I was actually playing this earlier today with a few people who had never played Tribes. It's a lot of fun (even they thought so) and I realize it's still in beta, but I wouldn't call it the unofficial Tribes 4 quite yet. As it stands it's kind of a dumbed down version without a lot of the things Tribes had. If they add a lot of it back such as proper classes, inventory stations, vehicles, packs, deployables, mines, etc... then I'll consider it a true successor. They don't have to clone the first game, in fact I'd prefer they mix it up (I quite like to overdrive function), but right now it's just a simple FPS with a jet pack and skiing. Definitely hope it turns out good though.
Including the Simi Valley fire, there have been four incidences of fires in California linked to solar panels, Kateley said. One was caused by a homeowner-installed panel, she noted.
'It does happen'...
"It's a rare occasion, but like any kind of electricity there are going to be instances where it does happen," Dowd said.
Yes it's rare, but that doesn't mean it can't happen if either the solar panel was made or installed improperly. I'm not quite sure how you were modded Insightful when you're clearly an idiot.
Add to that the unwillingness of many communities to host servers for L4D. Since people join a random server every time communities have no hope of establishing a regular player base and increasing the community size. Nor can they really justify using their resources and money to host these servers when their own community members will most likely end up joining a random server anyway. Also if the community is funded by donations or selling reserved slots or similar, then they have no chance of getting any money from the server to pay for its upkeep. There are also problems with the way Valve is controlling TF2. I'm too tired to list them, but the hlds mailing lists are usually full of mostly legitimate complaints if you're interested;).
Personally I think Valve is losing sight of what made their games great.
It's actually dependent upon the server operator. I help out a gaming community and when we had a TF2 server we used hidden reserved slots. Basically if the server was full there was a hidden slot that you could get to by connecting manually through console. Not only that but the server would actually be full in the server browser, so you could use the auto-join feature for when a slot freed up. I know of one TF2 community which used both hidden and reserved slots, the idea being to generate revenue by getting reserved slot payments. The public reserved slots really are annoying and it makes the server browser auto-join feature worthless, but people voted with their dollar and now there aren't many popular private reserved slot servers out there.
Of course there will always be people like the ones you describe. People on Slashdot throwing around the word "denialist" is starting to annoy me now though. What, was heretic too strong of a word for you? I mean seriously, how do you deal with someone who believes the Earth is flat? Personally if they believe the Earth is flat then there's no reason for me to talk to them, their mind is made up. Scientific reasoning will never reach them. Lately Slashdot commenters, for whatever reason, have moved away from scientific reasoning onto name calling and petty bickering though. Apparently global climate change is serious enough to warrant discussion, but not well thought out discussion, just ad hominem attacks. Not to mention half the people who are called "denialists" are just people arguing about the extent of anthropogenic climate change, but agree the average temperature of the Earth is rising faster than current models predict it should.
I'm usually too disgusted by these threads on Slashdot to post anymore. This time I'm posting rather early in hopes that at least a few people will read this.
I agree sort of. I actually did a major in math and I focused primarily on algebraic geometry. I have to admit that math didn't really get interesting in college until upper division math courses. The problem is these courses are extremely rigorous. I remember abstract algebra being very difficult to learn when I was used to my previous college level calculus courses which were basically memorization and solving equations. Abstract algebra on the other hand was taught by proof. Groups, rings, fields, homomorphisms, isomorphisms, and Galois Theory are all very interesting, but I think this might be tough to teach to high school kids.
I think perhaps a better subject to teach would be topology. I realize this is probably a more rigorous class than abstract algebra, but I think you can skip some of the details and present it to them in an easily understandable way. Also, the pre-requisites are fairly minimal if you don't advance to algebraic topology, you really only need a decent background in set theory. I think for an average high school student it'd be hard to grasp the idea of what a homomorphism is, or an automorphism. These are largely shown through proofs. However, you can show what a homeomorphism is visually by using say, a rubber band, or a piece of clay. I think at the high school level you really only need to impart the idea behind the math and perhaps get them interested.
Also, if you skip metric spaces you can bypass the analysis prerequisite. I think you could easily teach them what a topological space is, the fundamental idea behind homeomorphisms, closure, compactness, connectedness, path-connectedness*, and the separation axioms.
