"Will consumers soon be getting the full 13.1 audio system that we hear in movie theaters?"
Let's hope not. Sound in our local VUE multiplex sucks the big one. Let me just check in the mirror - yep - ear count still stable at 2. I don't have enough audio input channels for 13 speakers - my brain will have to down-mix it to 2.1 anyway...:P
Maybe when I can get my head upgraded to Quite-Frankly-Its-A-Miracle Labs Brainblaster Porridgy 2, with external 13-ear pack I'll be able to get the full effect from these speakers...
Yeah remember Deckard's printer in Bladerunner? "gimme a hardcopy right there - no wait! oh shit, I forgot to reset the copy count to 1!"
Now if we could just get paper images of such amazing resolution you can zoom in 200 times like he does we could store whole books in printed form on a postage stamp:P
Yeah - Solo claims that he "made a lot of special modifications myself"
Liar - this is what really happened:-
Xzbit "So this is your ride? What a piece of Junk!"
Han "Yeah - she may not look like much.."
Xzbit "Damm man, you got that right. So.. what IS it?"
Han "It's a Corellian YT-1300 light freighter"
Xzbit "You mean it USED to be! Look at this paint job - is that paint or dandruff ?"
Off to 'Western Spiral Arm Customs!'....Later, down at the dockyard..
Xzbit "Well, Han Western Spiral have done an amazing job on your YT, and here's ma droid Q to take you round the outside"
Q "When we first got your YT, Han it was so badly beat up, we didn't think it would fly at all.
Now we know you do a bit of smuggling so first we hit you with these Quad turbo laser cannons..
And that's not all: for a really powerful punch, we also added you very own Arakyd Concussion missile tubes!"
Han "No waaay - get outa town - you gave me my own missile launcher?!"
Q "We sure did, right there on your YT. Now, those weapons are great for when you're out on the sublight highway, but what if some low lifes try and steal your ride from the docking bay? Well check this out: Taim & Bak hooked you up with this neat ventral Auto Blaster. It drops down and takes out the bad guys."
Han "That is sooo neat"
Q "In fact, we couldn't let this one go without giving you the ultimate smuggler's package, so we hit you with the Seinar Fleet systems Active Sensor Pulse Generator, a Torplex Fore Deflector Shield generator, and Carbanti hooked you up with this 29L Electro-Magnetic Countermeasures package. Not only that but here you got your Nordoxicon Anti-concussion Field generator, a KaproCorp Acceleration compensator, for those tight turns, a Torplex Tandem Flight Computer with the Microaxial HyD Modular Navicomputer with optional crop duster program. And round the back we got you a Novaldex Stasis-type Shield generator on the port side, with a Kuat drive-yards shield generator on the starboard side, and an Ion Flux Stabilser with Alluvial damper, and chrome spinners. We also did some boring shit to the engines but we don't talk about that on the show.."
Han "I can't believe what you guys did to my YT! It's the fastest hunk-a-junk in the galaxy now!"
Xzbit "And that ain't all - check out your interior. Mike tell him what you did.."
Mike "When we got your ship in to the shop Han, you didn't *even* have a stereo, so we hooked you up with the biggest satellite dish we could find, and a state of the art holographic display right here in your lounge. And if there's nothing on the TV, it even plays chess!"
Xzbit "Now I know you're wondering where you actually store the stuff you're smuggling - Mike show Han our special modification"
Mike (lifts floor panel) "Check out your very own smuggling copmpartments!"
Han "Oh. My. God. That is soooo awesome!"
Mike "And if you ever find that you need to smuggle yourself in these, we installed 10 inch monitors and Holo player right here in the compartment lids, so you can watch movies whilst hiding out!"
Xzbit "and finally Han, what's a ship these days without strobe lights? Now we want you to stand out on the approach apron down at Mos Eisley so we hit you with the latest Gelieg 20m-cp Strobe/C-beams. These puppies will light up the inside of an asteroid!"
Han "This is unbelievable - wait til Chewie sees this!"
