I can't switch to Linux for several reasons. While my knowledge of Windows kernel is very little (actual code knowledge that is, I know nothing), I know even less about Linux. So while modern day Linux distros are all very GUI friendly and look similar to Windows, what if something went drastically wrong with it? I don't know nearly enough about Linux's command line system or anything. While I know a decent bit about DOS I've seen a small touch of Linux when I ran a Half Life 1 server on a Linux box for a mod. Using PuTTy into it was a pain cause all these strange Linux command line commands were no where near what I was used to.
Now the real kicker reason why I can't switch; I have no guarantee for my PC being able to use it. While I'm sure I could find a distro that has decent drivers for my hardware, what am I to do about the PC games I play that do not have Linux ports? I could use some Linux emulation software like Wine right? I mean that's the easiest solution. Emulate Windows to run those must-have Windows applications. Well my PC is rather old. You figure in running Linux, plus emulating Windows, plus running a Windows based MMORPG where I normally got 20 fps on a PC, I doubt I'd get anywhere a playable state. While I'm sure some Linux distros themselves run faster, use less memory etc than Windows XP, having to run that and emulate Windows + Game probably negates any resources I had freed up from running Linux itself, if not making the game run even worse.
For some people, upgrading or buying a new PC simply so they can use Linux instead of Windows isn't an option. If I was going to shell out that much money, I'd go get another copy of Windows XP that has the current SP2 streamlined into the install to greatly reduce install and patch time. If I didn't play PC games that needed Windows, I might consider running Linux cause pretty much everything else I use can be used on Linux (Firefox, IRC, mp3 player, VLC, etc).
Autopatcher was basically the "only way" I could patch Windows up to date. Owning a rather used SP1 XP cd, getting all the critical updates and SP2 could be a bitch. Especially when it came to stuff that was vitally important to the system.
Now it's just a matter of time before another huge flaw is founded which malware/spyware & virus makers exploit to shit. With WGA and all, patching my system against these hazards will basically be impossible. Just a matter of time before it succumbs to one of these:(
First and foremost, it's simply fair. I pay my, rather high priced, monthly bill for broadband cable internet access. While this is just access to the Internet and not access to every website obviously, it still is me paying to view or connect to the web.
By doing so, let's say I go to a local news affiliates web site, such as my local NBC station or ABC. While their site does contain news and such, they also always have ad's, banners, auto-streaming flash, sometimes even old school popups. I already paid to get the Internet, and since anyone with a tv and bunny ears can access local news stations for free, why should these people need me to view their ad's? So they can pay for the domain? Bandwidth costs? Webmaster(s) salary? They are a company, news yes but still a company, that cost should already be covered. Why force it onto the user? That just leads down the road of the classic "information should always be free".
Second comes non profit type sites, that fall into the same example above. People who are paying for their own personal site, space, bandwidth, maybe even a domain name or two. Ad's might offset some cost right? Yes. Does that mean they can push it on the user? Possibly, I mean you want to view their website, it's their site. But, it's simple capitalism in my opinion. Such as, if you really need a neon flashing banner, annoyingly wide Google Ad Sense banners, streaming flash etc to help off set the "cost" of your website, then you really need to consider not having a site. The burden, yes burden, of having a site online falls on the owner and webmaster (in a personal reference especially). The user should "pay out" by viewing these ad's, simply cause you can't chuck a few more bucks for bandwidth every month? I have a somewhat small personal website, hosted for free, with some banner ad's and Ad Sense. It's mainly a small forum. What do I tell my users of that forum? "If you dislike the intrusive ad's, I recommend Firefox and Adblock"
A somewhat third, if you even consider it, is simple screen space. A good portion of Internet using people are still those on older machines, or machines with small monitor's. (Or ones that can't do a decent resolution). So while most web sites are optimized for what, at least 1024x768 these days, a lot of web users are still using 800x600 or even 640x480. Have you seen some of these ad's in a small resolution? They can take up the whole screen, cause you to needlessly scroll over, stretch out tables etc It's really great when you're reading information on a site and that particular page has information in several categories, left centered and righted, yet to read the right margin text, you need to scroll over due to a very long banner ad stretch the page (where as if it wasn't there, the page wouldn't be stretched).
Oh and lets not forget, the good old family of PC Destroyers; virus, spyware and malware. This was a chief reason I block ad's and eventually switched to Firefox. It doesn't help IE isn't as secure but the mere fact you can simply load website and have a popup or some other code on the site come up and start installing random stuff without you asking it too, was great:( Sure OS's have gotten some more security since the golden era of pop ups but that still happens. It's not just pop ups either, how much you wanna bet there's some way to execute a file via a embeded flash file? While you load that site it seeminly looks ok, a cute little flash movie, in the background it's installing some variation of w32.arseraping.exe. Yea, you could "avoid" sites that do that, but how do you tell? Say you're browsing a forum, and someone posts a link to some content (the content itself is legit) but the site it's on has ad's or a banner or something that installs some shit? You had no way of knowing. Are we to pre screen all websites before ever visiting them?
