Up here in Scotland, we have our own paper money. Although its legal throughout the UK, a lot of english shopkeeps will give you funny looks if you give them a scottish fiver.
However, wheres fivers and the like merely look different, apparently the english dont have a paper £1 note (and we do, although they're much rarer these days).
How long until we get arrested for paying for something with "funny money"? Remember, every time you use a non-standard currency, your funding terrorists!
Sure, you can look up child porn on the internet, or you can read how to build bombs.
Or you can look up art, and read how to do first aid.
The internet is a medium, no different from the telephone, newspapers or television.
Sure, you can attack the internet, but i think the main problem with paedophilia is the witch hunt called my mainstream news, making it impossible to actually deal with the subject objectivly. Either your for burning anyone that looks at a kid at the stake, or your a child molester that needs burnt at the stake.
Im not trying to justify it in any way, but why does this thing get so much attention when rapists and murderers are considered to be more "socially acceptable" crimes?
Please excuse my westerenised complete ignorance of other countries, but what exactly is the state of computer access in India? I mean, if only 10% of the population has access to a computer, are they really going to care?
I realise that Indias a large place, and is growing quickly technologically, but how many people does this actually affect?
I was really looking forward to World of Warcraft.
Really. I was checking the forums every day, reading all the stats on Thottbott, and it was getting quite pathetic.
But Blizzard keep "nudging" back the release date. Americans got it in november... we in europe get it in December. No, late december. No, late december/early january.
And thats only the FINAL BETA. We get to wait until "early 2005" till the game officially opens. Which probably means late 2006.
It wouldnt bother me so much, except the game if DONE. Theyre just waiting cos they dont give a rats ass about the european market.
So Im playing Anarchy Online, I'm enjoying it, and im not buying world of warcraft.
Fuck you blizzard. If you gave half as much attention to europe as you do to america, im sure europe might have actually been a viable market to you. As is, Im telling everyone I know to play Anarchy instead.
I realise thisll probably be modded offtopic, but I thought itd mention it anyway:
My main problem isnt that Half Life 2 stutters, its that I paid ~£35 for it and cant even play the damn game.
I bought the game yesterday, it took about a day to download all the files then i started playing it. About half an hour into the game, my computer crashes (cant blame it specifically on half life, and no biggie anyway, ill just go back to the last save point.)
So i boot up steam to play HL2 again and... unable to connect to steam. And its been like that for the past 6 hours.
Now, i can understand this would be a problem if i was trying to play counterstrike but not letting me play Half life 2, an OFFLINE GAME, because their servers are only up 50% of the time? Thanks a fucking lot.
And im aware that steam is supposed to have an "offline mode", but that just causes errors and crashes. I could potentially reinstall just to be absolutely sure its not a bad install, but ~10 gigs is rather a lot to be downloading just to fixing one game at the moment. (steam and apps 10 gigs, not just hl2)
I am SERIOUSLY unimpressed. I will not be buying anything from valve again, and I just wish someone had told me about this before i encountered these problems.
I downloaded the open beta fully intending to play while it was free and not get into it when the full game comes out.
However, I was totally hooked and will be getting a copy as soon as i can. It should be noted, however, that although the game is great fun, it doesnt have the quite "finished" feel, if for no other reason that there is a lot of imbalance between the classes.
Paladins and Shamans seem to be considerably better than most other classes: some classes, like druid are pretty poor (I speak as a druid, and I love the druid abilities, but we do suck.)
Admittedly, most of the "discussion" on the forums seem to be bitching about other classes being too powerful, and requests to have things nerfed, but there IS a class imbalance. Its not even like Blizzard are trying to keep things balanced, they seem to be taking a more "fix the alliance map, fix this class, fix that class" rather than gradually improving everything.
Also, it takes forever to get anywhere. I nearly quit playing after my second day because i was so bored just walking from place to place; it can take 15 minutes, just walking, to get to certain areas. If you wanted to walk across the entire map, you could be talking about hours.
However, those small points aside, it is a beautiful game. I wish they would make movement slightly faster, but other than that i am in awe, and worship blizzard as gods.
I should also point out as well, i hated warcraft 3 (the skirmish mode, which was the reason i bought it, was insanely hard with no difficulty setting.) so its not like im a warcraft junkie.
Just wish Europe would get Warcraft earlier.:(
So many mmporgs, so little time
on
Everquest 2 Launches
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
By a coincedence, Ive been looking at the warcraft game today, dreaming about playing it. Probably dont have the time or money at the moment, but it looks pretty shiny.
