I never saw seasons 1-2. But from reading show synopses from TV Tome it sounded awful to me.
I did see a few episodes involving a terrorist attack on Vulcan, and I liked what I saw. However, it wasn't compelling enough to pick it up and try to get into it. I liked the scene where they were playing basketball on the ship, it really connected "us" with "them".
I thought so simple an allegory would be accessible here. Maybe you guys don't know much about cars. Windows has been shoddy and insecure for as long as it's been around, there are other options. If you buy Windows (e.g., a Chevy), don't be shocked that you end up paying the dealership (i.e., Microsoft) even more to keep it running, even though they've had decades to get it right in the first place and somehow have managed not to.
...expect to have it in the shop a lot. You know that it's a piece of crap vehicle, it has been for the last 15 years, and you're going to spend money to make a car, even a relatively new one, work properly.
If you find that unappetizing, get a Toyota or a Honda. They're more robust and less prone to breakage.
I quit playing months ago, because as fun as the game was, there was no reason to do anything.
Quests = experience, money, equipment, progress.
Fighting monsters = experience, money, equipment, progress
FIghting players = waste of time
You didn't gain or lose a damn thing for killing someone or being killed. And there was no really massive battle engagement, unless you count the occasional raid on a town.
Which were pointless and annoying.
After about six months, they FINALLY implemented some sort of "honor" system. But I'm not sure if it's the same honor system that was advertised
I bought the game utterly unaware of any advertised honor system. I'll have to look at the box when I get home and see if it's mentioned.
Hopefully, it has some sort of value in combat now to make killing a low level character less enticing and killing a higher level character more enticing.
Killing lowbies is just hassling now. A level 60 has to kill somebody who is at least 48 to get any credit for it.
The game really loses a lot of momentum when you're a 10th level guy being mobbed by two dozen 60+ guys who are taking over an area.
I play on a PvP server and even there, there is no place you need to go at level 10 where a level 60 from the other side can kill you. I have no clue what you're talking about. I levelled almost to 30 almost exclusively in protected zones.
What? what are you talking about? PacMan was a HUGE technological marvel back in its day! The sprites were alot more defined than any other game, it had a "neon" light effect in the maps, the sound consisted in something more than "beeps" and it was the first game with actual AI and a real map! (which changed each level) even today amateur coders have a bad time trying to pull pacman clones that actually feel and look authentic. (just look at the terrible Atari 2600 port for further reference) this was "doom 3 meets hl2" 25 years ago!
At the risk of quibbling, Pac-Man's map was static. Ms. Pac-Man had a changing map. Pac-Man's graphics, animation, everything video memory was stored in a handful of chips on the PCB, and if you wanted Frogger or Ms. Pac Man, it was a simple matter of swapping out some video ROMs and game code.
Because on an emulator you haven't paid $0.25 to play it. There aren't people around to shoulder-surf you when you reach an insane level. Because there's no anonymous competition with the guy you trade highscores with on the same machine, week after week.
This is pretty true. I have a fully restored vintage Pac-Man cocktail table game in my home. My dad bought it from a bar in like 1987 for $75 and I've been lugging it around ever since. The old ElectroHome monitor died years and I finally replaced it, replaced all the overlays and underlays, rebuilt the bad controller, rewired the lights, and got it operational.
I had it on Free Play mode but nobody ever wanted to play it for more than a minute or two before they'd hit reset.
So I switched it to coin-op and now the game is a hit. Whenever my buddies come over for poker somebody sits down to play and says, "Anybody got a quarter?"
If that sort of argument can win an election, it sounds like the people got the quality of representation they deserve.
Oh come on. Nobody, no matter how embittered or angry at the President, can possibly believe (and retain any sense of being a rational human being) that Senator Kerry lost the election because of that line. The same people who scream in pain at the ignorance of the President when he says "nuke you lar" are defending every verbal faux pas and misstep made by Senator Kerry during the campaign.
People from difference places pronounce things differently. Pronunciation is, in fact, defined by most common usage. It's a moving target, and it shifts over time. To a lesser degree, spelling rules are similar. Nobody in America writs "phantasy" anymore, do they? Unless we're being archaic on purpose, anyway. Call it an accent if you want. I find it odd that children in Oakland were permitted and encouraged to speak "Ebonics" because it's their native language, but when the President mispronounces "nuclear" it's a mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging moron.
