Yup, you could finish the game - I did. The parent poster is right - Star Control2 is nice, but Starflight was king.
I found Earth - funny to read the transmissions from that planet, something about the first man to get a brain-transplant, if I remember right, and the quote was, "after receiving the transplant, [the person that got it] didn't have much to say";)
***spoiler***
Beating the game involves finding a special device which lets you land on high-gravity planets. You then need to find the special planet and blow it up. Blowing it up takes a 'black egg', if I remember right. A powerful bomb - there are two in the game. If you like, you can land on and blow up the 'Ulek Central Ganglian [or something very similar]'. This made them all go nuts - if you recall, they had the huge-ass ships that always contacted you in binary code. They were harmless, unless you attacked them, in which case they kicked your ass for most of the game.
The advantage to blowing up their control-planet is that their ships are made from the second most valuable mineral in the game and they become easy to take out after you disable them. This effectively makes you instantly rich, though by that stage of the game, you pretty much are decked out anyway, as far as ship and crew go...
Anyway, you need to take one of the black eggs into Velox space and find the special planet. If you use the map that came with the original game, you can use brute-force to find it - there aren't that many systems in Velox space.
The point of the game, of course, is that you discover that what you use as fuel is actually a sentient race. They just operate on a slower time scale, and got quite pissed they were being used for FTL space travel, so they go around causing stars to nova in defense.
In any case, the way the game unfolds is actually like reading a half-way decent scifi novel - it was just too much fun back in the day playing it for hours...
I've seen it - this doctor is one of the few things this series seems to have going for it thus far...oh well...
Here is a little review I wrote about it - I'd like to know what anyone else thought of the actual series thus far - surprised Slashdot hasn't covered that angle of the show (or if they have, I missed it, lol - which is quite likely:) ):
***spoiler warning***
I really enjoyed it up to the part where the boyfriend gets swallowed up by the trash-can. They tried just a tad too hard to make this funny. Actually, the swallowing I can handle - but the burp? Come on - don't they expect that semi-science-savy folk would be watching? Why would the trash-can burp? It didn't eat and ingest him, it has no stomach with extra gas, etc., etc.
Later, when the shait hits the bloomin' fan, why just manikins? Why not all manner of plastic, even gum wrappers? How cool if anything plastic would have "turned" against humanity?
Earlier in the episode, while I was still liking it, they even joked about the silliness of taking over manikins, yet, at the end, it was manikins that tried to take over...
And, er, on that note: why? Why take over, and, er, take over what? Why shoot folks in shopping centers, and, why did all of those manikins come with guns? What was their plan - certainly if the military would have been called in, those slow moving and clumsy pieces of walking plastic would have been easy fodder...
Perhaps if the plastic-queen would have had more character, it could have saved the episode. Many Tom Baker episodes - the ones I remember the best - featured lots of talk and interaction with the bad-guys. Even if you didn't always feel for them, you understood their aims, the reason they were pissed, their goals, etc. At first, I really liked the pace, but by the time it was over, I missed the long and sometimes meandering 2 hour old-style...
The good: refreshing look for the TARDIS, a likable Doctor with much potential, a very cute associate, vastly better special effects
The bad: rushed-story line lacking depth, trying too hard and therefore failing to be funny
The main components - the Doctor, the TARDIS, and the associate are good - this series can work, if they try to make this a tad more into a semi-serious sci-fi show, and stay away from the Hercules sitcom-fantasy-style which they seem to have adopted. Judging from the preview of the next episode and the "last human" and her comments about plastic surgery, I don't have high-hopes at this point...
They should realize that ordinary non-scifi types will not appreciate their efforts to be funny at the expense of sci-fi - Dr. Who just isn't for "ordinary" folks, period, IMO. Their only hope is to appeal to their real target audience and make something they can be proud of.
But, that LONG? I think it might be worth spending more money on more complex systems that are more versatile and can walk around up there basically for years instead of weeks or months...
These baby-steps seem so infuriating to me, lol, I want cool shait discovered before I die, damn it...
Would it be so difficult, with today's tech, to send a moderately expensive mini-factory of some sort, nuclear powered? We could send along plenty of CPUs and RAM, and then remote-prog the thing to spit out the "bodies". Once we find a cool place to go, we bring the buggers back to base, have them walk into a disassembly plant, chips get removed, metal gets melted, new forms are made, new vehicles are made and away they go - we send along some balloons to transport them to far-off sites...
Every so often, instead of sending a brand-new vehicle system, we send rubber, chips, helium, better solar-panels, Mars-orbit satellites to beam down concentrated sunlight or microwaves, etc. Or, relatively cheap science-kits/experiments, ready to be inserted into whatever vehicle the plant is currently making.