You get "Keeping Up Appearances" ? Geez - then you do have my unreserved apologies:P I think it's illegal here now for civilian organisations to show Are You Being Served since it was re-classified as a weapon of mass mediocrity:p
As a UK subject - can I just say that's pretty damm funny (and spot on) although I'm not sure you've really understood about the French, or cars (e.g. it's not about the cupholders):P...and well, er.. oh alright then, let's get the ball rolling - I apologise on behalf of my country for the teletubbies - god knows it gave me nightmares, you have to wonder what it does to kids... now if the teletubbies isn't an argument for the right to bear arms, I don't know what is...
But while we're all saying sorry - isn't there something you want to say about Knight Rider? Murder, she wrote? and Titanic?
Re:Overclocking consoles...
on
Gaming Hacks
·
· Score: 1
Agreed - I remember reading an interview with Miller, in which he outlined his inspiration and sources for traveller including Poul Anderson's books and Star Wars. Elite, of course is basically Traveller - the computer game: even the example character has the same name!
I specifically mentioned Traveller though, as this was the thing that immediatley struck me when I watched the series - it was almost identical to a typical Traveller campaign: rag-tag bunch of adventurers/desperados each with their own shady past, scratch a living trading goods between planets, whilst getting involved in local scams/disputes/heists and mercenary activities. Then, on top you place the mystery/push/pull as described in the Trvaller Adventure campaign book..
This realisation takes nothing away from Whedon's universe. In fact, as a long time Traveller fan, it makes it all the more appealing to me.
Star Wars is set in a "galaxy far far away" as well, so I don't think the story's position in our timeline is relevant.
The vision is similar - spacefaring civilsation, frontier worlds, merchant ships, smugglers, pirates etc. George realised his vision in film a while ago.
Hmm I take your point, but I think those are more details than "the vision". The vision being a universe where interplantary travel is possible, with goods and services traded between them and vast frontiers to explore and tame.
Throw in some political background with a handful of warring factions.
Don't get me wrong, I liked the series, and this is one film that will persuade me to drag my ass to the cinema to endure the neck creaking, rustling, coughing and sweating, not to mention the washed out scratchy picture and unsatisfactory sound rendering; in order to see it before it premiers for real - on a disc I can play at home - on something a bit less agricultural, while I have a drink, but enough of my cinema pet hates rant:P
I have to take issue with this statement though - this vision of the future is hardly unique. In fact, it's a fairly standard issue vision of the future as proposed by Poul Anderson (Trader Team, The long night, Mirkheim etc), Marc Miller (Traveller et al), Bell & Braben (Elite) George Lucas (Star Wars), Harry Harrison (Rat series):-
Take sea going activities and extrapolate into space. Merchant ships, pirates, busy ports, adventure on the high, er.. volumes of near vacuum... and so on.
That said, it happens to be a vision I like - a working, slightly dirty and worn around the edges future filled with real looking objects - a vision that could be said to have been pioneered by Lucas, at least on screen.
I hope the soundtrack on that trailer isn't indicative though - cheap music will really feck this movie up. Using current pop output to score a film like this will date it in months.
Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?" he said.
Well I'm sitting here in my house in the UK and my Orange cellphone has a full signal. I live in the middle of nowhere too... Why would I want to use the, quite frankly, stone age landline that has no directory, no caller id (I know you can buy extra boxes to do this on landlines) and no conference facility to name just a few of the standard things a modern digital cellphone can do...? That 'phone is just a side effect of having ADSL to me - I use my portable 'phone to make calls.
"The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement."
They just take and take and take:P Thats technology for you Ivan: designers, research scientists and even marketeers are always looking to improve! Sounds like this guy is in the wrong job. Maybe he'd have been happy if the telephone had remained an analogue device with a quaint little clockwork dial to wind in order to dial numbers. Somone should get him one of Iain M. Banks Culture novels - say "Look To Windward". Cellphones working in elevators will seem like a walk in the park:D
Sounds like sour grapes to me - he wasn't so much saying "thats a dumb idea" but rather "thats a dumb idea because you didn't ask us to do it"
I agree you've got to compare like with like, but having tried both, I just feel like my shoelaces are tied together on a console controller, so even in a single player offline game, it just doesn't offer the same intuitive and fluid moves you can perform with a mouse/KB.
