The fact that there is no used market is one of the reasons I left PC gaming behind several years ago. I can usually buy a used copy of a console game for a fraction of the new price, and it's saved me a fortune over the years. With PC games, there basically is no buying games used. The PC software industry has been bullying sites like ebay for years. Game publishers would no doubt like to kill the used market on console games too (that's why they're salivating so much over the prospect of going to download-only games and expansions), but so far have been stymied by technological limitations and a traditionally strong used game market for consoles. Just look in any Gamestop and you'll see a huge console section (with mostly used games) and an almost non-existent PC game section.
Why should PC games be regarded as so different? There is no reason game publishers couldn't require their software be used on one computer at a time the same as a console disc. Why should they be able to use that lame "We're not selling it, we're just licensing it" argument to stop resale of the physical software discs when movie studios and console game developers can't get away with it?
The CEO claims it will run on about everything (further indication, IMHO, that this is vaporware). The CEO probably would claim Commodore 64 compatibility if it got him some more venture capital.
Something tells me that Google isn't going to just let this matter drop with this "workaround." They may have the IMAGE of being cool and laid back, but at their heart they're a prick corporation just like any other. And prick corporations HATE to lose control of anything (or be shown up by some punk outside programmer). Releasing *some* of this stuff open source was more PR than true dedication to open principles.
This whole thing just highlights the fact that NCAA players should be PAID, just as professional athletes. Colleges make BIG money off their athletes these day, and said athletes are grown men (and women) with the same rights to money made off the sweat of their brow as any other adult. The old NCAA rules might have been appropriate back when college sports were just moderately formal fun and games from students who were primarily there to get a college degree. But today's major NCAA athletic franchises are big business enterprises made up of athletes who are often only in college because of their athletic ability (and who are focused entirely on playing a sport, with some token time spent in a classroom to make them look like real students). The whole paternalistic "They're just students, and shouldn't be paid" facade is just a joke--a license for legal exploitation in sports, like football and basketball, that should have went to a more honest baseball-style minor league and semi-pro system a long time ago.
If NCAA players were paid and allowed to license their image in the first place, like their NFL counterparts, this wouldn't be an issue (and my NCAA Football 09 could have real player names in it dammit!).
I've never met any decent scholar who didn't need to take notes and highlight certain ideas and trains of thought in the course of studying a topic. Anyone who doesn't need to mark text or take notes either isn't having to read many texts (not hard to remember the important stuff if you're only reading one book a semester) or they have some sort of freakish super photographic memory (in which case they would probably be better off in Vegas counting cards than sitting in a classroom). Any student going to anything higher than "PassU State Community College" or wanting anything higher than a 2.0 GPA is going to have to take SOME sort of notes at some point.
Actually, if the person knows what they're doing, their notes and highlights can really be useful to the next student to get it. The problem only comes when you realize the person who had the book before was a complete idiot, who seemed to underline random passages instead of important ideas.
It's funny, just yesterday I was having a conversation about Apple's aggressive software with a guy who brought me a video in Quicktime. I told him that I refused to install any Apple software on my Windows computer because it is so aggressive about installing other Apple programs (like installing iTunes when you install Quicktime), taking over file extensions without asking, running an updater in the background without asking, etc. AFAIC, Apple software on a Windows machine is just glorified malware. The last time I installed Quicktime, it took over every media file extension, made iTunes my default media player, and put an updater on the system that I had to go hunt down in the registry to finally get rid of (even Apple's uninstaller is sneaky and tries to leave traces of itself behind). Bad-mouth MS all you want, but I would trust their stuff any day over Apple software.
I've had the exact opposite experience. It's only here on./ (and in other geek heavy settings) that I've met anyone who knew of "gimp" as a graphics editor.
I would happily do that if the slash screen and main workspace didn't prominently feature "GIMP" in all capital letters. And I don't expect them to change it to Photo-whatever, but how about something that at least isn't openly offensive? You can design the best application in the world, but if you name it "RETARD," don't expect to be taken seriously (or used in any professional setting).
Nice dodge. Tell everyone your religion makes people better, then when one of your "better" people turns out to be a scumbag you just say "Oh, you see, he wasn't a REAL Christian." That way you never have to accept the fact that your religion isn't any better at producing good people than atheism or any other religion.