Maybe just maybe, as AI gets better, the installation can mine some of its own resources, but it seems to me that investing in a foot-hold of some real kind would be worth the cost.
People are greedy, yes, and people which belong to the biz side of the Entertainment Industry seem to take the cake.
Remember that these same types objected to the Player Piano and the VCR - they would "hurt the artists"...
It's all about powerful biz-types using the legal system to protect and extend their own wealth. The drug companies do the same thing - they will use the courts to delay the end of their patent protection for new drugs, knowing they will lose, in order to make a few extra million. Not that I entirely disagree with these practices in all ways - they seem to be good strategies at times! Immoral, in many cases IMO, but good strategies nonetheless. Certainly less moral than someone who freeloads on the 'net. The freeloader isn't consciously trying to be greedy, at least not in my experience. I'm not an ethicist, but perhaps now that I think about it, when a freeloader consciously tries to save money by using eDonkey, his moral status is equal with the anti-Player Piano-type companies? Who knows...
Just because some of us think that TiVO with commercial-skip, dvd-vcr combo players (with built in, blatantly labeled, large COPY button) and Player Pianos are NEAT doesn't mean we want the GPL ripped to shreds.
Nuance is the key word here - lets try not be simple-minded generalists, ok?
I really enjoyed it up to the part where the boyfriend gets swallowed up by the trash-can. They tried just a tad too hard to make this funny. Actually, the swallowing I can handle - but the burp? Come on - don't they expect that semi-science-savy folk would be watching? Why would the trash-can burp? It didn't eat and ingest him, it has no stomach with extra gas, etc., etc.
Later, when the shait hits the bloomin' fan, why just manikins? Why not all manner of plastic, even gum wrappers? How cool if anything plastic would have "turned" against humanity?
Earlier in the episode, while I was still liking it, they even joked about the silliness of taking over manikins, yet, at the end, it was manikins that tried to take over...
And, er, on that note: why? Why take over, and, er, take over what? Why shoot folks in shopping centers, and, why did all of those manikins come with guns? What was their plan - certainly if the military would have been called in, those slow moving and clumsy pieces of walking plastic would have been easy fodder...
Perhaps if the plastic-queen would have had more character, it could have saved the episode. Many Tom Baker episodes - the ones I remember the best - featured lots of talk and interaction with the bad-guys. Even if you didn't always feel for them, you understood their aims, the reason they were pissed, their goals, etc. At first, I really liked the pace, but by the time it was over, I missed the long and sometimes meandering 2 hour old-style...
The good: refreshing look for the TARDIS, a likable Doctor with much potential, a very cute associate, vastly better special effects
The bad: rushed-story line lacking depth, trying too hard and therefore failing to be funny
The main components - the Doctor, the TARDIS, and the associate are good - this series can work, if they try to make this a tad more into a semi-serious sci-fi show, and stay away from the Hercules sitcom-fantasy-style which they seem to have adopted. Judging from the preview of the next episode and the "last human" and her comments about plastic surgery, I don't have high-hopes at this point...
They should realize that ordinary non-scifi types will not appreciate their efforts to be funny at the expense of sci-fi - Dr. Who just isn't for "ordinary" folks, period, IMO. Their only hope is to appeal to their real target audience and make something they can be proud of.
Yup, shes pulling the "centrist" move like her hubby did...
However, if she runs and actually gets the Donkey's nomination, vote for her anyway! Vote for anyone on the Dem ticket. There are two many important issues at stake right now - issues that go WAY beyond Hillary and her personal-marketing schemes. Alas, like the last election, the next election won't be about the individual so much as it will be about party/philosophy/culture wars, etc.
Even if you must vote for an Elephant, please, keep that in mind - there is a shit-ton of power at stake, and the person who happens to be president is just a cog in the greater machinery - and it will likely remain that way until the Supreme Court potential-open-seats issue is settled, to give one example.
Don't get me wrong, I love that they keep releasing these low-hardware-spec WMs, and use them occasionally with the various Linux liveCDs out there, but,
If you use a computer that's less than 600mhz, you're probally going to use Blackbox, Openbox, Fluxbox, etc.
I run KDE on an old laptop, Pentium2, 366Mhz. The "bloat" of KDE might be a RAM issue, but not a speed issue. It runs rather well. It has 160megs of RAM, though KDE runs better with 128 than XP does, in my experience, with similar eye-candy/frills.
Incidentally, I also run a non-GUI Linux on my "server" - it's a P1, 166Mhz beast with 48megs of RAM. It has KDE installed, but I don't run it by default. I do, however, occasionally run KDE apps via ssh remotely, and it works. K3B, for example, from time to time, as I use that machine for CD-writing...