Point is, the advertisement venture is on a decay. I don't mind seeing an ad for something new, that I've never heard of (say on
Reboot was by far one of the best series of the 90's. For a kid's cartoon it's storylines and such even appealed to teenagers and adults (come on, how cool was Enzo grown up as Matrix?). To date the episode where Megabyte and Bob have a guitar battle is one of the coolest things in animation I've ever seen.
If those spoilers are true, that indeed sounds fucking awesome.
Only downside is, it's a new book. So the paperback edition won't be out for a while, and even most discount stores will want like $25 for the hardcover. Libraries will have it for a free checkout but the local libraries here have a 7-day checkout time for "new releases" whereas other books can be checked out for just over 3 weeks.
Ok so if you get to pick the 3 free HD-DVD's, it might be. But as I've said in the past the only way to get main stream penetration for either format is to make them equally priced as a regular standard DVD player is now. I can walk into Wal-Mart now and pick up a nice little dvd player for $60-70. Sure it doesn't have a shit ton of features but it plays dvd's which is all I require. When I can pick up a HD-DVD player or Blu-Ray for $50-70 then I'll buy one. This deal is pretty nice itself, but they probably have 3 specific movies to give away (the article didn't specify?).
Being a somewhat geek that has really wanted to get into the computer related work field, be a website designer, or a sysadmin or just a guy doing hardware repairs, I've always found it hindersome when it came to math.
Math was never, ever my strong suit. I can do your basics. Addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. Some real basic formulas but past that yea math is a subject I can't seem to learn. As you got higher and higher in math in terms of types and levels there were just even more and more formulas and types of equations for you to memorize. Just cause I can remember a shit ton about Star Trek doesn't mean I can memorize the first couple hundred Prime numbers or square roots of stuff or sign and cosign etc
Which was cool, cause despite how I always liked the idea of programming and such I knew that was well beyond my field of duty. But then you start looking at other mediums of the computer industry and a lot of jobs require a certain expertise in math. Hell even schools, want math math math. When I enrolled in community college years ago, before I could even set foot into a computer course of any kind (even real basic stuff like web design or web coding) I woulda had to take a ton of math classes. Since I never got around to Algebra 2 in high school (it wasn't a requirement to graduate) I would have had to take that, then Calculus then Trig, then all kinds of other stuff, just for a simple class on how to do HTML or graphical design.
Since then I've always been hampered by math. Sure I can memorize a telephone number, calculate a checkbook etc But memorizing hundreds of formulas (you may be able to look them up on the job, doing them for tests is different, not all teachers and professors let you write down the formulas). If I want a job as someone high up in the tech industry (that isn't ya know, rocket science) I still need some big time degree and high level of mathematics skill.
Well, the $180/month for cable is basically our only "luxury", we don't go out, don't eat out a super ton, the rest of our cash goes towards bills, utilities, etc If you stopped to consider the average American spends money every month on going to the movies, renting movies from rental stores, alcohol, going out with friends, etc I'd bet the price of that comes out to about the same as what I pay for cable/internet.
Yea, very common. I've got a Digital Cable package from Time Warner Cable, we got it in early 2000, and the price of the package has gone up a lot. We didn't get their highspeed cable till a year or two later, so that tacked on another $50/month. I think atm we're paying around $180, for a package that has all the HBO's, Cinemax's, Showtimes, Starz, Encores etc including On Demand channels (though PPV On Demand still has it's own per movie price).
I just love how every year, like clockwork, they increase the price. And there aren't a ton of new channels being added to justify the cost. We don't have HD, so there's no HDTV channels that need to be there. I'm not sure if it is just costing them more to license out or lease out (however it's done) the channels from companies like HBO and such. I mean I love HBO brand tv shows, watch them all the time, especially On Demand, but I'd never buy them on DVD cause HBO prices their dvd's horribly (like $80 for 13 episodes of The Sopranos? 13 whole episodes? come on...).
I'd go with another company but there aren't any real broadband cable providers, everyone else only has DSL and since my PC is ancient, it can't use a USB connector for the modem and I really don't want some house-call technician installing a DSL card (we're a low budget family so if he fubars my 7 year old PC, I'm screwed).
Other than absolutely proving it was a arrow from 1800's, and actually fired during that period, couldn't someone say in the last few years, fire a weapon from that time period at the whale?
It just seems a stretch that, a fragment, of an arrowhead, from the 1800's, managed to stay wedged in it's skin for over a century. Aside from that, I always figured some species of whales were long lived, I mean some turtles live well past one hundred years, why not a species of whale?
To justify someone modding me down, on the link to the yahoo page there are 3 trailers listed. Since the/. article said it was the Theatrical Trailer, that's the one I watched. That trailer, does not the sound. The "Exclusive" trailer is the new one, which does include the sound. If anything, the article was a tad misleading.
So far a few people have replied saying Optimus's transform sound is pretty old school, very similar to the original if not a slightly modified one at that.
Am I deaf? I've watched the trailer a half a dozen times now and none of the sounds for transforming, sound anything like the awesome original sound from Generation 1. Like not even remotely close to the sound. The one scene in the trailer where we see Optimus, yea his transform sound, sounds like the background sound from a car work shop; hydraulics going off, that "whir whir" sound of a bolt remover/tightener etc nothing like the original transform, nothing.