As a PC gamer - I would welcome a level playing field, and this is perhaps the one thing I would envy from the console world. I have to say, I don't think the field is as bumpy as it used to be though: in the Quake2 days, kit made a massive difference, but recent FPS games seem to move at a much slower pace and have the game tactics "programmed in" in terms of classes, and other in-game features. So the frame rate has less of an effect.
I guess the strange console controllers have their roots in the more casual origins of console gaming - you played on the sofa, and probably passed the controller around if your mates came round. The games were uncomplicated and easy to pick up. These days though, you can get some pretty involved "hardcore" FPS games for consoles, and many PC games have also been ported as the console hardware got big enough numbers to support it. I'm willing to bet (not a lot, but a bet all the same) that the players of these console games are serious enough to have a dedicated TV/Monitor on their console in another room, and so could easily use a mouse/KB combo on a desktop. Maybe not a keyboard as we understand it, but a dedicated button pad, together with a regular mouse. I reckon most dedicated console gamers would prefer it. Maybe online servers could be labelled up as either causual/novice or hardcore. In fact, maybe the console would not let you join a newbie server with a keyboard/mouse... Keyboards and mice are cheap. Consoles have USB ports.
Quake, unlike most other FPS games, needs to be played fast - and if you're lumbered with a joypad, you're not really experiencing the game as it's meant to be, online or offline. In the words of Ben Kenobi, to Luke as he lay fragged in the snow on the Hoth map: "Use the *mouse* luke!"
Wow! A ship with a PC, 2 cash registers and a mixing desk in the cockpit!:P It's a wonder he can see where he's going with all that stuff piled on the dash.
From what I heard on the news here in the UK, it sounds very much like they just voted to continue the status quo for another 10 years... (funded by compulsory license, board of governers will be "replaced" by a board of "trustees" which sounds much the same to me - they even keep the same chairman...).
I agree - Slashdot is a Nirvana for people like me who regularly yell at the sheep on the TV. Imagine the ten o'clock news with comments...
While I wouldn't rule this sort of tactic out - this screenshot is clearly a fake. Here's my $.05 reason why: look at the description of Firefox in the screenie:-
"..vulnerable to a lack of security updates..." One thing I can say for MS, is that their text is almost always grammatically correct, and meaningful. You can't be "vulnerable to a lack of security updates". You can be vulnerable because of a lack of updates, but you cannot be vulnerable to an absence of something, meant to remove the vulnerability.
And then "differentley to the default browser". Firefox may well *be* the default browser on this system, and this makes no sense either. If MS were writing this, they would simply call it IE.
But then again, they wouldn't identify the browser at all would they, as so many court cases have revolved around the bundling of IE with Windows. They would probably just point out to the user that IE isn't set as the defult browser, and so Windows updates for IE will not apply.
Give this "judge/english-teacher bait" of a description - I don't think this came from anywhere near Redmond.
ohh some people don't need crack for this. You could say "and Lucas' Beard - which has taken the name "Trevor" - has started a film career of it's own, starring as a facial feature in Gremlins: Revenge of the Ewoks", and there'll be at least one guy who'll say "oh really? cool! But wait, isn't that just typical of Hollywood Today - even beards have agents. I bet George put Trevor up to it for a slice of his earnings"
These people need to be captured, and made to write out a 1000 times: "not everything written down, either on paper or on your computer screen is A. True, or B. Serious"
ROFL - do they have moderation over at ABC/Fortune? I bet all his fellow journos immediatley slapped a "-1 Flamebait" on him.. or even better "-957563, Plain Stupid"
I agree - sometimes it's more efficient to check the end result, rather than attempt to ascertain the status of all the sub-systems, components and events that would cause that end result.
I have this discussion monthly about web application monitoring with our data centre: they want to monitor the DBMS instance, the network links, the app server, the web server, the Internet route etc etc. You can monitor all of this and strill have problems go unnoticed. And why bother when you can just monitor the end result with a tool that browses the site, and uses all the functions? If it doesn't see what it expects, then it yells. I mean at that point, we're more interested in the fact that it's gone wrong, not which bit - that is usually fiarly obvious when a real person looks at the system.
