I've actually never enjoyed the Infinity Engine games. PST seemed to have a good plot, but it was so damn ponderous to play. It felt like a chore. This was more of a function of the engine and game mechanics than the writing, however.
I apparently submitted my askslashdot question at a bad time of day; it was barely voted on (and voted up), but not enough to get to the front page. What's the etiquette? Can I try again? Do I just pimp it out and say "HAY GUYZ GO VOTE FOR TeamSpeak, Ventrilo - Are there Free alternatives?"
It seems odd to me that there is this gap in the Twentieth Century during which nothing new was apparently learned about religion or the religious sentiment. All of this was being debated, with more articulation and learning on both sides, in the Twentieth Century. "Orientalism"--the fascination with all things Asian--was big at the time, and Buddhist "atheistic pessimism" was constantly being contrasted with "Emersonian atheistic optimism." If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience.
SH2 was hardly a gore/scare fest. It had the best plot, and was probably the most consistently melancholy and creepy of the games. The third game used such vibrant colors that its primary impact was visceral: some of the violence and blood scenes, while not particularly "gory," were very memorable because of the way the environment looked. SH4 relied too much on the "boo" factor to match the previous games.
...but Clover was overrated. Okami is brilliant, but Viewtiful Joe was overhyped to the point of pain, and its sequels were mediocre to foul. Now God Hand is getting 70%. This is a studio that will be remembered for one game.
I suppose we can commence comparing them to Origin, Square-Enix, Sierra, VALVe, Maxis, iD, and Nintendo now.
I will never understand why the best free software seems to be the ugliest, least user-friendly. Take slrn and mutt, for example. Both are excellent tools in their categories: I still use slrn to read Usenet, and would use mutt if all of my email accounts weren't locked behind web-based interfaces. Why does it seem as if you can either have power or a nice interface? They shouldn't be mutually exclusive.
My computer at work has a LCD screen. I can perceive a subtle flicker in it. I showed it to one of my friends--he couldn't see it. The only thing that I can figure out is that the LCD is flickering slightly at AC frequency, and I can see it. (Fluorescent lights also bother me unless they're CFLs with a lampshade over them.)
There are many books which haven't been stored in a controlled environment which were originally printed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They weren't published on great paper, either. There is no proof that computer media--any computer media--can or will last that long. Remember the gold disc they sent out into space? The one that the aliens are supposed to play on their convenient turntable? Yeah.
Also, as a still-fairly-young person, I must say that LCD screens cause me to have terrible eye fatigue. I'd much rather read on paper--or even a CRT.
Well, CPAN is very useful. You just check the code you're intending to include in your program to see if it says something like "this code is beta!" before you actually, you know, include it. There are a great number of "experimental" and "beta" perl modules on there--some, like B::CC, are mentioned in Programming Perl--but there are also some very useful, mature modules.
Don't warn people off it; it's one of perl's best features.
Honestly, I don't even see why these would break. Can't Debian keep calling it "Firefox" in the useragent field and so forth? If not, what's wrong with the old "Mozilla" designation that every other browser uses?
You weren't going to the next plot point. There was no point where you had to run around the streets for two hours, that I recall. Did you ever go to the apartment complex?
How far did you get in Silent Hill 2? It's one of the most atmospheric games on any console; interesting that you chose as your criticism "no atmosphere whatsoever." That said, try out the Ratchet & Clank games. They're Greatest Hits, so only $20 tops for any of them, and they're very straightforward and fun.
Snappers really are excellent mowers. I don't know that I'd buy a Snapper push-mower, just because push-mowers tend to get banged up since their job is basically to get the rough areas where a riding mower won't go, but their riding mowers are reliable and easy to maintain.
It seems that many people who use the Internet, even extensively, are ignorant of its necessities. Back in the mid-Nineties, there were very few competent search engines, so finding anything of use was difficult. You needed to know good "link lists" for any topic you were interested in, and good link lists were hard to come by. If the technologically illiterate manage to make the basic search functions of a search engine illegal, what do they expect to happen? I suspect that this plaintiff would be unhappy to find that all of his traffic suddenly vanished.