Same with Senator Kerry. He made one inarticulate comment and the Republicans got it and waved it around, completely out of context, shouting and stomping over what a "flip-flopper" Kerry is/was. Nevermind that President Bush has done a complete 180 reversal on a number of major policies/positions he espoused in 1999.
Senator Kerry did not lose in 2004 because of this line.
So far these have been the least intelligent responses to scientific matter I believe I have ever see on slashdot. If this were anything related to YRO, linux or windows the people would be busting out certifications & degrees in bunches, but the recorded creation of a blackhole, all we get is poorly constructed sexual innuendo. Fantastic.
I postulate that it's because your typical Slashdot poster has little to no physics expertise and can't even put forth a good front of having anything intelligent to say about it.
But we can wax intelletual ad nauseum over copyright infringement and misquote US code all afternoon. After all, you can Google some facts on legal cases and mostly understand them.
No no no no no! Shut up! Shut up! Republican bad! Conservative bad! Bush bad! Thok not like it! Thok think Bush bad! Thok hate read id card! Thok know it wrong! All idea from Republican bad and not work! Me know! It what other people say who Thok think smart!
I actually don't oppose the Read ID on the grounds that it's invading my privacy or anything, but that I don't think it'll help much and it's going to cost a lot.
The minority party in the Senate isn't nearly so toothless as you make it sound. Every vote counts, and with the filibuster rules, the minority party wields a significant amount of influence.
I mean seriously, what is so bad? Is everyone really buying into that Big Brother Crap where the government is going to know everywhere we go and shiat?
I don't care about the Big Brother side, I care about the part where our officials are enacting pointless legislation that won't solve anything but will create a whole new department of bureaucracy that you and I get to pay for. Hell no.
Yes, for more dissapointment, Tolkien heavily used Christian themes throughout his stories also
I don't understand why it's just assumed to be necessarily bad that any author incorporates Christian themes into his stories. Christian mythology is every bit as valid of a source to draw upon as any other mythology. Why is Nordic mythology cool but Christian not? Would you complain if the Babylonian creation myth appeared allegorically in fiction? No? Then why does the Christian myth upset you and seem to be a "disappointing" problem or flaw in the writing?
And what Christian themes? Social justice? Peace? Forgiveness? Redemption?
When most people in this crowd say "Christian themes", I always wonder what spefifically you're talking about. "Christian themes" around here seems to be synonymous with intolerance, bigotry, hatred, and brainwashing. Those are disappointing faculties of humanity. Religion is a vehicle in which those themes easily manifest. So are corporations, governments, and any other formalized organization of the flawed creature we call the human being.
So tell me, what are these unfortunate Christian themes that have insideously wormed they way into our most cherished fiction?
If you think that an empire defending its territory against invasion is "brought about by christianity"... you need to learn a little more history there, friend.
No kidding. It's not like there aren't any atrocities in Christian history to cite. There are plenty. Every walk of mankind is dirtied with horrible acts committed against the rest of the species. Christianity is no exception. It's just chic to talk about the Crusades these days due to Christian tensions with Islam.
While most people would probably focus on the issue of gold/gil/plat selling here, I think the more important issue here is the failure to curb these types of transactions. Blizzard had been saying that money would not be as important since the best items would be obtain from monsters, yet this happens. Simply put, either money still remains to be a major factor in the game or Blizzard totally messed up their monetary design and made it too difficult for casual players to get money.
Getting gold is easy. VERY easy. INSANELY easy. It's just time-consuming. What you're buying here isn't a rare commodity, you're buying somebody's playing time. If Blizzard really wants to devalue gold (they don't, trust me), they'd stop changing Scarlet Monestary to make pharming more difficult.
Anybody else get a little creeped out by the possibility that alot of what CS Lewis was doing with his fantasy writings was really Christian propaganda? I know this sounds terribly like a troll, but it's honestly not meant that way.
This never bothered me. I was aware of it even as a kid (actually, I only knew it was Christian-oriented material because my fundamentalist aunt got me the books for my birthday, so I knew they had to be Jesus books somehow).