The same is true with the train scenario. Your first concern is that the train isn't where it is supposed to be - not which point or signal failed. Once you get alerted to the fact that the train is in the wrong place you can go back over it's route to discover the problem. You can take your time too, as you've already been able to contact all the other trains on the line and tell them to stop.
There is no "British Rail" BTW - "Network Rail" owns the infrastructure (track, stations etc) and various train companies run services on that track. The biggest operator is Virgin Rail.
I do remember reading somewhere once that it was going to cost billions to equippe the cabs with on board phones so the controllers could contact the drivers, and so this idea was vetoed by the bean counters (thus implying they couldn't do this Today). I remember thinking at the time "You mean you can't talk to the driver?!?! Godamm it why are you so stupid? Just give them all a cheap cell phone ffs!! "
Half Speed camperstrike ? you gotta be kidding! CS is surely a breakthrough in insomnia cures! With the exception of the sniper rifles, all the guns were borrowed from the A Team.
I spent a good 10 seconds wearing a hole in some dude's skull with some sort of automatic rifle the other night. It would have been quicker to convince him of the error of his evil ways in a series of councilling sessions than shooting him: "you don't want to blow up the chateau... you want to go home and rethink your life..." At least in HL2DM I could have just thrown a chair at him...
"will it be A or will it be B?" "will there be a guy behind that door I just shot up?" oh the suspense is killing me!!:P
"Should I use the sniper rifle, or er.. um the other sniper rifle?!"
"and do these natty one-size-fits-all terrorist combats make my bum look big?" "only on full zoom luv.."
And remember - you *must* be on the ground to defuse the bomb... (ok maybe that bit is a bit of a Jerry-Goldsmith-suspense-musicometer raiser).
Quiet Life 2 the SP game did make me jump a little and so did D3 on the first couple of levels, but after that, hey I've seen horror flicks, and spoofs of horror flicks...
This is true. Our training dept recently wrote a doc and a presentation on the Internet. I reviewed it and a number of interesting concepts had formed in the author's head. The author had probably not thought for more than 10 seconds about the Internet up until writing this document, and it was a decent stab at it, but it was interesting how after reading a few things about the "Internet" that the wrong ends of a whole bunch of sticks were grasped:-
In the author's mind, the web and and the Internet were the same thing. Futhermore, traffic went from one web server to another to reach the user's browser, which was synonomous with the ISP. Servers were defined as "the hard drive that connects all the computers together" and "browser systems" were things like "netscape, AOL, BT and Demon". Curiously, IE was never in the list of "browsers".
The other interesting thing is that from looking at the some of the images in the document, I found the source of the author's information - howstuffworks.com, which does give a fairly accurate description of how web servers work (although the diagram on page 3 is a bit dodgy..). It just brought home to me that while we see the text on these pages and understand, what the non-techy person sees is "blah blah blah hard disk blah blah server blah browser blah blah blah IP address"
I've since been through the doc with the author and wheeled out the good old road network analogy which went most of the way. Had a hard time seperating the "web" from "the Internet" though. Key phrase "web servers are just big computers like yours - they connect to the internet in the same way you do. Your PC and the web server talk to each other using the Internet" OK not normally true on a quantitative level, but philosophically, they do.
I've also found that most users struggle with the concept of a location where files are concerned. Ask most users where the spreadsheet they are talking about is will say "it's in Excel". They don't know or care where the files go when they click "Save", and most never actually double click the file to open it, they launch the app and then laboriously do "file | open".
I just installed a Fuji/Siemens PC with XP preloaded and so many "duh!" type options are not set by default that when I;d done hunting them down, I thought "man how's the average punter supposed to figure that out?" I'm talking about the desktop icons such as "My Documents" that are not turned on by default, and a wiered setting in Outlook that prevents images being displayed by default... And don't get me started on all that "Security panel" bollocks.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's hope not. Sound in our local VUE multiplex sucks the big one. Let me just check in the mirror - yep - ear count still stable at 2. I don't have enough audio input channels for 13 speakers - my brain will have to down-mix it to 2.1 anyway...
