Slashdot Mirror


User: KDR_11k

KDR_11k's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
12,744
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 12,744

  1. Re:Automation on Real-Time Strategy Games - Too Many Clicks? · · Score: 1

    When I see a selection limit in an RTS I immediately conclude that whoever designed that interface was a retard. I mean, WHY? Command and fucking Conquer allowed selecting as many units as you want, why do modern RTSes want to restrict that? Want to turn it into a game of who-can-click-faster or what?

    Any game with an interface worse than Spring needs to have its GUI developers put through a collective beating.

  2. Re:What I don't understand... on Next-Gen Updates From Leipzig · · Score: 1

    Yeah, as far as the video game companies are concerned, those aren't people.

    As far as console games companies are concerned, you mean. That's the reason the PC is still more important to gaming than the PS2 over here.

  3. Re:Cataan on XBLA! on Next-Gen Updates From Leipzig · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Or maybe he's a cellphone developer?

  4. Re:Missing from the summary on Next-Gen Updates From Leipzig · · Score: 1

    The marketers responsible for that have been shipped off to Australia.

  5. Re:abuse on Microsoft Puts Police Link on Messenger · · Score: 1

    Not prosecuted but you can be charged for the cost caused to the Police.

  6. Re:Bomberman and Smash Bros. on The Console War Is Not Good For Gaming · · Score: 1
  7. Re:Submitter links with referals on August's Best Indie Games · · Score: 1

    Or you can go into a store and pick up the box in case you lack a credit card.

  8. Re:Bomberman and Smash Bros. on The Console War Is Not Good For Gaming · · Score: 1

    Stop being so ignorant. When was the last time you played a PC game that was multiplayer and wasn't turn based/hotseat on a single pc.

    One week ago.

  9. Re:Bomberman and Smash Bros. on The Console War Is Not Good For Gaming · · Score: 1

    GameCube and PlayStation 2 are not single-player consoles. They are single-display consoles, and there are all sorts of ways to put four players in front of one screen that don't involve splitting the screen into four viewports. I find it unlikely that you've never played Bomberman or Smash Bros. or Amplitude, which place all players within the same playfield.

    And? You can still play a singleplayer game on these consoles and it wouldn't be any less antisocial than playing a game that only supports one player per PC when that guest is around.

  10. Re:Family of six in a 1 bedroom apartment? on The Console War Is Not Good For Gaming · · Score: 1

    So you plan to convert your existing PC into a gaming PC. Then what will you use to read Slashdot or do your taxes?

    That same computer? A computer is general purpose, it's still capable of office chores even if it's upgraded to work for games. I'm posting this from my gaming PC.

    If you're planning to use your gaming PC to do those, then how do you plan on entertaining your other family members or house guests until you finish?

    Obviously you don't play a videogame when there's a guest around. That's not limited to PCs, playing a singleplayer console game while telling your guest/family member to wait until you're done is just as antisocial.

    With a console you could also run into the problem of other family members wanting to use the TV for, well, watching TV. Sure you can buy a second TV. But the better TV is usually the family TV so you'd need to shell out quite an amount if you want to use that HD output on the next gen consoles. Oh and of course if the rest of the family is watching TV and within earshot of your gaming TV you better invest into headphones right away.

    And once you're having fun in games with sub-GameCube-caliber graphics such as Quake III, you might as well just whip out a Wii and four controllers.

    Yeah except split screen (which is necessary for games like Quake 3) isn't very comfortable no matter what.

    And what multiplayer PC games do you recommend that are not rated 17+?

    Total Annihilation, man (or Spring, which is opensource and can run TA)! Or be a bit more social and play something like Anno or Settlers. Or look into the abandoned bargain bins and pull out Arena Wars. Maybe look to Japan and grab something like Melty Blood. Or download one of the free-game-premium-items MMORPGs that seem to be all the rage in Korea now.

  11. Re:Noooooooo!!! on Zelda on the Wii To Include Sword Swinging · · Score: 1

    A lightgun that works on all TVs duct taped to a bunch of accellerometers.