But answer me this: Everquest 2 will, one would assume, appeal to all the EQ addicts already out there. But the EQ addicts are already playing EQ: so whats this trying to achieve? Why should I play this over, say, world of warcraft or city of heros (which ive heard is meant to be excellent)
I have no doubt that this will be massively popular, but honestly whos the intended audience? Do old EQ players get to transfer their characters over, or is it start again from scratch for all?
Seriously... why is having flying cars lauded as "the next big thing" all the time? There are several things that would make travel easier and cheaper, such as electric or hydrogen powered cars. Or, even at the less techinical side of things, an effective public transport system. Also nicer to the environment.
Also, think of the mess you get when theres a car crash on a motorway. Now multiply that by 40 times - thats the mess you get when flying cards run out of fuel and plough into regular traffic.
Instead of worrying about flying cars, lets just try and make the cars we DO have less of a hassle.
Isnt that what RPGs are these days? Storytelling gone one step further?
You start off in one situation, and can basically tell the tale (within certain constraints) of our young hero: of how he slays the dragon and marries the princess. Or, if your not feeling so goody goody, slay the princess and enslave the dragon.
Im sure there are hundreds of good examples, but planescape torment nicely managed to merge an exceptional tale with the computer medium, imho.
I have a hotmail, yahoo and g-mail account. The yahoo account is my "primary" fake address, and gets a ton of spam, but most is filtered. The g-mail is new, and hasnt got any spam... yet. However, the hotmail one, which I hardly ever use, still gets spam in the main inbox.
The sender? MS. Every week they send me an email telling me how theyve "upgraded their fantastic service". I dont WANT these letters! I dont care! Its spam!
But of course, you cant block the sender... because its MS. And these are "important announcements". Shut up and just let me use my damn mail account. If not, im off to google.
I hate to say this... but im not really impressed with the gameboy. Sure, it was cool when it came out, but its old technology.
Today, your still paying £30 or so for a gameboy game (not unreasonable, considering most games have to be coded specifically for it). However, most PC games cost the same... and are a thousand times more indepth.
Even consoles at the moment are about as cheap.
I appreciate the portability, and thats definitly useful... but at the end of the day, i only get a couple hours entertainment out a gameboy, opposed to weeks with a PC.
If memory serves, there's already life on mars. Tiny bacteria (bacterium?) that attached themselves to the hundreds of probes we've landed on/crashed into mars are still alive, despite the inhospitiable conditions.
Of course, i may be wrong and it may be something else like the moon, but dont go discounting the obvious.
I think its also worth nothing that starforce drivers CAN mess up your system, and can only be safely removed with the starforce removal tool. (which they dont go out the way to advertise).
This program is, essentially, a virus. So why is it ok for corporations to spread virii that stop me legally using my own game, but crackers who create trojans and the like are hunted to the ends of the earth?
Most of all, don't go dicking around with the game system too much.
You have no idea how right you are.
I was the biggest Warlords 2 fanboy ever (still am, I suppose) so I creamed myself when i heard about warlords 3. But they screwed up the character system.
Before it played nicely, so if you put all your points into strength, it would take more and more points to increase it. Made for more rounded characters- a max level mage could still hold his own in a fight. Now its just bog standard diablo - get 1 point a level, assign it where you want. If your a mage, you cant fight, warriors cant convert, etc. Also, they removed the skills - so now rather than being a strong merchant but weak converter, your just overall charismatic.
I love fallout, and had hours of fun shooting peoples eyes out with my perception 10 sharpshooter. If they mess around then sure it may be a better game but 90% chance says it wont, as well as pissing off all the fallout fans.
Does anyone own tabbed browsing/built in customisable search engine bar/etc copyrights? I realise that firefox is open source and all, but can microsoft just steal the idea without so much as a thank-you? Is there prior art before firefox?
Just in case microsoft decides to put it in and go "ooh, look what we invented, lets patent it hey its ours"
Does the mozilla public license help at all? (had a quick look, but only seems to cover source code itself)
(Note: i havent used safari/opera, and theres more than likely non-browsers programs that do similar things, but just a thought....)
Slashdot Mirror
Up here in Scotland, we have our own paper money. Although its legal throughout the UK, a lot of english shopkeeps will give you funny looks if you give them a scottish fiver.
However, wheres fivers and the like merely look different, apparently the english dont have a paper £1 note (and we do, although they're much rarer these days).
How long until we get arrested for paying for something with "funny money"? Remember, every time you use a non-standard currency, your funding terrorists!
Sure, you can look up child porn on the internet, or you can read how to build bombs.