Maybe when I can get my head upgraded to Quite-Frankly-Its-A-Miracle Labs Brainblaster Porridgy 2, with external 13-ear pack I'll be able to get the full effect from these speakers...
Yeah remember Deckard's printer in Bladerunner? "gimme a hardcopy right there - no wait! oh shit, I forgot to reset the copy count to 1!"
:P
Now if we could just get paper images of such amazing resolution you can zoom in 200 times like he does we could store whole books in printed form on a postage stamp
Yeah - Solo claims that he "made a lot of special modifications myself"
....Later, down at the dockyard..
Liar - this is what really happened:-
Xzbit "So this is your ride? What a piece of Junk!"
Han "Yeah - she may not look like much.."
Xzbit "Damm man, you got that right. So.. what IS it?"
Han "It's a Corellian YT-1300 light freighter"
Xzbit "You mean it USED to be! Look at this paint job - is that paint or dandruff ?"
Off to 'Western Spiral Arm Customs!'
Xzbit "Well, Han Western Spiral have done an amazing job on your YT, and here's ma droid Q to take you round the outside"
Q "When we first got your YT, Han it was so badly beat up, we didn't think it would fly at all.
Now we know you do a bit of smuggling so first we hit you with these Quad turbo laser cannons..
And that's not all: for a really powerful punch, we also added you very own Arakyd Concussion missile tubes!"
Han "No waaay - get outa town - you gave me my own missile launcher?!"
Q "We sure did, right there on your YT. Now, those weapons are great for when you're out on the
sublight highway, but what if some low lifes try and steal your ride from the docking bay? Well check this out: Taim & Bak hooked you up with this neat ventral Auto Blaster. It drops down and
takes out the bad guys."
Han "That is sooo neat"
Q "In fact, we couldn't let this one go without giving you the ultimate smuggler's package, so we
hit you with the Seinar Fleet systems Active Sensor Pulse Generator, a Torplex Fore Deflector
Shield generator, and Carbanti hooked you up with this 29L Electro-Magnetic Countermeasures
package. Not only that but here you got your Nordoxicon Anti-concussion Field generator, a
KaproCorp Acceleration compensator, for those tight turns, a Torplex Tandem Flight Computer with
the Microaxial HyD Modular Navicomputer with optional crop duster program. And round the back we got you a Novaldex Stasis-type Shield generator on the port side, with a Kuat drive-yards shield generator on the starboard side, and an Ion Flux Stabilser with Alluvial damper, and chrome spinners. We also did some boring shit to the engines but we don't talk about that on the show.."
Han "I can't believe what you guys did to my YT! It's the fastest hunk-a-junk in the galaxy
now!"
Xzbit "And that ain't all - check out your interior. Mike tell him what you did.."
Mike "When we got your ship in to the shop Han, you didn't *even* have a stereo, so we hooked you
up with the biggest satellite dish we could find, and a state of the art holographic display
right here in your lounge. And if there's nothing on the TV, it even plays chess!"
Xzbit "Now I know you're wondering where you actually store the stuff you're smuggling - Mike
show Han our special modification"
Mike (lifts floor panel) "Check out your very own smuggling copmpartments!"
Han "Oh. My. God. That is soooo awesome!"
Mike "And if you ever find that you need to smuggle yourself in these, we installed 10 inch
monitors and Holo player right here in the compartment lids, so you can watch movies whilst
hiding out!"
Xzbit "and finally Han, what's a ship these days without strobe lights? Now we want you to stand
out on the approach apron down at Mos Eisley so we hit you with the latest Gelieg 20m-cp
Strobe/C-beams. These puppies will light up the inside of an asteroid!"
Han "This is unbelievable - wait til Chewie sees this!"
Xzbit "Han - you officially bin pimped!"
