Hey, the original (good) GTA games were played for points, as well as missions. That was the whole point of the score multipliers for finishing several missions in a row without failing, and the smaller multipliers for multikills, gory deaths, irony (smashing people with an ambulance, or a hippy bus), etc.
The arcade feel of the games was what made them great, not the slapshod mess of hooliganism they are now.
There is a key in the registry that stops non-system processes from accessing the index of available drives. I can never remember the key, but I know it defeats programs that scan for cd emulators, and I'm wondering if it might play some role in preventing these kinds of attacks too.
Re:as someone lumped with the prodigies for awhile
on
The Prodigy Puzzle
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· Score: 1
I resigned from the gifted program in middle school because I got along better with kids outside of it, as did the few of my close friends that were placed in it. Those of us who dropped out actually did much better than those who stayed in, and anyone was allowed to take the gifted courses if they had the prerequisites, so it really just kept us out of the mandatory 'gifted' study hall/problem solving/bullshit/student segregation blocks. There was one exception who stayed in the program, though he dropped out and went to home schooling in high school. He works for Google now, but that's a different story.
I was doing fine until my second year of college. Then I got electrocuted by the nearly deadly combination of clumsiness and an elevator power line, and was out for about two days. I felt crippled after that: I couldn't concentrate, I couldn't do math, and I failed all of my exams that semester (it was near the end, so I still got low Bs/high Cs in my classes, but it hurt). The whole summer I felt like a zombie (I spent most of it running Cat5 and building hundreds of desks, for several dozen computer labs), and it really took a bit over a year to reach a point where I could program well again, and teach myself again. Due to the math difficulties, I had to leave computer engineering, and I went to industrial/systems engineering, which has math, but its mainly deterministic/probabilistic OR and statistics, which are more games than they are math. No terrible ending; I did very well in ISE, graduated and whatnot, and had no difficulty getting a decent enough job to pay my few bills, so I'm doing alright. In some ways I wish that I had stayed in school and worked on an MS, and I might go back in a year or two.
Thing is, I think that being electrocuted changed me for the better. ISE was a much more diverse and interesting major than computer engineering (mainly because it consisted of subjects that were non-obvious to me, which I would never have taught myself), and after I recovered I was able to use my programming skills to complement the modeling and simulation courses. I also took some odd electives and learned a lot of machine shop skills and relay ladder logic, so now I can make (and have machines make) nifty metal things too.
I also relaxed a lot while I was zombiefied, and I'm told that I'm much easier to get along with now. I know that I'm less antisocial... before I walked around listening to music all day (usually some selection of generic antisocial 'alternative rock' on the pinnacle of MP3 players: the Rio 500) and ignoring people, now I really don't want to hear music most of the time (though I will always stop to listen to Dire Straits, Xploding Plastix, or post-Miles Davis jazz), and I'd rather just hear what's going on around me and talk to people.
Unless its a ringing cellphone.
I still hate those things, and I think its a holdover from when I was a kid. My family had a sheepdog that threw fits of homicidal rage whenever a phone rang, but was otherwise very friendly and easygoing. Most of the calls were jerks trying to sell things, as this was before the 'do not call' lists, when telemarketers called rampantly during dinner hours. I respected the wisdom of my elders, so I tended to agree with the dog. I still agree with the dog, for it was truly a prodigy in phone raging, squirrel ignoring, mud rolling, and flea gathering.
One of the smartest people I've ever known catches bluecrabs for a day job, and does some freelance electrical/plumbing work. Thing is, the guy can fix anything or build any sort of mechanical/electrical device if you ask him, usually from junk parts. He just likes crabbing though, and lately he's been trying to design better crabpots.
If they had played Tribes first, they would have been too traumatized to ever buy an FPS again... I only bought it because I thought it would have at least some gameplay similarity with Starsiege (the awesome mech game), and was horribly disappointed. That was one of the worst games ever.
To me, the FPS genre is defined by Sin (graphics design, environment interactivity, use of color, general coolness), Soldier of Fortune (furious multiplayer, corner leaning, accurate and gory hit detection, nether region shots), Marathon (story, the importance of sound), and Future Shock (huge outdoor area, drivable and flyable vehicles).
I understand that, but the reason that works well right now is that most content on P2P is somewhat short-lived, so swarms of people grab it while they can. P2P speed relies on popularity within a given time window OR on people stockpiling files to seed/share. With the second option nullified by the 24 hour limit (unless there are people who just save things regardless of being able to play them), reliance is on the first one. How can the companies ensure enough interest (users downloading) at any given point to ensure decent download speed?