It's hardly "propaganda", any more than Lord of the Rings is a rant against capitalism and industry. It's a story with themes of Christian mythology (or Christian theology, however you want to say it), and that's not propaganda. I haven't read any of them in at least 15 years but I don't recall any call to action in the books. It's a telling of a story that takes place in a fictional universe, whose history and mythology mirrors our own. I guess it's allegorical but... eh.
I also got the vague feeling that CS Lewis was out to manipulate the readers
He'd be the first author of any written work, politically/religiously motivated or not, to do so!<sarcasm>
How were the democrats the party of big business? Weren't they the party of labor unions?
They were heavily in bed with business, and I mean the biggest business of the country, up through WW2. Shortly after, they began to part ways. Wilson could be thought of as the beginning of the end for the close relationship between Democrats and big business. These things are cyclical. Just look at which party takes up censorship. SOmetimes it's one or the other, sometimes both, but rarely neither.
Republicans have traditionally been pro-choice, right up through the 1970's and 1980's. They embraced the pro-life lobby for political reasons: people will vote based ONLY on the abortion issue. It's the same reason the Republicans have adopted the religious right. Those people are going to vote, so the Republicans bend their platform to absorb them. The Republicans have traditionally been champsions of conservative fiscal policy - small government that leaves as many decisions in one's life as possible up to the individual. Now the Republicans are trying to get the DECISION on abortion taken away from the woman and they've passed legislation banning you from buying prescription drugs from Canada.
The Democrats don't stand for _ANYTHING_ anymore other than !Bush.getAgenda().
LOL you have a lot of nerve. The Dems may be spineless, disorganized and leaderless but insane? How can you possibly be aware of how the Republicans in particular have been acting for the last 10 years and espeically in the last 4 years and still call the Dems insane compared to them? Pot meet kettle.
Yes, insane. I stand by my characterization. Whether or not the Democrats are insane has nothing to do with whether or not the Republicans are. The religious right in particuar is just off the deep end and, sad to say, has slowly risen to dominance in the party (another reason I've abandoned the Republicans).
Then we got an article about how they reversed their stand and were... they weren't OPPOSING it, but they were no longer supporting it.
Now they've reversed again.
Who cares? I thought the goal was to divorce corporate sponsorship from legislation? Or do we only want that when we find the legislation in question to be deplorable.
Since the entire American government is owned by corporate interests, it'll take about 5 minutes for this to get passed by Congress.
This is exactly what has caused me to abandon the Republican party. The Republicans used to be the party of small business and the Democrats were the party of big business. That's not the case and it's getting to be less and less the case. The Republicans are firmly in the pockets of big business and the Democrats are... just insane.
I'd hope that the consumer electronics lobby is stronger than the MPAA, but I fear it isn't so.
Part of the consumer electronics industry is also part of the content management industry. Sony's subsidiaries are both members of the RIAA and other subsidiaries produce consumer electronics. O, the tangled we weave!
This is great news. I don't doubt that illegal distribution of copyrighted materials is a problem that costs content-owners money, but this flag is not the solution. It's going to mostly penalize and restrict the rights of legitimate and honest viewers who don't do anything criminal with their recordings, they just re-watch them.
The onus is on the industry to find a solution within technology and capitalism, not within politics and law.
Slashdot Mirror
It's the Russians. They haven't traditionally been big on our cranky Western values, like mission redundancy and keeping people alive.
What a SHOCK! Attack Firefox for its security vulnerabilities and get demodded to hell. I'm such a bad, bad citizen of Slashdot.
Thanks for the recommendations, when time permits I'll go back and check it out. I still haven't seen any of Voyager yet. :)
I did see a few episodes involving a terrorist attack on Vulcan, and I liked what I saw. However, it wasn't compelling enough to pick it up and try to get into it. I liked the scene where they were playing basketball on the ship, it really connected "us" with "them".
I might check out the coda.
Chevy = Microsoft.
Honda = Linux.
I thought so simple an allegory would be accessible here. Maybe you guys don't know much about cars. Windows has been shoddy and insecure for as long as it's been around, there are other options. If you buy Windows (e.g., a Chevy), don't be shocked that you end up paying the dealership (i.e., Microsoft) even more to keep it running, even though they've had decades to get it right in the first place and somehow have managed not to.