This is the book I used in my topology class, although I think it'd serve better as a reference to the teacher than the students.
They might not understand the prototypical example of a topological space which is connected but not path-connected though.
I think it depends really. Where I work we basically have storage servers, clusters, and NFS servers. The head nodes on the cluster are named after species of flora. Since we don't have 200 clusters, it's easier just to give them a unique name so the people who use the clusters can easily remember them and know which one they should use for a particular purpose. Basically it's easier for the researches to remember and identify them when they have unique names. Of course all the nodes are basically NodeN where N is a natural number.
Our NFS servers, which aren't accessible to anyone and just serve stuff out from the storage servers, are named nfsN. N here is a bit more complicated than a simple number since we have levels of redundancy, but that's the basic naming scheme. The storage servers are similar.
This works out fairly well since if a head node goes down, I know which one it is. Similarly for servers which people don't use directly it's easy to know what they do, since it's in the host name. The only problem is if some NFS share goes down we don't necessarily know which storage server(s) contained the data so we have to look that up. However, since we do a lot of research where I work we don't have many NFS shares, just a handful of really large ones. So it's not that big of a deal.
We didn't "accidentally geoengineer" ourselves into this. That statement is a bit of an oxymoron as engineering something implies you had a plan and a goal. This may seem a bit pedantic of me, but I think it's misleading to say we did that.
With regards to scientists thinking geoengineering is the solution, I have to say that they're out of their element. It's not as easy as changing a few parameters in their models, it requires a lot of people, planning, and work to implement. Basically the engineering required to implement what a scientist says is possible can be a bitch of a task. Take for instance the space elevator which is a great idea conceptually, but an engineering nightmare in reality. Granted this example is a bit extreme, but we are talking about changing the climate of an entire planet here.
Then there's also the question of how accurate these models are. As has been echoed here many times, we may do more harm than good if we geoengineer under the assumption that our models are good enough.
If you're going to look for game reviews I suggest metacritic and only look at the user ratings. I've noticed a lot of game review sites and magazines consistently give big release titles a much higher score than they deserve. Just look at the average critic score given to Far Cry 2 versus the average user score on metacritic. I think hundreds if not thousands of user scores coming from people who play games for fun are a better indication of a games worth than a handful of people who are paid to review them.
Now see I hated VATS. I thought it was a horrible system which took the worst parts from both real time FPS combat and turn based combat. On one hand you have a finite amount of action points which have to be recharged over time, on the other the enemy doesn't have AP, it just attacks until one of you dies. A lot of the time I would just end up running up to the guy point blank, going into VATS, use all of my AP on his head (which had a 90% probability of hitting) and then watch the slow motion carnage. After it was over I'd run the hell away and let my AP recharge. I know other people didn't mind VATS, but for me it was rather annoying.
Beyond that I thought Fallout 3 was an okay game. It definitely had the atmosphere of the previous two Fallout games, and I loved the graphics. I didn't even care that it was in the first person perspective. They even had some of the same kind of humor that the originals had. There were plenty of little gripes though, for instance the pipboy interface was clearly designed with consoles in mind. It had nested menus within nested menus. Granted the original Fallouts didn't have amazing interfaces, but I was expecting an improvement, not an interface designed solely with the console in mind (I bought the PC version). I also agree that the story was a bit shallow.
As for other games this year, here's what I think:
FarCry 2: It had nothing to do with the original, kind of like C&C:Generals. It was basically GTA in Africa. I thought the graphics were superb, blowing things up and lighting vast fields aflame were fun, but it got kind of tedious. All you do is go to X to kill Y for Z diamons. I haven't completed it yet, I'm about 3/4 done, but so far the story is horrible. I don't even know why they bothered.
Another gripe I had with FarCry 2 was the fact that they went for realism in some areas, but not others. You didn't have a reticule, you had to use iron sights. Vehicles broke down, weapons jammed (even bolt action rifles), etc... At the same time the vehicles are made from paper mache, guard posts would mysteriously resupply with troops when you get a hundred yards away (and not question the dead bodies apparently), and your character can get turned into swiss cheese by a volley of bullets and a syringe full of Cureital fixes everything.
