Ok, I admit, I *did* overexaggerate a little. It *is* possible to elaborate on a same genre, but "Spear of Destiny" is nothing but Wolf3D with slightly better graphics, Doom II is nothing but Doom with slightly better graphics, QuakeII is nothing but Quake with slightly better graphics, and the whole series of UT is basically just the previous version with slightly better graphics (maybe a couple of additional features on each new release, but absolutely nothing to justify spending another $50 everytime a new flavor comes out).
Don't get me wrong here, UT *is* really a good game, but there are designers that should spend more time developing new genres rather than adding features to an already excellent game.
The worst problems with games these days is that game designers rely on high-quality graphics to appeal to the player, and they practically don't innovate in terms of gameplay.
The best of games have an interresting gameplay, not superb graphics. Just look at the whole series of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six... they got nice graphics and all, but when you played a shooter once, you played them all. Or even FarCry... how different is that from Doom or Quake or Half-Life with super high-res graphics (that require a video card more powerful than anything actually on the market...).
Games like Tetris, Super Mario Bros. 3, Final Fantasy and The Sims are superbly good because they innovated in terms of gameplay, not because they have nice graphics.
Designers are supposed to be artists, not administrators. Right now, they see a genre (say... FPS) and think "I'm gonna make an FPS game that looks so realistic (either graphics or physics or both) that it's gonna be very popular". That is in fact the administrator's point of view. The real Artist should rather think "What hasn't been done yet that would totally appeal to the players?"
Until that day comes, we'll be stuck with games you'll buy for $50 and then get bored after a week.
If only people could stop believing and repeating stuff they heard somewhere without checking the sources, we'd stop hearing stuff like "Al Gore said he invented the Internet, what a loser".
Could you please tell me when and how he claimed that? I, on the other hand, can tell you when he didn't.
True, but what's the point of having a trial in the first place when it was totally obvious that Microsoft would appeal any decision that would be bad for them? That's just wasted money on the first trial, since we all knew from the start there would be a second one.
Use my machine and run a ressource-hungry game (let's call that game FarCry). You'll get about 100 FPS. Use your machine, you'll probably get about 150FPS... You're willing to pay more than twice the price for 50FPS that you won't even notice?
That's the whole problem with extreme-gamers wanting the *best computer available*... the human eye has its limitations, and 150 FPS is totally indistinguishible from 100FPS.
And really, I worked at Ubisoft, and I've seen people *so happy* to get over 150FPS with Unreal Tournament, having a monitor with a 75Hz refresh rate.........
I didn't say that "The value of the buck drops whenver the US is at war", I said "Most fluctuations happen at times of war". Fluctuations happen on both sides, and during WWI and WWII, the loonie actually got lower than the buck, mostly because of the economics of war that was very active in the US.
Winning wars improve the economy, losing wars hurt the economy... the US won the WWII (actually, the allies did, but for the sake of conversation) and their buck got better. Civil war was terrible for the economy (basically, nobody can win in a civil war). VietNam had the buck drop a little. Irak got the buck to drop again. The economics of war are good only if the war is won.
That acutally fluctuates from a period to another... right this moment, a looney is actually only 75% of a buck, but it has not always been this way, nor will it be forever.
Here's a little history for y'all. In 1862, the loonie and the buck were worth about the same thing. Two years later, in 1864, the loonie was worth 265% of a buck. That's right, people could buy $2.65 of american money for a single canadian dollar. After the civil war, the buck slowly went back up to match the loonie.
The loonie began to lose value compared to the buck at the beginning of WWI, then slowly restabilized after, then lost value again during WWII. In 1945, right after the war, the loonie and the buck regained their equality.
In 1961, both were worth about the same, and in 1972 the loonie was worth about 5% more than the buck.
At the beginning of 2003, the loonie was worth slightly more than 60% of the buck, since then, it got a big boost and almost hit 80% to be at 75% today...
Notice how all those major fluctuations coincides with wars... Civil war, WWI, WWII, Viet-Nam, Irak... Re-elect Bush and see what happens to your buck...