I wish GIMP has followed that lead. I used to use it in my web development classes for teaching basic graphics editing, but it was so embarrassing for people to see the name, I finally stopped using it. Better to spend some money than to offend a bunch of people and look like a jackass as an instructor (whether you view it as a derogatory name for the handicapped or a Pulp Fiction reference, it's pretty damn bad either way).
Another hypothesis is that dogs actually domesticated *us*. Okay well, it's actually less a "hypothesis" than an old Twilight Zone episode, but it's a cool twist ending nonetheless.
You should be grateful they didn't include it. If this is the kind of self-serving scumbag your religion produces, I wouldn't go around advertising it.
When my friends ask me about Linux, I usually steer them toward Ubuntu first, as it's the most user friendly and well-supported distro out there. Canonical really puts a lot of development work into it, and it shows (in this result and many others). In the past, I usually avoided the Linux topic altogether, as there were so many confusing distros that even trying to explain the concept of Linux to non-geeks (and even many geeks) was a huge pain in the ass. So, I for one welcome our new Ubuntu overlords.
"Nintendo" and "Indie games" are two terms that have never, and likely will never, mix. Even getting them to accept 3rd-party games was like pulling teeth.
You can get food, water, and oxygen from earth's ocean. Building a pressurized living environment is a helluva lot easier than trying to live without sufficient quantities of those.
It's like my grandpa used to say, "Dream, kid. But dream realistically." Of course, grandpa also used to periodically put his cat in the mailbox and feed his mail, so take it for what it's worth.
It's such a shame that dreamers like you won't accept the fact that the moon and other planetary bodies in this solar system simply cannot sustain human life. All your fantasies of hidden oceans and "water mining" won't change the fact that earth seems to be the only body in this system with anything more than sparse amounts of water and oxygen.
Considering the incredibly harsh environment of every other body in the solar system, I'd say that transportation is one of the least of our problems in trying to colonize them. We haven't even colonized the vast majority of *this* planet, and just about any spot on it is way more hospitable than anywhere on Mars.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that there is no used market is one of the reasons I left PC gaming behind several years ago. I can usually buy a used copy of a console game for a fraction of the new price, and it's saved me a fortune over the years. With PC games, there basically is no buying games used. The PC software industry has been bullying sites like ebay for years. Game publishers would no doubt like to kill the used market on console games too (that's why they're salivating so much over the prospect of going to download-only games and expansions), but so far have been stymied by technological limitations and a traditionally strong used game market for consoles. Just look in any Gamestop and you'll see a huge console section (with mostly used games) and an almost non-existent PC game section.
Why should PC games be regarded as so different? There is no reason game publishers couldn't require their software be used on one computer at a time the same as a console disc. Why should they be able to use that lame "We're not selling it, we're just licensing it" argument to stop resale of the physical software discs when movie studios and console game developers can't get away with it?
The CEO claims it will run on about everything (further indication, IMHO, that this is vaporware). The CEO probably would claim Commodore 64 compatibility if it got him some more venture capital.
Don't be so cynical. I predict this system will be the biggest thing in consoles since the Phantom.
Something tells me that Google isn't going to just let this matter drop with this "workaround." They may have the IMAGE of being cool and laid back, but at their heart they're a prick corporation just like any other. And prick corporations HATE to lose control of anything (or be shown up by some punk outside programmer). Releasing *some* of this stuff open source was more PR than true dedication to open principles.
This whole thing just highlights the fact that NCAA players should be PAID, just as professional athletes. Colleges make BIG money off their athletes these day, and said athletes are grown men (and women) with the same rights to money made off the sweat of their brow as any other adult. The old NCAA rules might have been appropriate back when college sports were just moderately formal fun and games from students who were primarily there to get a college degree. But today's major NCAA athletic franchises are big business enterprises made up of athletes who are often only in college because of their athletic ability (and who are focused entirely on playing a sport, with some token time spent in a classroom to make them look like real students). The whole paternalistic "They're just students, and shouldn't be paid" facade is just a joke--a license for legal exploitation in sports, like football and basketball, that should have went to a more honest baseball-style minor league and semi-pro system a long time ago.
If NCAA players were paid and allowed to license their image in the first place, like their NFL counterparts, this wouldn't be an issue (and my NCAA Football 09 could have real player names in it dammit!).
