I played around with bblean, (and a couple of other alternative shells) for a while, but finally decided they weren't worth the tweaking it took to keep them working. Plus, some of them didn't work well on a dual-monitor setup. I really liked GeoShell, but I had too many stability problems.
I finally went back to explorer.exe, with everything set to Win2000 style, but I use Launchy (http://www.launchy.net) instead of the Start button or the desktop shortcuts.
I had never thought about it that way, but I definitely agree with you about the first few Discworld books being more Adams-like than the later ones. I always thought that Pratchett's books improved dramatically starting at about book 4 or 5. That's when he seems to get past the "random collection of jokes loosely connected with a thin plotline" and really develops an entire world.
I think Adams started moving in that direction with "Life, The Universe, and Everything", but had intended that book to wrap things up. "So Long and Thanks For All The Fish" has a completely different feel to it. "Mostly Harmless" to me says, "Screw it - this time I really am done with this, so stop asking."
I do really enjoy Douglass Adam's writing, and I wish he still around, and still writing. (Preferably having fixed the script to the HHG movie.) But I'm not sure that he was really happy writing. I mean, look at all the different sort of projects he was involved with - fiction, non-fiction, radio dramas, TV, Movies, computer games. I think he just liked to play around with a lot of different things.
I read once that, late in their careers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Flaming both developed what could almost be described as a hatred for the protagonists they had created. But they kept writing because the book-buying public wanted more Sherlock Holmes and more James Bond. Both protagonists are apparently killed off at the end of multiple books, with the next book opening with a mention of how they miraculously survived. I wonder if "Mostly Harmless" was Adam's way of trying to avoid that.
Pratchett, on the other hand, clearly loves the characters he created - from the diversely insane faculty of the wizard's college, to the country witches, elderly barbarians, policemen/women/undead, to the Machiavellian patrician, to the guy with the scythe and the all-caps voice who comes for them at the end. All of these are very real people to Pratchett, and he has made them real to his readers.
"Going Postal" is one of his later books, and "Equal Rites" one of his earliest. While I do enjoy his earlier books, he didn't really hit his stride till roughly book 4 or 5. I usually recommend either "Small Gods", or "Guards, Guards" for a good introduction to Pratchett.
Should have read a bit more. Should have guessed that someone would have posted the same idea a couple of screens down.
Of course, it could be someone that experienced the event described, taking advantage of the chance to steal my joke then go back and post it before me.
Maybe it's another Alien civilization that just annihilated itself in nuclear\fusion\antimatter\something hellfire?
...by firing up their own version of the LHC?
Or for more Twilight Zone points, When the LHC is fully brought online, the result is a spacial-temporal event that blasted the earth through a wormhole, depositing us billions of light-years away and billions of years into the past. We're now seeing the flash from the apocalypse that is about to happen.
Wow. Upon preview, I realize how screwed up the verb tenses are in the above paragraph. I suppose that's to be expected when discussing time travel.
Haven't played MI4, but MI3 was my favorite. I loved the animation and the voice acting. The puzzles were logical - tricky without being too obscure. The humor was great, and who wouldn't love the songs? (I had my daughter singing the "Monkey in My Pocket" song almost as soon as she could talk.)
MI2 was alright, but I didn't think the humor was quite as good as the third.
If you already have a machine with a legit license key, skip the corp edition torrent. Go ahead and search Pirate Bay, but look for the OEM edition of whatever version of Windows is already on the machine. That way, instead of using a corporate edition with a leaked key, you're using the OEM license that you purchased with the PC.
I guess it's debatable whether the download itself is legal, but at least your software licensing is legit.
They usually ask something along the lines of "What happened to your screensaver?", confused about even the name of the desktop background.
AAAAA!!!! One of my personal pet peeves. And it's getting worse - to the point that device makers are starting to feed the ignorance.
My cell phone actually refers to the background picture as the "Screen Saver". When I saw that, I knew it was one more confirmation that the rest of the world is getting dumber.