I also had a problem with locating enemies sometimes. They'd always know where I was if I walked within a kilometer of them, but sometimes it took me several minutes just to locate them. Overall I thought the game was pretty and kind of fun, but I was hoping for more.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: Yes, I actually bought this game. Or rather, I bought a license which allows me to install it on 5 different computers and that's it. Before we get started let me say I loved the new naval warfare. I honestly thought that was a good addition. I also enjoyed how units had two different "attacks". The music was also quite good. Beyond those few things, there wasn't anything else I liked about the game. A lot of the story was rehashed from the first two, the Empire of the Rising sun felt very awkward, a lot of the graphics were sort of cartoony (yet the water wasn't at all), and EA hired more breasts than writers*.
One thing that really annoyed me was the forced co-op single player. When started to play the first mission it gave me a choice between solo and co-op. I thought at the time that co-op is a great idea and would be fun, but I didn't have anyone to play with at the time, so I went for solo. To my surprise I was forced to play the map with a computer ally (with campy dialogue). Now with C&C games I love capturing enemy bases to win, call it a quirk, but I always found that more satisfying than rolling them with a million units. However, now that I was forced to play with a computer ally with very limited control** either the computer would destroy the base before I could capture it, or the computer would be wiped out and I'd have to guard that flank. Overall I think the C&C franchise
You know I think if Global Warming is any indication, science is going to get even more politicized in the near future. People will use science, or rather manipulated and partial data and false pretenses which they will call science, to push agendas and line their pockets. Before anyone calls me a shill for whatever organization they hate most and mods me down let me make clear that I'm not pointing at the vast majority of scientists who are doing honest work using the scientific method. I am pointing at both parties who have politicized this issue for their own gain.
The thing that bugs me is that the public at large doesn't the read journals and papers on the latest scientific findings, instead they listen the political figure heads and corporations and news reporters, all of which have an agenda to push. I think what I'm beginning to realize is that science is ultimately going to suffer from this nonsense. I don't think it will matter if the results are peer-reviewed anymore, I think the public won't trust them anyway.
I think if they want to resurrect the species they'll need more than a male and a female. Genetic diversity and all that. I'm not sure how many would be sufficient, but it's more than two =).
There are many responsible people who can tinker with chemicals but there are many irresponsible ones who would end up seriously harming themselves or others, accidentally or on purpose.
Quite the contrary. They only want your money. They don't value anyone as a customer and they certainly don't care if they have any loyal customers. So long as they can get one more sale and increase their short term profits their happy.
The bad part is I just bought Red Alert 3. I come to find out it has the exact same DRM as Spore, 5 installs allowed. Thanks EA, for selling me a license masquerading as an actual product. And now this... I guess I deserve what I get. Still, a big "Fuck You" goes out to EA. I hope they piss off so many people they go bankrupt. Oh well, I can always dream.
So when someone says "X is 100 times larger than Y" you instinctively think "X=100*Y", yet when someone says "X is 100 times smaller than Y" you instinctively think "X=Z-100*(Z-Y)" for some arbitrary Z of same unit as Y. Forgive me for not following your erm... logic.
Let's say I have a temperature which is 100 times larger than 27.1 mK, this would be 2.71 K. Indeed 27.1 mK is smaller than 2.71 K and 2.71 K is larger than 27.1 mK. So saying 100 times smaller than 2.71 K should indicate I mean 27.1 mK. In no way is this nonsensical and I'm pretty sure everyone here understands that "X is N times smaller than Y" means multiply Y by the reciprocal of N, similarly "X is N times larger than Y" means multiply Y by N.
Granted this isn't something you'd see in technical writing, but I'm pretty sure Information Week isn't a technical journal, so why be a pedant about it?
A few weeks ago the university campus police sent everyone an e-mail saying "... a tornado is approaching from the west. Please take cover in a shelter designed to minimize damages." 39 minutes later they send out another e-mail saying "The email message that went out regarding a tornado was a TEST ONLY.... We apologize for the miscommunication."
Of course I didn't read my e-mail until much later on that evening, so I had a good laugh at it.