And with the cable constantly following you, you could always know how to get back home... now, it's a little riskier to go outside with no string leading you home... maybe you should invest in a wristwatch GPS too?;-)
If you can't afford an ISP, what do you need an email adress for? The phone still exists, the regular mail still exists, even faxes still exist. There are other ways of communication, and they are all as reliable as the other.
One could say that email is faster/cheaper/easier to use, but if I have to walk several blocks to get to the local library to use their half-locked-computer-that-doesn't-have-a-floppy-dr ive just so I can check my emails, I might as well go to the convenience store across the street to use their fax machine, or stay in my own living room and pick up the phone.
Poor != moron, right, but relying on Microsoft for important stuff does equal moron. If you can't afford a better way, don't use it! Just because I can't afford to buy a safe to put all my valuable documents in doesn't mean I can let them lay on the sidewalk and expect them not to be lost.
Not everybody can do it, because not everybody have the appropriate social skills to do it (I sure don't). However, many people have high-enough social skills, and if all of them did it, then it would be bad.
The driver for Linux does exist, that's not the point. But Windows would at least let me have a default crappy display to let me go to ATI's website and download the appropriate driver. Mandrake 9.2 doesn't do that, so I have to figure out a way to boot in text mode then go to ATI's website and download the driver in text mode. Providing a default driver that only gets the basic things done (and not all the super-optimized stuff), it would settle a whole lot of the Linux complaints, and it would make it so much easier for "the regular user" to do stuff like installing a driver.
The point is not about me being lazy point by point. The "community" wants to make Linux the next desktop platform. It's never gonna grow if every tweak that has to be done requires recompiling the kernel. I'm not talking in my own name, but in the name of all our grandma's out there. If grandma happens to buy some hardware that is not automatically supported, she'll never recompile her kernel.
The fact that there are no drivers out for some piece of hardware may indeed be the manufacturer's fault, but that there is not a default low-quality universal driver for everything simply isn't good. In Windows, whatever your video card or sound card, you'll still get an image and sound. It will be a crappy resolution, but you'll see something. If my $400 didn't run at all on WinXP, I would blame WinXP for not letting me have a display, but if WinXP wouldn't let me use the full power of the card, then I'd blame ATI for not making the driver.
Computers are indeed complex systems, and only a stupid person would expect it to be perfectly intuitive, but get real, the world is filled with stupid people, and if we want them to use Linux, then Linux has to be usable by stupid people.
You're basically making my point here. Here's what you're suggesting:
I should install/boot in text mode, then figure out a way to get the ATI driver in text mode, install the driver in text mode and "attempt to configure". All that, plus reading a howto document that is 20 pages long.
I don't know about you, but that definately doesn't fall in the "easy-to-use" category for me... what's the point of having a GUI installer if I can't even use it?
Call me a mug if you wish... All I can say is that I do enjoy playing games every once in a while (entertainment is important... life is not always work work work, or recompile recompile recompile). I also like watching TV, and the All-in-Wonder provides me with all I need for that.
But I'm a programmer, and I also like to program. This is something I would like to do under Linux. However, because of the two other things I like that I mentionned above, I can't program with Linux. That's basically saying that programmers can't enjoy life... if you're a programmer, you must do nothing but programming. Some of us are actually trying to get away from that extreme-geek stereotype, ya know?
I did not even have time to "try" the actual drivers... Linux simply won't boot! I'm facing a big black screen, with no sign of activity whatsoever. If it could at least boot with some default driver (I'd even settle for 640x480 in 16 bits), then I could get the driver, but I can't even do that now.
I might just be "anecdotal evidence", but I really want to be using Linux. I would be doing so right now if I only could. But for some reason, my Mandrake won't boot because of my ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon9800Pro video card (every single setting out of about the 20 possibilities ended with "An error occured, try different settings").
I'd like to buy Lindows (or Linspire, or whatever the name of the day is), but I was wise enough to write to customer support and ask if my hardware was supported (mostly an issue about the video card), and if not, whether they expected to be supporting it soon. The reply I got was "No, we do not support that video card". So now I got a video card worth well over $400 and I should trash it to go back to a crappier card because Linux doesn't support it? Sorry, but I'm gonna stick to WinXP as long as Linux doesn't run on my video card.
You are right about Linux not being hard to *use* anymore, but it is still freakin' hard to *install* and get it running.
