Looks like Starcraft Ghost is going to earn a place right next to Warcraft Adventures as a cancelled project. A shame...I was really looking forward to Warcraft Adventures. Ah well, at least they more or less released its story in a book: Lord of the Clans.
The isolinear chips are actually an optical storage format. I guess you could kind of compare them to CD-RW, only they are a LOT faster, and they also store their data in 3 dimensions instead of 2. Also, a lot less effort has to be made in ST computers to make them use an optical format, because the computers themselves are optical, not electronic. Crystals instead of silicon chips, fiber optics instead of semiconductors and connecting wires. They also do some funky stuff like putting a warp field around the computer so that the fiber optics can exceed the speed of light. Actually, Star Trek tech optical tech is kind of similar to Ancient and Goa'uld (since the Goa'uld scavenged Ancient tech to come up with their stuff) tech in Stargate.
...however, this does not mean that it won't be a lot more powerful. The Pentium Pro is an evolution of the 386. It just means the architecture is similar, only the Revolution has newer, much faster components and a lot more RAM. It will probably be very easy to work with for those familiar with the Gamecube.
Chrono Trigger was produced by "Dream Project" which featured members of both the Final Fantasy (Square) and Dragon Quest (Enix) teams. It was a hell of a good game, and that cooperation was long before Square and Enix merged. I'd personally like to see Dream Project get back together and do a third Chrono title (maybe Chrono Break, since they did reserve the name, though that game is nothing but vaporware at this point).
You're correct. The "Atari" they're referring to here is not the Atari we all remember from our childhood. That Atari went out of business years ago. The French company Infogrames (one of the largest publishers, though I believe they are behind EA) bought all the rights to the Atari name several years ago, and then they changed their name to "Atari". So to be more accurate, the title should be "Infogrames selling studios to avoid bankruptcy".
I wish people would quit repeating this myth. Only 3 consoles have ever been sold at a loss: the Sega Saturn, the Dreamcast, and the Xbox (well, probably 4 now, I assume they're taking a loss on the 360 also). Losing money on console hardware is NOT the norm, and it's something only Sega and Microsoft have done. And look at what happened to Sega when they did that. Here's an article that has a decent rundown on the subject. It was last updated in 2003, but nothing has really changed since then. http://www.actsofgord.com/Proclamations/chapter02. html
If you uninstall Skype from a Windows machine, it directs you to a survey page that asks you why you are uninstalling and invites you to provide comments. 1 of my machines is Windows, so I filled out the survey and explained that I was uninstalling it because of their policy to only enable certain features on Intel processors. Under Gentoo it's as simple as emerge -C skype, they don't ever even find out about that. Anyone using Windows should immediately uninstall the program and fill out the survey. Maybe if they lose 10,000 customers on the day of the announcement they will think twice about future actions like this.
It's already backfired. I uninstalled Skype from 3 computers today, and adjusted my firewall to make it as difficult as possible to make it work. Granted, since it's capable of using an HTTP proxy, there's no way to block it completely without blocking web access as well. But I still encourage that everyone that is involved in administrating a router do everything in their power to make Skype not work.
Skype has been removed from every computer on my network, and the ports that it uses have been blocked on my server. No Skype traffic will be allowed on my network.
How much do you want to bet that there will be a crack to make the game run in XP before it's even released? You know it's just going to be check for OS and refuse to install if it's not Vista.
That's really odd...all of my computers have CD-RW drives on them and neither Homeworld nor Homeworld Cataclysm ever complained about them. In fact, I never had any issues at all. I have the original disks for both as well (gotten from the bargain bin when they went cheap), not cracks. I never had to crack either.
Metroid Prime/Prime 2 do this well
on
Off With Their HUDS!
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The HUD in the Metroid Prime games is actually really well done. Of course, in that game it has a reason to be there...since you're walking around in a really high tech powered armorsuit. It's okay to have a HUD if it's believable in the context of the game and isn't excessive.
