I thought they would ban Communist songs too, close call on that.
Do you know the words? (well YOU better LEARN) Everyone sing along (or else)!
Unbreakable Union of freeborn Republics,
Great Russia has welded forever to stand.
Created in struggle by will of the people,
United and mighty, our Soviet land!
Sing to the Motherland, home of the free,
Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong.
O Party of Lenin, the strength of the people,
To Communism's triumph lead us on!
Through tempests the sunrays of freedom have cheered us,
Along the new path where great Lenin did lead.
To a righteous cause he raised up the peoples,
Inspired them to labor and valorous deed.
[Or, the original way:
Be true to the people, thus Stalin has reared us,
Inspire us to labor and valorous deed!]
Sing to the Motherland, home of the free,
Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong.
O Party of Lenin, the strength of the people,
To Communism's triumph lead us on!
In the vict'ry of Communism's deathless ideal,
We see the future of our dear land.
And to her fluttering scarlet banner,
Selflessly true we always shall stand!
My computer has managed to process over six trillion years of abacusian processing. However, due to the large amount of entropy inherant in Windows all this math is for naught as the flawed calculations tend to cease the hardware.
"Programming eventually leads to addition with letters"
Yeah, I guess all us gamers are closeted, pimply faced losers. And I guess we're also the 'new' culture (even though video game culture has been around since the late-seventies). Books will never lose their lustre, but TV? C'mon, television has gotten to a point of ineptitude that is only surpassed by it's inutility! (such is the fate of all static media, a la radio) I find it nearly unwatchable (primarily the dribble that oozes out of the USA).
I would like to ask this: If there are two people, one who watches four hours of television a day and another who plays Asheron's Call for the same amount of time, who is being more (or less) social?
It's the equivalent of a burglar checking your doors and windows looking for one that's not locked.
And if you left the keys in your door who is to blame? I don't think port scanning for the purpose of illegal entry is right or moral, but if you invite someone in due to negligence then you are at fault.
If you are running a home server and/or network and you don't even have rudimentary firewall software (also available at Tucows) then you have no one to blame but yourself if your network is comprimised.
Capt. Ron
Re:Fewer game developers == better games == good
on
Gaming Crash up Ahead
·
· Score: 1
"Realize that people buy games because of the subject matter and/or graphics, not because the games are long. They are only offered ridiculously short or ridiculously long games in today's market. If the publishers didn't need to justify charging increasingly more for each game because of overhead, we wouldn't see this kind of bloat." So uhhh, presumably how long is the "perfect" game supposed to be? Just long enough not to bore me but long enough to keep me interested? How long is that? And in case you didn't notice, game prices haven't fluctuated much in the last decade. Yes I had to pay $69 for Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1990 and yes I have to pay $59.99 for Tekken Tag Tournament, game prices aren't going anywhere and they are never based on actual development cost, they are based on what the industry suggests as "retail price". If you can't handle the high prices of games get a mod chip or get a crack!
As for less programmers making more innovation, does this make sense at all? I don't care how good a set of programmers are, the fewer there are the less innovation there is going to be, a larger group stimulates innovation (and if you can't find innovative games, you should obviously stop looking at the shelves in your local Wal-Mart and start poking around the web for more interesting games). There is more choice for gamers now than there has ever been, and if you can't find games that are "just right" for you, you aren't looking hard enough.
Capt. Ron
Re:Fewer game developers == better games == good
on
Gaming Crash up Ahead
·
· Score: 1
So what you're saying is that you want a game that is:
Cheap
Short
Easy
Where is the challenge?
The market wouldn't make money on games that are comprehensive, long, challenging if they weren't considered popular by the user base. Having less game developers in the market is definatly not the means of getting more innovative games out there. I mean really, game development is a small tight knit community and isn't something any idiot can get into (unlike web-development), it is a very "clicky" industry. Less developers only means that less ideas will get a venue, therefore less choice. Just look at the early 80's (which in contrast to now had very few game programmers), most games were clones of a select few 'great' games.
I think gaming is heading towards a bright future as game companies can directly interface with the masses via the internet. They have access to immediate feedback on what the gamers want to see and can harness this information to better cater to their clients needs.
Finally, why are PC games so buggy nowadays? Because the developer knows that he can release buggy code and afterwards patch it up. Not so in previous years. While the technology of patch delivery has been around for a while, most consumers did not accept the fact that patching software was viable. In older times, when you bought game software you expected it to run near-perfect. Now-a-days people almost expect bugs to rear their ugly heads, get the latest patch, and bob's-your-uncle, they're back playing their favourite games.
Different strokes for different folks I guess. Some of us could spend years playing "Asheron's Call" whereas others would get equal entertainment out of "Tetris".
Because as history has shown us (1929) investing is inevitably going to fail, and the stock market will crash again!