Cold salt water is -18 Celcius. Inside of your mouth is +36 Celcius. Make those marks on a piece of paper with whatever you're using (assuming you have the tools to make a thermometer), and fold in half (five times over if you can). You'll now have a thermometer with nice floating point numbers where the folds are two-ninths of a degree each.
Not a *whole* lot more complicated when you're good in math;-)
The article from 2 weeks ago was mainly focused on CD-R, while this article mentions CD-rot in commercialy produced CD's. So it's not only the free pirated copy of MS-Office that can rot, but also the original copy you bought for $500 (... yeah... right...)
And in a spammer's case, moving over seas doesn't even involve literally moving himself / herself and family over there. Everything can be done remotely.
In North-America, using a computer to commit a crime is a crime. Then, using a computer to access a computer to commit a crime, is that also a crime? I think it is and would result in the same charges.
Plus, if a spammer is physically located overseas, if it happens that his spam relays on servers in North-America, then didn't he use a computer to commit a crime in North-America, therefore commiting a crime in North-America and thus giving the opportunities for north-american juridiction to get the guy?
I might live overseas, but if I commit a crime in North-America, then I expect the north-american police to grab me.
it might be useful to also value the company's freedom it gains
From the article: He also wants to prevent Microsoft's product release and support road map from dictating FN Manufacturing's upgrade timetable.
That is totally right... sometimes, your company just doesn't have the money right away to upgrade, but Microsoft holds you by the balls and tell you "We won't support your old versions until you upgrade". Freedom to manage your company budget the way *you* want it is pretty important in the balance.
How about this. Take your file, serialize it so it's a huge list of 1's and 0's, then pick up a cardboard card, divide it in the number of bits you have in your file, then punch a hole in the sections you need 1's and leave it untouched in the sections you need 0's.
Paper can last for thousands of years... this could be a good solution for long-term storage... right?
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, I admit, I *did* overexaggerate a little. It *is* possible to elaborate on a same genre, but "Spear of Destiny" is nothing but Wolf3D with slightly better graphics, Doom II is nothing but Doom with slightly better graphics, QuakeII is nothing but Quake with slightly better graphics, and the whole series of UT is basically just the previous version with slightly better graphics (maybe a couple of additional features on each new release, but absolutely nothing to justify spending another $50 everytime a new flavor comes out).
Don't get me wrong here, UT *is* really a good game, but there are designers that should spend more time developing new genres rather than adding features to an already excellent game.
The worst problems with games these days is that game designers rely on high-quality graphics to appeal to the player, and they practically don't innovate in terms of gameplay.
The best of games have an interresting gameplay, not superb graphics. Just look at the whole series of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six... they got nice graphics and all, but when you played a shooter once, you played them all. Or even FarCry... how different is that from Doom or Quake or Half-Life with super high-res graphics (that require a video card more powerful than anything actually on the market...).
Games like Tetris, Super Mario Bros. 3, Final Fantasy and The Sims are superbly good because they innovated in terms of gameplay, not because they have nice graphics.
Designers are supposed to be artists, not administrators. Right now, they see a genre (say... FPS) and think "I'm gonna make an FPS game that looks so realistic (either graphics or physics or both) that it's gonna be very popular". That is in fact the administrator's point of view. The real Artist should rather think "What hasn't been done yet that would totally appeal to the players?"
Until that day comes, we'll be stuck with games you'll buy for $50 and then get bored after a week.
If only people could stop believing and repeating stuff they heard somewhere without checking the sources, we'd stop hearing stuff like "Al Gore said he invented the Internet, what a loser".
Could you please tell me when and how he claimed that? I, on the other hand, can tell you when he didn't.
True, but what's the point of having a trial in the first place when it was totally obvious that Microsoft would appeal any decision that would be bad for them? That's just wasted money on the first trial, since we all knew from the start there would be a second one.
Use my machine and run a ressource-hungry game (let's call that game FarCry). You'll get about 100 FPS. Use your machine, you'll probably get about 150FPS... You're willing to pay more than twice the price for 50FPS that you won't even notice?
... ...
That's the whole problem with extreme-gamers wanting the *best computer available*... the human eye has its limitations, and 150 FPS is totally indistinguishible from 100FPS.