I've never met any decent scholar who didn't need to take notes and highlight certain ideas and trains of thought in the course of studying a topic. Anyone who doesn't need to mark text or take notes either isn't having to read many texts (not hard to remember the important stuff if you're only reading one book a semester) or they have some sort of freakish super photographic memory (in which case they would probably be better off in Vegas counting cards than sitting in a classroom). Any student going to anything higher than "PassU State Community College" or wanting anything higher than a 2.0 GPA is going to have to take SOME sort of notes at some point.
Actually, if the person knows what they're doing, their notes and highlights can really be useful to the next student to get it. The problem only comes when you realize the person who had the book before was a complete idiot, who seemed to underline random passages instead of important ideas.
It's funny, just yesterday I was having a conversation about Apple's aggressive software with a guy who brought me a video in Quicktime. I told him that I refused to install any Apple software on my Windows computer because it is so aggressive about installing other Apple programs (like installing iTunes when you install Quicktime), taking over file extensions without asking, running an updater in the background without asking, etc. AFAIC, Apple software on a Windows machine is just glorified malware. The last time I installed Quicktime, it took over every media file extension, made iTunes my default media player, and put an updater on the system that I had to go hunt down in the registry to finally get rid of (even Apple's uninstaller is sneaky and tries to leave traces of itself behind). Bad-mouth MS all you want, but I would trust their stuff any day over Apple software.
I've had the exact opposite experience. It's only here on ./ (and in other geek heavy settings) that I've met anyone who knew of "gimp" as a graphics editor.
Alas, if you think rubber chickens are funny I'm afraid you've already lost one front of the battle.
I would happily do that if the slash screen and main workspace didn't prominently feature "GIMP" in all capital letters. And I don't expect them to change it to Photo-whatever, but how about something that at least isn't openly offensive? You can design the best application in the world, but if you name it "RETARD," don't expect to be taken seriously (or used in any professional setting).
Nice dodge. Tell everyone your religion makes people better, then when one of your "better" people turns out to be a scumbag you just say "Oh, you see, he wasn't a REAL Christian." That way you never have to accept the fact that your religion isn't any better at producing good people than atheism or any other religion.
I wish GIMP has followed that lead. I used to use it in my web development classes for teaching basic graphics editing, but it was so embarrassing for people to see the name, I finally stopped using it. Better to spend some money than to offend a bunch of people and look like a jackass as an instructor (whether you view it as a derogatory name for the handicapped or a Pulp Fiction reference, it's pretty damn bad either way).
Another hypothesis is that dogs actually domesticated *us*. Okay well, it's actually less a "hypothesis" than an old Twilight Zone episode, but it's a cool twist ending nonetheless.
Ma'am, we have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that the engine in your husband's car is just fine...
The guy looks so much like Matt Damon it's creepy.
You should be grateful they didn't include it. If this is the kind of self-serving scumbag your religion produces, I wouldn't go around advertising it.
Anyone find it a little amusing that a species found in a totalitarian country is given the specific name huxleyi?
When my friends ask me about Linux, I usually steer them toward Ubuntu first, as it's the most user friendly and well-supported distro out there. Canonical really puts a lot of development work into it, and it shows (in this result and many others). In the past, I usually avoided the Linux topic altogether, as there were so many confusing distros that even trying to explain the concept of Linux to non-geeks (and even many geeks) was a huge pain in the ass. So, I for one welcome our new Ubuntu overlords.
"Nintendo" and "Indie games" are two terms that have never, and likely will never, mix. Even getting them to accept 3rd-party games was like pulling teeth.
And I'm chanting back "Mere wild speculation, Arthur."
You can get food, water, and oxygen from earth's ocean. Building a pressurized living environment is a helluva lot easier than trying to live without sufficient quantities of those.
It's like my grandpa used to say, "Dream, kid. But dream realistically." Of course, grandpa also used to periodically put his cat in the mailbox and feed his mail, so take it for what it's worth.
It's such a shame that dreamers like you won't accept the fact that the moon and other planetary bodies in this solar system simply cannot sustain human life. All your fantasies of hidden oceans and "water mining" won't change the fact that earth seems to be the only body in this system with anything more than sparse amounts of water and oxygen.
Considering the incredibly harsh environment of every other body in the solar system, I'd say that transportation is one of the least of our problems in trying to colonize them. We haven't even colonized the vast majority of *this* planet, and just about any spot on it is way more hospitable than anywhere on Mars.