*CAUTION! EXTREME SARCASIM, USE OF PROTECTIVE GOGGLES IS REQUIRED
I agree the console market will die, however I think it will happen when things are being run by those "damn dirty apes!"
Capt. Ron
Re:Good Search engines come and go, but Google las
on
A Pair of Google Bits
·
· Score: 1
"Google is a company. A realization of an idea. What makes Google great is _people_ -- not some "algorythm" as you call it." Sorry, what makes Google great for me is the fact that it fetches the results I want, not because of a company or the people who work there. All I care about is "does it get results for me".
"Do you really think that the other search engines are NOT using ranking techniques along the same lines as PageRank? Page and Brin were not even the first ones to explore these ideas. They were not even the most clever ones to have gone there." Whoa, settle down there. Did I mention PageRank (or ranking techniques) at all? Because I could care less. Companies with web-sites or web-based companies should not rely on the fact that they appear first in a set of search results. To me thats the same as seeing the "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 1 Pizza" ad in the phone book. Good advertising, word of mouth and service are what really get people to a corporate website.
Tell you what, show me some search engine that gets the job done better! Prove to me that the "Google Corporation(TM)" is doing nothing in terms of fixing scalability issues, or better yet, show me a search engine that has a viable solution for this problem.
Capt. Ron
Good Search engines come and go, but Google lasts!
on
A Pair of Google Bits
·
· Score: 2
In the last few years I have cycled between several search engines (including metacrawler). Google, by far, is the best meta search engine, it always seems to get the results I want, which is whats really important. I also have to say that I love the 'no frills' interface. As a visually impared person readability is key and I can easily browse Google;-)
As for Google losing it's "cool" in the near future? I don't think so, the only thing that could screw Google is if someone else comes up with a better search algorythm and Google does nothing to compete with it, but I don't see that happening in the near future.
I'd really like to see new development of 'classic' style games.
Games don't need 3D or crappy CG cut-scenes to be fun! Why can't a game be visually basic and still have good game mechanics?
Games like Bosconian, Warlords, Pac-Man, Sinistar, Discs of Tron, Galaga, Track & Field, Star Wars (vector graphics), Golden Axe and Pitfall were all fairly basic visually but they still are fun to play, moreso than newer graphics rich games (not to mention they only cost $0.25 a pop). Seriously, whats worth more fun wise? A player vs. player game of Arkanoids or a round of "Dance, Dance Revoloution"? (BTW, down with [club | disco] sub-culture!).
Anyway, I would love to see new development in games that skimp on graphics but increase playability and entertainment value. How much development time / money gets spent on graphics alone? And how much money goes to design, testing and QA? Sure the market demands big 3D polygons dazzling the easily impressed casual arcade goer, but what legacy do these flashy games leave?
I go to the arcade for fun, not eye-candy.
P.S. Don't even get me started on the decline of Pinball!
Never, ever kid yourself about that fact! If Linux smells like it would be profitable, M$ will "magically" come out with a distro (and I think your prediction about how they would keep it 'closed' is accurate). There would be a lot of touting, taunting (from/.'ers) and fanfare, but M$ will always put itself ahead of the consumer (primarily because they feel comfortable with their massive user base, both at home and abroad and therefore don't fear other O/S's that much). The only benefit I can see of them joining the 21st century is stripped down versions of whatever distro they do come out with can be used, tweaked and made better, screw junk like IE and Visual Studio if it has to work on proprietary code anyway.
No way in Hell will I ever go mobile! I've seen what happens to people who buy a mobile phone, they are just buying a mobile leash. Not only can EVERYONE get your number (your Boss, your friend, advertisers, etc) but you are always near your phone and have to make excuses if you don't pick it up.
But maybe thats just me, someone had to twist my arm to get me to buy a digital phone, give me my rotary phone any day! (I'll be the only person who actually deals with another human instead of punching through endless menus;-))
The provincial Government of Alberta has set a price cap on electricity (I believe its $0.08/KwH) and Power producers say that they will not be able to maintain the high cost of production and be able to turn a profit. Meanwhile, Albertan businesses are claiming that the already too high cost of electricity may force them out of the province.
So what is the government to do? Allow the power companies charge whatever they need to to make a profit and lose big business (we're talking steel mills, etc) or keep a cap on electricity prices and have the power companies suffer (which will undoubtedly lead to higher taxes for government subsidized energy programs)?
I'm not sure what to think about these new GUI designs, I'm finding them becoming more and more cluttered and end up turning off all the 'new features'. Case in point, the interface for Netscape 6, while cool looking, is not easy to read (for me anyway) and for the most part looks cluttered. Lets keep the desktop / app looking clean.
I don't know about the rest of you but I'd prefer a more basic user interface. It might not be pretty, but it gets the job done...