I have no problem with your personal faith - as long as we agree that ID is not "scientific". Applying science to it would mean that we would need to infinitely find the creators of creators. Why do I talk about science in this regard? Because the implication was the 'creation vs evolution' debate. One is a science, the other, a religious belief.
Using the universe itself as evidence for a god can only work if we don't already accept a god going in (otherwise we would be employing circular-logic), and if we employ a 'no god going in' approach, then we have no taboo against finding the 'maker of the maker', etc., since the notion of 'no God before me', for example, is a specific religious idea that implies the existence of a god.
Have you noticed how every model of "evolution" first begins with in-depth instructions detailing how we must first create the conditions necessary for the model to work?
Your comment seemed to me to be pro-ID, given the nature of the Slashdot article, and, well, your post;)
I'm glad you find my comment funny - usually I'm accused of being long-winded and boring, and that's by friends;)
If I didn't know better, I'd say you were hinting at Intelligent Design;)
Fine, lets follow your premise - the Universe is so complex, ID suggests, that it must have had a designer.
Now that we've established that, we see that God must then be, by far, the most complex thing. Therefore, God had a designer. Therefore, the notion of a single god is silly and monotheistic religions have it all wrong...
...and they did it once again with the Nomad;) - a portable Genesis in a Gamegear-esq form-factor. A funky/cool feature was a tv-tuner card, if I remember right...
Personally, I think that's rather cool, assuming that new games will be made for these systems. That was the case with the Gamegear, though not nearly enough. I still find myself playing old games - having them portable can only be a plus.
I see. Is information transfer required? I mean, the speed of light is a law within our universe - maybe this doesn't apply to the universe itself in terms of it's role in a greater meta-verse of some kind?
Not to jump into philosophy-lala land here, but if things like time, speed, "direction", etc., are properties of our universe, maybe they don't mean anything outside of our universe (if there is such a region)? So, perhaps the expansion of of space itself, not matter or energy, but the space that matter and energy occupy, can expand faster than light. If we allow for this, then maybe the laws that govern matter and the layout of the galaxy chains, etc., were laid out when all matter was in close range - the dancers were each given nstructions at dance-practice, and then sent their own way.
I thought the "uniform" issue was solved, when they did a more detailed scan of the background radiation?
I thought that both a scientist who concentrated just on a tiny spot of the sky, and a newer probe launched by NASA both reached the same conclusion - that the early universe was in fact lumpy as expected?
Oh, and get me some of those things to stick on the patient's head and shock him while I wave this noisy glowing thing over him! Even though we're zapping his head, let me know if he doesn't heave his mid-section up nice and high!
If he nearly dies, I refuse to place the patient into statis (something we've hinted/mentioned on other episodes (or freeze him out-right, for that matter)). Instead, we will have the patient nearly die, right now - it's much more dramatic!
I also refuse to just use the patient's last good transporter pattern, because we don't want to get too controversial and talk about the whole "soul-issue"! Of course, we could just use the pattern as a "filter", but that always takes 40 minutes of technobabble from Geordi and Data first and there is probably some reason (like cooky metals if we are on the sufrace of a planet, or some funky atmospheric shit which will prevent it from working).
I have to agree completely. It's spell check sucks. I've often had to resort to dictionary.com to look up a word - it sucks at phonetic spell-suggestions, and for a bad speller like me, it's a serious limitation...
"immiedietly" is an example - it simply will not give the right suggestions or anything remotely close.
... instruments similar to those used on the 1970s Viking missions have previously failed to detect life there.
Whatever happened with that study about the chemical reactions they found on Mars - and thought was life at first - following the day-cycle (the 25 hours of sunlight on Mars or something similar)? I thought the verdict was still out on this?
It's dry, I've removed all of the bat-guano from the floor, and adjusted the stalactites and stalagmites so I don't run into them with my forehead (or stub my toes).
Yup, you made some great points too - especially the bit about being cool for hobbyists and the things it can do. It makes computing fun again;)
I would like to offer, however, that setting up firewalls and running transcode - those two things specifically - has been made really really easy. I find myself using Firestarter - it has a GUI for config and does pretty much everything by itself, including IP-masq - literally anyone can enable Internet sharing and enable a firewall using this tool. Ditto for transcode. Many times in the past did I try to find a shortcut, but I always ended up editing that paragraph-sized command line myself to get something decent - not anymore. There are several tools now, both GUI and command line, that drive transcode to do amazing things hassle free. k3b uses it, for example, though I've never tried it that way...
I take it you mean the notion of small single-purpose pieces which can be assembled like LEGO blocks to make larger programs, right?
I agree with this as well. My point is, that between cdrecord and cdrdao, there are is some missing functionality. Here we would have a third possible low-level way to close the gap. My hope is that this will encourage the open source projects to close the gap.