Shouldn't you have "In Soviet Russia.." in that joke somewhere... :p
You get "Keeping Up Appearances" ? Geez - then you do have my unreserved apologies :P I think it's illegal here now for civilian organisations to show Are You Being Served since it was re-classified as a weapon of mass mediocrity :p
As a UK subject - can I just say that's pretty damm funny (and spot on) although I'm not sure you've really understood about the French, or cars (e.g. it's not about the cupholders) :P ...and well, er.. oh alright then, let's get the ball rolling - I apologise on behalf of my country for the teletubbies - god knows it gave me nightmares, you have to wonder what it does to kids... now if the teletubbies isn't an argument for the right to bear arms, I don't know what is...
But while we're all saying sorry - isn't there something you want to say about Knight Rider? Murder, she wrote? and Titanic?
From my Quake2 autoexec.cfg:-
set lag 0
set l33t_skills 1
Easy!
Agreed - I remember reading an interview with Miller, in which he outlined his inspiration and sources for traveller including Poul Anderson's books and Star Wars. Elite, of course is basically Traveller - the computer game: even the example character has the same name!
I specifically mentioned Traveller though, as this was the thing that immediatley struck me when I watched the series - it was almost identical to a typical Traveller campaign: rag-tag bunch of adventurers/desperados each with their own shady past, scratch a living trading goods between planets, whilst getting involved in local scams/disputes/heists and mercenary activities. Then, on top you place the mystery/push/pull as described in the Trvaller Adventure campaign book..
This realisation takes nothing away from Whedon's universe. In fact, as a long time Traveller fan, it makes it all the more appealing to me.
Star Wars is set in a "galaxy far far away" as well, so I don't think the story's position in our timeline is relevant.
The vision is similar - spacefaring civilsation, frontier worlds, merchant ships, smugglers, pirates etc. George realised his vision in film a while ago.
Hmm I take your point, but I think those are more details than "the vision". The vision being a universe where interplantary travel is possible, with goods and services traded between them and vast frontiers to explore and tame.
Throw in some political background with a handful of warring factions.
A sort of "final frontier" then? :P
Don't get me wrong, I liked the series, and this is one film that will persuade me to drag my ass to the cinema to endure the neck creaking, rustling, coughing and sweating, not to mention the washed out scratchy picture and unsatisfactory sound rendering; in order to see it before it premiers for real - on a disc I can play at home - on something a bit less agricultural, while I have a drink, but enough of my cinema pet hates rant :P
I have to take issue with this statement though - this vision of the future is hardly unique. In fact, it's a fairly standard issue vision of the future as proposed by Poul Anderson (Trader Team, The long night, Mirkheim etc), Marc Miller (Traveller et al), Bell & Braben (Elite) George Lucas (Star Wars), Harry Harrison (Rat series):-
Take sea going activities and extrapolate into space. Merchant ships, pirates, busy ports, adventure on the high, er.. volumes of near vacuum... and so on.
That said, it happens to be a vision I like - a working, slightly dirty and worn around the edges future filled with real looking objects - a vision that could be said to have been pioneered by Lucas, at least on screen.
I hope the soundtrack on that trailer isn't indicative though - cheap music will really feck this movie up. Using current pop output to score a film like this will date it in months.
Well I'm sitting here in my house in the UK and my Orange cellphone has a full signal. I live in the middle of nowhere too... Why would I want to use the, quite frankly, stone age landline that has no directory, no caller id (I know you can buy extra boxes to do this on landlines) and no conference facility to name just a few of the standard things a modern digital cellphone can do...? That 'phone is just a side effect of having ADSL to me - I use my portable 'phone to make calls.
They just take and take and take
Sounds like sour grapes to me - he wasn't so much saying "thats a dumb idea" but rather "thats a dumb idea because you didn't ask us to do it"
This guy spent the last two decades studying what some other guy did? Imagine he's a real blast at parties:-
"So what do you do then MJ?"
"Well, I watch what that guy over there does and write it down - it's my life's work"
"er.. well that's nice.."
He's kind of like a mirror service then? Kinda handy now the source server's offline I guess, but even so - come on "MJ", get your own life!!
I agree you've got to compare like with like, but having tried both, I just feel like my shoelaces are tied together on a console controller, so even in a single player offline game, it just doesn't offer the same intuitive and fluid moves you can perform with a mouse/KB.
