Bob Barr had an interesting quote about McCain's position and the war posted on his website.
The gist of the comment was this: when things weren't going well McCain and other republicans said we absolutely couldn't pull out of Iraq because we would have lost. Now, these same folks say that the 'surge' has been an unmitigated success, but we still can't pull out. If that is the case, that you can't pull out when things are bad, and you still can't pull out when things are good then McCain must really be committed to the 100 years engagement that he discussed earlier in his campaign.
Obviously this comment is a bit tongue in cheek, but I think the underlying point is valid.
For what it's worth -- while I consider myself a libertarian at heart, there is no way I could vote for the Barr/Root ticket. Not when the VP candidate runs a sports book. So, this is not a shameless LP pandering comment.
Good for you. I canceled my service with Comcast over a year ago because of their god-awful customer service and the fact that their networks (cable and internet) went down at least weekly.
I haven't missed it since. I don't think you will either.
Sad to say, but it's no secret that Comcast has a defacto monopoly in many areas. I have had to move a lot in my career so I have had a chance to deal with several cable providers and Comcast is BY FAR the worst. The straw the broke this proverbial camel's back came last year when our service was horrendous. We would lose our cable and internet from Comcast at least once each month, usually for a day or two...and it's not like I live in some rural backwater, I'm in suburban NJ less than an hour from NYC.
Anyway, when I called Comcast and told them that I paid them for a service with an expectation that it would be available 24/7 and I would consider things to be balanced once they began to pro-rate my bill to take into consideration the fact that their network didn't function as much as 10% of the time...well, lets just say they weren't very receptive. So I dropped them like a hot rock.
The customer service rep was incredulous, because there are no other cable providers in my town (satellite isn't an option for me now for different reasons) and I told him flat out that I would rather have no television and computer access at all than to ever give Comcast one more cent of my money.
Since then I use Verizon Broadband and I am very pleased. I am really anxious for them to roll FIOS out to my area.
The only hitch is explaining to my kids why we are the only people in the neighborhood who can't watch TV.
On the good side, I think my kids are surprisingly well adjusted...in part because they aren't inundated by commercials for hours every day.
I agree. Movies based on games always seem to choose the craptacular titles to work from. How about choosing something with some plot to it. I think you could make a great conspiracy/action-thriller out of Deus Ex.
I for one, welcome our mind-reading computer overlords.
Can't wait til MS gets a hold of mind reading technology. I am sure it will be totally secure...
Actually, if you RTFA you would see that what's in the summary doesn't match the summary. So I see your 'Fucking retard' comment and raise you with 'stop being a total dumbass'
Anybody who puts that kind of stuff in their formal documents is clearly too cool to be a judge. Anybody know where you can find info on what the italicized letters are?
My wife was an English lit major in college. We had lot of arguments about the validity of feminist interpretations of various books and movies. When she came out of class one day convinced that there was a global male conspiracy to disenfranchise women I just about lost it. I mean honestly, its tough enough to get more than 4 guys to agree on anything more complex than which football game to watch, and that is not a trivial task in and of itself on some Sundays.
Anyway, years later I stumbled onto this link http://www.dourish.com/goodies/decon.html online. It pretty much summarizes how to deconstruct any book or movie and then turn it around to make it fit whatever interpretation you are looking for.
I don't see any more validity to folks who look for blantantly feminist themes in games, movies, book, etc...than I do with folks who always look at things with an intent to overlay racial overtones. In the end they will find what they are looking for, or at least make it appear as if they do.
As noted many times in this thread, most games today are glorified shoot-em-ups. You can't get a whole lot of story out of that. It is tough to find something that would have a compelling enough story to hold someone's attention for a couple of hours, but Silent Hill apparently has quite a following here on/.
The only game that I can think of that has the potential to be a great movie IMO, is Deus Ex. Fantastic, plot driven story line. A noir feel conspiracy/spy movie with some serous sci-fi thrown in could do very well. Of course conspiracy themes don't play well with our current administration, but that is another topic entirely.