Think before you fire the mod gun, people.
I'm glad it's only a Microsoft problem, it makes it much easier to deride everything they do on the grounds that somebody is making money off of it.
If you find that unappetizing, get a Toyota or a Honda. They're more robust and less prone to breakage.
Quests = experience, money, equipment, progress.
Fighting monsters = experience, money, equipment, progress FIghting players = waste of time
You didn't gain or lose a damn thing for killing someone or being killed. And there was no really massive battle engagement, unless you count the occasional raid on a town.
Which were pointless and annoying.
After about six months, they FINALLY implemented some sort of "honor" system. But I'm not sure if it's the same honor system that was advertised
I bought the game utterly unaware of any advertised honor system. I'll have to look at the box when I get home and see if it's mentioned.
Hopefully, it has some sort of value in combat now to make killing a low level character less enticing and killing a higher level character more enticing.
Killing lowbies is just hassling now. A level 60 has to kill somebody who is at least 48 to get any credit for it.
The game really loses a lot of momentum when you're a 10th level guy being mobbed by two dozen 60+ guys who are taking over an area.
I play on a PvP server and even there, there is no place you need to go at level 10 where a level 60 from the other side can kill you. I have no clue what you're talking about. I levelled almost to 30 almost exclusively in protected zones.
At the risk of quibbling, Pac-Man's map was static. Ms. Pac-Man had a changing map. Pac-Man's graphics, animation, everything video memory was stored in a handful of chips on the PCB, and if you wanted Frogger or Ms. Pac Man, it was a simple matter of swapping out some video ROMs and game code.
This is pretty true. I have a fully restored vintage Pac-Man cocktail table game in my home. My dad bought it from a bar in like 1987 for $75 and I've been lugging it around ever since. The old ElectroHome monitor died years and I finally replaced it, replaced all the overlays and underlays, rebuilt the bad controller, rewired the lights, and got it operational.
I had it on Free Play mode but nobody ever wanted to play it for more than a minute or two before they'd hit reset.
So I switched it to coin-op and now the game is a hit. Whenever my buddies come over for poker somebody sits down to play and says, "Anybody got a quarter?"
Oh come on. Nobody, no matter how embittered or angry at the President, can possibly believe (and retain any sense of being a rational human being) that Senator Kerry lost the election because of that line. The same people who scream in pain at the ignorance of the President when he says "nuke you lar" are defending every verbal faux pas and misstep made by Senator Kerry during the campaign.
People from difference places pronounce things differently. Pronunciation is, in fact, defined by most common usage. It's a moving target, and it shifts over time. To a lesser degree, spelling rules are similar. Nobody in America writs "phantasy" anymore, do they? Unless we're being archaic on purpose, anyway. Call it an accent if you want. I find it odd that children in Oakland were permitted and encouraged to speak "Ebonics" because it's their native language, but when the President mispronounces "nuclear" it's a mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging moron.
Same with Senator Kerry. He made one inarticulate comment and the Republicans got it and waved it around, completely out of context, shouting and stomping over what a "flip-flopper" Kerry is/was. Nevermind that President Bush has done a complete 180 reversal on a number of major policies/positions he espoused in 1999.
Senator Kerry did not lose in 2004 because of this line.
I postulate that it's because your typical Slashdot poster has little to no physics expertise and can't even put forth a good front of having anything intelligent to say about it.
But we can wax intelletual ad nauseum over copyright infringement and misquote US code all afternoon. After all, you can Google some facts on legal cases and mostly understand them.
But physics is freakin hard!
Teh Martials are old hat. Every since the Omgwtfpwnz0r Uprising when Teh Hax puppet government took over as an arm to the evil Noobz Empire.
I actually don't oppose the Read ID on the grounds that it's invading my privacy or anything, but that I don't think it'll help much and it's going to cost a lot.
The minority party in the Senate isn't nearly so toothless as you make it sound. Every vote counts, and with the filibuster rules, the minority party wields a significant amount of influence.
I don't care about the Big Brother side, I care about the part where our officials are enacting pointless legislation that won't solve anything but will create a whole new department of bureaucracy that you and I get to pay for. Hell no.