I won't be seeing it for a good number of reasons, but I was just curious where people are hearing this great old school sound, cause for me it's completely missing from this trailer, I literally could not hear it anywhere.
Joining up,even if drafted, they lose a lot of basic freedoms including free speech. I could understand if their C.O.'s didn't want a blog post accidentally revealing the location of a group of soldiers somewhere but most of this is probably done so nothing "bad" is said about whats happening over there or our current administration.
Let's not forget, this comes from the same people that didn't allow the footage of how many and when coffins/caskets were being brought home from Iraq to American soil. When you have to cover up how many are dying in the war you are "winning" then a few censored blogs isn't that far a stretch.
I thought the Cold War b.s. was over with? Aren't we allies with the Russians? I mean, we use their space station, joint ventures in science and medicine, etc wtf happened so suddenly they now want to paint us as an enemy?
Not being upheld in the UK aside, didn't they have proof to show the courts the company in question did in fact use underhanded illegal tactics to achieve it's advertising? I ask cause, not only did they lose but they were forced to de-list the company and basically apologize. It doesn't make sense. When a sex offender is caught, and proof given, they are put on a list and basically not removed, hell the list updates whenever they chose to relocate and such. So why could a spammer, just have this twisted around in the US court? Other than the Judge's ruling TFA didn't get much into detail as to why he chose the way he did.
Ok, so they chucked E3 (to later be replaced anyway) cause it wasn't focusing on the industry and it's people more so than the average day gamer getting into it, and all the hype etc They are saying GDC is becoming the same, more flashy big name stuff rather than it's usual routine.
It's simple, and obvious, make a gaming/technology industry show, that is for the people. Developers, businesses etc are all welcome regardless, and could setup booths of their own. I know, someone will quote me PAX but for every video game or console promoting itself there, there are another couple hundred people sitting around playing CCG's and such which while cool in their own right wouldn't fit in too much with a video game themed place such as an E3-like show. So you host this show, stick it some place neutral for god sakes, no West Coast, no East Coast. Make'em meet in the middle, hold the shit somewhere in north Texas or something. A large building, open to the public via purchased tickets, booths to be rented. No need to fake some industry connection to get in. Keep the booth babes but tame them up some, other wise you run the risk of having your show being labeled as adults only, which would cut into the fan base that could attend.
It would suck, as an idea, if no companies came out for it. If Nintendo, MS, Sony and others didn't show up, you'd basically just have one giant LAN party where people walked around from console demo unit to demo unit playing various games. But it could work. It would solve the "omg E3 ain't what it used to be, cancel it" or the "omg GDC is turning into E3" bullshit and make way for a more open E3-style show that is more accessible to the entire country.
I read one of the other articles about it here on/. a while back, when it was in the "idea" stage. Now it's all but basically implemented? I got a few..questions here so mod me down if you wish cause, I gotta ask;
So, we have until 2013 to become registered and with card right, what if we don't register? Are we just not admitted into federal buildings and airplanes as the article says? Or can businesses start not allowing customers entrance to their places without a card? Will businesses be able to shut off allowing a customer to buy a service or good from them cause they don't have a card? (such as even if they are paying for cash?) And what will be the "cost" of this new card for individuals? Some of us on fixed or basically no income at all, can barely afford to pay the bills and buy food every week, even if it's an el cheap price of like $20.00 USD that's $20 I don't have to waste every week, that's money spent on bills, and food. If it were something of a luxury item as most people would tell you, eat less or buy cheap food like ramen, save up and buy it. But should we American's be forced to pay for it? (The article wasn't clear on any individual cost)
This is both not shocking at all and scary. I expected much from Bush's plans and whatnot, I wouldn't be surprised if he got us caught in a nuclear war. But this is scary. I don't fly on planes and such so ID's to get on them never bothered me. I have a fear of cars. I don't mind riding in them, as long as someone else is driving. As such I've never gotten a drivers license and anything I've needed one for can always be clarified for by a DMV issue state ID', none of this RFID-track-me-anywhere bullshit etc. If I'm paying in cash, a restaurant or bookstore shouldn't need to see my "papers" to allow me the grace of purchasing their services or goods.
Not to get into specifics but I live in the south eastern part of the US, basically the "bible belt". I myself, am not really religious. Never been to a church, never read more than a couple pages of "the Bible" etc And ironically enough going through grade school, junior high and high school we never had a problem with any teacher actually teaching evolution. At least, I never heard of any complaints from other students or heard of anyone's parents complaining about it. You'd think there'd be more uproar, specially in the south. Gotta love them hypocrites of the south, it's bad to teach evolution rather than the whole god-created-stuff thing but many "Christians" disobey one of the teachings of the bible (as I remember, vaguely); god says it aint good to gamble. Yet where are a lot of Bingo Night's hosted? Your Local Church, usually ran by Church Employees to boot. Evolution = bad, gambling against the bibles wishes inside a church no less = good!