The GIAJ (Gravitional Industry Association of Jupiter) has sued Earth for illegally stealing Jupiters gravity, claiming that it "hurts the mass that generates the gravity as less and less comsumers would be interested in paying for a service it can aquire for free".
NASA commented on it's use of "free" Jovian gravity claiming that "By allowing space probes to use gravity, more consumers would be exposed to it and therefore more interested in its use / application. We also give a venue for the discovery of new massive objects and help them advertise the fact that they too produce gravity...", NASA made no furthur comments...
I like to spice up my RTG's with a little kayan pepper, if you dice up some Photopolarimeter with carrots and some boiled Plasma Wave Antenna's and stir fry them all in the 3.7 meter High Gain Antenna dish you will have a meal fit for a JPL Engineer!
Don't forget the chilled Narrow Angle, Wide Angle and Plasma sensors for dessert! Mmmm now thats good eatin'
Capt. Ron
I don't see how a television programme is Offtopic
on
On The Dune Miniseries
·
· Score: 1
Thank you for modding me into the black hole of "0".
Dune should have stayed small instead of selling out anyway. I still think "The Starlost" was an awesome Sci-Fi show, and I hope there are others like me who enjoyed this show.
Slashdot Mirror
;-)
Capt. Ron
Capt. Ron
Capt. Ron
Do you know the words? (well YOU better LEARN) Everyone sing along (or else)!
Unbreakable Union of freeborn Republics,
Great Russia has welded forever to stand.
Created in struggle by will of the people,
United and mighty, our Soviet land!
Sing to the Motherland, home of the free,
Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong.
O Party of Lenin, the strength of the people,
To Communism's triumph lead us on!
Through tempests the sunrays of freedom have cheered us,
Along the new path where great Lenin did lead.
To a righteous cause he raised up the peoples,
Inspired them to labor and valorous deed.
[Or, the original way:
Be true to the people, thus Stalin has reared us,
Inspire us to labor and valorous deed!]
Sing to the Motherland, home of the free,
Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong.
O Party of Lenin, the strength of the people,
To Communism's triumph lead us on!
In the vict'ry of Communism's deathless ideal,
We see the future of our dear land.
And to her fluttering scarlet banner,
Selflessly true we always shall stand!
Capt. Ron
Congressman: Wait a minute, I want to tack on a rider to that bill: $30 million of taxpayer money to support the perverted arts.
Speaker: All in favor of the amended Springfield-slash-pervert bill?
[everyone boos]
Speaker: Bill defeated. [bangs gavel]
Kent: I've said it before and I'll say it again: democracy simply doesn't work.
Capt. Ron
"Programming eventually leads to addition with letters"
Capt. Ron
;-)
"There is a reason why 95% of all cosplayers are women..." -Overheard at Animethon 6
Capt. Ron
;-)
Capt. Ron
I would like to ask this: If there are two people, one who watches four hours of television a day and another who plays Asheron's Call for the same amount of time, who is being more (or less) social?
Capt. Ron
And if you left the keys in your door who is to blame? I don't think port scanning for the purpose of illegal entry is right or moral, but if you invite someone in due to negligence then you are at fault.
If you are running a home server and/or network and you don't even have rudimentary firewall software (also available at Tucows) then you have no one to blame but yourself if your network is comprimised.
Capt. Ron
So uhhh, presumably how long is the "perfect" game supposed to be? Just long enough not to bore me but long enough to keep me interested? How long is that? And in case you didn't notice, game prices haven't fluctuated much in the last decade. Yes I had to pay $69 for Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1990 and yes I have to pay $59.99 for Tekken Tag Tournament, game prices aren't going anywhere and they are never based on actual development cost, they are based on what the industry suggests as "retail price". If you can't handle the high prices of games get a mod chip or get a crack!
As for less programmers making more innovation, does this make sense at all? I don't care how good a set of programmers are, the fewer there are the less innovation there is going to be, a larger group stimulates innovation (and if you can't find innovative games, you should obviously stop looking at the shelves in your local Wal-Mart and start poking around the web for more interesting games). There is more choice for gamers now than there has ever been, and if you can't find games that are "just right" for you, you aren't looking hard enough.
Capt. Ron
Cheap
Short
Easy
Where is the challenge?
The market wouldn't make money on games that are comprehensive, long, challenging if they weren't considered popular by the user base. Having less game developers in the market is definatly not the means of getting more innovative games out there. I mean really, game development is a small tight knit community and isn't something any idiot can get into (unlike web-development), it is a very "clicky" industry. Less developers only means that less ideas will get a venue, therefore less choice. Just look at the early 80's (which in contrast to now had very few game programmers), most games were clones of a select few 'great' games.
I think gaming is heading towards a bright future as game companies can directly interface with the masses via the internet. They have access to immediate feedback on what the gamers want to see and can harness this information to better cater to their clients needs.