  12. Re:I RTFA... on Peter Molyneux Talks Next-Gen Combat and Wii · · Score: 1

    Of course that doesn't make it any less accurate, Molyneaux makes everything up on the spot, too.

  13. Re:Gamecube and Wii versions!? on Zelda on the Wii To Include Sword Swinging · · Score: 1

    Considering that all the other console makers either took the market by storm or disappeared a gen or two later that is quite a low goal.

  14. Re:Gamecube and Wii versions!? on Zelda on the Wii To Include Sword Swinging · · Score: 1

    Yes but how many people actually own a Gamecube?

  15. Re:Unique nature of controller may hurt the consol on Peter Molyneux Talks Next-Gen Combat and Wii · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Considering the general difference in power between the Wii and the other consoles you won't be able to make direct ports anyway.

  16. Re:I RTFA... on Peter Molyneux Talks Next-Gen Combat and Wii · · Score: 1

    Molyneaux never talks about his games, only ideas he had. Usually he presents those ideas as if they were already implemented and all but they rarely make it into the final product.

  17. Re:What ebay needs. on EBay Sellers Seek Management Change · · Score: 1

    That could be handled by a filter option "maximum shipping fee".

  18. Re:What ebay needs. on EBay Sellers Seek Management Change · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That last bit is what really annoys me. Ebay needs to introduce a policy that gets people banned for listing in the wrong category twice.

  19. Re:Remove Whitman on EBay Sellers Seek Management Change · · Score: 2, Insightful

    EBay supports net neutrality to prevent ISPs from "regulating" the access to websites unwilling to pay for "higher tier service" while claiming they are just unclogging the tubes. Sure, removing access to Google is going to reduce traffic...

  20. Re:Can be converted to 3-SAT on Under the Hood of Quantum Computing · · Score: 1

    Not all problems in NP are equally hard, only the NP-Complete ones (again, assuming P!=NP). Binary search is in NP (and P) but it's not as hard as the TSP (which is in NP-Complete).

  21. Re:Money! on Lessig Defends Free Culture in Keynote · · Score: 1

    Theoretically, if your city spent enough money, they could put a cop on every corner 24 hours a day, and muggings would go down a lot without invading anyone's privacy. The same is not true of copyright - the only way to even enforce it in theory is to invade people's homes and equipment.

    How about hiring enough enforcement personell that you can take any warez distributors down within minutes? Physically unfeasible, theoretically possible.

    All right, suppose I offer you a contract: I'll sell you gas for your car at $20 a gallon for the next six months. You decline, and you go and buy gas from someone else at $3 a gallon. Under your logic, that's "demanding the advantage a contract gives you without fulfilling the obligations" - you don't like my terms, so you're going to someone else who offers you the same thing on better terms.

    No, the deal is 20$ for your gas or 3$ for that other guy's gas. He doesn't offer me your gas for 3$ (which would obviously involve stealing some of it out of your tank).

    But it's fine, right? Because you're not taking gas out of my tanks, depriving me of anything or causing me any extra trouble, you're getting it from someone else. Just like if you download a Britney song from Kazaa, you're not taking it off Britney's hard drive, or using any of her bandwidth, etc... you're getting it from someone else.

    The difference is that you didn't put any effort into giving your competitor that gas while with the song Britney (or the RIAA) did 99% of the work and that competitor merely clicked "copy". As a customer you'd encourage people to stop making music and only leech other people's music. (apropos leeching, even warezers won't like it if you just copy and don't fulfill your obligations, in this case uploading)

    If you're against that, you're against competition. When you buy a phone from Cingular, doesn't T-Mobile lose the option of selling it to you? When you buy a used Camry from Crazy Eddie, doesn't Wacky Larry down the street lose the option of selling you his used Camry? When you buy a satellite dish, doesn't Comcast essentially lose the option of selling you cable?

    Cingular's phone != T-Mobile's phone. Cingular has the option of offering a superior product or making it cheaper, a copyright holder cannot do that when competing against illegal copying as that competitor would just take any improvements and copy them without own expenses. Any additional work the copyright holder puts into his goods means more loss for him.

