There's obvious price fixing in the gasoline market so why wouldn't the other companies go along with a price increase? They would be making fistfuls of cash if gas prices went up because of the "BP Shortage."
Just today in the Chicago Tribune there is an article about a new Microsoft "cloud computing" datacenter in the suburbs. It goes on and on about how great cloud computing is and how visionary Microsoft is for their work in this field (*snicker*). They briefly mention some other companies, I think one called "google" and yahoo or whatever, that are following in Microsoft's footsteps into this brave new world of internet-based applications.
Given that, I doubt MS planned the Danger/Sidekick fiasco in order to discredit cloud computing. In fact I found it very amusing to read about the new data center and then just under it another article about an MS data center losing all of it's user data.
The article and almost every poster is coming from a primitive 20th century reality-centric perspective that values activities in the physical world higher than activities in the "virtual" world. Every mention of video games or virtual worlds is dripping with value-judgment and inflated self importance. It's an ignorant type of Imperialism that fails to look at the bigger picture or to acknowledge the arbitrary nature of these value judgments.
Why is an interaction in the real world any more "valuable" than an interaction in a virtual world? There is no reason other than the value that the participant places on the action. The old methods of valuation - working to pay your way, exercising to maintain a fit body, finding a mate and procreating - have all been subsumed by technology and society. An individual never has to leave their chair to work, there is no need to "fight to live" or maintain a powerful physique, and procreation can be handle with zero contact between sperm-donor and egg-donor.
In five hundred years whatever type of human is alive at the time will look back at this age and the popular perspective on virtual worlds as just another type of cultural imperialism that has done nothing but hold back evolution and progress. While I do see the value in contact with other people and physical fitness, etc, it is evident to me that these types of interaction are only valuable to us as long as we as a culture value them; the inevitable march of technology and progress will soon enculturate humanity into a future of virtual worlds and holo-decks.
I was.
My wife's 94 Jeep Grand Cherokee gets 11 MPG tops....
Why didn't you stop to think when you bought the vehicle that 11 MPG wasn't very good, and that you would be wasting a lot of money on gas for no reason?
This program is not "unfair" to you, it is unfair to all of the people who drive old junkers that get halfway decent gas mileage. You chose for some mysterious reason to purchase a gas guzzling vehicle for daily driving when you didn't need one, why should you be rewarded for that?
My '97 escort wagon gets around 23 mpg city and it is falling apart. Brakes going, shocks shot, tailpipe broken halfway under car. And I'm not about to pay to fix that tailpipe that spews pollution because the transmission is going as well! I'd gladly buy a new car (probably 30+mpg city) right now if I could get that cash for my junker.
But instead all of the people who bought unreasonably large vehicles are being rewarded because they are too ignorant and stupid to not only take care of themselves but also the environment in which they live.
Wow stop feeding this troll. LOOK AT HIS NAME. How can you not see this? I can't believe he got modded up, probably because there's some windows fanboys around, or just those idiots who believe every troll that jumps out and says "in MY experience!"
Firefox runs all its tabs in one process, whereas IE8 creates a new process for each one. So if you have one tab open in FF and one in IE, then IE might be smaller (FF is about 130mb and IE about 60). But each new "tab" (not really, it's a new process so may as well be a new window or instance of the program) in IE is another 30-60MB, but each new tab in FF adds a negligible amount of memory usage.
Open five tabs in each, tally up the usage from all the IE processes, and then compare.
Your argument is false because you are addressing the wrong issue. Sugar cane ethanol is an excellent solution; corn ethanol is not an ideal solution because it requires much more resources to produce it than sugar cane ethanol.
The only thing wrong with ethanol is that big corporate farms are subsidized to make corn ethanol. If the U.S. just allowed the importation of sugar cane ethanol from countries like Brazil, then it would be a great thing.
If you've spent any time in Brazil, you will see that ethanol is just fine for internal combustion engines. They've almost exclusively used ethanol for the last ten years. Now maybe there's an argument about "flex fuel" but that is just a transitional fuel type. Once we can import environmentally and economically friendly sugar cane ethanol it won't be a problem any more.
Living on 6 million dollars for an entire life would be easy. Especially since they will probably have to go to a country with a weaker economy, like one in South America or Asia. Welcome to the rest of your life on a tropical beach, with anything you'd ever want to buy.
That's rich; someone from Australia, going to Canada, complaining about U.S. violations of privacy. Have you read a paper in your own country lately? Australia is about as bad as the UK, which probably monitors its citizens more closely than China.
I remember the heady days of 2002, when rumors were floating over the internets of the epic third chapter of MvC. There was even a screenshot photoshopped up of the new game.