Another way to look at this is to say that we can have the most wonderful front-ends (k3b for example) limited by their back-end software. Here for the first time in a long while, is something more than just another front-end. Granted, I would prefer a separation of a front-end and a back-end for Nero...
My argument, in other words, is not to say that I dislike the fact that many front-ends use transcode as a back-end for video processing, but that I'm grateful to also have mencoder as a possible back-end. Choice is good.
vcdgear can convert NRG files. I haven't used it recently, and I don't know if Nero has updated their file format...
CDMage is a great Windows tool that can convert to and fro many image formats - it can flawlessly convert CloneCD (bin/cue/ccd) files to bin/cue files for example - required for burning CloneCD images from Linux. CDMage is free and works rather well in WINE. I mention this because I believe that Nero for Windows can write CloneCD image files - it would be handy if a Linux tool could natively write this format...
Re:Long story short....
on
NeroLinux vs. K3b
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
They may both use the same API, but k3b does this indirectly - it uses cdrecord and cdrdao for CD operations at least - it doesn't speak directly to the API - at least not the last time I looked into it.
I just RTFA, it seems clear that Nero has a way to go in Linux, however, if it speaks directly to the API, that is, runs without calling upon cdrdao and cdrecord, then it has the possibility of surpassing k3b in the future, since there are a few things that these tools cannot currently do - writing Karoke CDs or writing an mp3 on the fly in DAO mode, for example.
Further, Nero could very well use transcode and the other movie-tools that k3b uses. I hope this happens - I want the competition of alternatives to cdrecord and cdrdao - they are wonderful tools, don't get me wrong, but they are incomplete. I can't really speak about the dvd tools, I've hardly used them.
I'm a tad confused - Knoppix uses the GUI that many Linux distros use - if you have copy/paste/mouse-highlight vs. crtl-c/v/x issues, they will also be present in Knoppix *scratches head* In my experience, these issues are quickly learned. I now use mouse-highlight AND the keyboard shortcuts with my fav. apps, and what this amounts too is, in some cases, two clipboards without the use of a third party multi-clipboard tool. One person's nightmare is another's feature;)
Further, most distros have the Knoppix auto-detection stuff - hardware detection really isn't a problem anymore.
You said it yourself in your post - Windows has spoiled you. Actually, it hasn't spoiled you, are are just used to it. I might say that when I switch to Windows, that Linux has spoiled me. First, installing most any modern Linux from scratch is easier and requires less user-interaction than a Windows install.
Second, the irritation of spyware/driver disks/27 char-long reg codes, etc., and multiple reboots really really irks me. As does a driver download, which insists on running a Windows-console self-extracting deal, which requires two blank floppies, which I then must manually load and install - it's 2005, for God's sake!? I hate floppies, and don't have many drives for the number of machines I use. This issue really ground a project I recently had to a stand-still, requiring me to hook up an ancient drive, find disks, download semi-legal boot disks, etc., etc. As for the Windows GUI, I can't handle a GUI which doesn't allow for multiple Desktops - having to continally shrink and resize windows is silly - I have most apps full screen at all times on alternate desktops...
Most Windows folk that try Linux try to install it as a second OS onto their nicely stocked, pre-installed and configured, PC. Imagine you purchased a pre-installed and configured Linux PC - no doubt, you would experience similar joys - think about it.
Yes, of course in the real world you are much less likely to come across a store-bought, ready-to-go, Linux PC, nevertheless, that's another issue altogether. We should compare apples to apples, to use that damn overused-cliche.
Let me ramble on and mention conf files for a moment. There are GUI front-ends for virtually any config that you can think of in Linux. However, you will find that editing a simple, human readable text file is often easier. What is the difference between using a GUI which prompts you for values to configure your LAN/ethernet setup as opposed to entering them into a text file, which has prompts that you can read? Think about this for a moment - easy is when the LAN sets itself up. If your LAN is thus configured, Linux can do this as easily as Windows. If not, then both require manual entry of ip addresses...
Once you get familiar with Linux, editing a conf file may becomes as normal as learning keyboard shortcuts in Office apps basically, this translates into productivity, but in either case, it's not required..
Wow, I'm on a rambling roll here! Someone stop me! Let me address the standard-user-interface issue from this angle - most people have zero issue figuring out if the 'Settings' menu entry has moved someplace else and has been renamed to 'Options'. Further, most people have no issue using WinAmp and Quicktime and other "cute" GUIs which defy the standard widgets. I'm sorry, but only an anal person who memorizes layouts cannot handle a limited diversity of UIs. Computers are extremely simple to use, provided someone takes the time to meet them 1/5 of the way;)
I think that for the post part, comments such as yours basically amount too, "well, I wanted to try Linux, but I quickly realized, that Linux isn't Windows".