The open source Broadcom driver is VERY VERY close to being pretty much fully functional. Broadcom chipsets will not be paperweights on Linux much longer. Ndiswrapper is going to have to go away soon anyway...I'm not sure when it's going to happen, but I've heard that the Linux kernel is going to go to exclusively 4k stacks in an upcoming release (I'm not sure which one, 2.6.15 is still using 8k by default). Right now the default is 8k stacks, you can change it to 4k but this has to be done in the "kernel hacking" section of the config. Anyway, Windows drivers are usually written to expect 12k or greater stack sizes. Ndiswrapper seems to mostly work okay with the default 8k stack size, but once the kernel is switched to 4k, ndiswrapper will not work anymore. Native drivers are going to be necessary as soon as this change is made. Here's a thread on the native Broadcom driver: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-409194-highli ght-.html
This thread is mostly concerned with getting it working on ppc (since ndiswrapper only works on x86, ppc people don't have a choice and have to have a native driver), and it's mostly centered around Gentoo, but the driver developers are posting on there a lot and they're trying to track down specific issues with the driver. However, x86 people are also following this thread and posting on it. Right now I'm using the 0.0.1-20060105 snapshot (the only one Gentoo currently has in the portage tree). It *almost* works, I can bring my interface up, scan for access points, WEP and WPA are supported, it just has trouble actually associating with access points. Some people are having more problems than others, and some have been able to work around the problem by writing a shell script that hammers the interface until it successfully associates. The driver developers are working on this, once this is resolved it will be more functional than ndiswrapper.
IANAL...but most GPL software I've seen includes a comment that such and such can be redistributed under the terms of GPLv2 or "at your discretion, a later version". This would allow someone to "re-license" a GPLv2 program as GPLv3, I would think.
I will either pay to buy the game, or pay to play it (subscription service), NOT both. If I pay $50 for a game, I expect to be able to play it for free from that point on. If they're going to charge you to play a game (as in an MMORPG), the client should be free. Otherwise if you decide to stop paying for the subscription, you're left with a $50 coaster (the game CD). I believe it is immoral to charge for a game that is online subscription-only and then charge for the subscription on top of that. Heck, if the client were free, I might be tempted to try WoW for a month or so, and continue if I like it. But I'm not about to risk $50 on something that I would have to pay $13/month for to play.
Not sure what chipset your wireless card uses, but if it's Broadcom, there are 2 solutions now. 1) http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/ lets you use Windows drivers on Linux. 2) http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/ the native Broadcom driver is stabilizing now. It's experimental at this state, but people are using it on both x86 and ppc. I think you have to have a 2.6.15 or later kernel to use that though. I'm still using ndiswrapper for mine, it works okay until the native drivers are stabilized more.
The original regular cast members were Don S. Davis (Gen. Hammond), RDA (Jack), Amanda Tapping, Michael Shanks, and Christopher Judge. True, O'neill and Hammond are no longer series regulars...however, RDA did appear in episodes 1 and 3 of season 9 as a guest star, and his character is still very much alive in the Stargate universe. Davis appeared in episodes 10 and 11 of this season, and his character is also very much alive, he will probably be making future appearances. Amanda Tapping was not present in the first 5 episodes of season 9, but that was not because she left the series...the actress was merely on maternity leave, and she returned to the series starting episode 6. She's been in every episode since then. Michael Shanks was gone for most of season 6 (though he did make a few guest appearances and also provided the voice for Thor). He returned as a regular in the first episode of season 7 and has been with the series since then. Christopher Judge has never left, he's been in every episode AFAIK. So we still have 3 of the original 5 regular cast members, frequent guest appearances by 1, and infrequent guest apperances by the last...I'd hardly call that "most of the original cast is gone". I think Stargate will be fine...it's definitely going into season 10, and the chances for a season 11 are very good. And just because the Goa'uld empire has been wiped out does not mean they're all gone. They aren't the threat they once were, but they are still very much around. Baal in particular, he was the main antagonist in one of the season 9 episodes.
Diesel cars are not very common in the US. The diesel fuel we have is also far far "dirtier" than in Europe because of the high sulfur content. They are talking about phasing in low-sulfur diesel, but it's going to take quite awhile. In the meantime, I have a Prius now. I usually get ~55mpg or so during the summer, and ~45mpg during the winter. Colder temperatures make the engine run more during the winter, especially if the heater is in use. Still though, I can't complain about gas mileage. I think it would be awesome if they made a Prius with a diesel engine instead of the regular gas engine. I'm pretty sure 80-100mpg would not be out of the question in that case. I'd love to have a diesel/electric Prius running on biodiesel.