And really, I worked at Ubisoft, and I've seen people *so happy* to get over 150FPS with Unreal Tournament, having a monitor with a 75Hz refresh rate...
I didn't say that "The value of the buck drops whenver the US is at war", I said "Most fluctuations happen at times of war". Fluctuations happen on both sides, and during WWI and WWII, the loonie actually got lower than the buck, mostly because of the economics of war that was very active in the US.
Winning wars improve the economy, losing wars hurt the economy... the US won the WWII (actually, the allies did, but for the sake of conversation) and their buck got better. Civil war was terrible for the economy (basically, nobody can win in a civil war). VietNam had the buck drop a little. Irak got the buck to drop again. The economics of war are good only if the war is won.
Intel Pentium 4/ 2.8C GHz 800MHz FSB, 512K Cache $180
ATI RADEON 9800PRO Video Card, 128MB DDR $222
1Gb RAM Corsair TwinX1024-4400 $435
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum $165
Maxtor 250GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive $207
ASUS "P4C800-E DELUXE" i875P Chipset Motherboard $179
SubTotal: 1388
Add the case, the keyboard and the mouse... I really don't see how you can get a gaming maching for more than 3k...
That acutally fluctuates from a period to another... right this moment, a looney is actually only 75% of a buck, but it has not always been this way, nor will it be forever.
Here's a little history for y'all. In 1862, the loonie and the buck were worth about the same thing. Two years later, in 1864, the loonie was worth 265% of a buck. That's right, people could buy $2.65 of american money for a single canadian dollar. After the civil war, the buck slowly went back up to match the loonie.
The loonie began to lose value compared to the buck at the beginning of WWI, then slowly restabilized after, then lost value again during WWII. In 1945, right after the war, the loonie and the buck regained their equality.
In 1961, both were worth about the same, and in 1972 the loonie was worth about 5% more than the buck.
At the beginning of 2003, the loonie was worth slightly more than 60% of the buck, since then, it got a big boost and almost hit 80% to be at 75% today...
Notice how all those major fluctuations coincides with wars... Civil war, WWI, WWII, Viet-Nam, Irak... Re-elect Bush and see what happens to your buck...
And with the cable constantly following you, you could always know how to get back home... now, it's a little riskier to go outside with no string leading you home... maybe you should invest in a wristwatch GPS too? ;-)
If you can't afford an ISP, what do you need an email adress for? The phone still exists, the regular mail still exists, even faxes still exist. There are other ways of communication, and they are all as reliable as the other.
r ive just so I can check my emails, I might as well go to the convenience store across the street to use their fax machine, or stay in my own living room and pick up the phone.
One could say that email is faster/cheaper/easier to use, but if I have to walk several blocks to get to the local library to use their half-locked-computer-that-doesn't-have-a-floppy-d
Poor != moron, right, but relying on Microsoft for important stuff does equal moron. If you can't afford a better way, don't use it! Just because I can't afford to buy a safe to put all my valuable documents in doesn't mean I can let them lay on the sidewalk and expect them not to be lost.
Not everybody can do it, because not everybody have the appropriate social skills to do it (I sure don't). However, many people have high-enough social skills, and if all of them did it, then it would be bad.
The driver for Linux does exist, that's not the point. But Windows would at least let me have a default crappy display to let me go to ATI's website and download the appropriate driver. Mandrake 9.2 doesn't do that, so I have to figure out a way to boot in text mode then go to ATI's website and download the driver in text mode. Providing a default driver that only gets the basic things done (and not all the super-optimized stuff), it would settle a whole lot of the Linux complaints, and it would make it so much easier for "the regular user" to do stuff like installing a driver.
The point is not about me being lazy point by point. The "community" wants to make Linux the next desktop platform. It's never gonna grow if every tweak that has to be done requires recompiling the kernel. I'm not talking in my own name, but in the name of all our grandma's out there. If grandma happens to buy some hardware that is not automatically supported, she'll never recompile her kernel.