On one hand they need some kind of progression / grind on the other hand they need a speedier process. For example, I both love and hate the grind in an MMO. In a MMO, if none of my friends happen to be online, I don't mind grinding some, pass the time, get some loot, level whatever But when friends are around and it's time for other stuff (pvp for example or large party quests) then being a higher level than what you slowly progress as, is much preferred. No one likes trying to pvp at level 5 when other people are lvl 50, 60 or a 100.
People often make the claim of "well those people put in the time, so should you." OR they say "Well if you want instant gratification in levels and progress this game isn't for you." They may be technically right on both accounts but I pose this question for you; What game is right for us? Can you point me out a pay-to-play MMORPG that basically let's you jump right into the fray max level, with decent gear and a fighting chance against those that may or may not have ground up their levels and gear? (GuildWars does not count, it is not a MMORPG and you are still gimped in PvP character creation). That's the thing, while most MMO's "aren't" for us since we want a jump in levels or progression, there also aren't any for us to really choose from. If you know a MMO that has a decent sized player base, costs money to help filter out froobies and young players that let's you jump ahead please feel free to point it out to me, I'd love to try it.
I only played WoW briefly, but I know enough as a regular player does to know no other company at present will "beat" WoW. Why? Their personal limitations.
Other companies, won't take a chance. How many MMO's can claim they offer player based scripting for god knows how many in game effects? Or any of the other features WoW has? Despite the fact I dislike WoW, Blizzard did do that that right; Instead of coming up with some super special features of their own that other MMO's didn't have, they cherry picked what they thought were the best features. Not stolen content mind you but just things that an MMO should have. Case in point, umpteenth kinds of filters for the various chat huds. You'd be amazed that not every MMO offers a good deal of filters like WoW, or hell even any filters at all.
And the engine itself, of WoW, is the killer. Sure it's not really some supreme graphical eye candy people expect three years later after it's release but that is the point. Blizzard took a chance. They released a game engine that surprisingly works very well on low end hardware PC's which people tend to forget makes up the majority of gamers. Ever wonder why Counter Strike 1.6 is probably the most popular first person shooter, still, to date? Cause Half Life 1 can be run on some very low end hardware (if I remember right, the HL1 engine is a modified Quake 2 engine). Point being, no other MMO company is going to cater to low end PC users. More and more MMO's have such huge graphical requirements. You think Vanguard is going to topple WoW? No. Even if the gameplay and options of the client matched that of WoW, they'd still be eliminating a huge chunk of the 7 million WoW base (asssuming Vanguard had 7 mil) simply cause a good portion of those people wouldn't be even able to run the game.
Blizzard rolled the dice and won. They took a chance on merging a ton of features from various MMO's and a game engine that wasn't exactly the top of the game when it came out, and it worked. You find me another developer that will take those chances, and you'll find yourself a candidate for a WoW successor.
Ok so we already know the MPAA and big studios want their piece of the pie when it comes to people downloading, uploading and viewing pirated material. Obviously they've hit up people who have uploaded such content, but how long until they start in on YT, Google, etc for people who viewed the material? We all know there's someone up in their corporate office thinking "Man, millions of people saw this commercial free, illegally, they should pay some sort of cost to see it." Is it just a matter of time till we see these studios do something like this?
As a resident of "Carlotte", North Carolina my entire 25 years on this Earth, I gotta let you in on a secret; we named it Charlotte. What is this "Carlotte" you speak of?;p
I know my copy of XP Pro isn't legit by any means. I didn't download it a friend from college a few years back gave me a copy (had SP1 integrated). I know it won't come up as legit if I install WGA, and I'd rather not have WGA lock down my PC. You'd think so close to Vista being out, XP prices would be cheaper but sadly, they are still $200+ at Walmart of all places for XP Home. I couldn't afford that much for a mainstream OS (that most applications need) back then and I still can't afford it now.
I think, one time, WGA did say I wasn't legit, kind of. Back in 05, remember the first workaround for WGA? Where you could just tell IE6 not to load the WGA pluggin, then go to the Windows Update site and update as usual? I think either they had fixed it at that one point or I forgot to turn it back off and I went to download a specific update it told me I wasn't licensed and to run WGA fully to figure out if my license was valid, luckily it never started any of that 5-10 second Startup/Shutdown wait times or popups/tray icons reminding me to buy XP.
The kicker is, the WGA program has sort of a discount service right? You tell them how and where you got your XP, they sell you a copy of XP at a much reduced price. Right, I got my copy off a guy I had 1 class with in college. He just happened to be a fellow tech/gaming geek like me. It's honestly been over 3 years since i've seen him, we never talked after college. Even if I could remember wtf his first name was I could definitely not tell you his last name, cause I never knew that. Irony there. Even if I wanted to man-up and tell WGA I'm fucked, here's who/what/how I did it, please sell me a copy cheaper, I couldn't. Somehow I doubt they'd believe the line of "A guy I once new, briefly in college, who's name I can't remember, gave me a copy of XP Pro w/ SP1 integrated"
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I can't switch to Linux for several reasons. While my knowledge of Windows kernel is very little (actual code knowledge that is, I know nothing), I know even less about Linux. So while modern day Linux distros are all very GUI friendly and look similar to Windows, what if something went drastically wrong with it? I don't know nearly enough about Linux's command line system or anything. While I know a decent bit about DOS I've seen a small touch of Linux when I ran a Half Life 1 server on a Linux box for a mod. Using PuTTy into it was a pain cause all these strange Linux command line commands were no where near what I was used to.
