Religion is about suppressing your own ego and having compassion for those around you, which is something that a lot of scientists could sorely use.
It's also something a lot of religious people could use.
I mostly associate myself with educated, scientific people, and they are by far more honest, forgiving, opened minded, and nicer people than ANY of the religious people I know save for maybe one or two.
But that's just in MY experience. I do live just outside the Bible Belt(TM), so this may have something to do with my observations.
That lifelike prosthetic head and third arm Zaphod wore around certainly constituted all three of those dollars by themselves!
Though some satire was intended, that is mostly true, though the dollar value is a bit off.
Apparently a great deal of money DID go into the arm and head of Zaphod, and they were supposed to do a great number of things that they never really could quite get to work properly.
As for the Three Dollars, that was probably spent on the beers consumed in the pub scene.:)
Maybe they're just driving around, obeying traffic signals, listening to the radio, watching the sunset...
Perhaps to some degree, they are doing EXACTLY those things. But that's what is cool about Grand Theft Auto 3. You CAN do those things. Haven't you ever taken a car in GTA3 and wanted to see how long you could obey the traffic laws before some kind of shit breaks out that you had no hand in?
And the diversity of weather in the game is impressive.
GTA3 wins my vote as one of the greatest games of all time not because of the violence and gameplay, it's the stuff in between that which really puts it on top. There were other games with violence and good game play, but they lacked those "final touches".
As for Nintendo's games -- I still enjoy almost everything from Nintendo, and my girlfriend actually got me tolerating Pokemon against my will. The game is interesting to say the least. I can't say I'll sit down and play it, but watching her play can be amusing at times.
My thinking exactly...why would anyone need to re-install their OS monthly???
Or ever?
ONe of my machines has UPGRADED, but never been reformated. It started out as Win98, then ME, then WinXP. Never once without a reinstall. Another one of my machines has has FreeBSD for 3 years and has never needed a reinstall.
My most recent machine was just powered up for the first time the other day, and oddly enough, I had to put Windows XP on it. I suspect it will never need a reinstall.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that if you know what you are doing, major problems never crop up, and when they do you can fix them without resorting to a reformat. This applies to both Windows and *nix.
Oh, and yes, I know people who have had to reformat their Linux boxes a few times... but you will all instantly blame the user for THAT, won't you? It's no different, really.
Still, on to get back on topic.
Hotfixes, DX, and other patches. Trillian Pro Avg (Registered) Zone Alarm Pro AdAware ACDSee Classic WinAMP Skype Games (group them all together) Emulators (same here)
I do consider it nice to have native (rather than the hack MPlayer and the like use) support for a given format, but not at the expense of making Linux have the same stability as Windows.
First off, who says bringing Windows Media Player to Linux will make Linux unstable? It MIGHT make for an unstable Media Player but then, a single application should never make an entire OS unstable, right?
Right? Well I assume that MUST be the case, since everybody gripes about how single errant applications can bring down Windows.
If it does turn out that bringing WMP to Linux makes Linux as a whole unstable, then maybe Linux doesn't have that superior stability that everyone has always claimed.
Truth be known I don't even use WMP on my Windows machines. I stick to MP3 if I can help it. Sure, it's not opened like Ogg, but it's not quite as evil as WMP and it's a whole lot more popular.
I really don't see the need for WMP on any platform, much less Linux, but if someone wants to pay for a codec, let 'em.
In other words: a small team can today build a product that competes fairly well with Windows, using off-the-shelf technology. This was not true 10 years ago.
In fact, thanks to Zero-Price(as you put it) software (and underlying technologies), Windows Binary Compatibility is becoming more of a reality with each day.
