However i don't really know of many Western RPGs that have multiple ending possibilities either.
Not arguing your point here, but should you want to try some western rpgs with a large degree of freedom (including multiple endings) then you could do worse than trying the first two Fallout games, any of the TES games or Planescape Torment. All heartily recommended (though the first two TES games are not the most accessible of games).
Instead of the term "Western RPG" I'd use "traditional PC style RPG". The kind of rpgs you don't play with a joypad and that don't require massive amounts of mouse-clicking. I'm talking Betrayal at Krondor, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Wizardry, Albion, Bard's Tale, the old SSI games, Planescape Torment; those kinds of games.
Don't get me wrong: I've spend a significant portion of the past four years playing Morrowind, I had a lot of fun with Diablo (the original more so than the second one) and I've enjoyed all the Final Fantasy Games for the SNES (and Chrono Trigger... wonderful Chrono Trigger...), but I long for another Baldur's Gate or BaK.
The more recent Bioware fare really isn't in the same genre; Neverwinter Nights felt like Diablo, only without any of the atmosphere. Bethesda makes some of the greatest games in the rpg genre, but they've always leaned a bit towards being action games (remember how you had to make hacking gestures with the mouse to hack with your sword in Arena?) and I fully expect them to move more into that direction as console gamers make up a greater part of their audience. Not that I blame them, mind. It's just that noone seems to be making games in a subgenre that I love so dearly anymore.
True, but as the parent of my post pointed out, there's a difference between QuickTime and the QuickTime player. I don't mind getting an updated version of the former if necessary, but I have absolutely no need for the latter.
The QuickTime Player does come bundled with the Windows version of iTunes though.
Quite annoying, if you ask me. It's come to the point that I don't update iTunes anymore because for every bloody minor version I have to download yet another version of the QuickTime Player (that I didn't ask for) only to have it throw its icons around my start menu and completely ignore my preferences by showing up in the system tray.
And how will those funds be distributed? Will money go to everyone who contributed to the medication? How about those who contributed indirectly? Who will get how much? What about medication for very rare conditions? What about medication that is only a slight improvement over existing medication? What if that slight improvement is a big improvement for a small group of people? What if the medication is a big improvement, but it's not used much, because the hospitals have contracts for other medication?
Do you seriously think that the government can do a good job in determining all that? Without wasting 90% of the funds?
Medical patents suck, but I don't see a better alternative.
P.S. I almost wrote "Medical patients suck". That would have been embarassing.
I suspect that part of the reason why you believe Miyazaki to be more creative than Tarantino is that you are more familiar with the source material that the former draws his inspiration from than the source material that the latter draws his inspiration from. That which is exotic often seems more creative than that in which we recognize familiar influences.
Also, Tarantino just tells different kinds of stories, that apparently aren't your cup of tea. (Which is perfectly fine.) Doesn't mean that he's not incredibly creative though. The simple fact that he's extremely successful creating movies that nobody else is making - often in genres and with actors that have fallen out of grace - should be proof enough of that. If it was easy, then half of Hollywood would be doing it.
But, like I said, if you don't like his movies, that's perfectly fine. As long as enough people do for him to continue making movies, I'll be happy. Same goes for Miyazaki:-)
I had a feeling it was. Cool. We'll be colleagues starting next month, though I'll have nothing to do with the dbms development. (I'll be in the Dutch consulting branch.):-)
From a Linux advocates point of view (if you can nail that down), they should both be able to succeed.
Don't forget about the Free software folks. Many of them want to destroy MS as much as MS wants to destroy them. (Substitute "convert" for "destroy" if you want, but the likelyhood of that succeeding is even lower.)
Isn't that gambling with your privacy as well though, to store the email you want to receive in an inbox that anybody can access?
Only if you choose an account name that is easier to guess than a username/password combination. E.g. "drunkduckboot123" is just as safe as username "drunkduck" with password "boot123". (Not taking mechanisms into account that block the account if too many unsuccessful access attempts have been made.) Also, the mail will automatically be deleted after a few hours.