Now the real kicker reason why I can't switch; I have no guarantee for my PC being able to use it. While I'm sure I could find a distro that has decent drivers for my hardware, what am I to do about the PC games I play that do not have Linux ports? I could use some Linux emulation software like Wine right? I mean that's the easiest solution. Emulate Windows to run those must-have Windows applications. Well my PC is rather old. You figure in running Linux, plus emulating Windows, plus running a Windows based MMORPG where I normally got 20 fps on a PC, I doubt I'd get anywhere a playable state. While I'm sure some Linux distros themselves run faster, use less memory etc than Windows XP, having to run that and emulate Windows + Game probably negates any resources I had freed up from running Linux itself, if not making the game run even worse.
For some people, upgrading or buying a new PC simply so they can use Linux instead of Windows isn't an option. If I was going to shell out that much money, I'd go get another copy of Windows XP that has the current SP2 streamlined into the install to greatly reduce install and patch time. If I didn't play PC games that needed Windows, I might consider running Linux cause pretty much everything else I use can be used on Linux (Firefox, IRC, mp3 player, VLC, etc).
Autopatcher was basically the "only way" I could patch Windows up to date. Owning a rather used SP1 XP cd, getting all the critical updates and SP2 could be a bitch. Especially when it came to stuff that was vitally important to the system.
:(
Now it's just a matter of time before another huge flaw is founded which malware/spyware & virus makers exploit to shit. With WGA and all, patching my system against these hazards will basically be impossible. Just a matter of time before it succumbs to one of these
First and foremost, it's simply fair. I pay my, rather high priced, monthly bill for broadband cable internet access. While this is just access to the Internet and not access to every website obviously, it still is me paying to view or connect to the web.
:( Sure OS's have gotten some more security since the golden era of pop ups but that still happens. It's not just pop ups either, how much you wanna bet there's some way to execute a file via a embeded flash file? While you load that site it seeminly looks ok, a cute little flash movie, in the background it's installing some variation of w32.arseraping.exe. Yea, you could "avoid" sites that do that, but how do you tell? Say you're browsing a forum, and someone posts a link to some content (the content itself is legit) but the site it's on has ad's or a banner or something that installs some shit? You had no way of knowing. Are we to pre screen all websites before ever visiting them?
By doing so, let's say I go to a local news affiliates web site, such as my local NBC station or ABC. While their site does contain news and such, they also always have ad's, banners, auto-streaming flash, sometimes even old school popups. I already paid to get the Internet, and since anyone with a tv and bunny ears can access local news stations for free, why should these people need me to view their ad's? So they can pay for the domain? Bandwidth costs? Webmaster(s) salary? They are a company, news yes but still a company, that cost should already be covered. Why force it onto the user? That just leads down the road of the classic "information should always be free".
Second comes non profit type sites, that fall into the same example above. People who are paying for their own personal site, space, bandwidth, maybe even a domain name or two. Ad's might offset some cost right? Yes. Does that mean they can push it on the user? Possibly, I mean you want to view their website, it's their site. But, it's simple capitalism in my opinion. Such as, if you really need a neon flashing banner, annoyingly wide Google Ad Sense banners, streaming flash etc to help off set the "cost" of your website, then you really need to consider not having a site. The burden, yes burden, of having a site online falls on the owner and webmaster (in a personal reference especially). The user should "pay out" by viewing these ad's, simply cause you can't chuck a few more bucks for bandwidth every month? I have a somewhat small personal website, hosted for free, with some banner ad's and Ad Sense. It's mainly a small forum. What do I tell my users of that forum? "If you dislike the intrusive ad's, I recommend Firefox and Adblock"
A somewhat third, if you even consider it, is simple screen space. A good portion of Internet using people are still those on older machines, or machines with small monitor's. (Or ones that can't do a decent resolution). So while most web sites are optimized for what, at least 1024x768 these days, a lot of web users are still using 800x600 or even 640x480. Have you seen some of these ad's in a small resolution? They can take up the whole screen, cause you to needlessly scroll over, stretch out tables etc It's really great when you're reading information on a site and that particular page has information in several categories, left centered and righted, yet to read the right margin text, you need to scroll over due to a very long banner ad stretch the page (where as if it wasn't there, the page wouldn't be stretched).
Oh and lets not forget, the good old family of PC Destroyers; virus, spyware and malware. This was a chief reason I block ad's and eventually switched to Firefox. It doesn't help IE isn't as secure but the mere fact you can simply load website and have a popup or some other code on the site come up and start installing random stuff without you asking it too, was great
Point is, the advertisement venture is on a decay. I don't mind seeing an ad for something new, that I've never heard of (say on
Reboot was by far one of the best series of the 90's. For a kid's cartoon it's storylines and such even appealed to teenagers and adults (come on, how cool was Enzo grown up as Matrix?). To date the episode where Megabyte and Bob have a guitar battle is one of the coolest things in animation I've ever seen.