I suspect it won't be long before some of the "free Windows Compatible Alternatives" start becoming real threats to Windows market share. That might still be a couple of years off, but it is eventually going to happen.
and most can even manage a decent house/condo/apartment with cool things like air conditioning, heating, running water
Actually, multi-family residence is at an all time high (not to mention adults still living with parents). The fact is, in some parts of the country many people can not afford a decent place to live on a single income. In fact, at the current rate it is estimated that a very large percentage of the US citizens will require the pay of THREE full time jobs to afford decent housing. (Keep your eye on Realty Times as they discuss this issue from time to time.)
Remember, once upon a time, a SINGLE income family could afford a decent home.
Some things are better now days, but some things are very decidedly going down hill.
16-player doom might be fun, if you can find 16 people with GBAs...
With MILLIONS of GBAs sold... you should have no trouble finding someone with a GBA. Odds are you know lots of people with them, or people who have bought them for their kids.
I personally own the original GBA and the SP, and I personally have at least 6 close friends with GBAs, and some family members.
They're out there. You just might have a hard time finding people who want to huddle around for a game of DOOM.
In There...
on
SimChurch
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
There is literally no reason why this sort of thing couldn't have already been going on for who knows how long.
There are all kinds of people in games like Second Life, There, and The Sims Online that take the game way too seriously. It's only a matter of time before someone starts religious services, if they haven't already.
I've seen groups of people all wearing shirts with Crosses and quotes like "Got Jesus?" for a while. An official meeting place on Sundays is only one step away.
GBA isn't a mobile phone, so how does that poke a hole through the argument?
Simple.
The GBA is successful as a game console. The N-Gage is not.
I admit the GBA can't exactly be compared to a cell phone since it isn't one, but seeing as how the N-Gage isn't considered a very good phone either, that makes it an all around loser.
The GBA does what it's supposed to do really well. The N-Gage doesn't do either of it's tasks very well at all.
Your comment about peoples wide FOV is true, but only applicable to FPS and other 3D games. But those sorts of games are not what the mobile phone user typically wants to play.
I would agree with that entirely if the Gameboy Advance didn't totally poke a hole right through the argument.
Sure enough. But does this emulator magically make your DVD-ROM or, even more likely, CD-ROM able to read a retail Xbox game disc?
It would require your DVD-ROM to read the disk. The CD-ROM would not be capable.
There would be no magic involved in reading the disc with any high quality DVD-ROM, it would just require reading the drive RAW.
There was information floating around about how the XBox games wrote data from the "OUTSIDE IN" to gain a speed advantage. This isn't exactly the way it worked afterall, and though there have been arguments back and forth as to wether or not a high quality PC DVD-ROM drive could actually read an XBox game, the argument seems to have settled more towards the idea that the disc can in fact be read.
I don't claim to know the answer for sure, but the fact that this emulator does work is encouraging.
I'd say that they have a much bigger PR problem to tackle than the Virtual Boy or the 32X ever had.
I'd say the Virtual Boy and 32x may even have a better chance of success than the N-Gage.:)
I speak not only as someone who buys just about anything game related, but also as someone who has many like-minded friends. The major issue that gamers have with the N-Gage isn't the shape, and it isn't the location of the memory card, though both of those issues ARE major turn offs, they ALMOST might could have been overlooked if it weren't for a few other serious factors.
The first buzzkill was the screen. Tall and Skinny Works for early 80's upright cabinets and that's it. It doesn't work for handhelds, and there's almost nothing you can do to make it work.
In a day and age were video is making a push for "WIDE SCREEN", doing the total opposite is the kiss of death. Human vision is wider than it is tall, and we've become spoiled by a wide field of vision. For that reason, the screen layout of the N-Gage pretty much prohibits it from having games most people are going to stand playing for very long.
Next, the button layout is crap. It had all those buttons (in the form of a number pad) and they wasted the chance to do something really innovative by trying to turn the interface into a stylish phone. Only it's not a stylish phone, so they failed that too.
If the N-Gage actually has a future, it won't be in it's current, or even it's newly announced form. It'll require a MAJOR overhaul.
I just found out that Trillian Pro calls home whenever it starts up.