Late releases, stupid politics and aged packages isn't doing this distro any justice.
Come on, man, what myths you spew about Debian in general! You may wish to revise your statement and relegate it to SPARC specificaly...
I'm writing this on a Kanotix install of Debian-unstable - there is nothing "old" about it, or slow for that matter. Replace "politics" with "principles". It's not as if it's a handicap! Debian separates that software which fits into with their principles from that which doesn't, but, honestly, as a user of a modern Debian-based distro, in practical terms as to what I want to install and use, I hardly notice. Further, at least Debian has some principles as far as companies go...
What Debian means to me is simply the absolute best package system in the sense that they take extreme care and I won't break something when I upgrade. I'm using the same brand-spanking new version of Firefox as you, you Gentoo-zealot, and I got it via apt.
Most distros presume to do what Gentoo and Debian can do these days, but, have you ever used Mandrake's URPMI for example!? I honestly can't say how good or bad the Gentoo package system is, but I can say this, in terms of avoiding dependency-hell, Debian is the best I've used, by leaps and bounds. Yes, I'm sure that compiling everything results in tighter and faster code, but there are many ways to judge the value of something and on my old hardware, Debian feels quite nice, even in full KDE/OpenOffice heavy-GUI glory.
Slashdot Mirror
I found Earth - funny to read the transmissions from that planet, something about the first man to get a brain-transplant, if I remember right, and the quote was, "after receiving the transplant, [the person that got it] didn't have much to say" ;)
***spoiler***
Beating the game involves finding a special device which lets you land on high-gravity planets. You then need to find the special planet and blow it up. Blowing it up takes a 'black egg', if I remember right. A powerful bomb - there are two in the game. If you like, you can land on and blow up the 'Ulek Central Ganglian [or something very similar]'. This made them all go nuts - if you recall, they had the huge-ass ships that always contacted you in binary code. They were harmless, unless you attacked them, in which case they kicked your ass for most of the game.
The advantage to blowing up their control-planet is that their ships are made from the second most valuable mineral in the game and they become easy to take out after you disable them. This effectively makes you instantly rich, though by that stage of the game, you pretty much are decked out anyway, as far as ship and crew go...
Anyway, you need to take one of the black eggs into Velox space and find the special planet. If you use the map that came with the original game, you can use brute-force to find it - there aren't that many systems in Velox space.
The point of the game, of course, is that you discover that what you use as fuel is actually a sentient race. They just operate on a slower time scale, and got quite pissed they were being used for FTL space travel, so they go around causing stars to nova in defense.
In any case, the way the game unfolds is actually like reading a half-way decent scifi novel - it was just too much fun back in the day playing it for hours...
Here is a little review I wrote about it - I'd like to know what anyone else thought of the actual series thus far - surprised Slashdot hasn't covered that angle of the show (or if they have, I missed it, lol - which is quite likely :) ):
***spoiler warning***
I really enjoyed it up to the part where the boyfriend gets swallowed up by the trash-can. They tried just a tad too hard to make this funny. Actually, the swallowing I can handle - but the burp? Come on - don't they expect that semi-science-savy folk would be watching? Why would the trash-can burp? It didn't eat and ingest him, it has no stomach with extra gas, etc., etc.
Later, when the shait hits the bloomin' fan, why just manikins? Why not all manner of plastic, even gum wrappers? How cool if anything plastic would have "turned" against humanity?
Earlier in the episode, while I was still liking it, they even joked about the silliness of taking over manikins, yet, at the end, it was manikins that tried to take over...
And, er, on that note: why? Why take over, and, er, take over what? Why shoot folks in shopping centers, and, why did all of those manikins come with guns? What was their plan - certainly if the military would have been called in, those slow moving and clumsy pieces of walking plastic would have been easy fodder...
Perhaps if the plastic-queen would have had more character, it could have saved the episode. Many Tom Baker episodes - the ones I remember the best - featured lots of talk and interaction with the bad-guys. Even if you didn't always feel for them, you understood their aims, the reason they were pissed, their goals, etc. At first, I really liked the pace, but by the time it was over, I missed the long and sometimes meandering 2 hour old-style...
The good: refreshing look for the TARDIS, a likable Doctor with much potential, a very cute associate, vastly better special effects
The bad: rushed-story line lacking depth, trying too hard and therefore failing to be funny
The main components - the Doctor, the TARDIS, and the associate are good - this series can work, if they try to make this a tad more into a semi-serious sci-fi show, and stay away from the Hercules sitcom-fantasy-style which they seem to have adopted. Judging from the preview of the next episode and the "last human" and her comments about plastic surgery, I don't have high-hopes at this point...