Alliance was pretty good, but the "Family cargo business" missions kinda ruined it for me. They were a really good idea, but too many of them turned into, "sit in the turret and shoot the incoming missiles". Which wouldn't have been so bad if they'd given you a decent way to control the ship from the turret.
This got labeled funny, but it reminds me of the only open source space sim I know of, which got obsessed with realism. The devs thought it would be a great idea if 90% of your time was spent accelerating and decelerating between planets, and battles would be most interesting if they were spent 99% of time outside weapon range after flying past your target. No offense to those who worked hard on vega-strike, but it is a stunning example of the horrors of realism in a game.
As much as I have tried to love Vega Strike, I have to agree with you. It's fun for the first few cargo runs, but it gets old really quickly.
It's kinda strange. The Vega Strike project started out as a remake of Privateer, but they left out the freakin' autopilot. The developers say that the left out the autopilot in favor of a "Velocity Multiplier" that means you just fly really fast if you're not near a planet. The way it works in practice is that you sit and wait (and wait...) to get far enough from the planet for it to do any good, zip up to an insane speed, then overshoot your goal and spend a couple more minutes getting turned around and going back.
I realize that the space physics are meant to be realistic - you have to spend the same amount of time decelerating as you did accelerating. But is it really realistic that a space-faring race that has energy shields and FTL travel can't design a freakin' autopilot? A simple "Set the destination, wake me when we're almost there or if we're attacked". Privateer's autopilot worked that way and it was so much nicer.
I realize that this new drug (if it passes trials) could halt people's progression at an early stage. The problem is that Alzheimer's is very difficult to diagnose in an early stage. There is no blood test. There is no skin biopsy. By the time Grandma or Grandpa shows obvious symptoms, (and believe me, he or she has probably known for YEARS that something is wrong, he was just too scared to tell anyone) the person may be halfway through the disease process.
A major part of the fear of telling anyone is that, right now, Alzheimer's is basically a slow death sentence. People will probably be more willing to tell others about any symptoms if there is an effective treatment available.
Soft-mod the Xboxes, then upgrade to larger hard drives and copy the Yourself Fitness disc to the hard drives. Assuming you're not using Xbox live, that is. Most of the "dying" Xboxes I've seen had failing DVD drives. With a modded box and a big hard drive, you only use the DVD once for copying the disc. A failing DVD drive might need a couple of attempts to successfully copy a disc, but it's a lot less annoying than having things freeze up in the middle of a game because of a bad disc read.
Another sign of a bad martial arts school: advancing students too quickly. Before you sign up, ask how often a student can belt test. If it's monthly, they're probably just generating testing fees (and black belts that don't know anything.)
I'll second the Martial Arts recommendation. I had gone 10 years without any regular exercise. (P.E. was only required the first 2 years of High School.) I had been gradually gaining weight and inches since getting a desk job. I was edging toward 190 pounds and starting to buy my pants with a 36" waist. (Not that big, I know, but on my body it wasn't good. When I started the desk job, I was about 130 pounds and 32" waist.)
I started taking classes at a local Martial Arts school and in the first 3 months I lost about 20 pounds. By 6 months, I was down to about 155 and back into my old 32" pants. I feel so much better and my only regret is that I didn't start back in high school. Aside from the physical benefits, I definitely could have used the confidence.
You're right about the expense, though. I just had to talk to my instructor about dropping classes at the end of September. My daughter's dance classes went up again and something had to give.
As for bad teachers, I've only been to one school, but I've seen other schools give demos where their black belts looked worse than our mid-level students. Definitely try a few classes before you sign up. Also find out how often you can belt test. If it's every month, they're probably just using testing fees to bring in more money and they've got a bunch of black belts that don't know anything.
Any/.ers in south-central Kansas looking for a good Martial Arts school, feel free to email me. jlitwiller at google's webmail service.