What did you think using your registered login name to execute the program (at least for the first time) was for? They do that to prevent (or at least track) piracy, and nothing more. The anonymous usage stats that they do send can be disabled, so you don't have to worry about that. Besides, that whole ordeal isn't and never was a secret.
I certainly think there is a major difference between "signing in" to authenticate right to use softare vs. "sneaking onto your system" to watch what you do. Two totally different things indeed.
One other major thing going for Trillian. If you don't like it, uninstall it. You might not get a refund out of Cerulean but at least they give you the option to take the software off. Most spyware doesn't even want you to know it's there.
Lastly, Trillian phones home but it doesn't keep constant communication going with them and it certainly doesn't feed you spam/spyware/etc. It also checks for updates.
If anything, Trillian represents a fairly socially responsible piece of software. It tells you what it does, it doesn't do anything obtrusive, and it does something useful.
While Piracy IS a negative side effect of all this, there is no reason why it has to be all about piracy.
There are plenty of people who would just LOVE to play XBox games on their PCs.
If this means just sticking an XBox game in their PC and firing up a good game through an Emulator, I don't see anything at all wrong with this.
Legally, though, I'm sure Microsoft would differe in opinion, but if it were to actually increase games sales I don't know how they could really have too much to complain about.
One of the companies I hold a credit card from outsourced all of their incoming customer care calls to an India based call center, and put a totally automated front-end on their access number so that only members could contact them.
Saves money, and prevents unwanted calls wasting employee time. Sounds like a lovely business plan.
Fsck'em. Last week I tried to place an order online using that credit card from a company whose order staff was outsourced to some other country (not India, I couldn't recognize the accent of the person I spoke with).
Since their company policy was to phone the credit card company and validate the shipping address, this put me in a difficult situation. I attempted various different methods of getting them the information, even going so far as to call my credit card company and telling them they needed to contact the company I was trying to place the order with.
In the end nothing I did satisfied both ends and now two companies have both suffered. I'll never buy anything from that company again, and I'm canceling this credit card. It'll save them both money when they don't have to deal with customers like me.
Doesn't Wild Tangent not only contain spyware, but make itself difficult to uninstall?
If I remember correctly it once did if it doesn't still. For that reason, I refused to allow Wild Tangent's crap on my system. They might have changed since then, but I've not been impressed enough to care.
I guess Alex St. John knows all about losing strategies, huh?
explain why all three outsourced both their core processor and their graphics processor to the same two companies
You mean two out of three. Sony has done no such thing.
They have their own "CELL" technology they're going on and on about. This doesn't mean they can't go with IBM/ATI in the end, but I somehow don't see them just giving up on Cell after having invested so much in it.
Another thing to remember though is that Off-The-Shelf components is nothing new to the console world. The NES(Modified 6502), GENESIS(Motorolla 68000), SATURN(Dual SH2's), DREAMCAST(Single SH4), and many other systems used existing processors.
This isn't uncommon not only because it costs a whole lot less than making a proprietary processor, but it also eases in the developement of software when you use processors with an existing developer base.
Given that you have to select an E-mail to delete it, how are users supposed to protect themselves from this one?
Disable the Preview Pane (Pain).
It's a stupid feature anyway, it's unsafe by design, and the last thing on earth I want is my computer opening my e-mails without my input.
This is OLD news. The Preview Pane shouldn't even exist until Microsoft can find some way to totally secure it, which probably won't ever happen as long as harmfull tricks can be planted in e-mail.
I've NEVER used the Preview Pane, and I don't miss it one bit. Maybe more so called "computer experts" should stop carrying stupid misconceptions and actually learn the truth behind the stupid ideas they so firmly hold onto.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of my friends' parents are dead set against them ever owning a video game console, and yet they own state of the art computers.
After all, most parents buy PCs to help with the homework.
Religion is about suppressing your own ego and having compassion for those around you, which is something that a lot of scientists could sorely use.
It's also something a lot of religious people could use.