It's a damn shame that some asshole company stepped in and bought the exclusive rights to Marvel video games, and then hasn't done shit good with it. It's quite obvious that a third installment of this game would be popular, if people are STILL playing the Dreamcast version, which has been ported to FOUR systems now.
They are not bankrupt, but what they are doing is shattering their core userbase into many different groups. This is not the same as 1st ed vs 2nd ed players, or the players (like me) who still play 2nd and 3e.
Hasbro/WotC completely dropped support for their OGL that they developed with 3rd edition, but many people still use that. There are many other new, creative RPGs that can easily give D&D a run for its money, and the old powerhouses like Palladium are still going strong.
It's funny that everything you mention about 4e is in the sense of a dumbing-down or simplifying. WotC has always been obsessed with that concept but it is just not in sync with reality. Gamers love complexity and they want a system that has rich options. Why do you think WotCs attempts to turn RPGs into a kids oversimplified boardgame always fail, and the system inevitable ends up becoming more and more complex?
As for the actual content, well WotC will never be able to top the greats of 2nd edition; that is when there was true creative talent in the AD&D universe, with settings like Planescape, Dark Sun and Spelljammer as well as the more "traditional" fantasy settings on Toril, Krynn and Greyhawk. WotC has just been living off those great masterminds and reprinting books of lists (feats, skills, equipment, classes, whatever), not creating anything of its own.
A lot of science fiction shows throughout the years played on fridays; didn't X-Files even air on Friday?
This stems from the fact that TV execs assume that science fiction fans are nerds with no life, and so Friday is the perfect time to play these shows.
I don't really care when the shows are on, I just download the torrent a couple days later. And, I'd never trust Fox not to cancel a good show; in fact, that goes for any tv (broadcast or cable) station. I've been burned too many times by their stupidity.
The judges should be locked up for at least 20 years. When an individual picks up the mantel of public protector the laws that govern them should be much harsher than for normal citizens; they are given authority over us "normal" people and should be punished in the harshest manner if they abuse that trust. The same goes for pigs, soldiers, etc.
Comcast already lost my business back in the throttling days. Luckily, I live in an urban center where there are choices for cable internet. Of course, each apartment building is usually only wired for one company's cable; this meant that when I was looking for an apt I had to find out what company it was wired for and weed out all the comcast ones. Really cut down my options, because comcast is the main provider around here. It was worth it though for RCN, who have publicly stated that they won't work with the RIAA or block/throttle/inhibit/cap downloads.
In most small cities and towns though there is only one provider. My friend, for example, has only one choice: Comcast. So he has to use that if he wants good internet speed.
It's pretty crazy to be running keygens on your system. Every time I do it, I think to myself "what are these guys getting for all their hard work?" The same thing with cracked software - you run an installer yourself how could the cracker pass up that type opportunity? I just assume most of them infect your computer with some spyware and trojans.
I can't believe your original post was modded interesting.
You seem to think that allowing children to be ignorant of the harsh realities of the real world is a bad thing, which just means you're a selfish, spiteful person or more likely someone who hasn't had to face a lot of hardship. Apparently you are religious (because you proclaim Christmas is supposed to be a holy day) and you critique other people for raising their kids in a "world that would make Hello Kitty's Fantasy Island look like a cruel place," but religion was the very first self-induced, escapist fantasy created to soothe the hardships that humankind must face. Teaching your kid that a magical person was born on December 25th who could heal people, replicate food, and absorb the evil nature of humanity is no different than teaching him/her that Santa is going to drop off presents under the tree. It's a fictional character (or historical person who's accomplishments have been greatly exaggerated over the generations) created to pass along meaning through the generations, and if you weren't such a fucking idiot (or more likely naive child) you'd realize that Santa embodies the spirit of what Christians want us to believe Jesus is all about - in the end the good get rewarded and the evil get punished; that it is good to give and be humble; that happiness can also be found in making others happy.
A teacher who deliberately attempts to dispel the illusion of Santa is no different than a teacher who tries to teach the kids that there is no god or that Jesus was just a really charismatic guy who inspired others to write about him, or on the flip-side a teacher that tries to convert the kids to Christianity or teaches them that creationism is right and evolution is wrong. These are not subjects for a classroom before at least age sixteen, if not eighteen. It's just malicious and/or selfish meddling before those ages, because there's nothing wrong with children living in an illusory world and in fact those childish imaginings are what creates creative, imaginative adults.
Christmas is now a secular holiday, whether you like it or not. My parents are atheists and they still raised me with Christmas and to believe in Santa, because it is easy to celebrate the spirit of Christmas no matter your beliefs - giving and receiving, spending time with family, making traditions whether it's an aluminum pole or a murdered tree decorated with trinkets. Every kid eventually learns Santa isn't real, so there's no reason to force the truth onto them.