Or you can look up art, and read how to do first aid.
The internet is a medium, no different from the telephone, newspapers or television.
Sure, you can attack the internet, but i think the main problem with paedophilia is the witch hunt called my mainstream news, making it impossible to actually deal with the subject objectivly. Either your for burning anyone that looks at a kid at the stake, or your a child molester that needs burnt at the stake.
Im not trying to justify it in any way, but why does this thing get so much attention when rapists and murderers are considered to be more "socially acceptable" crimes?
Just chop their heads off. See how well they spam if they cant see their monitor.
Please excuse my westerenised complete ignorance of other countries, but what exactly is the state of computer access in India? I mean, if only 10% of the population has access to a computer, are they really going to care?
I realise that Indias a large place, and is growing quickly technologically, but how many people does this actually affect?
1: Jupiter
2: My toe-nail clippings
3: Profit!
4: A profound sense of well being.
My (not very good point) is that just because you cant buy them, doesnt necessarily mean youd WANT to buy them.
I was really looking forward to World of Warcraft.
Really. I was checking the forums every day, reading all the stats on Thottbott, and it was getting quite pathetic.
But Blizzard keep "nudging" back the release date. Americans got it in november... we in europe get it in December. No, late december. No, late december/early january.
And thats only the FINAL BETA. We get to wait until "early 2005" till the game officially opens. Which probably means late 2006.
It wouldnt bother me so much, except the game if DONE. Theyre just waiting cos they dont give a rats ass about the european market.
So Im playing Anarchy Online, I'm enjoying it, and im not buying world of warcraft.
Fuck you blizzard. If you gave half as much attention to europe as you do to america, im sure europe might have actually been a viable market to you. As is, Im telling everyone I know to play Anarchy instead.
Whenever a company sues google, google pulls all links to that companys site.
See how long it stops people to stop the litigation.
Since all the yanks are playing WoW, and all the Europeans are getting bent over and shafted repeatedly by vivendi/blizzard.
It will however be several million characters long.
If memory serves, there was (in amongst all the other versions) a "Street Fighter 2: the movie" computer game.
oops. Thatll teach me to hit the wrong button.
There was formatting on that paragraph, my bad.
I realise thisll probably be modded offtopic, but I thought itd mention it anyway: My main problem isnt that Half Life 2 stutters, its that I paid ~£35 for it and cant even play the damn game. I bought the game yesterday, it took about a day to download all the files then i started playing it. About half an hour into the game, my computer crashes (cant blame it specifically on half life, and no biggie anyway, ill just go back to the last save point.) So i boot up steam to play HL2 again and... unable to connect to steam. And its been like that for the past 6 hours. Now, i can understand this would be a problem if i was trying to play counterstrike but not letting me play Half life 2, an OFFLINE GAME, because their servers are only up 50% of the time? Thanks a fucking lot. And im aware that steam is supposed to have an "offline mode", but that just causes errors and crashes. I could potentially reinstall just to be absolutely sure its not a bad install, but ~10 gigs is rather a lot to be downloading just to fixing one game at the moment. (steam and apps 10 gigs, not just hl2) I am SERIOUSLY unimpressed. I will not be buying anything from valve again, and I just wish someone had told me about this before i encountered these problems.
I downloaded the open beta fully intending to play while it was free and not get into it when the full game comes out.
:(
However, I was totally hooked and will be getting a copy as soon as i can. It should be noted, however, that although the game is great fun, it doesnt have the quite "finished" feel, if for no other reason that there is a lot of imbalance between the classes.
Paladins and Shamans seem to be considerably better than most other classes: some classes, like druid are pretty poor (I speak as a druid, and I love the druid abilities, but we do suck.)
Admittedly, most of the "discussion" on the forums seem to be bitching about other classes being too powerful, and requests to have things nerfed, but there IS a class imbalance. Its not even like Blizzard are trying to keep things balanced, they seem to be taking a more "fix the alliance map, fix this class, fix that class" rather than gradually improving everything.
Also, it takes forever to get anywhere. I nearly quit playing after my second day because i was so bored just walking from place to place; it can take 15 minutes, just walking, to get to certain areas. If you wanted to walk across the entire map, you could be talking about hours.
However, those small points aside, it is a beautiful game. I wish they would make movement slightly faster, but other than that i am in awe, and worship blizzard as gods.
I should also point out as well, i hated warcraft 3 (the skirmish mode, which was the reason i bought it, was insanely hard with no difficulty setting.) so its not like im a warcraft junkie.