I sold Grandia 2 a couple of years ago...had it for the Dreamcast. I paid $15 for it new when I got it, but I felt ripped off. The 2 Dreamcast RPG's were Skies of Arcadia and Grandia 2. I figured that since it was from the makers of Lunar, Grandia 2 would be the far better game and Skies of Arcadia would only be average. Boy was I wrong...Skies of Arcadia was one of the best games on the Dreamcast and one of the 2 best RPG's of this generation IMO. I give it #2 actually...#1 going to Tales of Symphonia. Grandia 2 was just terrible IMO. The story was cliched and predictable, the characters were cookie-cutter, and the gameplay was TERRIBLE. I actually made it to the city that the kid came from (don't even remember the name), before I had to stop because the gameplay was just so bad. The plot was so predictable that I was able to guess the ending before I even made it to this point, and after I read Gamefaqs I found I was right.
Stingrays "fly" in water too (I mean the larger kind that have "wings", not the smaller ones that look like fish frisbees). They are very interesting to watch. They're also very curious...they don't act like fish at all. They act more like puppies than fish actually.
I feel your pain. I tried to like Kingdom Hearts, I really did. I didn't buy it, but borrowed it from a friend of mine. It started out great. The story was interesting to me. However, the gameplay at times made Diablo 2 look NOT repetitive by comparison. I remember parts where I had to stand in the same place fighting the same enemies for 10-15 minutes or sometimes more! I wanted to see where the story went, but it got to the point where it was downright painful to play. I made it to the Little Mermaid world before I had to give up...the gameplay got so tedious and boring I couldn't stand to play it for more than 10-15 minutes at a time. The hideous camera also killed it for me. The boss fights were terrible, the other characters were more of a hindrance than a help. I eventually gave up even trying to keep them alive. At times the battle system felt like a bad Zelda knockoff. The only other game that I played that was that boring was Grandia 2 (which I never finished either...only in that one the plot was as boring as the gameplay). Sadly, KH had a lot of potential, but the gameplay just killed it for me.
There's no rule that says you HAVE to use a JVM to execute Java code. Of course, if you want the whole "write once, run anywhere" philosophy to apply it has to be done through a JVM, but Java itself is just a language. There's no reason you couldn't make a true Java compiler that would create machine code just like a C compiler does (instead of JVM bytecode). In fact, there has been some work on the gcc project to this end (gcj).
If you REALLY want to get technical, electrons are involved in every chemical reaction...in fact they are the reason chemical reactions take place. All life processes are chemical reactions, whether you use electricity or not.;)
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Looks like Starcraft Ghost is going to earn a place right next to Warcraft Adventures as a cancelled project. A shame...I was really looking forward to Warcraft Adventures. Ah well, at least they more or less released its story in a book: Lord of the Clans.
The isolinear chips are actually an optical storage format. I guess you could kind of compare them to CD-RW, only they are a LOT faster, and they also store their data in 3 dimensions instead of 2. Also, a lot less effort has to be made in ST computers to make them use an optical format, because the computers themselves are optical, not electronic. Crystals instead of silicon chips, fiber optics instead of semiconductors and connecting wires. They also do some funky stuff like putting a warp field around the computer so that the fiber optics can exceed the speed of light. Actually, Star Trek tech optical tech is kind of similar to Ancient and Goa'uld (since the Goa'uld scavenged Ancient tech to come up with their stuff) tech in Stargate.
...however, this does not mean that it won't be a lot more powerful. The Pentium Pro is an evolution of the 386. It just means the architecture is similar, only the Revolution has newer, much faster components and a lot more RAM. It will probably be very easy to work with for those familiar with the Gamecube.
Chrono Trigger was produced by "Dream Project" which featured members of both the Final Fantasy (Square) and Dragon Quest (Enix) teams. It was a hell of a good game, and that cooperation was long before Square and Enix merged. I'd personally like to see Dream Project get back together and do a third Chrono title (maybe Chrono Break, since they did reserve the name, though that game is nothing but vaporware at this point).
You're correct. The "Atari" they're referring to here is not the Atari we all remember from our childhood. That Atari went out of business years ago. The French company Infogrames (one of the largest publishers, though I believe they are behind EA) bought all the rights to the Atari name several years ago, and then they changed their name to "Atari". So to be more accurate, the title should be "Infogrames selling studios to avoid bankruptcy".
I wish people would quit repeating this myth. Only 3 consoles have ever been sold at a loss: the Sega Saturn, the Dreamcast, and the Xbox (well, probably 4 now, I assume they're taking a loss on the 360 also). Losing money on console hardware is NOT the norm, and it's something only Sega and Microsoft have done. And look at what happened to Sega when they did that. Here's an article that has a decent rundown on the subject. It was last updated in 2003, but nothing has really changed since then. http://www.actsofgord.com/Proclamations/chapter02. html
Nixon's head: "I am not a crook's head!"