As an awful example, let's say they were offering the classic movie 'Robot Versus Mummy', and I wanted to watch it... Nobody in their right mind would watch that, so odds are there are no other downloaders... how do they ensure me a good download speed?
I might be able to cope with this idea if billing did not occur until the file was played. Then if you're looking for something obscure and can never finish the download, you have no loss. And, there might be an incentive for holding an expired file, if you are willing to pay to watch it again.
Note: Any download service actually offering 'Robot Versus Mummy' should be bitch-slapped into oblivion.
Hardware rendering or not, it looked terrible. There were software PC games, like Future Shock or Quake, that looked far better than the N64. There were also 3D accelerated games prior to 3Dfx. I had an 8 MB Virge card which ran Descent 2 (the best Descent, and there was even a hardware-accleration-only level pack for it) and Mechwarrior 2 beautifully. I had a friend who had a Matrox (can't recall the model) which could hardware accelerate Quake and the first Unreal. Those also looked far better than the N64. I actually avoided 3Dfx until the Voodoo 2 came out, and I still kept the Virge after that. The N64 and the PS1 are among the awfullest things I've ever seen, and I gladly sat out that entire console generation.
There are changeable graphics settings in the CoD2 demo (not arguing, just asking, I haven't seen it)? Just the usual brightness/contrast/screen shape adjust, or are you talking performance-impact settings?
There is, in the Hunter: The Reckoning games... she carries a katana and a revolver by default, and of course there's shotguns, machine guns, flareguns, chainsaws, etc... they're fun gauntlet-style games, but with undead and monsters, and they're great with 2-3 people (like gauntlet, they can get a bit too hectic with 4).
I've never understood why switchblades are illegal to buy or sell (they are actually legal to own here), or feared. Any well designed knife can be opened easily with one hand, with only thumb motion, and as quickly as a switchblade (for mass production cheap folders, I'm fond of Beretta AirWeight IIs and Cold Steel Scimitars). Not to mention that many switchblades have safety switches that hinder rapid deployment (or cause them to accidentally open in your pocket if left off). And for some reason most switchblades place their clips at the same end of the knife as the hinge, meaning that when you draw the clipped knife, your hand is backwards on it. I think they're an added danger, and only to the user.
The only nice automatic knives are double action stilettos, but even the cheap ones are too expensive to actually use for work, and the nice ones tend to just be collector knives.
I was running DVI-out to DVI-in, and DScaler wouldn't do anything (I use a tv tuner for s-video and composite input), the screen just stuck. Switched back to VGA-VGA, without even closing the program, and everything was fine. In any case, I wasn't interested in DVI anymore since I got absolutely no benefit from it, and it caused problems.
I haven't tried DVI-out to VGA-in with a converter for lack of a converter, but you have made me wonder what the specs on those ports are. Might be good to watch for if I have to buy a new video card anyway, I've noticed that many of them have 2 DVI ports now.
Arrrr, I hate JPEG in general, and wish that format would finally die. Why even bother putting something online if you're going to compress the hell out of it?
Half-Life didn't even have a decent plot, it was the same plot as Doom... Scientists build teleporter experiment -> monsters (aliens/demons) come through teleporter, and all the base personnel go nuts too -> one guy fights through them -> guy goes through portal to hell/other dimension, and kills more monsters... whoooo. There are some minor differences (one protagonist is a scientist, one is a marine; one has a crowbar, one has a fist; etc). Half-life attempted to add a bit of interest by giving the story a 'government coverup' angle, but that didnt' stop it from more or less being the same. I think Half-Life was one of the most overrated games ever, and I was sort of dissapointed that the hype for it crushed Sin, which was released around the same week, and was a much cooler game (it still has some of my favorite multiplayer maps, some using local gravity).
PID was OK, but I agree that the Marathon games have the best plot and story I've ever seen in a game. Deus Ex came close to the same greatness just by the sheer number of cliches it tied together in a cool way, but it wasn't nearly as epic.
I always found it odd that Half-Life used Marathon's recharge-terminal idea too, though it did fit well in the game.
Why do people obsess about DVI? I can't even get certain deinterlacing applications to work right over it, and there is no quality difference at all on a 21" LCD. I'm glad that said 21" LCD has 2 VGA inputs too, otherwise I would have returned it. I'll never buy a monitor that only inputs DVI, and I'll never buy a video card that only outputs DVI. Besides, with all the awful video DRM that's on the way, isn't having an analog option a good thing?