Tabula Rasa received a poor reception largely because it was released prematurely. A classic management error that is seen in every sector. "Talent" is usually just given the bare minimum of time to create a product before it is pushed out the door. I enjoyed the game, the same as I enjoyed Auto Assault and Saga of Ryzom. Just because a company has declared them not profitable enough to continue supporting, doesn't mean they were bad games. The "masses" are not known for their good taste in art or media.
Of course Jack stayed with Cryptic, he basically founded the company. City of Heroes was his project for years and the other developers (who are now working for CoH with NCSoft) were brought into his project. There were many years where Jack was the lead developer of City of Heroes. I'm not too sure of his level of involvement with Champions, but the fact that he created the only other MMO in this genre means something in his favor.
Hopefully Champions Online gets some additional funding due to this buy out. It could be a really awesome game if it gets enough funds. Cryptic and Jack Emmert designed City of Heroes and they learned from the mistakes made in that game. If Atari can just keep from meddling in the development cycle of CO (ie pushing it out too soon or trying to WoW-ify it), they might have a great game.
I'm waiting for the advent of a computer program that assists role playing in the modes in which a computer excels. Crunch the odds, render the characters and monsters into active graphics and sound FX, keep records of character development, draw maps; all these things are great. Good DM's usually find the mechanics of running a campaign a pain the the tush, and taking care of it all will leave the DM to do what DM's do; tell the story.
There actually are things like this out there and, Surprise!!, they all rely on player (end user) created content. The best example is Neverwinter Nights, which has just about the best system of player created content ever made for a computer game, going so far as players even being able to create new models/textures for everything from maps to dresses to swords and even naked, anatomically correct bodies. Some of the campaigns that players create rival any tabletop game I've played as far as epic story is concerned; the only thing that's missing is the interaction amongst multiple players/DM, and even that's possible with an internet/LAN connection (I've never done it though so can't speak on it).
I would still play a table top game over a computer one any day of the week though, if I had the option. The key of role playing games is the social interaction/storytelling which is just hampered by the impersonal nature of communication through the internet.
I mean there were developed as entertainment and phillosophical points of view, but they don't really have much to teach us other than the authors point of view and perhaps a perspective of the world they lived in.
Take Shakespear from example... I mean his works were specifically devolped to entertain an live audience of his era with comeday and tragedy and frankly the only reason we study him because he was most likely the only one to do it at his time.
The reason why there's a literary canon is because those stories cover pretty much all of the "story archtypes" possible. By reading Shakespeare you're effectively also reading most of all subsequent literature. Shakespeare may not have put the different plot templates to paper first, but he did a pretty good job of exploring them all in an aesthetically pleasing manner and that's why he's still read world-over.
Slashdot Mirror
There's obvious price fixing in the gasoline market so why wouldn't the other companies go along with a price increase? They would be making fistfuls of cash if gas prices went up because of the "BP Shortage."
Just today in the Chicago Tribune there is an article about a new Microsoft "cloud computing" datacenter in the suburbs. It goes on and on about how great cloud computing is and how visionary Microsoft is for their work in this field (*snicker*). They briefly mention some other companies, I think one called "google" and yahoo or whatever, that are following in Microsoft's footsteps into this brave new world of internet-based applications.
Given that, I doubt MS planned the Danger/Sidekick fiasco in order to discredit cloud computing. In fact I found it very amusing to read about the new data center and then just under it another article about an MS data center losing all of it's user data.
The article and almost every poster is coming from a primitive 20th century reality-centric perspective that values activities in the physical world higher than activities in the "virtual" world. Every mention of video games or virtual worlds is dripping with value-judgment and inflated self importance. It's an ignorant type of Imperialism that fails to look at the bigger picture or to acknowledge the arbitrary nature of these value judgments.
Why is an interaction in the real world any more "valuable" than an interaction in a virtual world? There is no reason other than the value that the participant places on the action. The old methods of valuation - working to pay your way, exercising to maintain a fit body, finding a mate and procreating - have all been subsumed by technology and society. An individual never has to leave their chair to work, there is no need to "fight to live" or maintain a powerful physique, and procreation can be handle with zero contact between sperm-donor and egg-donor.
In five hundred years whatever type of human is alive at the time will look back at this age and the popular perspective on virtual worlds as just another type of cultural imperialism that has done nothing but hold back evolution and progress. While I do see the value in contact with other people and physical fitness, etc, it is evident to me that these types of interaction are only valuable to us as long as we as a culture value them; the inevitable march of technology and progress will soon enculturate humanity into a future of virtual worlds and holo-decks.