If you uninstall Skype from a Windows machine, it directs you to a survey page that asks you why you are uninstalling and invites you to provide comments. 1 of my machines is Windows, so I filled out the survey and explained that I was uninstalling it because of their policy to only enable certain features on Intel processors. Under Gentoo it's as simple as emerge -C skype, they don't ever even find out about that. Anyone using Windows should immediately uninstall the program and fill out the survey. Maybe if they lose 10,000 customers on the day of the announcement they will think twice about future actions like this.
It's already backfired. I uninstalled Skype from 3 computers today, and adjusted my firewall to make it as difficult as possible to make it work. Granted, since it's capable of using an HTTP proxy, there's no way to block it completely without blocking web access as well. But I still encourage that everyone that is involved in administrating a router do everything in their power to make Skype not work.
Skype has been removed from every computer on my network, and the ports that it uses have been blocked on my server. No Skype traffic will be allowed on my network.
My car is front wheel drive and it has two engines. http://www.toyota.com/prius/ Course, one is electric...but still, it disproves that point.
How much do you want to bet that there will be a crack to make the game run in XP before it's even released? You know it's just going to be check for OS and refuse to install if it's not Vista.
That's really odd...all of my computers have CD-RW drives on them and neither Homeworld nor Homeworld Cataclysm ever complained about them. In fact, I never had any issues at all. I have the original disks for both as well (gotten from the bargain bin when they went cheap), not cracks. I never had to crack either.
The HUD in the Metroid Prime games is actually really well done. Of course, in that game it has a reason to be there...since you're walking around in a really high tech powered armorsuit. It's okay to have a HUD if it's believable in the context of the game and isn't excessive.
The open source Broadcom driver is VERY VERY close to being pretty much fully functional. Broadcom chipsets will not be paperweights on Linux much longer. Ndiswrapper is going to have to go away soon anyway...I'm not sure when it's going to happen, but I've heard that the Linux kernel is going to go to exclusively 4k stacks in an upcoming release (I'm not sure which one, 2.6.15 is still using 8k by default). Right now the default is 8k stacks, you can change it to 4k but this has to be done in the "kernel hacking" section of the config. Anyway, Windows drivers are usually written to expect 12k or greater stack sizes. Ndiswrapper seems to mostly work okay with the default 8k stack size, but once the kernel is switched to 4k, ndiswrapper will not work anymore. Native drivers are going to be necessary as soon as this change is made. Here's a thread on the native Broadcom driver: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-409194-highli ght-.html
This thread is mostly concerned with getting it working on ppc (since ndiswrapper only works on x86, ppc people don't have a choice and have to have a native driver), and it's mostly centered around Gentoo, but the driver developers are posting on there a lot and they're trying to track down specific issues with the driver. However, x86 people are also following this thread and posting on it. Right now I'm using the 0.0.1-20060105 snapshot (the only one Gentoo currently has in the portage tree). It *almost* works, I can bring my interface up, scan for access points, WEP and WPA are supported, it just has trouble actually associating with access points. Some people are having more problems than others, and some have been able to work around the problem by writing a shell script that hammers the interface until it successfully associates. The driver developers are working on this, once this is resolved it will be more functional than ndiswrapper.
IANAL...but most GPL software I've seen includes a comment that such and such can be redistributed under the terms of GPLv2 or "at your discretion, a later version". This would allow someone to "re-license" a GPLv2 program as GPLv3, I would think.
I will either pay to buy the game, or pay to play it (subscription service), NOT both. If I pay $50 for a game, I expect to be able to play it for free from that point on. If they're going to charge you to play a game (as in an MMORPG), the client should be free. Otherwise if you decide to stop paying for the subscription, you're left with a $50 coaster (the game CD). I believe it is immoral to charge for a game that is online subscription-only and then charge for the subscription on top of that. Heck, if the client were free, I might be tempted to try WoW for a month or so, and continue if I like it. But I'm not about to risk $50 on something that I would have to pay $13/month for to play.
Not sure what chipset your wireless card uses, but if it's Broadcom, there are 2 solutions now. 1) http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/ lets you use Windows drivers on Linux. 2) http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/ the native Broadcom driver is stabilizing now. It's experimental at this state, but people are using it on both x86 and ppc. I think you have to have a 2.6.15 or later kernel to use that though. I'm still using ndiswrapper for mine, it works okay until the native drivers are stabilized more.
