doubt, Splicers are creapy, but so are semi-annelids and suicidal serv-bots, not to mention the weird pseudo-normalcy of Xerxes' messages. SS2 was there first.
In fact, even System Shock 1 had that, IIRC.
Actually, I like to call it System Shock 2.5: Terror From The Deep. Really, BioShock it so SS2 what TFTD was to UFO Defense/Enemy Unknown:
- setting moved underwater
- more emphasis on the bad guys using biotech
- nearly identical gameplay, save for a couple omissions
- nearly identical plot
- would have made more sense as a mission pack or mod
They wanted to remake System Shock 2 but lacked the rights. So they created a new franchise and cloned the game with a new setting and then cut several notable features such as deteriorating equipment and inventory management - maybe because they didn't want the cloning to be too obvious, maybe because that't too complicated for the modern gamer, maybe because non-PC-exclusive game never have decent inventory management. Whatever the reason, BioShock can be summed up with five words: Stale System Shock 2 remake.
Well, it is System Shock 2 with DRM and without the RPG-ish elements. I've seen it, I've played it and it definietly is a pretty blatant SS2 remake. While the copy protection scheme doesn't affect gameplay itself much, one does compare remakes to the originals closely and System Shock 2 wasn't nearly as rabidd about dictating the terms under which it culd be played.
Either that or self-resoldering XBox 360 CPUs.
Wuss! Real Men don't care what state their equipment is in, whether it be solid, liquid, gaseous or a frickin' plasma at the same temperature as the sun's core. You really need to grow up.
Of course it's:
# USE="hardened" emerge gfx-hardware/display-hinge
He didn't emerge it with the hardened flag the first time, which is why it broke. Duh.
Oh, come on. You can't blow up Canadia with four nukes! The country is at least 700 million square miles big! You'd need at least a gigaton bomb in order to completely atomize that and one B-52 can't carry a gigaton of uranium all by itself!
Don't miss the riveting scene when he isn't sure whether to cut the red or the blue wire! Never-before seen action that will keep you on your seat, edges not required!
That has to be the best reason to study one's religion I've ever heard of. It also makes for interesting conversations: "I studied the holy scriptures so I could have a closer relationship with Jahweh/God/Allah." - "Well, as for me... You see, I think bacon has this in-built [i]deliciousness factor[/i]..."
Ah right, it was that way around. You're absolutely right.
If the LDS are 19th century's pseudo-scientific pseudo-religion and Scientology is the 20th century equivalent... That means we can still establich the 21st century equivalent if we are quick!
j/k, of course. The 21st century equivalent is already there; it's known as Web 2.0...
Well, much of the traditional religions' tenets emerged as useful knowledge that needed to be disseminated in some way. One example is the whole "do not eat pigs"-thing: It started as simple sanitary advice, since pig meat rots much faster in hot weather than beef, thus making it difficult to store (and easier to kill yourself by eating it).
Many of Scientology, however, does focus around "give us money for treatment/device/procedure X".
Of course we'd all be happy to play against someone called "FingeredUranus"...
Yup, that's one of the small gotchas.
Notice how none of these evolutionary geneticists are writing about how black people got a sense of rhythm because of some remnant of their stone age past, and that the Chinese aren't good at math because the proto-Chinese used math in their mammoth hunts, etc.
Not to forget that the proto-Germans hunted animals by running over them with early cars and the proto-Swiss killed mammoths by covering them in liquid chocolate.
Obviousl, the only possible explanation would be that the Japanese evolved independently from us. It's just a freak coincidence that they happen to be genetically compatible. Otherwise the fine article would be wrong, which is completely and utterly ridiculous.
Journalistic ethic is a bit like computer scientists' ethic - both have the power to screw up things in a horrible fashion (they misinform people by doing their work badly, we kill jobs by doing our work well) and both more or less follow a certain thic to keep us from abusing said power (they try to monitor themselves, many universities tell first-grade CS students that developing the control systems for cruise missiles is somewhat unethical).
In the end we booth can do what we want - if you want to help develop a better cruise missile there are plenty of defense contractors who are happy to hear that; if they want to write bullshit there's plenty of maggazines, papers and TV stations who will employ them. Like the hippocratic oath, such work ethics are a nice thing to have, but in the end everyone can decide to ignore them. It's better to have them, though - by showing fledgling journalists/scientists/etc. an ideal of how they should be, some do keep aspiring to meet it. Of course they hide behind their ethic, but there often are other reporters who point out how much bullshit they're talking - a nice example for Europe's biggest tabloid would be http://bildblog.de/ [in German].
Just imagine how bad journalists would be if they were told "write anything you want as long as it sounds good" from the get-go. *shivers*
Or declare that a local directive will be enacted that states that country X does not accept OOXML as an ISO standard, leaving (if it does get through) OOXML as an "ISO standard except in Denmark". Yes, that would severely undermine the ISO's authority as a standard body, but then again - if they do approve bullshit standards...
By the way, someone really ought to buy a large patch of land and plant flowers on it in such a way that the petals form hello.jpg, right before one of those satellites photographs the area.
Huge-ass patch of land: a couple thousand dollars
Lots of flowers: a couple hundred dollars
Getting Goatse into Google Earth: priceless
There are some things in life you can't troll. For everything else there's Goatse.
Because it was to be expected that a large number of their users would run Vista - if they would have tested a pre-release version and noticed that it doesn't speak proper DHCP they could have sent Microsoft a bug report, giving them a chance to fix it.
Remember, sometimes compatibility testing ends with a mail to the developer of the other product with the subject line "Your shit needs fixing".
The kernel isn't that bad. It's everything besides the kernel that's bad. The services, bad. The UI, bad. The default configuration, bad (and the concept of storing everything in the same four files, just as bad). Drivers, often bad but Microsoft decided to almost completely let the manufacturers handle them, so it's not surprising. Default apps, bad. Kernel... actually not entirely crummy. Okay, and NTFS has its upsides (like fine-grained ACLs), too.
Windows is what happens when you take a promising kernel and a decent file system and wrap them in shit. No matter what kind of gold nugget you have on the inside, the result looks, feels and behaves like shit. If Microsoft would dump everything besides the NT kernel and start a completely new OS based on it (especially one without twenty years worth of backward compatibility hacks) and used a more sane approach to development than overstaffed fiefdoms they'd probably come up with something pretty decent.