I mostly associate myself with educated, scientific people, and they are by far more honest, forgiving, opened minded, and nicer people than ANY of the religious people I know save for maybe one or two.
But that's just in MY experience. I do live just outside the Bible Belt(TM), so this may have something to do with my observations.
That lifelike prosthetic head and third arm Zaphod wore around certainly constituted all three of those dollars by themselves!
:)
Though some satire was intended, that is mostly true, though the dollar value is a bit off.
Apparently a great deal of money DID go into the arm and head of Zaphod, and they were supposed to do a great number of things that they never really could quite get to work properly.
As for the Three Dollars, that was probably spent on the beers consumed in the pub scene.
IBM is doing quite a bit of work in Quantum Computing. So, I guess they are both GOOD AND BAD.
Maybe they're just driving around, obeying traffic signals, listening to the radio, watching the sunset...
Perhaps to some degree, they are doing EXACTLY those things. But that's what is cool about Grand Theft Auto 3. You CAN do those things. Haven't you ever taken a car in GTA3 and wanted to see how long you could obey the traffic laws before some kind of shit breaks out that you had no hand in?
And the diversity of weather in the game is impressive.
GTA3 wins my vote as one of the greatest games of all time not because of the violence and gameplay, it's the stuff in between that which really puts it on top. There were other games with violence and good game play, but they lacked those "final touches".
As for Nintendo's games -- I still enjoy almost everything from Nintendo, and my girlfriend actually got me tolerating Pokemon against my will. The game is interesting to say the least. I can't say I'll sit down and play it, but watching her play can be amusing at times.
My thinking exactly...why would anyone need to re-install their OS monthly???
Or ever?
ONe of my machines has UPGRADED, but never been reformated. It started out as Win98, then ME, then WinXP. Never once without a reinstall. Another one of my machines has has FreeBSD for 3 years and has never needed a reinstall.
My most recent machine was just powered up for the first time the other day, and oddly enough, I had to put Windows XP on it. I suspect it will never need a reinstall.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that if you know what you are doing, major problems never crop up, and when they do you can fix them without resorting to a reformat. This applies to both Windows and *nix.
Oh, and yes, I know people who have had to reformat their Linux boxes a few times... but you will all instantly blame the user for THAT, won't you? It's no different, really.
Still, on to get back on topic.
Hotfixes, DX, and other patches.
Trillian Pro
Avg (Registered)
Zone Alarm Pro
AdAware
ACDSee Classic
WinAMP
Skype
Games (group them all together)
Emulators (same here)
I do consider it nice to have native (rather than the hack MPlayer and the like use) support for a given format, but not at the expense of making Linux have the same stability as Windows.
First off, who says bringing Windows Media Player to Linux will make Linux unstable? It MIGHT make for an unstable Media Player but then, a single application should never make an entire OS unstable, right?
Right? Well I assume that MUST be the case, since everybody gripes about how single errant applications can bring down Windows.
If it does turn out that bringing WMP to Linux makes Linux as a whole unstable, then maybe Linux doesn't have that superior stability that everyone has always claimed.
Truth be known I don't even use WMP on my Windows machines. I stick to MP3 if I can help it. Sure, it's not opened like Ogg, but it's not quite as evil as WMP and it's a whole lot more popular.
I really don't see the need for WMP on any platform, much less Linux, but if someone wants to pay for a codec, let 'em.
In other words: a small team can today build a product that competes fairly well with Windows, using off-the-shelf technology. This was not true 10 years ago.
In fact, thanks to Zero-Price(as you put it) software (and underlying technologies), Windows Binary Compatibility is becoming more of a reality with each day.
I suspect it won't be long before some of the "free Windows Compatible Alternatives" start becoming real threats to Windows market share. That might still be a couple of years off, but it is eventually going to happen.
and most can even manage a decent house/condo/apartment with cool things like air conditioning, heating, running water
Actually, multi-family residence is at an all time high (not to mention adults still living with parents). The fact is, in some parts of the country many people can not afford a decent place to live on a single income. In fact, at the current rate it is estimated that a very large percentage of the US citizens will require the pay of THREE full time jobs to afford decent housing. (Keep your eye on Realty Times as they discuss this issue from time to time.)