The original regular cast members were Don S. Davis (Gen. Hammond), RDA (Jack), Amanda Tapping, Michael Shanks, and Christopher Judge. True, O'neill and Hammond are no longer series regulars...however, RDA did appear in episodes 1 and 3 of season 9 as a guest star, and his character is still very much alive in the Stargate universe. Davis appeared in episodes 10 and 11 of this season, and his character is also very much alive, he will probably be making future appearances. Amanda Tapping was not present in the first 5 episodes of season 9, but that was not because she left the series...the actress was merely on maternity leave, and she returned to the series starting episode 6. She's been in every episode since then. Michael Shanks was gone for most of season 6 (though he did make a few guest appearances and also provided the voice for Thor). He returned as a regular in the first episode of season 7 and has been with the series since then. Christopher Judge has never left, he's been in every episode AFAIK. So we still have 3 of the original 5 regular cast members, frequent guest appearances by 1, and infrequent guest apperances by the last...I'd hardly call that "most of the original cast is gone". I think Stargate will be fine...it's definitely going into season 10, and the chances for a season 11 are very good. And just because the Goa'uld empire has been wiped out does not mean they're all gone. They aren't the threat they once were, but they are still very much around. Baal in particular, he was the main antagonist in one of the season 9 episodes.
Diesel cars are not very common in the US. The diesel fuel we have is also far far "dirtier" than in Europe because of the high sulfur content. They are talking about phasing in low-sulfur diesel, but it's going to take quite awhile. In the meantime, I have a Prius now. I usually get ~55mpg or so during the summer, and ~45mpg during the winter. Colder temperatures make the engine run more during the winter, especially if the heater is in use. Still though, I can't complain about gas mileage. I think it would be awesome if they made a Prius with a diesel engine instead of the regular gas engine. I'm pretty sure 80-100mpg would not be out of the question in that case. I'd love to have a diesel/electric Prius running on biodiesel.
I sold Grandia 2 a couple of years ago...had it for the Dreamcast. I paid $15 for it new when I got it, but I felt ripped off. The 2 Dreamcast RPG's were Skies of Arcadia and Grandia 2. I figured that since it was from the makers of Lunar, Grandia 2 would be the far better game and Skies of Arcadia would only be average. Boy was I wrong...Skies of Arcadia was one of the best games on the Dreamcast and one of the 2 best RPG's of this generation IMO. I give it #2 actually...#1 going to Tales of Symphonia. Grandia 2 was just terrible IMO. The story was cliched and predictable, the characters were cookie-cutter, and the gameplay was TERRIBLE. I actually made it to the city that the kid came from (don't even remember the name), before I had to stop because the gameplay was just so bad. The plot was so predictable that I was able to guess the ending before I even made it to this point, and after I read Gamefaqs I found I was right.
Stingrays "fly" in water too (I mean the larger kind that have "wings", not the smaller ones that look like fish frisbees). They are very interesting to watch. They're also very curious...they don't act like fish at all. They act more like puppies than fish actually.
I feel your pain. I tried to like Kingdom Hearts, I really did. I didn't buy it, but borrowed it from a friend of mine. It started out great. The story was interesting to me. However, the gameplay at times made Diablo 2 look NOT repetitive by comparison. I remember parts where I had to stand in the same place fighting the same enemies for 10-15 minutes or sometimes more! I wanted to see where the story went, but it got to the point where it was downright painful to play. I made it to the Little Mermaid world before I had to give up...the gameplay got so tedious and boring I couldn't stand to play it for more than 10-15 minutes at a time. The hideous camera also killed it for me. The boss fights were terrible, the other characters were more of a hindrance than a help. I eventually gave up even trying to keep them alive. At times the battle system felt like a bad Zelda knockoff. The only other game that I played that was that boring was Grandia 2 (which I never finished either...only in that one the plot was as boring as the gameplay). Sadly, KH had a lot of potential, but the gameplay just killed it for me.
There's no rule that says you HAVE to use a JVM to execute Java code. Of course, if you want the whole "write once, run anywhere" philosophy to apply it has to be done through a JVM, but Java itself is just a language. There's no reason you couldn't make a true Java compiler that would create machine code just like a C compiler does (instead of JVM bytecode). In fact, there has been some work on the gcc project to this end (gcj).
If you REALLY want to get technical, electrons are involved in every chemical reaction...in fact they are the reason chemical reactions take place. All life processes are chemical reactions, whether you use electricity or not. ;)