One of my all-time favorite games. Great voice acting, puzzles where the solution actually makes sense, and a great sense of humor. Plus, no sadistic, "You pushed the wrong button and now you're dead," or, worse yet, "You didn't grab the stick back in Pakistan in Chapter 1, so you can't solve the puzzle. No, you can't go back to Pakistan to get the stick. Time to start over from the beginning."
Show me where in the Bible it says the pyramids were build by Hebrew slaves. Here's a hint - it doesn't. The pyramids were built centuries before Abraham, much less Moses, and any biblical scholar will agree.
I have seen several Sunday-School cartoons that show the Hebrew slaves working on the pyramids, but those aren't exactly accepted biblical cannon.
Speaking of costumes, one thing I loved about "The Watchmen" is how it isn't just accepted as normal that people will dress up in weird costumes and fight crime. People raise questions: How do you keep the mask on? The cape looks cool, but doesn't it get in the way? Is this some sort of sexual fetish?
The memoir of the first Night Owl raises a great point about costumed criminals. "...if you're the only one who'd bothered to turn up in a costume, you tended to look kind of stupid. If the bad guys joined in as well, it wasn't so bad, but without them it was always sort of embarassing..." I mean, seriously, imagine what the response would be if some guy in a skin-tight superhero costume started running around New York beating up muggers and crack dealers.
I was thinking more along the line of stoking the "listening device or death ray" thought process. Bonus paranoia points for asking him how often he has a cancer screening, or if he's had any unusual headaches lately.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, this is getting rediculous.
I played around with bblean, (and a couple of other alternative shells) for a while, but finally decided they weren't worth the tweaking it took to keep them working. Plus, some of them didn't work well on a dual-monitor setup. I really liked GeoShell, but I had too many stability problems.
I finally went back to explorer.exe, with everything set to Win2000 style, but I use Launchy (http://www.launchy.net) instead of the Start button or the desktop shortcuts.
I had never thought about it that way, but I definitely agree with you about the first few Discworld books being more Adams-like than the later ones. I always thought that Pratchett's books improved dramatically starting at about book 4 or 5. That's when he seems to get past the "random collection of jokes loosely connected with a thin plotline" and really develops an entire world.
I think Adams started moving in that direction with "Life, The Universe, and Everything", but had intended that book to wrap things up. "So Long and Thanks For All The Fish" has a completely different feel to it. "Mostly Harmless" to me says, "Screw it - this time I really am done with this, so stop asking."
I do really enjoy Douglass Adam's writing, and I wish he still around, and still writing. (Preferably having fixed the script to the HHG movie.) But I'm not sure that he was really happy writing. I mean, look at all the different sort of projects he was involved with - fiction, non-fiction, radio dramas, TV, Movies, computer games. I think he just liked to play around with a lot of different things.
I read once that, late in their careers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Flaming both developed what could almost be described as a hatred for the protagonists they had created. But they kept writing because the book-buying public wanted more Sherlock Holmes and more James Bond. Both protagonists are apparently killed off at the end of multiple books, with the next book opening with a mention of how they miraculously survived. I wonder if "Mostly Harmless" was Adam's way of trying to avoid that.
Pratchett, on the other hand, clearly loves the characters he created - from the diversely insane faculty of the wizard's college, to the country witches, elderly barbarians, policemen/women/undead, to the Machiavellian patrician, to the guy with the scythe and the all-caps voice who comes for them at the end. All of these are very real people to Pratchett, and he has made them real to his readers.
"Going Postal" is one of his later books, and "Equal Rites" one of his earliest. While I do enjoy his earlier books, he didn't really hit his stride till roughly book 4 or 5. I usually recommend either "Small Gods", or "Guards, Guards" for a good introduction to Pratchett.
That's interesting. I have introduced several friends to Terry Pratchett by explaining that it was like Douglas Adams, except fantasy.
Should have read a bit more. Should have guessed that someone would have posted the same idea a couple of screens down.