So just choose accounts like "ahg76nmbhjkdf7i98nbhalkj09nhiuyyuo@mailinator.com " and you'll be safe.
True, but it was a major competitor back then. Just goes to show that they do care about small European countries (or more specifically, the money to be made from said countries). They spent an insane amount of money (280 million dollars for marktplaats alone) to get their foot in the Dutch market.
And MSN (until recent versions anyway) remained quick and functional. ICQ went down because ICQ went the way of WinAmp 3. No need to blame MS on this.
That sounds reasonable, and I'll gladly admit that ICQ made things easier for the competition, but I remain sceptical. ICQ had the network effect on their side, yet people still switched to MSN (back then still Windows Messenger IIRC). Besides, MSN is now just as bloated as ICQ was, yet people still stick to it, even though there are plenty of quick and functional alternatives.
And to get back to the Skype vs MSN issue: most people (at least here in Europe) already use MSN. If they beef up their voice chat, then there'll be no reason anymore for people to install Skype. They already have the network effect on their side.
I simply can't imagine why Ebay would bother with, or even understand those Euro-centric problems.
I don't know in what tiny European country you live, but mine has its own ebay. If they think that that particular market is lucrative enough for them, even though there is plentyofcompetition, then I'm sure that they consider the telecom market lucrative enough too.
It wasn't a ship-shaped hole. It was a 15 meter (50 feet) breach that could not be filled with sandbags, so a ship was commandeered and stranded length-wise next to the breach, thereby mostly plugging it. Sandbags completed the job.
Details can be found here. It's in Dutch, but there are lots of pictures.
Judging by your username, you're from the Netherlands, like I am. Prices over here are about half of what you say, currently around 1.55 EUR a litre. Still high though. (Over 7 USD per gallon.)
Now that Microsoft has incorporated an unzip utilitiy in the OS, WinZip can't profit from people who just want to unzip files.
Actually, IIRC, Microsoft licensed their zip handling code from WinZip, so they may still be able to profit, depending on what kind of deal they struck with MS.
That did sound like a rather big difference, so I closed FF and re-opened all my tabs. FF is now at 39MB. Still almost double what Opera uses, but significantly less than before.
The previous FF instance had been running for several days, except for the occasional hiberation period. Looks like there's a memory leak somewhere.
Opera bloated? Powerful, sure, but bloated? I have both Opera and FF (with Flashblock being the only extension) open, with the same sites loaded and Opera uses about 20MB of ram, while FF uses over 100MB. The download was a heck of a lot smaller too.
I'll probably stick to FF, since I don't really like Opera's interface, but if bloat was an issue, I'd switch to Opera in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, the clock can be reset for a number of reasons unrelated to tricking DRM. Take daylight saving time for example, or automatic synchronization with time.nist.gov.
I don't think the support calls related to such things would be worth whatever you'd gain by tightening the DRM in the way you described.
Yeah, I considered going that route myself. I eventually decided to stick to stars + intelligent playlists since that works much the same. The comment route is definitely more flexible though. Probably more portable as well, so I may come to regret my decision:-)
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However i don't really know of many Western RPGs that have multiple ending possibilities either.
Not arguing your point here, but should you want to try some western rpgs with a large degree of freedom (including multiple endings) then you could do worse than trying the first two Fallout games, any of the TES games or Planescape Torment. All heartily recommended (though the first two TES games are not the most accessible of games).
Instead of the term "Western RPG" I'd use "traditional PC style RPG". The kind of rpgs you don't play with a joypad and that don't require massive amounts of mouse-clicking. I'm talking Betrayal at Krondor, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Wizardry, Albion, Bard's Tale, the old SSI games, Planescape Torment; those kinds of games.