I have been in races where I have an 18-20 second lead, and a few seconds later will get a "on your tail" note and lose boost because of it. This is notable in the one-on-one races. It essentially makes the game one of "crash him once and then go the rest of the way without crashing, and don't boost to try to build a lead." If you boost, you are liable to crash, and you can come out of a crash with a twenty (or more) second deficit, when the actual crash should have cost you five at most.
Burnout 3 was fun for the first few hours of play, but it quickly got old, for me. Rubberbanding AI made unlocking the tons of special content a real pain, and versus mode can only go so far. Road rage was really the only multiplayer mode I found interesting, actually--and since the tactics varied only in whether you chose a heavy car (custom muscle...) or a fast car (assassin super...), the potential was exhausted fairly quickly.
In the end, I was glad I paid only $5 (yes, legally) for the game. If I'd paid $50, I would have felt ripped off.
If you've got Steam coming from a leaky VALVe, you really need to patch it as soon as possible. Structural damage and personal injury can result from such problems.
I'm a little confused about your statement that "it's more on the art side of things rather than the engineering side... [it] is merely a pleasurable passage of time." I find it interesting (though it may be, and probably is, the dominant idea here on Slashdot) that you consider art inferior in a very important way to "engineering," which here, I believe, means "pragmatic undertakings." In the past, it should be noted, design in the pragmatic sense and design in the aesthetic sense were intimately related. In architecture, for instance, arches were arches for more than just appearance: they actually provided structural support. There was no reinforced concrete to cause the architectural elements to become mere "decoration." Similarly, many things we now view as "art"--furniture and quiltmaking, for instance--are extremely practical. The "art" aspect is simply the creator (engineer) making the most aesthetically pleasing use of her materials that she can. Other art forms now seem impractical, like stained glass and paintings, but served an important purpose in a society where most people were functionally illiterate.
Instead of comparing video games merely to art to imply their uselessness, one could note that they are a further evolution of the narrative impulse, from oral traditions to literature to movies and so on. This is dangerous, though: a narrative tells a lot of truth along with its fiction, if it's a well-told story. I'm not sure you could call some great novels merely a "pleasurable passage of time." (Read Lolita sometime. A truly disturbing book. Anna Karenina, too, and 1984, and The Power and the Glory...)
So they collaborated online. Yes, I understand that it was done through Internet2, but what is the practical or philosophical significance of this development? People have been collaborating online for two decades.
The ecological impacts of huge space ads could be horrible. In a system as delicate as nature, you don't want to vary things like the amount of sun an area receives... even by tiny amounts.
Slashdot Mirror
I've actually never enjoyed the Infinity Engine games. PST seemed to have a good plot, but it was so damn ponderous to play. It felt like a chore. This was more of a function of the engine and game mechanics than the writing, however.
I apparently submitted my askslashdot question at a bad time of day; it was barely voted on (and voted up), but not enough to get to the front page. What's the etiquette? Can I try again? Do I just pimp it out and say "HAY GUYZ GO VOTE FOR TeamSpeak, Ventrilo - Are there Free alternatives?"
It seems odd to me that there is this gap in the Twentieth Century during which nothing new was apparently learned about religion or the religious sentiment. All of this was being debated, with more articulation and learning on both sides, in the Twentieth Century. "Orientalism"--the fascination with all things Asian--was big at the time, and Buddhist "atheistic pessimism" was constantly being contrasted with "Emersonian atheistic optimism." If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience .
SH2 was hardly a gore/scare fest. It had the best plot, and was probably the most consistently melancholy and creepy of the games. The third game used such vibrant colors that its primary impact was visceral: some of the violence and blood scenes, while not particularly "gory," were very memorable because of the way the environment looked. SH4 relied too much on the "boo" factor to match the previous games.
Here's hoping SH5 is more like SH2.
Not sure about xbox games, but Team Fortress Classic has dynamic lip sync.