    You've got it backwards. Copyright itself is an anticompetitive measure: a work can only be sold or given away by the copyright holder; everyone else is banned from competing.

    Everyone else is allowed to compete on the same terms: Make your own goddamn music if you want to sell it! Because otherwise you encourage people to not create anthing new and instead hope that some idiot tries to do that for them.

    If you want o compete with a commercial product by offering a free one, do it like Linux and create your own goddamn OS (even if it's pretty much a clone of another product you're still adding your own ideas), don't just sell warez copies of Windows. Which would be better for us: Free copies of Windows or having a completely open OS?

    Really, I don't see how Britney Sprears is any less interchangeable than Kellog's Cornflakes or Coca Cola or how copyright is any worse for competition than trademarks (because the primary value of a trademark is the ad money you put into it).

  22. Re:Can be converted to 3-SAT on Under the Hood of Quantum Computing · · Score: 1

    You can verify whether the path taken by a TSP is valid in polynomial time (which is pretty much the definition of NP) but you cannot verify whether the output of the algorithm (which is "Does a valid path exist for this TSP?") is correct. The quantum computer (or an NTM, which is obviously a bit more powerful than a quantum computer unless BQP=NP) can only tell you the final answer, you cannot see any of the possible solutions it tested since observing them would collapse the quantum wave form. Never mind that to be sure you'd have to test ALL of those possible solutions which is NP-Complete since the original problem is NP-Complete. The only thing that can test the quantum computer's possible solutions is the qc itself and its answer is random with a skew.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BQP

  23. Re:Could be applied to most software on Download Torrents With Your PC Turned Off · · Score: 1

    Just because you don't want to use it doesn't mean you can't use it like that. With explosives the uses are heavily regulated so you probably don't even have a place to detonate them without violating any laws. You could decide at any time to download e.g. a Linux distro via Bittorrent so it has legitimate uses, whether you notice them is up to you.

  24. Re:Money! on Lessig Defends Free Culture in Keynote · · Score: 1

    Er.. a system that allows one person to opt himself and everyone else in isn't exactly "opt-in". The rest of us don't get a choice.

    Not regarding that one good but you do get the choice to buy something else. Property is opt-in for the owner, not other people. If you're the only one in your town who doesn't want to share his car with others, is it okay if they just take yours?

    I disagree. I think the invasive laws are a natural consequence of copyright, because copyright is basically unenforceable today without them. When even the cheapest Wal-Mart PCs can copy CDs and DVDs, and the populace is increasingly willing to do so even though it's illegal, copyright law has little effect on its own. You can't stop someone from making copies in his basement unless you post a guard in his house - or require hardware manufacturers to build guards into his equipment.

    The law doesn't do much about mugging either but noone proposed additional laws for that.

    Nope. Employees don't have to pay their wages back if it turns out the work they did wasn't as useful to the bottom line as it seemed... but that's exactly how royalty advances work. Employers don't ask for your paycheck to be paid back; that's what payday loan sharks do.

    Depends on the business you're in. Not even EA has the nerve to demand their money back.

    The reason stealing is wrong is that you're taking something away from its owner, depriving him of it. If I put my car up for sale, and someone magically makes a copy instead and drives off in an identical car (leaving me with the original), I might be sad because I didn't get paid, but he hasn't really done anything wrong.

    I'm not talking about stealing, I'm talking about demanding the advantage a contract gives you without fulfilling the obligations.

    We had to outlaw theft because when your physical property is "unlawfully acquired", you don't have it anymore. If it could be copied and used by many people simultaneously like information can, we wouldn't need laws against that either.

    If you unlawfully acquire a song the copyright holder loses the option of selling it to you. With isolated cases that may not mean much but if enough people do it that destroys the market the copyright holder wanted to sell his good to. May not be anything like theft but works pretty well as an anticompetitive measure, i.e. if it didn't violate copyright it should violate antitrust laws.

  25. Re:Verifiable in P on Under the Hood of Quantum Computing · · Score: 1

    No, the output of the algorithm (yes or no) is random with a skew. You can't verify in P if your TSP algorithm gave the right answer.