I was. My wife's 94 Jeep Grand Cherokee gets 11 MPG tops....
Why didn't you stop to think when you bought the vehicle that 11 MPG wasn't very good, and that you would be wasting a lot of money on gas for no reason?
This program is not "unfair" to you, it is unfair to all of the people who drive old junkers that get halfway decent gas mileage. You chose for some mysterious reason to purchase a gas guzzling vehicle for daily driving when you didn't need one, why should you be rewarded for that?
My '97 escort wagon gets around 23 mpg city and it is falling apart. Brakes going, shocks shot, tailpipe broken halfway under car. And I'm not about to pay to fix that tailpipe that spews pollution because the transmission is going as well! I'd gladly buy a new car (probably 30+mpg city) right now if I could get that cash for my junker.
But instead all of the people who bought unreasonably large vehicles are being rewarded because they are too ignorant and stupid to not only take care of themselves but also the environment in which they live.
Wow stop feeding this troll. LOOK AT HIS NAME. How can you not see this? I can't believe he got modded up, probably because there's some windows fanboys around, or just those idiots who believe every troll that jumps out and says "in MY experience!"
Firefox runs all its tabs in one process, whereas IE8 creates a new process for each one. So if you have one tab open in FF and one in IE, then IE might be smaller (FF is about 130mb and IE about 60). But each new "tab" (not really, it's a new process so may as well be a new window or instance of the program) in IE is another 30-60MB, but each new tab in FF adds a negligible amount of memory usage.
Open five tabs in each, tally up the usage from all the IE processes, and then compare.
Your argument is false because you are addressing the wrong issue. Sugar cane ethanol is an excellent solution; corn ethanol is not an ideal solution because it requires much more resources to produce it than sugar cane ethanol.
The only thing wrong with ethanol is that big corporate farms are subsidized to make corn ethanol. If the U.S. just allowed the importation of sugar cane ethanol from countries like Brazil, then it would be a great thing.
If you've spent any time in Brazil, you will see that ethanol is just fine for internal combustion engines. They've almost exclusively used ethanol for the last ten years. Now maybe there's an argument about "flex fuel" but that is just a transitional fuel type. Once we can import environmentally and economically friendly sugar cane ethanol it won't be a problem any more.
Good for them, hopefully they don't get caught.
Living on 6 million dollars for an entire life would be easy. Especially since they will probably have to go to a country with a weaker economy, like one in South America or Asia. Welcome to the rest of your life on a tropical beach, with anything you'd ever want to buy.
That's rich; someone from Australia, going to Canada, complaining about U.S. violations of privacy. Have you read a paper in your own country lately? Australia is about as bad as the UK, which probably monitors its citizens more closely than China.
I remember the heady days of 2002, when rumors were floating over the internets of the epic third chapter of MvC. There was even a screenshot photoshopped up of the new game.
It's a damn shame that some asshole company stepped in and bought the exclusive rights to Marvel video games, and then hasn't done shit good with it. It's quite obvious that a third installment of this game would be popular, if people are STILL playing the Dreamcast version, which has been ported to FOUR systems now.
I love it when you select your character and the guy says, "Just as I expected." A classic soundtrack for sure.
Don't you mean phishers?
They are not bankrupt, but what they are doing is shattering their core userbase into many different groups. This is not the same as 1st ed vs 2nd ed players, or the players (like me) who still play 2nd and 3e.
Hasbro/WotC completely dropped support for their OGL that they developed with 3rd edition, but many people still use that. There are many other new, creative RPGs that can easily give D&D a run for its money, and the old powerhouses like Palladium are still going strong.
It's funny that everything you mention about 4e is in the sense of a dumbing-down or simplifying. WotC has always been obsessed with that concept but it is just not in sync with reality. Gamers love complexity and they want a system that has rich options. Why do you think WotCs attempts to turn RPGs into a kids oversimplified boardgame always fail, and the system inevitable ends up becoming more and more complex?
As for the actual content, well WotC will never be able to top the greats of 2nd edition; that is when there was true creative talent in the AD&D universe, with settings like Planescape, Dark Sun and Spelljammer as well as the more "traditional" fantasy settings on Toril, Krynn and Greyhawk. WotC has just been living off those great masterminds and reprinting books of lists (feats, skills, equipment, classes, whatever), not creating anything of its own.
WotC killed it with 4e. These are the throws of a dying organization, just like RIAA/MPAA.
A lot of science fiction shows throughout the years played on fridays; didn't X-Files even air on Friday?
This stems from the fact that TV execs assume that science fiction fans are nerds with no life, and so Friday is the perfect time to play these shows.
