During the 9/11 commission, I heard senators ask Rice out-right why we didn't hire someone to just kill bin Laden and Saddam years ago. Rice responded that hasn't been American policy in years, and that sovereign nations don't assassinate leaders.
KOTOR:2 is improved over the original in every possible way. The only major advantage that KOTOR:1 has is the love affair people had with the main character after the main plot twist was revealed. I found the main character in the second game to be more interesting however.
I was big on Str and Dex and wasn't big on Wis. Hell, I could have beat most battles without ever using Force Powers. Just hitting Master Flurry was enough, but if I did spam a force power, it was most often Force Wave.
Assuming KOTOR:3 gets made. Obsidian says they want to make it, but LucasArts has also said they are afraid of over-saturating the Star Wars market. Clearly that was the problem, not releasing crap titles like Bounty Hunter, Clone Wars, and Super Bom-Bad Racing.
Titles like Lego Star Wars cost less money to make, and sell more copies.
I sure hope Obsidian gets to finish what they started, but I'm not sure it will happen.
I was the biggest Obsidian forum junkie back in the day. Chris Avellone wrote a dark ending, only to have LucasArts axe it. They planned for a longer development cycle, only to have LucasArts demand they ship early, and LucasArts didn't want to pony up money for patches, even after LucasArts initally promised they would.
LucasArts was really hurting for money at the time. I'm not sure if anyone recalls, but LucasArts was folded, they closed shop and reopened in name within the ILM offices, but almost everyone was fired, and all their current projects (including KOTOR:3) were scrapped.
The content did exist on the disc, but it could only be accessed via a mod to unlock it.
Most any game has content that is cut from release, and fairly often these orphaned data files still ship with a game.
I don't think you should be held accountable for something that can be only accessed via third-party tools, or added to a game after release by third parties.
Hell, there are nude sprite patches for Super Mario Bros.
Honestly, I don't see that having sex in a game (while clothed no doubt) is a first, or pushing a huge boundary. The Leisure Suit Larry games featured sex as the main premise in the game.
And it saddens me to think that having sex is worse than killing a cop in this society.
The Hot Coffee thing was a media creation. They missed the boat initially on going after Rockstar. People have targeted violent video games for ages. This just gave them a new excuse, but the actual backlash that occurred was far from warranted.
This news is far from surprising. Rockstar has been Sony-first in the past. The second they announced exclusive content for one console, I figured it would come on the PS3 and possibly Wii as well. Unfortunately with what they are talking about with GTAIV, I'm not sure the Wii hardware will handle it.
Rockstar makes money for every copy sold. If they can double their sales by getting people to buy two copies with minimal effort (making a small ammount of content exclusive for each console) then it would be silly not to do this.
You also have to realize that GTA:SA purportedly had a budget of 80-90 million dollars to make. Figure it the recall, possible lawsuits, etc. that each GTA game while in the past a success, can be a huge risk in the future. If they are spending 80 million dollars or more on the next title, they have to do everything in their power to maximize profit potential on that investment.
It doesn't take long for a publisher or developer to go under in this day and age.
Re:Openoffice draining KOffice (Hurd effect)
on
KOffice 1.6 Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Yes and no. OpenOffice.org is written to take advantage of both QT and GTK widgets, but as I understand it, it is written in C with GTK really in mind. It has been suggested to the KOffice devs many times to just lift the code from OpenOffice.org for importing MS Office documents (the only real major advantage OO.o has on the Linux desktop in my opinion) and they state that they can't just plug that code in. Because you're jumping from C to C++, apparently it needs to be rewritten considerably.
The folding team has done this, and it will be a free download for the PS3 version. The Cell processor runs the Folding application itself, and the graphical representation of the protein folding calculations will be handled by the GPU with a pretty display.
I'm curious how a simple statement of facts constitutes flamebait.
Fact - most distros make changes to Firefox. They include unofficial patches and make changes.
Fact - Linspire claims to make "hundreds" of changes to Firefox.
Fact - Firefox says on their own website that if you change it, then just make it known that it isn't an unofficial build, and don't use the official branding artwork.
Fact - When people don't share patches and fixes upstream, it hurts the overall quality of the project.