Bottom line, you have to get away from RTS or your typical FPS to get something substantial enough to make a good movie.
I have made it a long term goal of mine to find the worst movie ever made...and I have quite a collection. If you are new to the 'genre' of crappy movies I would recommend that you check out http://badmovies.org/ for a pretty nice synopsis of some of the real stinkers out there.
In my personal opinion, The Crippled Masters, a kung-fu movie staring two parapeligics takes the cake, just barely beating out Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (need I say more?)
Obviously this question is all about personal opinion, but if you are just looking for really bad films I would also check out Them Damn Zombies, Pirahna 2 (the spawning), and Troll 2.
I understand what you are saying, but I think it is a very dangerous attribution to assume that one individual (Rumsfeld) or even group of individuals (cabinet members) can have the type of sweeping influence on an organization the size of the military.
I know firsthand the stories that your friends have told you about the army. I am an army officer and have proverbially been there, and done that. However, while people at the top can shake things up, I would further your comparison of the military to a corporation by pointing out that the folks who wield the real power are the legions of nameless, faceless, well-entrenched bearuecrats (sp?) who establish policy at local levels. Bear in mind that the majority of the 'heavy-hitters' at the national policy level are presidential appointees, who often spend the majority of their term of office learning how to do their jobs. By the time they are proficient, they are usually on the way out. Don't discount the power of inertia in an organization the size of our military.
So, having said all that, are changes being made? Sure. Are they significant? Sometimes. Will that mean that our troops will actually see gee-whiz stuff like the armor noted in the article? Not in this generation. Remember that the basic weapon of issue (M16 or M4) is still based on a vietnam era design. Whenever a substantial amount of money is involved things move slowly. As proof, I would point to the crusader howitzer system you alluded to in your previous post as well as the comanche attack helicopter.
Remember when the Army made the big announcement about everyone wearing black berets? That took damn near 18 months to implement and no batteries were required. If this happens anytime during our generation I will be stunned. What they really need are a better pair of standard issue boots...that would be money well spent for the soldiers.
For me, it is a shame that MS has disabled the messenger service with SP2. I used to administer some networks for the army, and found a great use for it.
I had a relatively small number of IP addresses to assign to users compared to the number of client machines we had on the network, and some folks couldn't get as many machines on the LAN as they wanted to. Now, the smarter ones who wanted more IPs than they were allocated would just start taking the IP I had assigned them and incrementing or decrementing it by one or two until they found an unused IP and hopping on the network. If the person assigned to this IP was on the network then it didn't work...however if the IP wasn't in use then it was easily stolen. A few hours later the legitimate user would turn their computer on and get the dialogue box stating that their IP was already in use by another machine. So, following their instructions they contacted their system administrator...which meant that I got a ton of phone calls. Unfortunately, DHCP wasn't an option for us for security reasons so I had to make static addressing work.
After some thought I wrote a very small (like five line) batch file using the NET SEND command and a recursive loop that sent a message to the pirated IP address...something like, "Hey dummass, you are using an IP address that is assigned to someone else. Call (my phone number inserted here) and I will let you use your computer again."
Since the overwhelming majority of my users had default installations of win2k running, this mini-program would pop up windows on their computer faster than they could close them, and they couldn't do anything other than take the computer off the network to stop the messages or shutdown...Either way, problem solved. It was a nice combination of naive users and a silly quirk of windows.
How doth MILES suck?? Let me count the ways...
on
Modding Laser Tag Gear?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Allow me answer all of your specific questions before I elaborate.
Unreliable? Absolutely. To test out MILES gear soldiers will often resort to setting off the laser by tapping the sensor on the front of the unit (this is referred to as 'dry firing') and attempting to kill each other just to verify that their equipment works. If, after several likely unsuccessful attempts they do actually kill their buddy, he has to slink over to a referee and claim his equipment went off for no good reason and have his gear reset. Interestingly, there is a high enough incidence of the gear spontaneously going off and 'killing' players that this is utterly believable. When batteries begin to get low, then the gear often gives a 'false positive' and kills you...sort of an electronic death rattle I suppose. I have also had my equipment set off by flourescent lights and other RF emitters.