Remember, once upon a time, a SINGLE income family could afford a decent home.
Some things are better now days, but some things are very decidedly going down hill.
16-player doom might be fun, if you can find 16 people with GBAs...
With MILLIONS of GBAs sold... you should have no trouble finding someone with a GBA. Odds are you know lots of people with them, or people who have bought them for their kids.
I personally own the original GBA and the SP, and I personally have at least 6 close friends with GBAs, and some family members.
They're out there. You just might have a hard time finding people who want to huddle around for a game of DOOM.
There is literally no reason why this sort of thing couldn't have already been going on for who knows how long.
There are all kinds of people in games like Second Life, There, and The Sims Online that take the game way too seriously. It's only a matter of time before someone starts religious services, if they haven't already.
I've seen groups of people all wearing shirts with Crosses and quotes like "Got Jesus?" for a while. An official meeting place on Sundays is only one step away.
Anybody who has ever played Animal Crossing knows that if you run around shaking enough trees eventually a bag of money will fall out.
Just be careful, some of them have bee hives.
GBA isn't a mobile phone, so how does that poke a hole through the argument?
Simple.
The GBA is successful as a game console. The N-Gage is not.
I admit the GBA can't exactly be compared to a cell phone since it isn't one, but seeing as how the N-Gage isn't considered a very good phone either, that makes it an all around loser.
The GBA does what it's supposed to do really well. The N-Gage doesn't do either of it's tasks very well at all.
Your comment about peoples wide FOV is true, but only applicable to FPS and other 3D games. But those sorts of games are not what the mobile phone user typically wants to play.
I would agree with that entirely if the Gameboy Advance didn't totally poke a hole right through the argument.
Sure enough. But does this emulator magically make your DVD-ROM or, even more likely, CD-ROM able to read a retail Xbox game disc?
It would require your DVD-ROM to read the disk. The CD-ROM would not be capable.
There would be no magic involved in reading the disc with any high quality DVD-ROM, it would just require reading the drive RAW.
There was information floating around about how the XBox games wrote data from the "OUTSIDE IN" to gain a speed advantage. This isn't exactly the way it worked afterall, and though there have been arguments back and forth as to wether or not a high quality PC DVD-ROM drive could actually read an XBox game, the argument seems to have settled more towards the idea that the disc can in fact be read.
I don't claim to know the answer for sure, but the fact that this emulator does work is encouraging.
I'd say that they have a much bigger PR problem to tackle than the Virtual Boy or the 32X ever had.
:)
I'd say the Virtual Boy and 32x may even have a better chance of success than the N-Gage.
I speak not only as someone who buys just about anything game related, but also as someone who has many like-minded friends. The major issue that gamers have with the N-Gage isn't the shape, and it isn't the location of the memory card, though both of those issues ARE major turn offs, they ALMOST might could have been overlooked if it weren't for a few other serious factors.
The first buzzkill was the screen. Tall and Skinny Works for early 80's upright cabinets and that's it. It doesn't work for handhelds, and there's almost nothing you can do to make it work.
In a day and age were video is making a push for "WIDE SCREEN", doing the total opposite is the kiss of death. Human vision is wider than it is tall, and we've become spoiled by a wide field of vision. For that reason, the screen layout of the N-Gage pretty much prohibits it from having games most people are going to stand playing for very long.
Next, the button layout is crap. It had all those buttons (in the form of a number pad) and they wasted the chance to do something really innovative by trying to turn the interface into a stylish phone. Only it's not a stylish phone, so they failed that too.
If the N-Gage actually has a future, it won't be in it's current, or even it's newly announced form. It'll require a MAJOR overhaul.