Just wish Europe would get Warcraft earlier.
By a coincedence, Ive been looking at the warcraft game today, dreaming about playing it. Probably dont have the time or money at the moment, but it looks pretty shiny.
But answer me this: Everquest 2 will, one would assume, appeal to all the EQ addicts already out there. But the EQ addicts are already playing EQ: so whats this trying to achieve? Why should I play this over, say, world of warcraft or city of heros (which ive heard is meant to be excellent)
I have no doubt that this will be massively popular, but honestly whos the intended audience? Do old EQ players get to transfer their characters over, or is it start again from scratch for all?
Seriously... why is having flying cars lauded as "the next big thing" all the time? There are several things that would make travel easier and cheaper, such as electric or hydrogen powered cars. Or, even at the less techinical side of things, an effective public transport system. Also nicer to the environment.
Also, think of the mess you get when theres a car crash on a motorway. Now multiply that by 40 times - thats the mess you get when flying cards run out of fuel and plough into regular traffic.
Instead of worrying about flying cars, lets just try and make the cars we DO have less of a hassle.
Isnt that what RPGs are these days? Storytelling gone one step further? You start off in one situation, and can basically tell the tale (within certain constraints) of our young hero: of how he slays the dragon and marries the princess. Or, if your not feeling so goody goody, slay the princess and enslave the dragon. Im sure there are hundreds of good examples, but planescape torment nicely managed to merge an exceptional tale with the computer medium, imho.
I have a hotmail, yahoo and g-mail account. The yahoo account is my "primary" fake address, and gets a ton of spam, but most is filtered. The g-mail is new, and hasnt got any spam... yet. However, the hotmail one, which I hardly ever use, still gets spam in the main inbox.
The sender? MS. Every week they send me an email telling me how theyve "upgraded their fantastic service". I dont WANT these letters! I dont care! Its spam!
But of course, you cant block the sender... because its MS. And these are "important announcements". Shut up and just let me use my damn mail account. If not, im off to google.
I hate to say this... but im not really impressed with the gameboy. Sure, it was cool when it came out, but its old technology.
Today, your still paying £30 or so for a gameboy game (not unreasonable, considering most games have to be coded specifically for it). However, most PC games cost the same... and are a thousand times more indepth.
Even consoles at the moment are about as cheap.
I appreciate the portability, and thats definitly useful... but at the end of the day, i only get a couple hours entertainment out a gameboy, opposed to weeks with a PC.
If memory serves, there's already life on mars. Tiny bacteria (bacterium?) that attached themselves to the hundreds of probes we've landed on/crashed into mars are still alive, despite the inhospitiable conditions. Of course, i may be wrong and it may be something else like the moon, but dont go discounting the obvious.
This is the difference:
We've found a bug in firefox, we're really sorry. Anyone using old versions of firefox will be affected.
We've found a bug in internet explorer, we're really sorry. We'll fix it... eventually.
>>computer games, the next designer drug
Just as well computer games arent addictive.
*cough evercrack cough*
http://www.boycottstarforce.org/
I think its also worth nothing that starforce drivers CAN mess up your system, and can only be safely removed with the starforce removal tool. (which they dont go out the way to advertise).
This program is, essentially, a virus. So why is it ok for corporations to spread virii that stop me legally using my own game, but crackers who create trojans and the like are hunted to the ends of the earth?
You have no idea how right you are.
I was the biggest Warlords 2 fanboy ever (still am, I suppose) so I creamed myself when i heard about warlords 3. But they screwed up the character system.
Before it played nicely, so if you put all your points into strength, it would take more and more points to increase it. Made for more rounded characters- a max level mage could still hold his own in a fight. Now its just bog standard diablo - get 1 point a level, assign it where you want. If your a mage, you cant fight, warriors cant convert, etc. Also, they removed the skills - so now rather than being a strong merchant but weak converter, your just overall charismatic.
I love fallout, and had hours of fun shooting peoples eyes out with my perception 10 sharpshooter. If they mess around then sure it may be a better game but 90% chance says it wont, as well as pissing off all the fallout fans.
Does anyone own tabbed browsing/built in customisable search engine bar/etc copyrights? I realise that firefox is open source and all, but can microsoft just steal the idea without so much as a thank-you? Is there prior art before firefox?
Just in case microsoft decides to put it in and go "ooh, look what we invented, lets patent it hey its ours"
Does the mozilla public license help at all? (had a quick look, but only seems to cover source code itself)
(Note: i havent used safari/opera, and theres more than likely non-browsers programs that do similar things, but just a thought....)