If those spoilers are true, that indeed sounds fucking awesome.
Only downside is, it's a new book. So the paperback edition won't be out for a while, and even most discount stores will want like $25 for the hardcover. Libraries will have it for a free checkout but the local libraries here have a 7-day checkout time for "new releases" whereas other books can be checked out for just over 3 weeks.
Ok so if you get to pick the 3 free HD-DVD's, it might be. But as I've said in the past the only way to get main stream penetration for either format is to make them equally priced as a regular standard DVD player is now. I can walk into Wal-Mart now and pick up a nice little dvd player for $60-70. Sure it doesn't have a shit ton of features but it plays dvd's which is all I require. When I can pick up a HD-DVD player or Blu-Ray for $50-70 then I'll buy one. This deal is pretty nice itself, but they probably have 3 specific movies to give away (the article didn't specify?).
Being a somewhat geek that has really wanted to get into the computer related work field, be a website designer, or a sysadmin or just a guy doing hardware repairs, I've always found it hindersome when it came to math.
Math was never, ever my strong suit. I can do your basics. Addition, subtraction, division and multiplication. Some real basic formulas but past that yea math is a subject I can't seem to learn. As you got higher and higher in math in terms of types and levels there were just even more and more formulas and types of equations for you to memorize. Just cause I can remember a shit ton about Star Trek doesn't mean I can memorize the first couple hundred Prime numbers or square roots of stuff or sign and cosign etc
Which was cool, cause despite how I always liked the idea of programming and such I knew that was well beyond my field of duty. But then you start looking at other mediums of the computer industry and a lot of jobs require a certain expertise in math. Hell even schools, want math math math. When I enrolled in community college years ago, before I could even set foot into a computer course of any kind (even real basic stuff like web design or web coding) I woulda had to take a ton of math classes. Since I never got around to Algebra 2 in high school (it wasn't a requirement to graduate) I would have had to take that, then Calculus then Trig, then all kinds of other stuff, just for a simple class on how to do HTML or graphical design.
Since then I've always been hampered by math. Sure I can memorize a telephone number, calculate a checkbook etc But memorizing hundreds of formulas (you may be able to look them up on the job, doing them for tests is different, not all teachers and professors let you write down the formulas). If I want a job as someone high up in the tech industry (that isn't ya know, rocket science) I still need some big time degree and high level of mathematics skill.
I'd take that seriously, if it wasn't posted by an A.C.
Well, the $180/month for cable is basically our only "luxury", we don't go out, don't eat out a super ton, the rest of our cash goes towards bills, utilities, etc If you stopped to consider the average American spends money every month on going to the movies, renting movies from rental stores, alcohol, going out with friends, etc I'd bet the price of that comes out to about the same as what I pay for cable/internet.
Yea, very common. I've got a Digital Cable package from Time Warner Cable, we got it in early 2000, and the price of the package has gone up a lot. We didn't get their highspeed cable till a year or two later, so that tacked on another $50/month. I think atm we're paying around $180, for a package that has all the HBO's, Cinemax's, Showtimes, Starz, Encores etc including On Demand channels (though PPV On Demand still has it's own per movie price).
I just love how every year, like clockwork, they increase the price. And there aren't a ton of new channels being added to justify the cost. We don't have HD, so there's no HDTV channels that need to be there. I'm not sure if it is just costing them more to license out or lease out (however it's done) the channels from companies like HBO and such. I mean I love HBO brand tv shows, watch them all the time, especially On Demand, but I'd never buy them on DVD cause HBO prices their dvd's horribly (like $80 for 13 episodes of The Sopranos? 13 whole episodes? come on...).
I'd go with another company but there aren't any real broadband cable providers, everyone else only has DSL and since my PC is ancient, it can't use a USB connector for the modem and I really don't want some house-call technician installing a DSL card (we're a low budget family so if he fubars my 7 year old PC, I'm screwed).
Other than absolutely proving it was a arrow from 1800's, and actually fired during that period, couldn't someone say in the last few years, fire a weapon from that time period at the whale?
It just seems a stretch that, a fragment, of an arrowhead, from the 1800's, managed to stay wedged in it's skin for over a century. Aside from that, I always figured some species of whales were long lived, I mean some turtles live well past one hundred years, why not a species of whale?
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/ 07/2317239
To justify someone modding me down, on the link to the yahoo page there are 3 trailers listed. Since the /. article said it was the Theatrical Trailer, that's the one I watched. That trailer, does not the sound. The "Exclusive" trailer is the new one, which does include the sound. If anything, the article was a tad misleading.
So far a few people have replied saying Optimus's transform sound is pretty old school, very similar to the original if not a slightly modified one at that.