As a PC gamer - I would welcome a level playing field, and this is perhaps the one thing I would envy from the console world. I have to say, I don't think the field is as bumpy as it used to be though: in the Quake2 days, kit made a massive difference, but recent FPS games seem to move at a much slower pace and have the game tactics "programmed in" in terms of classes, and other in-game features. So the frame rate has less of an effect.
I guess the strange console controllers have their roots in the more casual origins of console gaming - you played on the sofa, and probably passed the controller around if your mates came round. The games were uncomplicated and easy to pick up. These days though, you can get some pretty involved "hardcore" FPS games for consoles, and many PC games have also been ported as the console hardware got big enough numbers to support it. I'm willing to bet (not a lot, but a bet all the same) that the players of these console games are serious enough to have a dedicated TV/Monitor on their console in another room, and so could easily use a mouse/KB combo on a desktop. Maybe not a keyboard as we understand it, but a dedicated button pad, together with a regular mouse. I reckon most dedicated console gamers would prefer it. Maybe online servers could be labelled up as either causual/novice or hardcore. In fact, maybe the console would not let you join a newbie server with a keyboard/mouse... Keyboards and mice are cheap. Consoles have USB ports.
Quake, unlike most other FPS games, needs to be played fast - and if you're lumbered with a joypad, you're not really experiencing the game as it's meant to be, online or offline. In the words of Ben Kenobi, to Luke as he lay fragged in the snow on the Hoth map: "Use the *mouse* luke!"
looking at it, I'd say it'd be a challenge to find the snooze button when it's still sat on your bed-side table...
Wow! A ship with a PC, 2 cash registers and a mixing desk in the cockpit! :P It's a wonder he can see where he's going with all that stuff piled on the dash.
i ke_mod/pirate_ejection
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/gallery/vegastr
From what I heard on the news here in the UK, it sounds very much like they just voted to continue the status quo for another 10 years... (funded by compulsory license, board of governers will be "replaced" by a board of "trustees" which sounds much the same to me - they even keep the same chairman...).
I agree - Slashdot is a Nirvana for people like me who regularly yell at the sheep on the TV. Imagine the ten o'clock news with comments ...
While I wouldn't rule this sort of tactic out - this screenshot is clearly a fake. Here's my $.05 reason why: look at the description of Firefox in the screenie:-
"..vulnerable to a lack of security updates..." One thing I can say for MS, is that their text is almost always grammatically correct, and meaningful. You can't be "vulnerable to a lack of security updates". You can be vulnerable because of a lack of updates, but you cannot be vulnerable to an absence of something, meant to remove the vulnerability.
And then "differentley to the default browser". Firefox may well *be* the default browser on this system, and this makes no sense either. If MS were writing this, they would simply call it IE.
But then again, they wouldn't identify the browser at all would they, as so many court cases have revolved around the bundling of IE with Windows. They would probably just point out to the user that IE isn't set as the defult browser, and so Windows updates for IE will not apply.
Give this "judge/english-teacher bait" of a description - I don't think this came from anywhere near Redmond.
hehe true true. Pity you can't give a mod point in a sarcastic tone, or with a smirk on your face that's somehow apparent..
ohh some people don't need crack for this. You could say "and Lucas' Beard - which has taken the name "Trevor" - has started a film career of it's own, starring as a facial feature in Gremlins: Revenge of the Ewoks", and there'll be at least one guy who'll say "oh really? cool! But wait, isn't that just typical of Hollywood Today - even beards have agents. I bet George put Trevor up to it for a slice of his earnings"
These people need to be captured, and made to write out a 1000 times: "not everything written down, either on paper or on your computer screen is A. True, or B. Serious"
ROFL - do they have moderation over at ABC/Fortune? I bet all his fellow journos immediatley slapped a "-1 Flamebait" on him.. or even better "-957563, Plain Stupid"
I agree - sometimes it's more efficient to check the end result, rather than attempt to ascertain the status of all the sub-systems, components and events that would cause that end result.