The teacher would still need some means to load the cds, and make them accessible to the ad-hoc network those things make. And the laptop needs some form of storage for them, unless they need to be connected to a terminal server to run or something. I haven't seen a spec on what it uses for storage, but it does seem to be covered in USB ports. Perhaps texts could be issued on USB sticks? The old 16 and 32 MB ones are practically value-less now but could still hold massive text files, and quite a few 1 megapixel images.
How long is my need for a laptop going to last during a blackout? Unless I really needed some locally stored data, not long. I'm perfectly content with just lighting an oil lamp and reading a book for a bit, or carving a stick into something that looks entirely unlike what I intended. Of course, there was that one time I had no power for 16 days and had to bring fresh water home in bags from the other end of the county since the water filtration gear on my well wouldn't work... that was sort of annoying. Nothing that a crank powered laptop would have alleviated though.
I could probably be replaced by a sufficiently advanced grammar checker/ARMY jargon translator, as long as it could also spontaneously generate rambling technical justifications for crazy projects. And make colorful spreadsheets with lots of budget and performance forecasts drawn from tenuously connected data.
Well, the one nice thing about not having the brick at the end of the wire is not having the brick block other plugs on your outlet/line filter/etc, or fall off the wall. This also allows multiple bricks to not be concentrated in one place (making another potential heat problem).
Agreed that the device-wire-brick-wire-plug is sometimes bad for placement (and I haven't looked at the wire lengths on the 360), but as long as the device-brick wire is long it usually works out OK.
I messed with one myself at an EB, and while it was comfortable and light, it felt much more cheaply made than an old x-box controller, or even a controller S. The plastic seemed a bit more malleable, and seams in the controller seemed less finely fit. It still feels more solid that a PS2 controller though, and I've never managed to break one of those, so it should be alright.
Also, I might be nuts, but is the xbox logo in the middle now a button too?
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, the original (good) GTA games were played for points, as well as missions. That was the whole point of the score multipliers for finishing several missions in a row without failing, and the smaller multipliers for multikills, gory deaths, irony (smashing people with an ambulance, or a hippy bus), etc. The arcade feel of the games was what made them great, not the slapshod mess of hooliganism they are now.
There is a key in the registry that stops non-system processes from accessing the index of available drives. I can never remember the key, but I know it defeats programs that scan for cd emulators, and I'm wondering if it might play some role in preventing these kinds of attacks too.
I resigned from the gifted program in middle school because I got along better with kids outside of it, as did the few of my close friends that were placed in it. Those of us who dropped out actually did much better than those who stayed in, and anyone was allowed to take the gifted courses if they had the prerequisites, so it really just kept us out of the mandatory 'gifted' study hall/problem solving/bullshit/student segregation blocks. There was one exception who stayed in the program, though he dropped out and went to home schooling in high school. He works for Google now, but that's a different story.
I was doing fine until my second year of college. Then I got electrocuted by the nearly deadly combination of clumsiness and an elevator power line, and was out for about two days. I felt crippled after that: I couldn't concentrate, I couldn't do math, and I failed all of my exams that semester (it was near the end, so I still got low Bs/high Cs in my classes, but it hurt). The whole summer I felt like a zombie (I spent most of it running Cat5 and building hundreds of desks, for several dozen computer labs), and it really took a bit over a year to reach a point where I could program well again, and teach myself again. Due to the math difficulties, I had to leave computer engineering, and I went to industrial/systems engineering, which has math, but its mainly deterministic/probabilistic OR and statistics, which are more games than they are math. No terrible ending; I did very well in ISE, graduated and whatnot, and had no difficulty getting a decent enough job to pay my few bills, so I'm doing alright. In some ways I wish that I had stayed in school and worked on an MS, and I might go back in a year or two.
Thing is, I think that being electrocuted changed me for the better. ISE was a much more diverse and interesting major than computer engineering (mainly because it consisted of subjects that were non-obvious to me, which I would never have taught myself), and after I recovered I was able to use my programming skills to complement the modeling and simulation courses. I also took some odd electives and learned a lot of machine shop skills and relay ladder logic, so now I can make (and have machines make) nifty metal things too.