Am I deaf? I've watched the trailer a half a dozen times now and none of the sounds for transforming, sound anything like the awesome original sound from Generation 1. Like not even remotely close to the sound. The one scene in the trailer where we see Optimus, yea his transform sound, sounds like the background sound from a car work shop; hydraulics going off, that "whir whir" sound of a bolt remover/tightener etc nothing like the original transform, nothing.
I won't be seeing it for a good number of reasons, but I was just curious where people are hearing this great old school sound, cause for me it's completely missing from this trailer, I literally could not hear it anywhere.
Joining up,even if drafted, they lose a lot of basic freedoms including free speech. I could understand if their C.O.'s didn't want a blog post accidentally revealing the location of a group of soldiers somewhere but most of this is probably done so nothing "bad" is said about whats happening over there or our current administration.
Let's not forget, this comes from the same people that didn't allow the footage of how many and when coffins/caskets were being brought home from Iraq to American soil. When you have to cover up how many are dying in the war you are "winning" then a few censored blogs isn't that far a stretch.
"The United States must be portrayed as an enemy"
I thought the Cold War b.s. was over with? Aren't we allies with the Russians? I mean, we use their space station, joint ventures in science and medicine, etc wtf happened so suddenly they now want to paint us as an enemy?
Not being upheld in the UK aside, didn't they have proof to show the courts the company in question did in fact use underhanded illegal tactics to achieve it's advertising? I ask cause, not only did they lose but they were forced to de-list the company and basically apologize. It doesn't make sense. When a sex offender is caught, and proof given, they are put on a list and basically not removed, hell the list updates whenever they chose to relocate and such. So why could a spammer, just have this twisted around in the US court? Other than the Judge's ruling TFA didn't get much into detail as to why he chose the way he did.
Ok, so they chucked E3 (to later be replaced anyway) cause it wasn't focusing on the industry and it's people more so than the average day gamer getting into it, and all the hype etc They are saying GDC is becoming the same, more flashy big name stuff rather than it's usual routine.
It's simple, and obvious, make a gaming/technology industry show, that is for the people. Developers, businesses etc are all welcome regardless, and could setup booths of their own. I know, someone will quote me PAX but for every video game or console promoting itself there, there are another couple hundred people sitting around playing CCG's and such which while cool in their own right wouldn't fit in too much with a video game themed place such as an E3-like show. So you host this show, stick it some place neutral for god sakes, no West Coast, no East Coast. Make'em meet in the middle, hold the shit somewhere in north Texas or something. A large building, open to the public via purchased tickets, booths to be rented. No need to fake some industry connection to get in. Keep the booth babes but tame them up some, other wise you run the risk of having your show being labeled as adults only, which would cut into the fan base that could attend.
It would suck, as an idea, if no companies came out for it. If Nintendo, MS, Sony and others didn't show up, you'd basically just have one giant LAN party where people walked around from console demo unit to demo unit playing various games. But it could work. It would solve the "omg E3 ain't what it used to be, cancel it" or the "omg GDC is turning into E3" bullshit and make way for a more open E3-style show that is more accessible to the entire country.
I read one of the other articles about it here on /. a while back, when it was in the "idea" stage. Now it's all but basically implemented? I got a few..questions here so mod me down if you wish cause, I gotta ask;
So, we have until 2013 to become registered and with card right, what if we don't register? Are we just not admitted into federal buildings and airplanes as the article says? Or can businesses start not allowing customers entrance to their places without a card? Will businesses be able to shut off allowing a customer to buy a service or good from them cause they don't have a card? (such as even if they are paying for cash?) And what will be the "cost" of this new card for individuals? Some of us on fixed or basically no income at all, can barely afford to pay the bills and buy food every week, even if it's an el cheap price of like $20.00 USD that's $20 I don't have to waste every week, that's money spent on bills, and food. If it were something of a luxury item as most people would tell you, eat less or buy cheap food like ramen, save up and buy it. But should we American's be forced to pay for it? (The article wasn't clear on any individual cost)
This is both not shocking at all and scary. I expected much from Bush's plans and whatnot, I wouldn't be surprised if he got us caught in a nuclear war. But this is scary. I don't fly on planes and such so ID's to get on them never bothered me. I have a fear of cars. I don't mind riding in them, as long as someone else is driving. As such I've never gotten a drivers license and anything I've needed one for can always be clarified for by a DMV issue state ID', none of this RFID-track-me-anywhere bullshit etc. If I'm paying in cash, a restaurant or bookstore shouldn't need to see my "papers" to allow me the grace of purchasing their services or goods.
Not to get into specifics but I live in the south eastern part of the US, basically the "bible belt". I myself, am not really religious. Never been to a church, never read more than a couple pages of "the Bible" etc And ironically enough going through grade school, junior high and high school we never had a problem with any teacher actually teaching evolution. At least, I never heard of any complaints from other students or heard of anyone's parents complaining about it. You'd think there'd be more uproar, specially in the south. Gotta love them hypocrites of the south, it's bad to teach evolution rather than the whole god-created-stuff thing but many "Christians" disobey one of the teachings of the bible (as I remember, vaguely); god says it aint good to gamble. Yet where are a lot of Bingo Night's hosted? Your Local Church, usually ran by Church Employees to boot. Evolution = bad, gambling against the bibles wishes inside a church no less = good!