I have this discussion monthly about web application monitoring with our data centre: they want to monitor the DBMS instance, the network links, the app server, the web server, the Internet route etc etc. You can monitor all of this and strill have problems go unnoticed. And why bother when you can just monitor the end result with a tool that browses the site, and uses all the functions? If it doesn't see what it expects, then it yells. I mean at that point, we're more interested in the fact that it's gone wrong, not which bit - that is usually fiarly obvious when a real person looks at the system.
The same is true with the train scenario. Your first concern is that the train isn't where it is supposed to be - not which point or signal failed. Once you get alerted to the fact that the train is in the wrong place you can go back over it's route to discover the problem. You can take your time too, as you've already been able to contact all the other trains on the line and tell them to stop.
There is no "British Rail" BTW - "Network Rail" owns the infrastructure (track, stations etc) and various train companies run services on that track. The biggest operator is Virgin Rail.
I do remember reading somewhere once that it was going to cost billions to equippe the cabs with on board phones so the controllers could contact the drivers, and so this idea was vetoed by the bean counters (thus implying they couldn't do this Today). I remember thinking at the time "You mean you can't talk to the driver?!?! Godamm it why are you so stupid? Just give them all a cheap cell phone ffs!! "
Half Speed camperstrike ? you gotta be kidding! CS is surely a breakthrough in insomnia cures! With the exception of the sniper rifles, all the guns were borrowed from the A Team.
I spent a good 10 seconds wearing a hole in some dude's skull with some sort of automatic rifle the other night. It would have been quicker to convince him of the error of his evil ways in a series of councilling sessions than shooting him: "you don't want to blow up the chateau... you want to go home and rethink your life..." At least in HL2DM I could have just thrown a chair at him...
"will it be A or will it be B?" "will there be a guy behind that door I just shot up?" oh the suspense is killing me!!:P
"Should I use the sniper rifle, or er.. um the other sniper rifle?!"
"and do these natty one-size-fits-all terrorist combats make my bum look big?" "only on full zoom luv.."
And remember - you *must* be on the ground to defuse the bomb... (ok maybe that bit is a bit of a Jerry-Goldsmith-suspense-musicometer raiser).
Quiet Life 2 the SP game did make me jump a little and so did D3 on the first couple of levels, but after that, hey I've seen horror flicks, and spoofs of horror flicks...
This is true. Our training dept recently wrote a doc and a presentation on the Internet. I reviewed it and a number of interesting concepts had formed in the author's head. The author had probably not thought for more than 10 seconds about the Internet up until writing this document, and it was a decent stab at it, but it was interesting how after reading a few things about the "Internet" that the wrong ends of a whole bunch of sticks were grasped:-
In the author's mind, the web and and the Internet were the same thing. Futhermore, traffic went from one web server to another to reach the user's browser, which was synonomous with the ISP. Servers were defined as "the hard drive that connects all the computers together" and "browser systems" were things like "netscape, AOL, BT and Demon". Curiously, IE was never in the list of "browsers".
The other interesting thing is that from looking at the some of the images in the document, I found the source of the author's information - howstuffworks.com, which does give a fairly accurate description of how web servers work (although the diagram on page 3 is a bit dodgy..). It just brought home to me that while we see the text on these pages and understand, what the non-techy person sees is "blah blah blah hard disk blah blah server blah browser blah blah blah IP address"
I've since been through the doc with the author and wheeled out the good old road network analogy which went most of the way. Had a hard time seperating the "web" from "the Internet" though. Key phrase "web servers are just big computers like yours - they connect to the internet in the same way you do. Your PC and the web server talk to each other using the Internet" OK not normally true on a quantitative level, but philosophically, they do.
I've also found that most users struggle with the concept of a location where files are concerned. Ask most users where the spreadsheet they are talking about is will say "it's in Excel". They don't know or care where the files go when they click "Save", and most never actually double click the file to open it, they launch the app and then laboriously do "file | open".
I just installed a Fuji/Siemens PC with XP preloaded and so many "duh!" type options are not set by default that when I;d done hunting them down, I thought "man how's the average punter supposed to figure that out?" I'm talking about the desktop icons such as "My Documents" that are not turned on by default, and a wiered setting in Outlook that prevents images being displayed by default... And don't get me started on all that "Security panel" bollocks.