The fact that there are no drivers out for some piece of hardware may indeed be the manufacturer's fault, but that there is not a default low-quality universal driver for everything simply isn't good. In Windows, whatever your video card or sound card, you'll still get an image and sound. It will be a crappy resolution, but you'll see something. If my $400 didn't run at all on WinXP, I would blame WinXP for not letting me have a display, but if WinXP wouldn't let me use the full power of the card, then I'd blame ATI for not making the driver.
Computers are indeed complex systems, and only a stupid person would expect it to be perfectly intuitive, but get real, the world is filled with stupid people, and if we want them to use Linux, then Linux has to be usable by stupid people.
Newsflash : Gamers aren't geeks. I know, I worked for Ubisoft.
And watching TV while chatting, while typing a report, while shopping online... oh yeah... real geeky
You're basically making my point here. Here's what you're suggesting:
I should install/boot in text mode, then figure out a way to get the ATI driver in text mode, install the driver in text mode and "attempt to configure". All that, plus reading a howto document that is 20 pages long.
I don't know about you, but that definately doesn't fall in the "easy-to-use" category for me... what's the point of having a GUI installer if I can't even use it?
Call me a mug if you wish... All I can say is that I do enjoy playing games every once in a while (entertainment is important... life is not always work work work, or recompile recompile recompile). I also like watching TV, and the All-in-Wonder provides me with all I need for that. But I'm a programmer, and I also like to program. This is something I would like to do under Linux. However, because of the two other things I like that I mentionned above, I can't program with Linux. That's basically saying that programmers can't enjoy life... if you're a programmer, you must do nothing but programming. Some of us are actually trying to get away from that extreme-geek stereotype, ya know?
I did not even have time to "try" the actual drivers... Linux simply won't boot! I'm facing a big black screen, with no sign of activity whatsoever. If it could at least boot with some default driver (I'd even settle for 640x480 in 16 bits), then I could get the driver, but I can't even do that now.
I might just be "anecdotal evidence", but I really want to be using Linux. I would be doing so right now if I only could. But for some reason, my Mandrake won't boot because of my ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon9800Pro video card (every single setting out of about the 20 possibilities ended with "An error occured, try different settings").
I'd like to buy Lindows (or Linspire, or whatever the name of the day is), but I was wise enough to write to customer support and ask if my hardware was supported (mostly an issue about the video card), and if not, whether they expected to be supporting it soon. The reply I got was "No, we do not support that video card". So now I got a video card worth well over $400 and I should trash it to go back to a crappier card because Linux doesn't support it? Sorry, but I'm gonna stick to WinXP as long as Linux doesn't run on my video card.
You are right about Linux not being hard to *use* anymore, but it is still freakin' hard to *install* and get it running.
Cold salt water is -18 Celcius. Inside of your mouth is +36 Celcius. Make those marks on a piece of paper with whatever you're using (assuming you have the tools to make a thermometer), and fold in half (five times over if you can). You'll now have a thermometer with nice floating point numbers where the folds are two-ninths of a degree each.
;-)
Not a *whole* lot more complicated when you're good in math
From the article : will be targeted initially at men ages 18 to 34 years-old
The article from 2 weeks ago was mainly focused on CD-R, while this article mentions CD-rot in commercialy produced CD's. So it's not only the free pirated copy of MS-Office that can rot, but also the original copy you bought for $500 (... yeah... right...)
True... just give me one free and powerful codec and I'll be happy... Can't we just have a standard here?
In North-America, using a computer to commit a crime is a crime. Then, using a computer to access a computer to commit a crime, is that also a crime? I think it is and would result in the same charges.
Plus, if a spammer is physically located overseas, if it happens that his spam relays on servers in North-America, then didn't he use a computer to commit a crime in North-America, therefore commiting a crime in North-America and thus giving the opportunities for north-american juridiction to get the guy?
I might live overseas, but if I commit a crime in North-America, then I expect the north-american police to grab me.
From the article:
He also wants to prevent Microsoft's product release and support road map from dictating FN Manufacturing's upgrade timetable.
That is totally right... sometimes, your company just doesn't have the money right away to upgrade, but Microsoft holds you by the balls and tell you "We won't support your old versions until you upgrade". Freedom to manage your company budget the way *you* want it is pretty important in the balance.
Paper can last for thousands of years... this could be a good solution for long-term storage... right?