Finally, why are PC games so buggy nowadays? Because the developer knows that he can release buggy code and afterwards patch it up. Not so in previous years. While the technology of patch delivery has been around for a while, most consumers did not accept the fact that patching software was viable. In older times, when you bought game software you expected it to run near-perfect. Now-a-days people almost expect bugs to rear their ugly heads, get the latest patch, and bob's-your-uncle, they're back playing their favourite games.
Different strokes for different folks I guess. Some of us could spend years playing "Asheron's Call" whereas others would get equal entertainment out of "Tetris".
Capt. Ron
*CAUTION! EXTREME SARCASIM, USE OF PROTECTIVE GOGGLES IS REQUIRED
I agree the console market will die, however I think it will happen when things are being run by those "damn dirty apes!"
Capt. Ron
Sorry, what makes Google great for me is the fact that it fetches the results I want, not because of a company or the people who work there. All I care about is "does it get results for me".
"Do you really think that the other search engines are NOT using ranking techniques along the same lines as PageRank? Page and Brin were not even the first ones to explore these ideas. They were not even the most clever ones to have gone there."
Whoa, settle down there. Did I mention PageRank (or ranking techniques) at all? Because I could care less. Companies with web-sites or web-based companies should not rely on the fact that they appear first in a set of search results. To me thats the same as seeing the "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 1 Pizza" ad in the phone book. Good advertising, word of mouth and service are what really get people to a corporate website.
Tell you what, show me some search engine that gets the job done better! Prove to me that the "Google Corporation(TM)" is doing nothing in terms of fixing scalability issues, or better yet, show me a search engine that has a viable solution for this problem.
Capt. Ron
As for Google losing it's "cool" in the near future? I don't think so, the only thing that could screw Google is if someone else comes up with a better search algorythm and Google does nothing to compete with it, but I don't see that happening in the near future.
Capt. Ron
"We got a mouse, now all we need is a computer, monitor, keyboard, cables...."
Capt. Ron
Games don't need 3D or crappy CG cut-scenes to be fun! Why can't a game be visually basic and still have good game mechanics?
Games like Bosconian, Warlords, Pac-Man, Sinistar, Discs of Tron, Galaga, Track & Field, Star Wars (vector graphics), Golden Axe and Pitfall were all fairly basic visually but they still are fun to play, moreso than newer graphics rich games (not to mention they only cost $0.25 a pop). Seriously, whats worth more fun wise? A player vs. player game of Arkanoids or a round of "Dance, Dance Revoloution"? (BTW, down with [club | disco] sub-culture!).
Anyway, I would love to see new development in games that skimp on graphics but increase playability and entertainment value. How much development time / money gets spent on graphics alone? And how much money goes to design, testing and QA? Sure the market demands big 3D polygons dazzling the easily impressed casual arcade goer, but what legacy do these flashy games leave?
I go to the arcade for fun, not eye-candy.
P.S. Don't even get me started on the decline of Pinball!
Capt. Ron
Capt. Ron
But maybe thats just me, someone had to twist my arm to get me to buy a digital phone, give me my rotary phone any day! (I'll be the only person who actually deals with another human instead of punching through endless menus
Capt. Ron
So what is the government to do? Allow the power companies charge whatever they need to to make a profit and lose big business (we're talking steel mills, etc) or keep a cap on electricity prices and have the power companies suffer (which will undoubtedly lead to higher taxes for government subsidized energy programs)?
What does the
Capt. Ron
For Example:
The Cassini-Hyugens page looks pretty good:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/
The Voyager Project Home Page looks like crap (but has good info):
http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/voyager/voyager.html
And none of these pages looks like the root:
www.jpl.nasa.gov
(With the possible exception of the Galileo page, BTW Galileo is celebrating it's fifth year in orbit of Jupiter):
http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/
Consistently good or consistently bad, I don't care as long as there is consistency between the pages...
...uhh otherwise good site
Capt. Ron
I don't know about the rest of you but I'd prefer a more basic user interface. It might not be pretty, but it gets the job done...
How about an HAL 9000 style interface?
Capt. Ron
NASA commented on it's use of "free" Jovian gravity claiming that "By allowing space probes to use gravity, more consumers would be exposed to it and therefore more interested in its use / application. We also give a venue for the discovery of new massive objects and help them advertise the fact that they too produce gravity...", NASA made no furthur comments...
Capt. Ron
Don't forget the chilled Narrow Angle, Wide Angle and Plasma sensors for dessert! Mmmm now thats good eatin'
Capt. Ron
Dune should have stayed small instead of selling out anyway. I still think "The Starlost" was an awesome Sci-Fi show, and I hope there are others like me who enjoyed this show.
Capt. Ron