Not to mention that I've asked the Firefox dev team personally in regards to CVS builds, Gentoo patches, and the like. We're not supposed to use the official logo, and we just have to make it clear that it is an unofficial build. That is the word from the devs themselves.
There are tons of "unofficial" builds of Firefox. And Linspire claims to make HUNDREDS of changes to the Firefox code. So long as you don't use the official artwork, and make it clear that your version is different and unofficial, you don't have to rename or fork.
They're fine with you calling it an "unofficial" build of Firefox.
Debian isn't willing to use the word unofficial, so out of stubbornness they're going to fork. Open source loses in this regard, because while GPL code is open if you ask for it, often it is very difficult to find all the patches and changes people make to projects in all these splintered forks. They never go upstream, and very few people benefit. If everyone submitted their fixes upstream, then everyone would benefit.
If you want to do an unofficial build that is fine. I don't see why everyone has to be so childish though.
Instead of reading a someone's interpretation of the Patriot Act, I tend to read the original source in its full context.
That very same section states:
"`(a)(1) The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution."
So no, the government is not going to come knocking down your door just because you checked out a book. If you read the full section, it states that if you already under investigation for being a terrorist, they can ask a judge for permission to collect assets such as papers and books to continue that investigation, and people aren't supposed to divulge information pertaining to an ongoing investigation.
The highlighted section clearly protects people's interests of free speech. No one is going to label you a terrorist simply for expressing an opinion.
I know an individual who clearly posts on the interwebs on a regular basis statements in full support of terrorism, stating that all Americans should die, all Whites should die, all Jews should die, etc. From his IP address, he is posting from within the US. Nothing has happened to him.
Despite the fact that people post anti-government rants every day, that doesn't mean the government is doing anything to stop it. We still have the right to free speech (despite Jack Thompson's efforts in Florida).
I'm not defending the administration. I'm just stating facts, which gets me downmodded. Those that make paranoid statements that have no factual basis get modded "Interesting". Again, meta-moderate all you like, but the Slashdot crowd is very biased, so the moderation system is by proxy.
A squad is assigned a machine gun. One person carries the gun. Another carries the ammo. Another carries a replacement barrel. When you fire the things pretty regularly, the barrel gets hot and can warp.
There was a lawyer who pissed all over free speech and the Constitution in Florida, making it illegal to sell 2 Live Crew tapes in Florida, and making it illegal for them to perform.
I'm not sure how this gets modded 5 - Interesting.
Perhaps you should go to factcheck.org - a non-paritsan fact-checking website. There is one famous story of a boy who was visited by the NSA for checking out a book, except that he publicly admitted to making up the story. Not a single news agency tried to verify if it was true.
There is warrantless wiretapping which is the big fucked up part of the Patriot Act, but MOST provisions in the Patriot Act do require warrants and court orders still. Perhaps you should Google for the Patriot Act and read it rather than spout off internet rumors and pretend they are facts.
A few months ago I said Google routinely lied when the flatly denied making an Office suite when we all knew they were. Google routinely flatly denied making a payment system, until they launched that.
When they bought Writely I said it was proof that Google was lying. I was labeled a troll and accused of flame-baiting the thread.
Maybe I was just telling the truth.
Google routinely denies all kinds of projects, right up to the point where they launch them.
5 terrorists with box-cutters can handle 70 people, but 1 world class athlete can't handle 2.
Blood in his shower drain, sink, car, and clothes. His blood at the scene. Murder weapon at his house, and he was caught lying in his alibi. Oh, did I mention motive? And then he got a gun and ran from the cops.
Clearly he is innocent.
You're either a troll or an idiot. I'm not sure which, but either way I'm done.
Slashdot Mirror
During the 9/11 commission, I heard senators ask Rice out-right why we didn't hire someone to just kill bin Laden and Saddam years ago. Rice responded that hasn't been American policy in years, and that sovereign nations don't assassinate leaders.
I don't play Star Wars Galaxies, but apparently HK-47 does in fact appear 4,000 years later in Galaxies.
The graphics aren't great, and it wouldn't stand up as a 360 title unless they redid all the models, animations and textures in the whole game.