Breaks down a lot? As a unit, we are often issued at least 10% more units of MILES than we need because they expect to have at least that much of stuff fail during use. I personally think it is horrendous that the government continues to invest in a system with that kind of failure rate.
Inaccurate? Sort of. It's a laser, so it shoots straight, but mounting it onto your weapon so that straight for the laser corresponds to where you are pointing your rifle is a pain in the ass. The system comes with some mounting brackets intended to mate properly with an M-16, M-4, etc...but in practice using these alone results in a very loose attachment with the laser rattling left, right, up, down and everywhich way...and those few degrees of difference in aim at the barrel result in dozens of meters of difference for your target downrange. By its nature MILES will also never be able to accurately simulate the ballistic arc of a bullet over a long distance...not important to most people, but for training soldiers, a significant point.
How else does MILES suck, you ask. Well, I'll tell you since you're interested. Perhaps most importantly, the designer of the system is clearly not acquainted with the most basic concepts of ergonomics. The heart of the system is a metal box, roughly 8x6 inches positioned directly between your shoulder blades...interesting location when you consider the targetted user group often wears 60-80 pound rucksacks that have to press down on this godforsaken piece of crap and drive it right into your back. Moreover, when worn as designed, MILES has some critical cabling that runs across the chest harness horizontally, about 3-4 inches below your throat. Given that anyone using MILES is going to be jumping, rolling, and crawling around, can you think of a worse place to run a line that can, and often, does effectively strangle the wearer? If you can you are more creative than I am. Then there is the halo...or as I refer to it, the crown of thorns. MILES uses a conceptually interesting idea where the target can be hit in the head or the torso. It accomplishes this with the 'halo' of sensors that ring a user's head. When shot, this halo broadcasts an RF signal to the harness, which registers the kill...theoretically. To make this work (READ: suck even worse) there is another of those evil metal boxes on the halo. (This is one of the major failings of MILES...the halo doesn't really work very well without a helmet to put it on. Take the weight of a helmet, then add about a pound and a half of halo, which only mounts off-center, thus unbalancing the system, and imagine wearing it for 2 weeks to a month straight during an exercise.) This box is needed to hold batteries and the RF transmitter to communicate a hit to the harness. Now, imagine you are in, oh, say a foxhole with another soldier. One of you gets shot in the head. Your halo sends out the RF signal, and does it register with just your harness? Of course not. You're both dead, thanks to MILES.
I think that about sums up my major issues with MILES. Bottom line is that I cannot believe that f
Actually MILES is attached to the barrel of a weapon and is activated by the pressure wave created near the flash suppressor when a round is fired. There is a small black disk on the front of the laser that is sensitive to this pressure and can be set off by gently tapping on it with your finger...this is just one of the major failings of MILES gear for military use, since it allows soldiers who have expended all their ammunition to continue shooting without any limit, or it allows them to shoot with an absolutely silent 'sniper' weapon that has no signature whether visual or audible.
Avoid MILES. It sucks in a special kind of way. Trust me on this.
OH SWEET JESUS, ANYTHING BUT M.I.L.E.S!!
on
Modding Laser Tag Gear?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
M.I.L.E.S. (Multiple Integrated Laser Engagment System, in case you were wondering) is horrible. It is awful. It is so atrocious that I can't truly capture its badness except to say that it sucks about as much as a black hole. Don't look into it. Don't consider it. Don't mention it...for gawdsake, don't even think about it.
I have been in the Army for about eight years now and I honestly cannot sum up how much I hate this system. I once told myself, "Self, I think I could be happy doing anything as long as I don't have to wear M.I.L.E.S gear." Since I told myself that I have spent significant time in swamps, deserts and everywhere in-between and I can tell you as a bone fide user that I preferred being in a hostile combat environment where I was getting shot at over wearing that crap in training.
Fortunately for you I find it very hard to believe that you would find any that works on the market, and if you did, the last thing your neighbors or police would want is you and your friends shooting real machine guns at each other with real (blank) ammo and then trying to explain that its just a game.