I don't really care when the shows are on, I just download the torrent a couple days later. And, I'd never trust Fox not to cancel a good show; in fact, that goes for any tv (broadcast or cable) station. I've been burned too many times by their stupidity.
The judges should be locked up for at least 20 years. When an individual picks up the mantel of public protector the laws that govern them should be much harsher than for normal citizens; they are given authority over us "normal" people and should be punished in the harshest manner if they abuse that trust. The same goes for pigs, soldiers, etc.
Comcast already lost my business back in the throttling days. Luckily, I live in an urban center where there are choices for cable internet. Of course, each apartment building is usually only wired for one company's cable; this meant that when I was looking for an apt I had to find out what company it was wired for and weed out all the comcast ones. Really cut down my options, because comcast is the main provider around here. It was worth it though for RCN, who have publicly stated that they won't work with the RIAA or block/throttle/inhibit/cap downloads.
In most small cities and towns though there is only one provider. My friend, for example, has only one choice: Comcast. So he has to use that if he wants good internet speed.
It's pretty crazy to be running keygens on your system. Every time I do it, I think to myself "what are these guys getting for all their hard work?" The same thing with cracked software - you run an installer yourself how could the cracker pass up that type opportunity? I just assume most of them infect your computer with some spyware and trojans.
I can't believe your original post was modded interesting.
You seem to think that allowing children to be ignorant of the harsh realities of the real world is a bad thing, which just means you're a selfish, spiteful person or more likely someone who hasn't had to face a lot of hardship. Apparently you are religious (because you proclaim Christmas is supposed to be a holy day) and you critique other people for raising their kids in a "world that would make Hello Kitty's Fantasy Island look like a cruel place," but religion was the very first self-induced, escapist fantasy created to soothe the hardships that humankind must face. Teaching your kid that a magical person was born on December 25th who could heal people, replicate food, and absorb the evil nature of humanity is no different than teaching him/her that Santa is going to drop off presents under the tree. It's a fictional character (or historical person who's accomplishments have been greatly exaggerated over the generations) created to pass along meaning through the generations, and if you weren't such a fucking idiot (or more likely naive child) you'd realize that Santa embodies the spirit of what Christians want us to believe Jesus is all about - in the end the good get rewarded and the evil get punished; that it is good to give and be humble; that happiness can also be found in making others happy.
A teacher who deliberately attempts to dispel the illusion of Santa is no different than a teacher who tries to teach the kids that there is no god or that Jesus was just a really charismatic guy who inspired others to write about him, or on the flip-side a teacher that tries to convert the kids to Christianity or teaches them that creationism is right and evolution is wrong. These are not subjects for a classroom before at least age sixteen, if not eighteen. It's just malicious and/or selfish meddling before those ages, because there's nothing wrong with children living in an illusory world and in fact those childish imaginings are what creates creative, imaginative adults.
Christmas is now a secular holiday, whether you like it or not. My parents are atheists and they still raised me with Christmas and to believe in Santa, because it is easy to celebrate the spirit of Christmas no matter your beliefs - giving and receiving, spending time with family, making traditions whether it's an aluminum pole or a murdered tree decorated with trinkets. Every kid eventually learns Santa isn't real, so there's no reason to force the truth onto them.
Tabula Rasa received a poor reception largely because it was released prematurely. A classic management error that is seen in every sector. "Talent" is usually just given the bare minimum of time to create a product before it is pushed out the door. I enjoyed the game, the same as I enjoyed Auto Assault and Saga of Ryzom. Just because a company has declared them not profitable enough to continue supporting, doesn't mean they were bad games. The "masses" are not known for their good taste in art or media.
Of course Jack stayed with Cryptic, he basically founded the company. City of Heroes was his project for years and the other developers (who are now working for CoH with NCSoft) were brought into his project. There were many years where Jack was the lead developer of City of Heroes. I'm not too sure of his level of involvement with Champions, but the fact that he created the only other MMO in this genre means something in his favor.
Hopefully Champions Online gets some additional funding due to this buy out. It could be a really awesome game if it gets enough funds. Cryptic and Jack Emmert designed City of Heroes and they learned from the mistakes made in that game. If Atari can just keep from meddling in the development cycle of CO (ie pushing it out too soon or trying to WoW-ify it), they might have a great game.
Too bad they removed parrying, it was one of my favorite elements of Third Strike.
I would still play a table top game over a computer one any day of the week though, if I had the option. The key of role playing games is the social interaction/storytelling which is just hampered by the impersonal nature of communication through the internet.
that they will go bankrupt, but us gamers will never get that kind of lucky break.