Of course, it could be someone that experienced the event described, taking advantage of the chance to steal my joke then go back and post it before me.
Maybe it's another Alien civilization that just annihilated itself in nuclear\fusion\antimatter\something hellfire?
...by firing up their own version of the LHC?
Or for more Twilight Zone points, When the LHC is fully brought online, the result is a spacial-temporal event that blasted the earth through a wormhole, depositing us billions of light-years away and billions of years into the past. We're now seeing the flash from the apocalypse that is about to happen.
Wow. Upon preview, I realize how screwed up the verb tenses are in the above paragraph. I suppose that's to be expected when discussing time travel.
Not really. If there's one thing we know for sure about Scientologists, it's that their tolerance for bad science fiction is *really* high.
xenu.net is a good source for a ton of info, but it's poorly laid out and, really, it's a bit of an information overload.
I usually recommend http://www.exscientologykids.com/ and http://www.whyaretheydead.net/ for a look into the damage done by Scientology.
Haven't played MI4, but MI3 was my favorite. I loved the animation and the voice acting. The puzzles were logical - tricky without being too obscure. The humor was great, and who wouldn't love the songs? (I had my daughter singing the "Monkey in My Pocket" song almost as soon as she could talk.)
MI2 was alright, but I didn't think the humor was quite as good as the third.
If you already have a machine with a legit license key, skip the corp edition torrent. Go ahead and search Pirate Bay, but look for the OEM edition of whatever version of Windows is already on the machine. That way, instead of using a corporate edition with a leaked key, you're using the OEM license that you purchased with the PC.
I guess it's debatable whether the download itself is legal, but at least your software licensing is legit.
They usually ask something along the lines of "What happened to your screensaver?", confused about even the name of the desktop background.
AAAAA!!!! One of my personal pet peeves. And it's getting worse - to the point that device makers are starting to feed the ignorance.
My cell phone actually refers to the background picture as the "Screen Saver". When I saw that, I knew it was one more confirmation that the rest of the world is getting dumber.
Oh, it has seats, it's just that they're equipped with a Direct Rectal Manipulator that is... ahem... activated whenever you change the radio station.
Oh, don't forget the wonders of "Airbag Deployment: Deny/Allow?"
Alliance was pretty good, but the "Family cargo business" missions kinda ruined it for me. They were a really good idea, but too many of them turned into, "sit in the turret and shoot the incoming missiles". Which wouldn't have been so bad if they'd given you a decent way to control the ship from the turret.
This got labeled funny, but it reminds me of the only open source space sim I know of, which got obsessed with realism. The devs thought it would be a great idea if 90% of your time was spent accelerating and decelerating between planets, and battles would be most interesting if they were spent 99% of time outside weapon range after flying past your target. No offense to those who worked hard on vega-strike, but it is a stunning example of the horrors of realism in a game.
As much as I have tried to love Vega Strike, I have to agree with you. It's fun for the first few cargo runs, but it gets old really quickly.
It's kinda strange. The Vega Strike project started out as a remake of Privateer, but they left out the freakin' autopilot. The developers say that the left out the autopilot in favor of a "Velocity Multiplier" that means you just fly really fast if you're not near a planet. The way it works in practice is that you sit and wait (and wait...) to get far enough from the planet for it to do any good, zip up to an insane speed, then overshoot your goal and spend a couple more minutes getting turned around and going back.
I realize that the space physics are meant to be realistic - you have to spend the same amount of time decelerating as you did accelerating. But is it really realistic that a space-faring race that has energy shields and FTL travel can't design a freakin' autopilot? A simple "Set the destination, wake me when we're almost there or if we're attacked". Privateer's autopilot worked that way and it was so much nicer.
I realize that this new drug (if it passes trials) could halt people's progression at an early stage. The problem is that Alzheimer's is very difficult to diagnose in an early stage. There is no blood test. There is no skin biopsy. By the time Grandma or Grandpa shows obvious symptoms, (and believe me, he or she has probably known for YEARS that something is wrong, he was just too scared to tell anyone) the person may be halfway through the disease process.