There was an entire planet and major plot cut from the game (the droid planet) but redoing all the art assets is no small feat.
KOTOR:2 is improved over the original in every possible way. The only major advantage that KOTOR:1 has is the love affair people had with the main character after the main plot twist was revealed. I found the main character in the second game to be more interesting however.
I was big on Str and Dex and wasn't big on Wis. Hell, I could have beat most battles without ever using Force Powers. Just hitting Master Flurry was enough, but if I did spam a force power, it was most often Force Wave.
I played the first one and enjoyed it. I'm not knocking it, just noting that KOTOR:3 is likely not a priority for LA at the moment.
Choke? Electrocute?
No way dude! Light side for life, dog!
Assuming KOTOR:3 gets made. Obsidian says they want to make it, but LucasArts has also said they are afraid of over-saturating the Star Wars market. Clearly that was the problem, not releasing crap titles like Bounty Hunter, Clone Wars, and Super Bom-Bad Racing.
Titles like Lego Star Wars cost less money to make, and sell more copies.
I sure hope Obsidian gets to finish what they started, but I'm not sure it will happen.
I was the biggest Obsidian forum junkie back in the day. Chris Avellone wrote a dark ending, only to have LucasArts axe it. They planned for a longer development cycle, only to have LucasArts demand they ship early, and LucasArts didn't want to pony up money for patches, even after LucasArts initally promised they would.
LucasArts was really hurting for money at the time. I'm not sure if anyone recalls, but LucasArts was folded, they closed shop and reopened in name within the ILM offices, but almost everyone was fired, and all their current projects (including KOTOR:3) were scrapped.
The content did exist on the disc, but it could only be accessed via a mod to unlock it.
Most any game has content that is cut from release, and fairly often these orphaned data files still ship with a game.
I don't think you should be held accountable for something that can be only accessed via third-party tools, or added to a game after release by third parties.
Hell, there are nude sprite patches for Super Mario Bros.
Honestly, I don't see that having sex in a game (while clothed no doubt) is a first, or pushing a huge boundary. The Leisure Suit Larry games featured sex as the main premise in the game.
And it saddens me to think that having sex is worse than killing a cop in this society.
The Hot Coffee thing was a media creation. They missed the boat initially on going after Rockstar. People have targeted violent video games for ages. This just gave them a new excuse, but the actual backlash that occurred was far from warranted.
This news is far from surprising. Rockstar has been Sony-first in the past. The second they announced exclusive content for one console, I figured it would come on the PS3 and possibly Wii as well. Unfortunately with what they are talking about with GTAIV, I'm not sure the Wii hardware will handle it.
Rockstar makes money for every copy sold. If they can double their sales by getting people to buy two copies with minimal effort (making a small ammount of content exclusive for each console) then it would be silly not to do this.
You also have to realize that GTA:SA purportedly had a budget of 80-90 million dollars to make. Figure it the recall, possible lawsuits, etc. that each GTA game while in the past a success, can be a huge risk in the future. If they are spending 80 million dollars or more on the next title, they have to do everything in their power to maximize profit potential on that investment.
It doesn't take long for a publisher or developer to go under in this day and age.
Yes and no. OpenOffice.org is written to take advantage of both QT and GTK widgets, but as I understand it, it is written in C with GTK really in mind. It has been suggested to the KOffice devs many times to just lift the code from OpenOffice.org for importing MS Office documents (the only real major advantage OO.o has on the Linux desktop in my opinion) and they state that they can't just plug that code in. Because you're jumping from C to C++, apparently it needs to be rewritten considerably.
Yes, I said it has a nifty display.
And clearly, attempting to cure cancer and other such diseases is merely a waste of electricity.
The purpose a general purpose CPU is to handle all calculations. For this task, which is very specific, a GPU may be that much better.
The folding team has done this, and it will be a free download for the PS3 version. The Cell processor runs the Folding application itself, and the graphical representation of the protein folding calculations will be handled by the GPU with a pretty display.
I'm curious how a simple statement of facts constitutes flamebait.
Fact - most distros make changes to Firefox. They include unofficial patches and make changes.