Experiments are now considered entertainment? Hell, I can't wait for the results from the LHC to show up in the entertainment section. I can see it now, "The World is Ending! Armageddon is Here!" tagged with "humor" in the entertainment section.
You will have to heavily elaborate "write" in that sentence. Apple did not sit down one day and write OSX from scratch. Under the hood it's BSD (from NeXT when they bought them), granted they've changed things and added stuff (including a nice GUI), but they did not write the entire operating system. Unless of course a pretty GUI and patch files to an existing OS is considered an OS in itself.
Fine, I'll give you some valid reasons. Halo isn't a bad game, it really isn't. However, it's not a good game either, it's mediocre. I was excited as hell for Halo before Microsoft bought out Bungie. I remember seeing the original videos and pictures and though it was going to be an amazing game. Even after Microsoft bought Bungie I wasn't deterred, I bought an Xbox solely for Halo. When I played it I found it wasn't that good. It wasn't original, it wasn't unique, it was just there. Thanks to Microsofts huge PR push it became an instant hit though and spawned two sequels and soon an RTS. It's widely proclaimed to be one of the best FPS games by Halo players, which leads me to assume they have little experience with FPS games that came before it. I'd even rate Goldeneye for the N64 (to keep it console only) much higher than Halo. Don't get me wrong, playing Halo 3 multiplayer with friends while drinking a few beers is fun, but not fun enough to buy the game.
It's not that we're hating on kids, but they are a new generation of gamers. One which I think are more concerned with pretty graphics than gameplay. I still go back to old games and love to play them. Of course I can't get the Halo gamer types to pick them up at all. So in this regard I agree with the GP that they wouldn't get Grim Fandango or Fallout or even games in the same vein.
Note that I'm not saying Too Human is good or bad. I played the demo and found it moderately fun, but didn't get the urge to buy it from playing the demo.
Slashdot Mirror
I was actually playing this earlier today with a few people who had never played Tribes. It's a lot of fun (even they thought so) and I realize it's still in beta, but I wouldn't call it the unofficial Tribes 4 quite yet. As it stands it's kind of a dumbed down version without a lot of the things Tribes had. If they add a lot of it back such as proper classes, inventory stations, vehicles, packs, deployables, mines, etc... then I'll consider it a true successor. They don't have to clone the first game, in fact I'd prefer they mix it up (I quite like to overdrive function), but right now it's just a simple FPS with a jet pack and skiing. Definitely hope it turns out good though.
Including the Simi Valley fire, there have been four incidences of fires in California linked to solar panels, Kateley said. One was caused by a homeowner-installed panel, she noted. 'It does happen' ...
"It's a rare occasion, but like any kind of electricity there are going to be instances where it does happen," Dowd said.
Yes it's rare, but that doesn't mean it can't happen if either the solar panel was made or installed improperly. I'm not quite sure how you were modded Insightful when you're clearly an idiot.
Yes I can, but can you imagine a Real Projective Plane made of these? Neither can I =(.
Add to that the unwillingness of many communities to host servers for L4D. Since people join a random server every time communities have no hope of establishing a regular player base and increasing the community size. Nor can they really justify using their resources and money to host these servers when their own community members will most likely end up joining a random server anyway. Also if the community is funded by donations or selling reserved slots or similar, then they have no chance of getting any money from the server to pay for its upkeep. There are also problems with the way Valve is controlling TF2. I'm too tired to list them, but the hlds mailing lists are usually full of mostly legitimate complaints if you're interested ;).
Personally I think Valve is losing sight of what made their games great.
It's actually dependent upon the server operator. I help out a gaming community and when we had a TF2 server we used hidden reserved slots. Basically if the server was full there was a hidden slot that you could get to by connecting manually through console. Not only that but the server would actually be full in the server browser, so you could use the auto-join feature for when a slot freed up. I know of one TF2 community which used both hidden and reserved slots, the idea being to generate revenue by getting reserved slot payments. The public reserved slots really are annoying and it makes the server browser auto-join feature worthless, but people voted with their dollar and now there aren't many popular private reserved slot servers out there.