On one hand they need some kind of progression / grind on the other hand they need a speedier process. For example, I both love and hate the grind in an MMO. In a MMO, if none of my friends happen to be online, I don't mind grinding some, pass the time, get some loot, level whatever But when friends are around and it's time for other stuff (pvp for example or large party quests) then being a higher level than what you slowly progress as, is much preferred. No one likes trying to pvp at level 5 when other people are lvl 50, 60 or a 100.
People often make the claim of "well those people put in the time, so should you." OR they say "Well if you want instant gratification in levels and progress this game isn't for you." They may be technically right on both accounts but I pose this question for you; What game is right for us? Can you point me out a pay-to-play MMORPG that basically let's you jump right into the fray max level, with decent gear and a fighting chance against those that may or may not have ground up their levels and gear? (GuildWars does not count, it is not a MMORPG and you are still gimped in PvP character creation). That's the thing, while most MMO's "aren't" for us since we want a jump in levels or progression, there also aren't any for us to really choose from. If you know a MMO that has a decent sized player base, costs money to help filter out froobies and young players that let's you jump ahead please feel free to point it out to me, I'd love to try it.
I only played WoW briefly, but I know enough as a regular player does to know no other company at present will "beat" WoW. Why? Their personal limitations.
Other companies, won't take a chance. How many MMO's can claim they offer player based scripting for god knows how many in game effects? Or any of the other features WoW has? Despite the fact I dislike WoW, Blizzard did do that that right; Instead of coming up with some super special features of their own that other MMO's didn't have, they cherry picked what they thought were the best features. Not stolen content mind you but just things that an MMO should have. Case in point, umpteenth kinds of filters for the various chat huds. You'd be amazed that not every MMO offers a good deal of filters like WoW, or hell even any filters at all.
And the engine itself, of WoW, is the killer. Sure it's not really some supreme graphical eye candy people expect three years later after it's release but that is the point. Blizzard took a chance. They released a game engine that surprisingly works very well on low end hardware PC's which people tend to forget makes up the majority of gamers. Ever wonder why Counter Strike 1.6 is probably the most popular first person shooter, still, to date? Cause Half Life 1 can be run on some very low end hardware (if I remember right, the HL1 engine is a modified Quake 2 engine). Point being, no other MMO company is going to cater to low end PC users. More and more MMO's have such huge graphical requirements. You think Vanguard is going to topple WoW? No. Even if the gameplay and options of the client matched that of WoW, they'd still be eliminating a huge chunk of the 7 million WoW base (asssuming Vanguard had 7 mil) simply cause a good portion of those people wouldn't be even able to run the game.
Blizzard rolled the dice and won. They took a chance on merging a ton of features from various MMO's and a game engine that wasn't exactly the top of the game when it came out, and it worked. You find me another developer that will take those chances, and you'll find yourself a candidate for a WoW successor.
Ok so we already know the MPAA and big studios want their piece of the pie when it comes to people downloading, uploading and viewing pirated material. Obviously they've hit up people who have uploaded such content, but how long until they start in on YT, Google, etc for people who viewed the material? We all know there's someone up in their corporate office thinking "Man, millions of people saw this commercial free, illegally, they should pay some sort of cost to see it." Is it just a matter of time till we see these studios do something like this?
As a resident of "Carlotte", North Carolina my entire 25 years on this Earth, I gotta let you in on a secret; we named it Charlotte. What is this "Carlotte" you speak of? ;p
I know my copy of XP Pro isn't legit by any means. I didn't download it a friend from college a few years back gave me a copy (had SP1 integrated). I know it won't come up as legit if I install WGA, and I'd rather not have WGA lock down my PC. You'd think so close to Vista being out, XP prices would be cheaper but sadly, they are still $200+ at Walmart of all places for XP Home. I couldn't afford that much for a mainstream OS (that most applications need) back then and I still can't afford it now.
I think, one time, WGA did say I wasn't legit, kind of. Back in 05, remember the first workaround for WGA? Where you could just tell IE6 not to load the WGA pluggin, then go to the Windows Update site and update as usual? I think either they had fixed it at that one point or I forgot to turn it back off and I went to download a specific update it told me I wasn't licensed and to run WGA fully to figure out if my license was valid, luckily it never started any of that 5-10 second Startup/Shutdown wait times or popups/tray icons reminding me to buy XP.
The kicker is, the WGA program has sort of a discount service right? You tell them how and where you got your XP, they sell you a copy of XP at a much reduced price. Right, I got my copy off a guy I had 1 class with in college. He just happened to be a fellow tech/gaming geek like me. It's honestly been over 3 years since i've seen him, we never talked after college. Even if I could remember wtf his first name was I could definitely not tell you his last name, cause I never knew that. Irony there. Even if I wanted to man-up and tell WGA I'm fucked, here's who/what/how I did it, please sell me a copy cheaper, I couldn't. Somehow I doubt they'd believe the line of "A guy I once new, briefly in college, who's name I can't remember, gave me a copy of XP Pro w/ SP1 integrated"