Slashdot Mirror
Bob Barr had an interesting quote about McCain's position and the war posted on his website.
The gist of the comment was this: when things weren't going well McCain and other republicans said we absolutely couldn't pull out of Iraq because we would have lost. Now, these same folks say that the 'surge' has been an unmitigated success, but we still can't pull out. If that is the case, that you can't pull out when things are bad, and you still can't pull out when things are good then McCain must really be committed to the 100 years engagement that he discussed earlier in his campaign.
Obviously this comment is a bit tongue in cheek, but I think the underlying point is valid.
For what it's worth -- while I consider myself a libertarian at heart, there is no way I could vote for the Barr/Root ticket. Not when the VP candidate runs a sports book. So, this is not a shameless LP pandering comment.
Good for you. I canceled my service with Comcast over a year ago because of their god-awful customer service and the fact that their networks (cable and internet) went down at least weekly. I haven't missed it since. I don't think you will either.
Sad to say, but it's no secret that Comcast has a defacto monopoly in many areas. I have had to move a lot in my career so I have had a chance to deal with several cable providers and Comcast is BY FAR the worst. The straw the broke this proverbial camel's back came last year when our service was horrendous. We would lose our cable and internet from Comcast at least once each month, usually for a day or two...and it's not like I live in some rural backwater, I'm in suburban NJ less than an hour from NYC.
Anyway, when I called Comcast and told them that I paid them for a service with an expectation that it would be available 24/7 and I would consider things to be balanced once they began to pro-rate my bill to take into consideration the fact that their network didn't function as much as 10% of the time...well, lets just say they weren't very receptive. So I dropped them like a hot rock.
The customer service rep was incredulous, because there are no other cable providers in my town (satellite isn't an option for me now for different reasons) and I told him flat out that I would rather have no television and computer access at all than to ever give Comcast one more cent of my money.
Since then I use Verizon Broadband and I am very pleased. I am really anxious for them to roll FIOS out to my area.
The only hitch is explaining to my kids why we are the only people in the neighborhood who can't watch TV.
On the good side, I think my kids are surprisingly well adjusted...in part because they aren't inundated by commercials for hours every day.
I agree. Movies based on games always seem to choose the craptacular titles to work from. How about choosing something with some plot to it. I think you could make a great conspiracy/action-thriller out of Deus Ex.
I for one, welcome our mind-reading computer overlords. Can't wait til MS gets a hold of mind reading technology. I am sure it will be totally secure...
Actually, if you RTFA you would see that what's in the summary doesn't match the summary. So I see your 'Fucking retard' comment and raise you with 'stop being a total dumbass'
Anybody who puts that kind of stuff in their formal documents is clearly too cool to be a judge. Anybody know where you can find info on what the italicized letters are?
My wife was an English lit major in college. We had lot of arguments about the validity of feminist interpretations of various books and movies. When she came out of class one day convinced that there was a global male conspiracy to disenfranchise women I just about lost it. I mean honestly, its tough enough to get more than 4 guys to agree on anything more complex than which football game to watch, and that is not a trivial task in and of itself on some Sundays.
Anyway, years later I stumbled onto this link http://www.dourish.com/goodies/decon.html online. It pretty much summarizes how to deconstruct any book or movie and then turn it around to make it fit whatever interpretation you are looking for.
I don't see any more validity to folks who look for blantantly feminist themes in games, movies, book, etc...than I do with folks who always look at things with an intent to overlay racial overtones. In the end they will find what they are looking for, or at least make it appear as if they do.
As noted many times in this thread, most games today are glorified shoot-em-ups. You can't get a whole lot of story out of that. It is tough to find something that would have a compelling enough story to hold someone's attention for a couple of hours, but Silent Hill apparently has quite a following here on /.
The only game that I can think of that has the potential to be a great movie IMO, is Deus Ex. Fantastic, plot driven story line. A noir feel conspiracy/spy movie with some serous sci-fi thrown in could do very well. Of course conspiracy themes don't play well with our current administration, but that is another topic entirely.