Don't get me wrong: I've spend a significant portion of the past four years playing Morrowind, I had a lot of fun with Diablo (the original more so than the second one) and I've enjoyed all the Final Fantasy Games for the SNES (and Chrono Trigger... wonderful Chrono Trigger...), but I long for another Baldur's Gate or BaK.
The more recent Bioware fare really isn't in the same genre; Neverwinter Nights felt like Diablo, only without any of the atmosphere. Bethesda makes some of the greatest games in the rpg genre, but they've always leaned a bit towards being action games (remember how you had to make hacking gestures with the mouse to hack with your sword in Arena?) and I fully expect them to move more into that direction as console gamers make up a greater part of their audience. Not that I blame them, mind. It's just that noone seems to be making games in a subgenre that I love so dearly anymore.
True, but as the parent of my post pointed out, there's a difference between QuickTime and the QuickTime player. I don't mind getting an updated version of the former if necessary, but I have absolutely no need for the latter.
The QuickTime Player does come bundled with the Windows version of iTunes though. Quite annoying, if you ask me. It's come to the point that I don't update iTunes anymore because for every bloody minor version I have to download yet another version of the QuickTime Player (that I didn't ask for) only to have it throw its icons around my start menu and completely ignore my preferences by showing up in the system tray.
And how will those funds be distributed? Will money go to everyone who contributed to the medication? How about those who contributed indirectly? Who will get how much? What about medication for very rare conditions? What about medication that is only a slight improvement over existing medication? What if that slight improvement is a big improvement for a small group of people? What if the medication is a big improvement, but it's not used much, because the hospitals have contracts for other medication?
Do you seriously think that the government can do a good job in determining all that? Without wasting 90% of the funds?
Medical patents suck, but I don't see a better alternative.
P.S. I almost wrote "Medical patients suck". That would have been embarassing.
I suspect that part of the reason why you believe Miyazaki to be more creative than Tarantino is that you are more familiar with the source material that the former draws his inspiration from than the source material that the latter draws his inspiration from. That which is exotic often seems more creative than that in which we recognize familiar influences.
:-)
Also, Tarantino just tells different kinds of stories, that apparently aren't your cup of tea. (Which is perfectly fine.) Doesn't mean that he's not incredibly creative though. The simple fact that he's extremely successful creating movies that nobody else is making - often in genres and with actors that have fallen out of grace - should be proof enough of that. If it was easy, then half of Hollywood would be doing it.
But, like I said, if you don't like his movies, that's perfectly fine. As long as enough people do for him to continue making movies, I'll be happy. Same goes for Miyazaki
I had a feeling it was. Cool. We'll be colleagues starting next month, though I'll have nothing to do with the dbms development. (I'll be in the Dutch consulting branch.) :-)
From a Linux advocates point of view (if you can nail that down), they should both be able to succeed.
Don't forget about the Free software folks. Many of them want to destroy MS as much as MS wants to destroy them. (Substitute "convert" for "destroy" if you want, but the likelyhood of that succeeding is even lower.)
Would you mind telling us what product that is? (I'm genuinely interested.) Sounds like a dbms.
What???
Java does not run on my Linux box, for example, while Mono does.
I work on Redhat, CentOS, Debian and Mandrake boxes and each and every one of those runs Java just fine.
Java has not "proven to scale" any more than Mono has;
Right, all the Fortune 500 companies use Mono for their enterprise apps instead of Java. (Yes, that is sarcasm.)
and while Sun was pushing Java for enterprise apps, their runtime had horrendous memory leaks.
Yeah, version 1.1 was buggy, but that was ages ago. Early linux versions were not so great either. Software can improve, you know.
Finally, Java is not mature, it's frozen; there is a difference.
Have you even looked at Java 5? The list of improvements is enormous.
Come on. There are plenty of real reasons to praise Mono. Don't try to make up false ones.
Isn't that gambling with your privacy as well though, to store the email you want to receive in an inbox that anybody can access?
m " and you'll be safe.