I just found out that Trillian Pro calls home whenever it starts up.
What did you think using your registered login name to execute the program (at least for the first time) was for? They do that to prevent (or at least track) piracy, and nothing more. The anonymous usage stats that they do send can be disabled, so you don't have to worry about that. Besides, that whole ordeal isn't and never was a secret.
I certainly think there is a major difference between "signing in" to authenticate right to use softare vs. "sneaking onto your system" to watch what you do. Two totally different things indeed.
One other major thing going for Trillian. If you don't like it, uninstall it. You might not get a refund out of Cerulean but at least they give you the option to take the software off. Most spyware doesn't even want you to know it's there.
Lastly, Trillian phones home but it doesn't keep constant communication going with them and it certainly doesn't feed you spam/spyware/etc. It also checks for updates.
If anything, Trillian represents a fairly socially responsible piece of software. It tells you what it does, it doesn't do anything obtrusive, and it does something useful.
Exactly how can you criminalize Carulean?
you insentive clod, online's next victim is you
Yes, but only in Soviet Russia...
While Piracy IS a negative side effect of all this, there is no reason why it has to be all about piracy.
There are plenty of people who would just LOVE to play XBox games on their PCs.
If this means just sticking an XBox game in their PC and firing up a good game through an Emulator, I don't see anything at all wrong with this.
Legally, though, I'm sure Microsoft would differe in opinion, but if it were to actually increase games sales I don't know how they could really have too much to complain about.
One of the companies I hold a credit card from outsourced all of their incoming customer care calls to an India based call center, and put a totally automated front-end on their access number so that only members could contact them.
Saves money, and prevents unwanted calls wasting employee time. Sounds like a lovely business plan.
Fsck'em.
Last week I tried to place an order online using that credit card from a company whose order staff was outsourced to some other country (not India, I couldn't recognize the accent of the person I spoke with).
Since their company policy was to phone the credit card company and validate the shipping address, this put me in a difficult situation. I attempted various different methods of getting them the information, even going so far as to call my credit card company and telling them they needed to contact the company I was trying to place the order with.
In the end nothing I did satisfied both ends and now two companies have both suffered. I'll never buy anything from that company again, and I'm canceling this credit card. It'll save them both money when they don't have to deal with customers like me.
Doesn't Wild Tangent not only contain spyware, but make itself difficult to uninstall?
If I remember correctly it once did if it doesn't still. For that reason, I refused to allow Wild Tangent's crap on my system. They might have changed since then, but I've not been impressed enough to care.
I guess Alex St. John knows all about losing strategies, huh?
explain why all three outsourced both their core processor and their graphics processor to the same two companies
You mean two out of three. Sony has done no such thing.
They have their own "CELL" technology they're going on and on about. This doesn't mean they can't go with IBM/ATI in the end, but I somehow don't see them just giving up on Cell after having invested so much in it.
Another thing to remember though is that Off-The-Shelf components is nothing new to the console world. The NES(Modified 6502), GENESIS(Motorolla 68000), SATURN(Dual SH2's), DREAMCAST(Single SH4), and many other systems used existing processors.
This isn't uncommon not only because it costs a whole lot less than making a proprietary processor, but it also eases in the developement of software when you use processors with an existing developer base.
Given that you have to select an E-mail to delete it, how are users supposed to protect themselves from this one?
Disable the Preview Pane (Pain).
It's a stupid feature anyway, it's unsafe by design, and the last thing on earth I want is my computer opening my e-mails without my input.
This is OLD news. The Preview Pane shouldn't even exist until Microsoft can find some way to totally secure it, which probably won't ever happen as long as harmfull tricks can be planted in e-mail.
I've NEVER used the Preview Pane, and I don't miss it one bit. Maybe more so called "computer experts" should stop carrying stupid misconceptions and actually learn the truth behind the stupid ideas they so firmly hold onto.
And after those two, you can move on to AOL... oh wait..
No.
Plasma cutters.