I also relaxed a lot while I was zombiefied, and I'm told that I'm much easier to get along with now. I know that I'm less antisocial... before I walked around listening to music all day (usually some selection of generic antisocial 'alternative rock' on the pinnacle of MP3 players: the Rio 500) and ignoring people, now I really don't want to hear music most of the time (though I will always stop to listen to Dire Straits, Xploding Plastix, or post-Miles Davis jazz), and I'd rather just hear what's going on around me and talk to people.
Unless its a ringing cellphone.
I still hate those things, and I think its a holdover from when I was a kid. My family had a sheepdog that threw fits of homicidal rage whenever a phone rang, but was otherwise very friendly and easygoing. Most of the calls were jerks trying to sell things, as this was before the 'do not call' lists, when telemarketers called rampantly during dinner hours. I respected the wisdom of my elders, so I tended to agree with the dog. I still agree with the dog, for it was truly a prodigy in phone raging, squirrel ignoring, mud rolling, and flea gathering.
One of the smartest people I've ever known catches bluecrabs for a day job, and does some freelance electrical/plumbing work. Thing is, the guy can fix anything or build any sort of mechanical/electrical device if you ask him, usually from junk parts. He just likes crabbing though, and lately he's been trying to design better crabpots.
If they had played Tribes first, they would have been too traumatized to ever buy an FPS again... I only bought it because I thought it would have at least some gameplay similarity with Starsiege (the awesome mech game), and was horribly disappointed. That was one of the worst games ever.
To me, the FPS genre is defined by Sin (graphics design, environment interactivity, use of color, general coolness), Soldier of Fortune (furious multiplayer, corner leaning, accurate and gory hit detection, nether region shots), Marathon (story, the importance of sound), and Future Shock (huge outdoor area, drivable and flyable vehicles).
What sort of inputs are on that card? Does it have s-video?
I understand that, but the reason that works well right now is that most content on P2P is somewhat short-lived, so swarms of people grab it while they can. P2P speed relies on popularity within a given time window OR on people stockpiling files to seed/share. With the second option nullified by the 24 hour limit (unless there are people who just save things regardless of being able to play them), reliance is on the first one. How can the companies ensure enough interest (users downloading) at any given point to ensure decent download speed? As an awful example, let's say they were offering the classic movie 'Robot Versus Mummy', and I wanted to watch it... Nobody in their right mind would watch that, so odds are there are no other downloaders... how do they ensure me a good download speed? I might be able to cope with this idea if billing did not occur until the file was played. Then if you're looking for something obscure and can never finish the download, you have no loss. And, there might be an incentive for holding an expired file, if you are willing to pay to watch it again. Note: Any download service actually offering 'Robot Versus Mummy' should be bitch-slapped into oblivion.
Hardware rendering or not, it looked terrible. There were software PC games, like Future Shock or Quake, that looked far better than the N64. There were also 3D accelerated games prior to 3Dfx. I had an 8 MB Virge card which ran Descent 2 (the best Descent, and there was even a hardware-accleration-only level pack for it) and Mechwarrior 2 beautifully. I had a friend who had a Matrox (can't recall the model) which could hardware accelerate Quake and the first Unreal. Those also looked far better than the N64. I actually avoided 3Dfx until the Voodoo 2 came out, and I still kept the Virge after that. The N64 and the PS1 are among the awfullest things I've ever seen, and I gladly sat out that entire console generation.
There are changeable graphics settings in the CoD2 demo (not arguing, just asking, I haven't seen it)? Just the usual brightness/contrast/screen shape adjust, or are you talking performance-impact settings?
There is, in the Hunter: The Reckoning games... she carries a katana and a revolver by default, and of course there's shotguns, machine guns, flareguns, chainsaws, etc... they're fun gauntlet-style games, but with undead and monsters, and they're great with 2-3 people (like gauntlet, they can get a bit too hectic with 4).
If the file expires in 24 hours, what incentive is there for peers to hold the expired file and seed it? This sounds dumb.
I've never understood why switchblades are illegal to buy or sell (they are actually legal to own here), or feared. Any well designed knife can be opened easily with one hand, with only thumb motion, and as quickly as a switchblade (for mass production cheap folders, I'm fond of Beretta AirWeight IIs and Cold Steel Scimitars). Not to mention that many switchblades have safety switches that hinder rapid deployment (or cause them to accidentally open in your pocket if left off). And for some reason most switchblades place their clips at the same end of the knife as the hinge, meaning that when you draw the clipped knife, your hand is backwards on it. I think they're an added danger, and only to the user.