Only if you choose an account name that is easier to guess than a username/password combination. E.g. "drunkduckboot123" is just as safe as username "drunkduck" with password "boot123". (Not taking mechanisms into account that block the account if too many unsuccessful access attempts have been made.) Also, the mail will automatically be deleted after a few hours.
So just choose accounts like "ahg76nmbhjkdf7i98nbhalkj09nhiuyyuo@mailinator.co
True, but it was a major competitor back then. Just goes to show that they do care about small European countries (or more specifically, the money to be made from said countries). They spent an insane amount of money (280 million dollars for marktplaats alone) to get their foot in the Dutch market.
And MSN (until recent versions anyway) remained quick and functional. ICQ went down because ICQ went the way of WinAmp 3. No need to blame MS on this.
That sounds reasonable, and I'll gladly admit that ICQ made things easier for the competition, but I remain sceptical. ICQ had the network effect on their side, yet people still switched to MSN (back then still Windows Messenger IIRC). Besides, MSN is now just as bloated as ICQ was, yet people still stick to it, even though there are plenty of quick and functional alternatives.
And to get back to the Skype vs MSN issue: most people (at least here in Europe) already use MSN. If they beef up their voice chat, then there'll be no reason anymore for people to install Skype. They already have the network effect on their side.
I simply can't imagine why Ebay would bother with, or even understand those Euro-centric problems.
:-)
I don't know in what tiny European country you live, but mine has its own ebay. If they think that that particular market is lucrative enough for them, even though there is plenty of competition, then I'm sure that they consider the telecom market lucrative enough too.
In short: I wouldn't start worrying just yet
How are they going to earn that back from a "free" VoIP service?
Especially when Microsoft decides to beef up their voice chat in MSN. I fear that Skype will go the way of ICQ when that happens...
Here's another interesting one. The guy who paid for the attacks is one of the FBI's most wanted and is to be considered armed and dangerous.
It wasn't a ship-shaped hole. It was a 15 meter (50 feet) breach that could not be filled with sandbags, so a ship was commandeered and stranded length-wise next to the breach, thereby mostly plugging it. Sandbags completed the job.
Details can be found here. It's in Dutch, but there are lots of pictures.
Judging by your username, you're from the Netherlands, like I am. Prices over here are about half of what you say, currently around 1.55 EUR a litre. Still high though. (Over 7 USD per gallon.)
Now that Microsoft has incorporated an unzip utilitiy in the OS, WinZip can't profit from people who just want to unzip files.
Actually, IIRC, Microsoft licensed their zip handling code from WinZip, so they may still be able to profit, depending on what kind of deal they struck with MS.
Is there a video game for Cthulhu? The patent specifically states it is for a video game.
Quite a few, actually.
Here's a recent one and here's an old one. There are several others. I don't know if any of them use Chaosium's sanity system, though.
That did sound like a rather big difference, so I closed FF and re-opened all my tabs. FF is now at 39MB. Still almost double what Opera uses, but significantly less than before.
The previous FF instance had been running for several days, except for the occasional hiberation period. Looks like there's a memory leak somewhere.
Opera bloated? Powerful, sure, but bloated? I have both Opera and FF (with Flashblock being the only extension) open, with the same sites loaded and Opera uses about 20MB of ram, while FF uses over 100MB. The download was a heck of a lot smaller too.
I'll probably stick to FF, since I don't really like Opera's interface, but if bloat was an issue, I'd switch to Opera in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, the clock can be reset for a number of reasons unrelated to tricking DRM. Take daylight saving time for example, or automatic synchronization with time.nist.gov.
I don't think the support calls related to such things would be worth whatever you'd gain by tightening the DRM in the way you described.
Don't worry. Tune in next week for a tutorial on how to turn a broken shredder into a fully functioning laser printer!
Results may vary, of course...
Yeah, I considered going that route myself. I eventually decided to stick to stars + intelligent playlists since that works much the same. The comment route is definitely more flexible though. Probably more portable as well, so I may come to regret my decision :-)