Of course there will always be people like the ones you describe. People on Slashdot throwing around the word "denialist" is starting to annoy me now though. What, was heretic too strong of a word for you? I mean seriously, how do you deal with someone who believes the Earth is flat? Personally if they believe the Earth is flat then there's no reason for me to talk to them, their mind is made up. Scientific reasoning will never reach them. Lately Slashdot commenters, for whatever reason, have moved away from scientific reasoning onto name calling and petty bickering though. Apparently global climate change is serious enough to warrant discussion, but not well thought out discussion, just ad hominem attacks. Not to mention half the people who are called "denialists" are just people arguing about the extent of anthropogenic climate change, but agree the average temperature of the Earth is rising faster than current models predict it should.
I'm usually too disgusted by these threads on Slashdot to post anymore. This time I'm posting rather early in hopes that at least a few people will read this.
I agree sort of. I actually did a major in math and I focused primarily on algebraic geometry. I have to admit that math didn't really get interesting in college until upper division math courses. The problem is these courses are extremely rigorous. I remember abstract algebra being very difficult to learn when I was used to my previous college level calculus courses which were basically memorization and solving equations. Abstract algebra on the other hand was taught by proof. Groups, rings, fields, homomorphisms, isomorphisms, and Galois Theory are all very interesting, but I think this might be tough to teach to high school kids.
I think perhaps a better subject to teach would be topology. I realize this is probably a more rigorous class than abstract algebra, but I think you can skip some of the details and present it to them in an easily understandable way. Also, the pre-requisites are fairly minimal if you don't advance to algebraic topology, you really only need a decent background in set theory. I think for an average high school student it'd be hard to grasp the idea of what a homomorphism is, or an automorphism. These are largely shown through proofs. However, you can show what a homeomorphism is visually by using say, a rubber band, or a piece of clay. I think at the high school level you really only need to impart the idea behind the math and perhaps get them interested.
Also, if you skip metric spaces you can bypass the analysis prerequisite. I think you could easily teach them what a topological space is, the fundamental idea behind homeomorphisms, closure, compactness, connectedness, path-connectedness*, and the separation axioms.
This is the book I used in my topology class, although I think it'd serve better as a reference to the teacher than the students.
They might not understand the prototypical example of a topological space which is connected but not path-connected though.
I think it depends really. Where I work we basically have storage servers, clusters, and NFS servers. The head nodes on the cluster are named after species of flora. Since we don't have 200 clusters, it's easier just to give them a unique name so the people who use the clusters can easily remember them and know which one they should use for a particular purpose. Basically it's easier for the researches to remember and identify them when they have unique names. Of course all the nodes are basically NodeN where N is a natural number.
Our NFS servers, which aren't accessible to anyone and just serve stuff out from the storage servers, are named nfsN. N here is a bit more complicated than a simple number since we have levels of redundancy, but that's the basic naming scheme. The storage servers are similar.
This works out fairly well since if a head node goes down, I know which one it is. Similarly for servers which people don't use directly it's easy to know what they do, since it's in the host name. The only problem is if some NFS share goes down we don't necessarily know which storage server(s) contained the data so we have to look that up. However, since we do a lot of research where I work we don't have many NFS shares, just a handful of really large ones. So it's not that big of a deal.
We didn't "accidentally geoengineer" ourselves into this. That statement is a bit of an oxymoron as engineering something implies you had a plan and a goal. This may seem a bit pedantic of me, but I think it's misleading to say we did that.
With regards to scientists thinking geoengineering is the solution, I have to say that they're out of their element. It's not as easy as changing a few parameters in their models, it requires a lot of people, planning, and work to implement. Basically the engineering required to implement what a scientist says is possible can be a bitch of a task. Take for instance the space elevator which is a great idea conceptually, but an engineering nightmare in reality. Granted this example is a bit extreme, but we are talking about changing the climate of an entire planet here.
Then there's also the question of how accurate these models are. As has been echoed here many times, we may do more harm than good if we geoengineer under the assumption that our models are good enough.
If you're going to look for game reviews I suggest metacritic and only look at the user ratings. I've noticed a lot of game review sites and magazines consistently give big release titles a much higher score than they deserve. Just look at the average critic score given to Far Cry 2 versus the average user score on metacritic. I think hundreds if not thousands of user scores coming from people who play games for fun are a better indication of a games worth than a handful of people who are paid to review them.