Bottom line, you have to get away from RTS or your typical FPS to get something substantial enough to make a good movie.
I have made it a long term goal of mine to find the worst movie ever made...and I have quite a collection. If you are new to the 'genre' of crappy movies I would recommend that you check out http://badmovies.org/ for a pretty nice synopsis of some of the real stinkers out there.
In my personal opinion, The Crippled Masters, a kung-fu movie staring two parapeligics takes the cake, just barely beating out Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (need I say more?)
Obviously this question is all about personal opinion, but if you are just looking for really bad films I would also check out Them Damn Zombies, Pirahna 2 (the spawning), and Troll 2.
I understand what you are saying, but I think it is a very dangerous attribution to assume that one individual (Rumsfeld) or even group of individuals (cabinet members) can have the type of sweeping influence on an organization the size of the military.
I know firsthand the stories that your friends have told you about the army. I am an army officer and have proverbially been there, and done that. However, while people at the top can shake things up, I would further your comparison of the military to a corporation by pointing out that the folks who wield the real power are the legions of nameless, faceless, well-entrenched bearuecrats (sp?) who establish policy at local levels. Bear in mind that the majority of the 'heavy-hitters' at the national policy level are presidential appointees, who often spend the majority of their term of office learning how to do their jobs. By the time they are proficient, they are usually on the way out. Don't discount the power of inertia in an organization the size of our military.
So, having said all that, are changes being made? Sure. Are they significant? Sometimes. Will that mean that our troops will actually see gee-whiz stuff like the armor noted in the article? Not in this generation. Remember that the basic weapon of issue (M16 or M4) is still based on a vietnam era design. Whenever a substantial amount of money is involved things move slowly. As proof, I would point to the crusader howitzer system you alluded to in your previous post as well as the comanche attack helicopter.
By the way, thanks for paying attention.
Remember when the Army made the big announcement about everyone wearing black berets? That took damn near 18 months to implement and no batteries were required. If this happens anytime during our generation I will be stunned. What they really need are a better pair of standard issue boots...that would be money well spent for the soldiers.
For me, it is a shame that MS has disabled the messenger service with SP2. I used to administer some networks for the army, and found a great use for it.
I had a relatively small number of IP addresses to assign to users compared to the number of client machines we had on the network, and some folks couldn't get as many machines on the LAN as they wanted to. Now, the smarter ones who wanted more IPs than they were allocated would just start taking the IP I had assigned them and incrementing or decrementing it by one or two until they found an unused IP and hopping on the network. If the person assigned to this IP was on the network then it didn't work...however if the IP wasn't in use then it was easily stolen. A few hours later the legitimate user would turn their computer on and get the dialogue box stating that their IP was already in use by another machine. So, following their instructions they contacted their system administrator...which meant that I got a ton of phone calls. Unfortunately, DHCP wasn't an option for us for security reasons so I had to make static addressing work.
After some thought I wrote a very small (like five line) batch file using the NET SEND command and a recursive loop that sent a message to the pirated IP address...something like, "Hey dummass, you are using an IP address that is assigned to someone else. Call (my phone number inserted here) and I will let you use your computer again."
Since the overwhelming majority of my users had default installations of win2k running, this mini-program would pop up windows on their computer faster than they could close them, and they couldn't do anything other than take the computer off the network to stop the messages or shutdown...Either way, problem solved. It was a nice combination of naive users and a silly quirk of windows.
Allow me answer all of your specific questions before I elaborate.
Unreliable? Absolutely. To test out MILES gear soldiers will often resort to setting off the laser by tapping the sensor on the front of the unit (this is referred to as 'dry firing') and attempting to kill each other just to verify that their equipment works. If, after several likely unsuccessful attempts they do actually kill their buddy, he has to slink over to a referee and claim his equipment went off for no good reason and have his gear reset. Interestingly, there is a high enough incidence of the gear spontaneously going off and 'killing' players that this is utterly believable. When batteries begin to get low, then the gear often gives a 'false positive' and kills you...sort of an electronic death rattle I suppose. I have also had my equipment set off by flourescent lights and other RF emitters.