The only nice automatic knives are double action stilettos, but even the cheap ones are too expensive to actually use for work, and the nice ones tend to just be collector knives.
I was running DVI-out to DVI-in, and DScaler wouldn't do anything (I use a tv tuner for s-video and composite input), the screen just stuck. Switched back to VGA-VGA, without even closing the program, and everything was fine. In any case, I wasn't interested in DVI anymore since I got absolutely no benefit from it, and it caused problems.
I haven't tried DVI-out to VGA-in with a converter for lack of a converter, but you have made me wonder what the specs on those ports are. Might be good to watch for if I have to buy a new video card anyway, I've noticed that many of them have 2 DVI ports now.
Arrrr, I hate JPEG in general, and wish that format would finally die. Why even bother putting something online if you're going to compress the hell out of it?
Er, the PS1, PS2, N64, and possibly the Dreamcast were all underperforming compared to desktops at their time (especially the PS1 and N64).
Haven't played the game, but the movie is the worst sci-fi movie I've ever seen... I think it was worse than ST:Nemesis. Space goths?
Half-Life didn't even have a decent plot, it was the same plot as Doom... Scientists build teleporter experiment -> monsters (aliens/demons) come through teleporter, and all the base personnel go nuts too -> one guy fights through them -> guy goes through portal to hell/other dimension, and kills more monsters... whoooo. There are some minor differences (one protagonist is a scientist, one is a marine; one has a crowbar, one has a fist; etc). Half-life attempted to add a bit of interest by giving the story a 'government coverup' angle, but that didnt' stop it from more or less being the same. I think Half-Life was one of the most overrated games ever, and I was sort of dissapointed that the hype for it crushed Sin, which was released around the same week, and was a much cooler game (it still has some of my favorite multiplayer maps, some using local gravity).
PID was OK, but I agree that the Marathon games have the best plot and story I've ever seen in a game. Deus Ex came close to the same greatness just by the sheer number of cliches it tied together in a cool way, but it wasn't nearly as epic.
I always found it odd that Half-Life used Marathon's recharge-terminal idea too, though it did fit well in the game.
Why do people obsess about DVI? I can't even get certain deinterlacing applications to work right over it, and there is no quality difference at all on a 21" LCD. I'm glad that said 21" LCD has 2 VGA inputs too, otherwise I would have returned it. I'll never buy a monitor that only inputs DVI, and I'll never buy a video card that only outputs DVI. Besides, with all the awful video DRM that's on the way, isn't having an analog option a good thing?
The teacher would still need some means to load the cds, and make them accessible to the ad-hoc network those things make. And the laptop needs some form of storage for them, unless they need to be connected to a terminal server to run or something. I haven't seen a spec on what it uses for storage, but it does seem to be covered in USB ports. Perhaps texts could be issued on USB sticks? The old 16 and 32 MB ones are practically value-less now but could still hold massive text files, and quite a few 1 megapixel images.
How long is my need for a laptop going to last during a blackout? Unless I really needed some locally stored data, not long. I'm perfectly content with just lighting an oil lamp and reading a book for a bit, or carving a stick into something that looks entirely unlike what I intended. Of course, there was that one time I had no power for 16 days and had to bring fresh water home in bags from the other end of the county since the water filtration gear on my well wouldn't work... that was sort of annoying. Nothing that a crank powered laptop would have alleviated though.
Be assured that Negroponte is only involved in something if he profits personally.
I could probably be replaced by a sufficiently advanced grammar checker/ARMY jargon translator, as long as it could also spontaneously generate rambling technical justifications for crazy projects. And make colorful spreadsheets with lots of budget and performance forecasts drawn from tenuously connected data.
Well, the one nice thing about not having the brick at the end of the wire is not having the brick block other plugs on your outlet/line filter/etc, or fall off the wall. This also allows multiple bricks to not be concentrated in one place (making another potential heat problem).
Agreed that the device-wire-brick-wire-plug is sometimes bad for placement (and I haven't looked at the wire lengths on the 360), but as long as the device-brick wire is long it usually works out OK.
Hey, my job seems to consist mostly of trading doc files!
I messed with one myself at an EB, and while it was comfortable and light, it felt much more cheaply made than an old x-box controller, or even a controller S. The plastic seemed a bit more malleable, and seams in the controller seemed less finely fit. It still feels more solid that a PS2 controller though, and I've never managed to break one of those, so it should be alright.
Also, I might be nuts, but is the xbox logo in the middle now a button too?