They should realize that ordinary non-scifi types will not appreciate their efforts to be funny at the expense of sci-fi - Dr. Who just isn't for "ordinary" folks, period, IMO. Their only hope is to appeal to their real target audience and make something they can be proud of.
These baby-steps seem so infuriating to me, lol, I want cool shait discovered before I die, damn it...
Would it be so difficult, with today's tech, to send a moderately expensive mini-factory of some sort, nuclear powered? We could send along plenty of CPUs and RAM, and then remote-prog the thing to spit out the "bodies". Once we find a cool place to go, we bring the buggers back to base, have them walk into a disassembly plant, chips get removed, metal gets melted, new forms are made, new vehicles are made and away they go - we send along some balloons to transport them to far-off sites...
Every so often, instead of sending a brand-new vehicle system, we send rubber, chips, helium, better solar-panels, Mars-orbit satellites to beam down concentrated sunlight or microwaves, etc. Or, relatively cheap science-kits/experiments, ready to be inserted into whatever vehicle the plant is currently making.
Maybe just maybe, as AI gets better, the installation can mine some of its own resources, but it seems to me that investing in a foot-hold of some real kind would be worth the cost.
Remember that these same types objected to the Player Piano and the VCR - they would "hurt the artists"...
It's all about powerful biz-types using the legal system to protect and extend their own wealth. The drug companies do the same thing - they will use the courts to delay the end of their patent protection for new drugs, knowing they will lose, in order to make a few extra million. Not that I entirely disagree with these practices in all ways - they seem to be good strategies at times! Immoral, in many cases IMO, but good strategies nonetheless. Certainly less moral than someone who freeloads on the 'net. The freeloader isn't consciously trying to be greedy, at least not in my experience. I'm not an ethicist, but perhaps now that I think about it, when a freeloader consciously tries to save money by using eDonkey, his moral status is equal with the anti-Player Piano-type companies? Who knows...
Just because some of us think that TiVO with commercial-skip, dvd-vcr combo players (with built in, blatantly labeled, large COPY button) and Player Pianos are NEAT doesn't mean we want the GPL ripped to shreds.
Nuance is the key word here - lets try not be simple-minded generalists, ok?
***spoiler warning***
I really enjoyed it up to the part where the boyfriend gets swallowed up by the trash-can. They tried just a tad too hard to make this funny. Actually, the swallowing I can handle - but the burp? Come on - don't they expect that semi-science-savy folk would be watching? Why would the trash-can burp? It didn't eat and ingest him, it has no stomach with extra gas, etc., etc.
Later, when the shait hits the bloomin' fan, why just manikins? Why not all manner of plastic, even gum wrappers? How cool if anything plastic would have "turned" against humanity?
Earlier in the episode, while I was still liking it, they even joked about the silliness of taking over manikins, yet, at the end, it was manikins that tried to take over...
And, er, on that note: why? Why take over, and, er, take over what? Why shoot folks in shopping centers, and, why did all of those manikins come with guns? What was their plan - certainly if the military would have been called in, those slow moving and clumsy pieces of walking plastic would have been easy fodder...
Perhaps if the plastic-queen would have had more character, it could have saved the episode. Many Tom Baker episodes - the ones I remember the best - featured lots of talk and interaction with the bad-guys. Even if you didn't always feel for them, you understood their aims, the reason they were pissed, their goals, etc. At first, I really liked the pace, but by the time it was over, I missed the long and sometimes meandering 2 hour old-style...
The good: refreshing look for the TARDIS, a likable Doctor with much potential, a very cute associate, vastly better special effects
The bad: rushed-story line lacking depth, trying too hard and therefore failing to be funny
The main components - the Doctor, the TARDIS, and the associate are good - this series can work, if they try to make this a tad more into a semi-serious sci-fi show, and stay away from the Hercules sitcom-fantasy-style which they seem to have adopted. Judging from the preview of the next episode and the "last human" and her comments about plastic surgery, I don't have high-hopes at this point...
They should realize that ordinary non-scifi types will not appreciate their efforts to be funny at the expense of sci-fi - Dr. Who just isn't for "ordinary" folks, period, IMO. Their only hope is to appeal to their real target audience and make something they can be proud of.
However, if she runs and actually gets the Donkey's nomination, vote for her anyway! Vote for anyone on the Dem ticket. There are two many important issues at stake right now - issues that go WAY beyond Hillary and her personal-marketing schemes. Alas, like the last election, the next election won't be about the individual so much as it will be about party/philosophy/culture wars, etc.
Even if you must vote for an Elephant, please, keep that in mind - there is a shit-ton of power at stake, and the person who happens to be president is just a cog in the greater machinery - and it will likely remain that way until the Supreme Court potential-open-seats issue is settled, to give one example.