Breaks down a lot? As a unit, we are often issued at least 10% more units of MILES than we need because they expect to have at least that much of stuff fail during use. I personally think it is horrendous that the government continues to invest in a system with that kind of failure rate.
Inaccurate? Sort of. It's a laser, so it shoots straight, but mounting it onto your weapon so that straight for the laser corresponds to where you are pointing your rifle is a pain in the ass. The system comes with some mounting brackets intended to mate properly with an M-16, M-4, etc...but in practice using these alone results in a very loose attachment with the laser rattling left, right, up, down and everywhich way...and those few degrees of difference in aim at the barrel result in dozens of meters of difference for your target downrange. By its nature MILES will also never be able to accurately simulate the ballistic arc of a bullet over a long distance...not important to most people, but for training soldiers, a significant point.
How else does MILES suck, you ask. Well, I'll tell you since you're interested. Perhaps most importantly, the designer of the system is clearly not acquainted with the most basic concepts of ergonomics. The heart of the system is a metal box, roughly 8x6 inches positioned directly between your shoulder blades...interesting location when you consider the targetted user group often wears 60-80 pound rucksacks that have to press down on this godforsaken piece of crap and drive it right into your back. Moreover, when worn as designed, MILES has some critical cabling that runs across the chest harness horizontally, about 3-4 inches below your throat. Given that anyone using MILES is going to be jumping, rolling, and crawling around, can you think of a worse place to run a line that can, and often, does effectively strangle the wearer? If you can you are more creative than I am. Then there is the halo...or as I refer to it, the crown of thorns. MILES uses a conceptually interesting idea where the target can be hit in the head or the torso. It accomplishes this with the 'halo' of sensors that ring a user's head. When shot, this halo broadcasts an RF signal to the harness, which registers the kill...theoretically. To make this work (READ: suck even worse) there is another of those evil metal boxes on the halo. (This is one of the major failings of MILES...the halo doesn't really work very well without a helmet to put it on. Take the weight of a helmet, then add about a pound and a half of halo, which only mounts off-center, thus unbalancing the system, and imagine wearing it for 2 weeks to a month straight during an exercise.) This box is needed to hold batteries and the RF transmitter to communicate a hit to the harness. Now, imagine you are in, oh, say a foxhole with another soldier. One of you gets shot in the head. Your halo sends out the RF signal, and does it register with just your harness? Of course not. You're both dead, thanks to MILES.
I think that about sums up my major issues with MILES. Bottom line is that I cannot believe that f
Actually MILES is attached to the barrel of a weapon and is activated by the pressure wave created near the flash suppressor when a round is fired. There is a small black disk on the front of the laser that is sensitive to this pressure and can be set off by gently tapping on it with your finger...this is just one of the major failings of MILES gear for military use, since it allows soldiers who have expended all their ammunition to continue shooting without any limit, or it allows them to shoot with an absolutely silent 'sniper' weapon that has no signature whether visual or audible.
Avoid MILES. It sucks in a special kind of way. Trust me on this.
M.I.L.E.S. (Multiple Integrated Laser Engagment System, in case you were wondering) is horrible. It is awful. It is so atrocious that I can't truly capture its badness except to say that it sucks about as much as a black hole. Don't look into it. Don't consider it. Don't mention it...for gawdsake, don't even think about it.
I have been in the Army for about eight years now and I honestly cannot sum up how much I hate this system. I once told myself, "Self, I think I could be happy doing anything as long as I don't have to wear M.I.L.E.S gear." Since I told myself that I have spent significant time in swamps, deserts and everywhere in-between and I can tell you as a bone fide user that I preferred being in a hostile combat environment where I was getting shot at over wearing that crap in training.
Fortunately for you I find it very hard to believe that you would find any that works on the market, and if you did, the last thing your neighbors or police would want is you and your friends shooting real machine guns at each other with real (blank) ammo and then trying to explain that its just a game.
Stick with Laser Tag...trust me on this one.