Fact - Linspire claims to make "hundreds" of changes to Firefox.
Fact - Firefox says on their own website that if you change it, then just make it known that it isn't an unofficial build, and don't use the official branding artwork.
Fact - When people don't share patches and fixes upstream, it hurts the overall quality of the project.
How is any of this flame-bait?
Sometimes I wonder why I bother posting here.
How about the official unofficial builds?
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=42
Not to mention that I've asked the Firefox dev team personally in regards to CVS builds, Gentoo patches, and the like. We're not supposed to use the official logo, and we just have to make it clear that it is an unofficial build. That is the word from the devs themselves.
There are tons of "unofficial" builds of Firefox. And Linspire claims to make HUNDREDS of changes to the Firefox code. So long as you don't use the official artwork, and make it clear that your version is different and unofficial, you don't have to rename or fork.
They're fine with you calling it an "unofficial" build of Firefox.
Debian isn't willing to use the word unofficial, so out of stubbornness they're going to fork. Open source loses in this regard, because while GPL code is open if you ask for it, often it is very difficult to find all the patches and changes people make to projects in all these splintered forks. They never go upstream, and very few people benefit. If everyone submitted their fixes upstream, then everyone would benefit.
If you want to do an unofficial build that is fine. I don't see why everyone has to be so childish though.
Instead of reading a someone's interpretation of the Patriot Act, I tend to read the original source in its full context.
That very same section states:
"`(a)(1) The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution."
http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html
So no, the government is not going to come knocking down your door just because you checked out a book. If you read the full section, it states that if you already under investigation for being a terrorist, they can ask a judge for permission to collect assets such as papers and books to continue that investigation, and people aren't supposed to divulge information pertaining to an ongoing investigation.
The highlighted section clearly protects people's interests of free speech. No one is going to label you a terrorist simply for expressing an opinion.
I know an individual who clearly posts on the interwebs on a regular basis statements in full support of terrorism, stating that all Americans should die, all Whites should die, all Jews should die, etc. From his IP address, he is posting from within the US. Nothing has happened to him.
Despite the fact that people post anti-government rants every day, that doesn't mean the government is doing anything to stop it. We still have the right to free speech (despite Jack Thompson's efforts in Florida).
I'm not defending the administration. I'm just stating facts, which gets me downmodded. Those that make paranoid statements that have no factual basis get modded "Interesting". Again, meta-moderate all you like, but the Slashdot crowd is very biased, so the moderation system is by proxy.
A squad is assigned a machine gun. One person carries the gun. Another carries the ammo. Another carries a replacement barrel. When you fire the things pretty regularly, the barrel gets hot and can warp.
This is 2 Live Crew all over again.
There was a lawyer who pissed all over free speech and the Constitution in Florida, making it illegal to sell 2 Live Crew tapes in Florida, and making it illegal for them to perform.
I believe his name was Jack Thompson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Live_Crew
Mod parent up please.
I'm not sure how this gets modded 5 - Interesting.
Perhaps you should go to factcheck.org - a non-paritsan fact-checking website. There is one famous story of a boy who was visited by the NSA for checking out a book, except that he publicly admitted to making up the story. Not a single news agency tried to verify if it was true.
There is warrantless wiretapping which is the big fucked up part of the Patriot Act, but MOST provisions in the Patriot Act do require warrants and court orders still. Perhaps you should Google for the Patriot Act and read it rather than spout off internet rumors and pretend they are facts.
A few months ago I said Google routinely lied when the flatly denied making an Office suite when we all knew they were. Google routinely flatly denied making a payment system, until they launched that.
When they bought Writely I said it was proof that Google was lying. I was labeled a troll and accused of flame-baiting the thread.
Maybe I was just telling the truth.
Google routinely denies all kinds of projects, right up to the point where they launch them.
5 terrorists with box-cutters can handle 70 people, but 1 world class athlete can't handle 2.
Blood in his shower drain, sink, car, and clothes. His blood at the scene. Murder weapon at his house, and he was caught lying in his alibi. Oh, did I mention motive? And then he got a gun and ran from the cops.
Clearly he is innocent.
You're either a troll or an idiot. I'm not sure which, but either way I'm done.