Just my opinion though.
Now see I hated VATS. I thought it was a horrible system which took the worst parts from both real time FPS combat and turn based combat. On one hand you have a finite amount of action points which have to be recharged over time, on the other the enemy doesn't have AP, it just attacks until one of you dies. A lot of the time I would just end up running up to the guy point blank, going into VATS, use all of my AP on his head (which had a 90% probability of hitting) and then watch the slow motion carnage. After it was over I'd run the hell away and let my AP recharge. I know other people didn't mind VATS, but for me it was rather annoying.
Beyond that I thought Fallout 3 was an okay game. It definitely had the atmosphere of the previous two Fallout games, and I loved the graphics. I didn't even care that it was in the first person perspective. They even had some of the same kind of humor that the originals had. There were plenty of little gripes though, for instance the pipboy interface was clearly designed with consoles in mind. It had nested menus within nested menus. Granted the original Fallouts didn't have amazing interfaces, but I was expecting an improvement, not an interface designed solely with the console in mind (I bought the PC version). I also agree that the story was a bit shallow.
As for other games this year, here's what I think:
FarCry 2: It had nothing to do with the original, kind of like C&C:Generals. It was basically GTA in Africa. I thought the graphics were superb, blowing things up and lighting vast fields aflame were fun, but it got kind of tedious. All you do is go to X to kill Y for Z diamons. I haven't completed it yet, I'm about 3/4 done, but so far the story is horrible. I don't even know why they bothered.
Another gripe I had with FarCry 2 was the fact that they went for realism in some areas, but not others. You didn't have a reticule, you had to use iron sights. Vehicles broke down, weapons jammed (even bolt action rifles), etc... At the same time the vehicles are made from paper mache, guard posts would mysteriously resupply with troops when you get a hundred yards away (and not question the dead bodies apparently), and your character can get turned into swiss cheese by a volley of bullets and a syringe full of Cureital fixes everything.
I also had a problem with locating enemies sometimes. They'd always know where I was if I walked within a kilometer of them, but sometimes it took me several minutes just to locate them. Overall I thought the game was pretty and kind of fun, but I was hoping for more.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: Yes, I actually bought this game. Or rather, I bought a license which allows me to install it on 5 different computers and that's it. Before we get started let me say I loved the new naval warfare. I honestly thought that was a good addition. I also enjoyed how units had two different "attacks". The music was also quite good. Beyond those few things, there wasn't anything else I liked about the game. A lot of the story was rehashed from the first two, the Empire of the Rising sun felt very awkward, a lot of the graphics were sort of cartoony (yet the water wasn't at all), and EA hired more breasts than writers*.
One thing that really annoyed me was the forced co-op single player. When started to play the first mission it gave me a choice between solo and co-op. I thought at the time that co-op is a great idea and would be fun, but I didn't have anyone to play with at the time, so I went for solo. To my surprise I was forced to play the map with a computer ally (with campy dialogue). Now with C&C games I love capturing enemy bases to win, call it a quirk, but I always found that more satisfying than rolling them with a million units. However, now that I was forced to play with a computer ally with very limited control** either the computer would destroy the base before I could capture it, or the computer would be wiped out and I'd have to guard that flank. Overall I think the C&C franchise
You know I think if Global Warming is any indication, science is going to get even more politicized in the near future. People will use science, or rather manipulated and partial data and false pretenses which they will call science, to push agendas and line their pockets. Before anyone calls me a shill for whatever organization they hate most and mods me down let me make clear that I'm not pointing at the vast majority of scientists who are doing honest work using the scientific method. I am pointing at both parties who have politicized this issue for their own gain.
The thing that bugs me is that the public at large doesn't the read journals and papers on the latest scientific findings, instead they listen the political figure heads and corporations and news reporters, all of which have an agenda to push. I think what I'm beginning to realize is that science is ultimately going to suffer from this nonsense. I don't think it will matter if the results are peer-reviewed anymore, I think the public won't trust them anyway.
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
No OS can protect itself against a stupid user.
I think if they want to resurrect the species they'll need more than a male and a female. Genetic diversity and all that. I'm not sure how many would be sufficient, but it's more than two =).