A major part of the fear of telling anyone is that, right now, Alzheimer's is basically a slow death sentence. People will probably be more willing to tell others about any symptoms if there is an effective treatment available.
Soft-mod the Xboxes, then upgrade to larger hard drives and copy the Yourself Fitness disc to the hard drives. Assuming you're not using Xbox live, that is. Most of the "dying" Xboxes I've seen had failing DVD drives. With a modded box and a big hard drive, you only use the DVD once for copying the disc. A failing DVD drive might need a couple of attempts to successfully copy a disc, but it's a lot less annoying than having things freeze up in the middle of a game because of a bad disc read.
Another sign of a bad martial arts school: advancing students too quickly. Before you sign up, ask how often a student can belt test. If it's monthly, they're probably just generating testing fees (and black belts that don't know anything.)
I'll second the Martial Arts recommendation. I had gone 10 years without any regular exercise. (P.E. was only required the first 2 years of High School.) I had been gradually gaining weight and inches since getting a desk job. I was edging toward 190 pounds and starting to buy my pants with a 36" waist. (Not that big, I know, but on my body it wasn't good. When I started the desk job, I was about 130 pounds and 32" waist.)
I started taking classes at a local Martial Arts school and in the first 3 months I lost about 20 pounds. By 6 months, I was down to about 155 and back into my old 32" pants. I feel so much better and my only regret is that I didn't start back in high school. Aside from the physical benefits, I definitely could have used the confidence.
You're right about the expense, though. I just had to talk to my instructor about dropping classes at the end of September. My daughter's dance classes went up again and something had to give.
As for bad teachers, I've only been to one school, but I've seen other schools give demos where their black belts looked worse than our mid-level students. Definitely try a few classes before you sign up. Also find out how often you can belt test. If it's every month, they're probably just using testing fees to bring in more money and they've got a bunch of black belts that don't know anything.
Any /.ers in south-central Kansas looking for a good Martial Arts school, feel free to email me. jlitwiller at google's webmail service.
I'm just surprised its not called a "Kashew"
One of my all-time favorite games. Great voice acting, puzzles where the solution actually makes sense, and a great sense of humor. Plus, no sadistic, "You pushed the wrong button and now you're dead," or, worse yet, "You didn't grab the stick back in Pakistan in Chapter 1, so you can't solve the puzzle. No, you can't go back to Pakistan to get the stick. Time to start over from the beginning."
I really miss LucasArts adventure games.
Show me where in the Bible it says the pyramids were build by Hebrew slaves. Here's a hint - it doesn't. The pyramids were built centuries before Abraham, much less Moses, and any biblical scholar will agree.
I have seen several Sunday-School cartoons that show the Hebrew slaves working on the pyramids, but those aren't exactly accepted biblical cannon.
Speaking of costumes, one thing I loved about "The Watchmen" is how it isn't just accepted as normal that people will dress up in weird costumes and fight crime. People raise questions: How do you keep the mask on? The cape looks cool, but doesn't it get in the way? Is this some sort of sexual fetish?
The memoir of the first Night Owl raises a great point about costumed criminals. "...if you're the only one who'd bothered to turn up in a costume, you tended to look kind of stupid. If the bad guys joined in as well, it wasn't so bad, but without them it was always sort of embarassing..." I mean, seriously, imagine what the response would be if some guy in a skin-tight superhero costume started running around New York beating up muggers and crack dealers.
I was thinking more along the line of stoking the "listening device or death ray" thought process. Bonus paranoia points for asking him how often he has a cancer screening, or if he's had any unusual headaches lately.
Or, you could glue a Metallic Rod With A Red Tip to the center, and point it at your most paranoid neighbor's house.
Don't forget a flashing red light you can turn on any time he pisses you off.