If you use a computer that's less than 600mhz, you're probally going to use Blackbox, Openbox, Fluxbox, etc.
I run KDE on an old laptop, Pentium2, 366Mhz. The "bloat" of KDE might be a RAM issue, but not a speed issue. It runs rather well. It has 160megs of RAM, though KDE runs better with 128 than XP does, in my experience, with similar eye-candy/frills.
Incidentally, I also run a non-GUI Linux on my "server" - it's a P1, 166Mhz beast with 48megs of RAM. It has KDE installed, but I don't run it by default. I do, however, occasionally run KDE apps via ssh remotely, and it works. K3B, for example, from time to time, as I use that machine for CD-writing...
Using the universe itself as evidence for a god can only work if we don't already accept a god going in (otherwise we would be employing circular-logic), and if we employ a 'no god going in' approach, then we have no taboo against finding the 'maker of the maker', etc., since the notion of 'no God before me', for example, is a specific religious idea that implies the existence of a god.
Your comment seemed to me to be pro-ID, given the nature of the Slashdot article, and, well, your post ;)
I'm glad you find my comment funny - usually I'm accused of being long-winded and boring, and that's by friends ;)
Fine, lets follow your premise - the Universe is so complex, ID suggests, that it must have had a designer.
Now that we've established that, we see that God must then be, by far, the most complex thing. Therefore, God had a designer. Therefore, the notion of a single god is silly and monotheistic religions have it all wrong...
Personally, I think that's rather cool, assuming that new games will be made for these systems. That was the case with the Gamegear, though not nearly enough. I still find myself playing old games - having them portable can only be a plus.
Not to jump into philosophy-lala land here, but if things like time, speed, "direction", etc., are properties of our universe, maybe they don't mean anything outside of our universe (if there is such a region)? So, perhaps the expansion of of space itself, not matter or energy, but the space that matter and energy occupy, can expand faster than light. If we allow for this, then maybe the laws that govern matter and the layout of the galaxy chains, etc., were laid out when all matter was in close range - the dancers were each given nstructions at dance-practice, and then sent their own way.
I thought that both a scientist who concentrated just on a tiny spot of the sky, and a newer probe launched by NASA both reached the same conclusion - that the early universe was in fact lumpy as expected?
Oh, and get me some of those things to stick on the patient's head and shock him while I wave this noisy glowing thing over him! Even though we're zapping his head, let me know if he doesn't heave his mid-section up nice and high!
If he nearly dies, I refuse to place the patient into statis (something we've hinted/mentioned on other episodes (or freeze him out-right, for that matter)). Instead, we will have the patient nearly die, right now - it's much more dramatic!
I also refuse to just use the patient's last good transporter pattern, because we don't want to get too controversial and talk about the whole "soul-issue"! Of course, we could just use the pattern as a "filter", but that always takes 40 minutes of technobabble from Geordi and Data first and there is probably some reason (like cooky metals if we are on the sufrace of a planet, or some funky atmospheric shit which will prevent it from working).
"immiedietly" is an example - it simply will not give the right suggestions or anything remotely close.
Whatever happened with that study about the chemical reactions they found on Mars - and thought was life at first - following the day-cycle (the 25 hours of sunlight on Mars or something similar)? I thought the verdict was still out on this?
It's dry, I've removed all of the bat-guano from the floor, and adjusted the stalactites and stalagmites so I don't run into them with my forehead (or stub my toes).
IMO, you are just jealous...
I would like to offer, however, that setting up firewalls and running transcode - those two things specifically - has been made really really easy. I find myself using Firestarter - it has a GUI for config and does pretty much everything by itself, including IP-masq - literally anyone can enable Internet sharing and enable a firewall using this tool. Ditto for transcode. Many times in the past did I try to find a shortcut, but I always ended up editing that paragraph-sized command line myself to get something decent - not anymore. There are several tools now, both GUI and command line, that drive transcode to do amazing things hassle free. k3b uses it, for example, though I've never tried it that way...
doh!
Of course, the Daleks used slaves to overcome those difficulties... http://www.google.comfredthisisatest/meep
I agree with this as well. My point is, that between cdrecord and cdrdao, there are is some missing functionality. Here we would have a third possible low-level way to close the gap. My hope is that this will encourage the open source projects to close the gap.
Another way to look at this is to say that we can have the most wonderful front-ends (k3b for example) limited by their back-end software. Here for the first time in a long while, is something more than just another front-end. Granted, I would prefer a separation of a front-end and a back-end for Nero...
My argument, in other words, is not to say that I dislike the fact that many front-ends use transcode as a back-end for video processing, but that I'm grateful to also have mencoder as a possible back-end. Choice is good.