There are many responsible people who can tinker with chemicals but there are many irresponsible ones who would end up seriously harming themselves or others, accidentally or on purpose.
And yet we let damn near everyone drive.
Say I have a Linksys router, one which won't allow openWRT/DD-WRT to run on it. Does this also warrant an antitrust lawsuit?
Quite the contrary. They only want your money. They don't value anyone as a customer and they certainly don't care if they have any loyal customers. So long as they can get one more sale and increase their short term profits their happy.
The bad part is I just bought Red Alert 3. I come to find out it has the exact same DRM as Spore, 5 installs allowed. Thanks EA, for selling me a license masquerading as an actual product. And now this... I guess I deserve what I get. Still, a big "Fuck You" goes out to EA. I hope they piss off so many people they go bankrupt. Oh well, I can always dream.
They didn't say *intelligent* life, merely life.
So when someone says "X is 100 times larger than Y" you instinctively think "X=100*Y", yet when someone says "X is 100 times smaller than Y" you instinctively think "X=Z-100*(Z-Y)" for some arbitrary Z of same unit as Y. Forgive me for not following your erm... logic.
Let's say I have a temperature which is 100 times larger than 27.1 mK, this would be 2.71 K. Indeed 27.1 mK is smaller than 2.71 K and 2.71 K is larger than 27.1 mK. So saying 100 times smaller than 2.71 K should indicate I mean 27.1 mK. In no way is this nonsensical and I'm pretty sure everyone here understands that "X is N times smaller than Y" means multiply Y by the reciprocal of N, similarly "X is N times larger than Y" means multiply Y by N.
Granted this isn't something you'd see in technical writing, but I'm pretty sure Information Week isn't a technical journal, so why be a pedant about it?
A few weeks ago the university campus police sent everyone an e-mail saying "... a tornado is approaching from the west. Please take cover in a shelter designed to minimize damages." 39 minutes later they send out another e-mail saying "The email message that went out regarding a tornado was a TEST ONLY. ... We apologize for the miscommunication."
Of course I didn't read my e-mail until much later on that evening, so I had a good laugh at it.
It's like asking, "Would you rather be kicked in the nuts or punched in the face?"
Experiments are now considered entertainment? Hell, I can't wait for the results from the LHC to show up in the entertainment section. I can see it now, "The World is Ending! Armageddon is Here!" tagged with "humor" in the entertainment section.
... or write their own OS like Apple did.
You will have to heavily elaborate "write" in that sentence. Apple did not sit down one day and write OSX from scratch. Under the hood it's BSD (from NeXT when they bought them), granted they've changed things and added stuff (including a nice GUI), but they did not write the entire operating system. Unless of course a pretty GUI and patch files to an existing OS is considered an OS in itself.
Fine, I'll give you some valid reasons. Halo isn't a bad game, it really isn't. However, it's not a good game either, it's mediocre. I was excited as hell for Halo before Microsoft bought out Bungie. I remember seeing the original videos and pictures and though it was going to be an amazing game. Even after Microsoft bought Bungie I wasn't deterred, I bought an Xbox solely for Halo. When I played it I found it wasn't that good. It wasn't original, it wasn't unique, it was just there. Thanks to Microsofts huge PR push it became an instant hit though and spawned two sequels and soon an RTS. It's widely proclaimed to be one of the best FPS games by Halo players, which leads me to assume they have little experience with FPS games that came before it. I'd even rate Goldeneye for the N64 (to keep it console only) much higher than Halo. Don't get me wrong, playing Halo 3 multiplayer with friends while drinking a few beers is fun, but not fun enough to buy the game.
It's not that we're hating on kids, but they are a new generation of gamers. One which I think are more concerned with pretty graphics than gameplay. I still go back to old games and love to play them. Of course I can't get the Halo gamer types to pick them up at all. So in this regard I agree with the GP that they wouldn't get Grim Fandango or Fallout or even games in the same vein.
Note that I'm not saying Too Human is good or bad. I played the demo and found it moderately fun, but didn't get the urge to buy it from playing the demo.
Ah yes, the original Star Trek. Where Captain Kirk would either
A) Beat up the antagonist
B) Have sex with the antagonist
or C) Do both A and B
It really went downhill after the original!