...but Clover was overrated. Okami is brilliant, but Viewtiful Joe was overhyped to the point of pain, and its sequels were mediocre to foul. Now God Hand is getting 70%. This is a studio that will be remembered for one game.
I suppose we can commence comparing them to Origin, Square-Enix, Sierra, VALVe, Maxis, iD, and Nintendo now.
I will never understand why the best free software seems to be the ugliest, least user-friendly. Take slrn and mutt, for example. Both are excellent tools in their categories: I still use slrn to read Usenet, and would use mutt if all of my email accounts weren't locked behind web-based interfaces. Why does it seem as if you can either have power or a nice interface? They shouldn't be mutually exclusive.
My computer at work has a LCD screen. I can perceive a subtle flicker in it. I showed it to one of my friends--he couldn't see it. The only thing that I can figure out is that the LCD is flickering slightly at AC frequency, and I can see it. (Fluorescent lights also bother me unless they're CFLs with a lampshade over them.)
Also, as a still-fairly-young person, I must say that LCD screens cause me to have terrible eye fatigue. I'd much rather read on paper--or even a CRT.
Well, CPAN is very useful. You just check the code you're intending to include in your program to see if it says something like "this code is beta!" before you actually, you know, include it. There are a great number of "experimental" and "beta" perl modules on there--some, like B::CC, are mentioned in Programming Perl--but there are also some very useful, mature modules. Don't warn people off it; it's one of perl's best features.
Honestly, I don't even see why these would break. Can't Debian keep calling it "Firefox" in the useragent field and so forth? If not, what's wrong with the old "Mozilla" designation that every other browser uses?
You weren't going to the next plot point. There was no point where you had to run around the streets for two hours, that I recall. Did you ever go to the apartment complex?
How far did you get in Silent Hill 2? It's one of the most atmospheric games on any console; interesting that you chose as your criticism "no atmosphere whatsoever." That said, try out the Ratchet & Clank games. They're Greatest Hits, so only $20 tops for any of them, and they're very straightforward and fun.
Snappers really are excellent mowers. I don't know that I'd buy a Snapper push-mower, just because push-mowers tend to get banged up since their job is basically to get the rough areas where a riding mower won't go, but their riding mowers are reliable and easy to maintain.
Why would you run XP64 on an old donated system?
It seems that many people who use the Internet, even extensively, are ignorant of its necessities. Back in the mid-Nineties, there were very few competent search engines, so finding anything of use was difficult. You needed to know good "link lists" for any topic you were interested in, and good link lists were hard to come by. If the technologically illiterate manage to make the basic search functions of a search engine illegal, what do they expect to happen? I suspect that this plaintiff would be unhappy to find that all of his traffic suddenly vanished.
I have been in races where I have an 18-20 second lead, and a few seconds later will get a "on your tail" note and lose boost because of it. This is notable in the one-on-one races. It essentially makes the game one of "crash him once and then go the rest of the way without crashing, and don't boost to try to build a lead." If you boost, you are liable to crash, and you can come out of a crash with a twenty (or more) second deficit, when the actual crash should have cost you five at most.
In the end, I was glad I paid only $5 (yes, legally) for the game. If I'd paid $50, I would have felt ripped off.
9/10 at level C. Missed "'phone." I have never seen 'phone. Phone, yes. 'Phone, no. Ahh well. :P
If you've got Steam coming from a leaky VALVe, you really need to patch it as soon as possible. Structural damage and personal injury can result from such problems.
Instead of comparing video games merely to art to imply their uselessness, one could note that they are a further evolution of the narrative impulse, from oral traditions to literature to movies and so on. This is dangerous, though: a narrative tells a lot of truth along with its fiction, if it's a well-told story. I'm not sure you could call some great novels merely a "pleasurable passage of time." (Read Lolita sometime. A truly disturbing book. Anna Karenina, too, and 1984, and The Power and the Glory...)
Maybe video games are just bad art? :)
Mod parent funny. Someone. Anyone.
So they collaborated online. Yes, I understand that it was done through Internet2, but what is the practical or philosophical significance of this development? People have been collaborating online for two decades.
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