I don't understand why it's just assumed to be necessarily bad that any author incorporates Christian themes into his stories. Christian mythology is every bit as valid of a source to draw upon as any other mythology. Why is Nordic mythology cool but Christian not? Would you complain if the Babylonian creation myth appeared allegorically in fiction? No? Then why does the Christian myth upset you and seem to be a "disappointing" problem or flaw in the writing?
And what Christian themes? Social justice? Peace? Forgiveness? Redemption?
When most people in this crowd say "Christian themes", I always wonder what spefifically you're talking about. "Christian themes" around here seems to be synonymous with intolerance, bigotry, hatred, and brainwashing. Those are disappointing faculties of humanity. Religion is a vehicle in which those themes easily manifest. So are corporations, governments, and any other formalized organization of the flawed creature we call the human being.
So tell me, what are these unfortunate Christian themes that have insideously wormed they way into our most cherished fiction?
No kidding. It's not like there aren't any atrocities in Christian history to cite. There are plenty. Every walk of mankind is dirtied with horrible acts committed against the rest of the species. Christianity is no exception. It's just chic to talk about the Crusades these days due to Christian tensions with Islam.
Getting gold is easy. VERY easy. INSANELY easy. It's just time-consuming. What you're buying here isn't a rare commodity, you're buying somebody's playing time. If Blizzard really wants to devalue gold (they don't, trust me), they'd stop changing Scarlet Monestary to make pharming more difficult.
This never bothered me. I was aware of it even as a kid (actually, I only knew it was Christian-oriented material because my fundamentalist aunt got me the books for my birthday, so I knew they had to be Jesus books somehow).
It's hardly "propaganda", any more than Lord of the Rings is a rant against capitalism and industry. It's a story with themes of Christian mythology (or Christian theology, however you want to say it), and that's not propaganda. I haven't read any of them in at least 15 years but I don't recall any call to action in the books. It's a telling of a story that takes place in a fictional universe, whose history and mythology mirrors our own. I guess it's allegorical but ... eh.
I also got the vague feeling that CS Lewis was out to manipulate the readers
He'd be the first author of any written work, politically/religiously motivated or not, to do so!<sarcasm>
They were heavily in bed with business, and I mean the biggest business of the country, up through WW2. Shortly after, they began to part ways. Wilson could be thought of as the beginning of the end for the close relationship between Democrats and big business. These things are cyclical. Just look at which party takes up censorship. SOmetimes it's one or the other, sometimes both, but rarely neither.
Republicans have traditionally been pro-choice, right up through the 1970's and 1980's. They embraced the pro-life lobby for political reasons: people will vote based ONLY on the abortion issue. It's the same reason the Republicans have adopted the religious right. Those people are going to vote, so the Republicans bend their platform to absorb them. The Republicans have traditionally been champsions of conservative fiscal policy - small government that leaves as many decisions in one's life as possible up to the individual. Now the Republicans are trying to get the DECISION on abortion taken away from the woman and they've passed legislation banning you from buying prescription drugs from Canada.
The Democrats don't stand for _ANYTHING_ anymore other than !Bush.getAgenda().
Yes, insane. I stand by my characterization. Whether or not the Democrats are insane has nothing to do with whether or not the Republicans are. The religious right in particuar is just off the deep end and, sad to say, has slowly risen to dominance in the party (another reason I've abandoned the Republicans).
Then we got an article about how they reversed their stand and were ... they weren't OPPOSING it, but they were no longer supporting it.
Now they've reversed again.
Who cares? I thought the goal was to divorce corporate sponsorship from legislation? Or do we only want that when we find the legislation in question to be deplorable.
This is exactly what has caused me to abandon the Republican party. The Republicans used to be the party of small business and the Democrats were the party of big business. That's not the case and it's getting to be less and less the case. The Republicans are firmly in the pockets of big business and the Democrats are ... just insane.
I'd hope that the consumer electronics lobby is stronger than the MPAA, but I fear it isn't so.
Part of the consumer electronics industry is also part of the content management industry. Sony's subsidiaries are both members of the RIAA and other subsidiaries produce consumer electronics. O, the tangled we weave!
The onus is on the industry to find a solution within technology and capitalism, not within politics and law.