CDMage is a great Windows tool that can convert to and fro many image formats - it can flawlessly convert CloneCD (bin/cue/ccd) files to bin/cue files for example - required for burning CloneCD images from Linux. CDMage is free and works rather well in WINE. I mention this because I believe that Nero for Windows can write CloneCD image files - it would be handy if a Linux tool could natively write this format...
I just RTFA, it seems clear that Nero has a way to go in Linux, however, if it speaks directly to the API, that is, runs without calling upon cdrdao and cdrecord, then it has the possibility of surpassing k3b in the future, since there are a few things that these tools cannot currently do - writing Karoke CDs or writing an mp3 on the fly in DAO mode, for example.
Further, Nero could very well use transcode and the other movie-tools that k3b uses. I hope this happens - I want the competition of alternatives to cdrecord and cdrdao - they are wonderful tools, don't get me wrong, but they are incomplete. I can't really speak about the dvd tools, I've hardly used them.
Further, most distros have the Knoppix auto-detection stuff - hardware detection really isn't a problem anymore.
You said it yourself in your post - Windows has spoiled you. Actually, it hasn't spoiled you, are are just used to it. I might say that when I switch to Windows, that Linux has spoiled me. First, installing most any modern Linux from scratch is easier and requires less user-interaction than a Windows install.
Second, the irritation of spyware/driver disks/27 char-long reg codes, etc., and multiple reboots really really irks me. As does a driver download, which insists on running a Windows-console self-extracting deal, which requires two blank floppies, which I then must manually load and install - it's 2005, for God's sake!? I hate floppies, and don't have many drives for the number of machines I use. This issue really ground a project I recently had to a stand-still, requiring me to hook up an ancient drive, find disks, download semi-legal boot disks, etc., etc. As for the Windows GUI, I can't handle a GUI which doesn't allow for multiple Desktops - having to continally shrink and resize windows is silly - I have most apps full screen at all times on alternate desktops...
Most Windows folk that try Linux try to install it as a second OS onto their nicely stocked, pre-installed and configured, PC. Imagine you purchased a pre-installed and configured Linux PC - no doubt, you would experience similar joys - think about it.
Yes, of course in the real world you are much less likely to come across a store-bought, ready-to-go, Linux PC, nevertheless, that's another issue altogether. We should compare apples to apples, to use that damn overused-cliche.
Let me ramble on and mention conf files for a moment. There are GUI front-ends for virtually any config that you can think of in Linux. However, you will find that editing a simple, human readable text file is often easier. What is the difference between using a GUI which prompts you for values to configure your LAN/ethernet setup as opposed to entering them into a text file, which has prompts that you can read? Think about this for a moment - easy is when the LAN sets itself up. If your LAN is thus configured, Linux can do this as easily as Windows. If not, then both require manual entry of ip addresses...
Once you get familiar with Linux, editing a conf file may becomes as normal as learning keyboard shortcuts in Office apps basically, this translates into productivity, but in either case, it's not required..
Wow, I'm on a rambling roll here! Someone stop me! Let me address the standard-user-interface issue from this angle - most people have zero issue figuring out if the 'Settings' menu entry has moved someplace else and has been renamed to 'Options'. Further, most people have no issue using WinAmp and Quicktime and other "cute" GUIs which defy the standard widgets. I'm sorry, but only an anal person who memorizes layouts cannot handle a limited diversity of UIs. Computers are extremely simple to use, provided someone takes the time to meet them 1/5 of the way ;)
I think that for the post part, comments such as yours basically amount too, "well, I wanted to try Linux, but I quickly realized, that Linux isn't Windows".
Come on, man, what myths you spew about Debian in general! You may wish to revise your statement and relegate it to SPARC specificaly...
I'm writing this on a Kanotix install of Debian-unstable - there is nothing "old" about it, or slow for that matter. Replace "politics" with "principles". It's not as if it's a handicap! Debian separates that software which fits into with their principles from that which doesn't, but, honestly, as a user of a modern Debian-based distro, in practical terms as to what I want to install and use, I hardly notice. Further, at least Debian has some principles as far as companies go...
What Debian means to me is simply the absolute best package system in the sense that they take extreme care and I won't break something when I upgrade. I'm using the same brand-spanking new version of Firefox as you, you Gentoo-zealot, and I got it via apt.
Most distros presume to do what Gentoo and Debian can do these days, but, have you ever used Mandrake's URPMI for example!? I honestly can't say how good or bad the Gentoo package system is, but I can say this, in terms of avoiding dependency-hell, Debian is the best I've used, by leaps and bounds. Yes, I'm sure that compiling everything results in tighter and faster code, but there are many ways to judge the value of something and on my old hardware, Debian feels quite nice, even in full KDE/OpenOffice heavy-GUI glory.