Freed from the constraint of costing money, this game obviously floats to the top. You were modded funny, but I think you're absolutely correct. I love FPS games and have been playing them since Wolfenstein 3D. Nothing, but nothing has kept me coming back like Enemy Territory. The weapons feel solid, the hits register properly (take note, Battlefield devs), and it's just damned fun. Hell, I've been playing the same six maps for years now and I still find myself laughing out loud at some of the play. To be honest, I'll probably buy the new ET coming out just to reward Splash Damage for the original, despite the in-game advertising. Enemy Territory is without doubt the best gaming money I never spent!
Lest anyone be confused by the AC here, "Hear hear!" is in fact the correct form of this expression. "Here here!", despite being used all over the Internet, is incorrect. Wikipedia has the facts. ^^ This.
So in other words, they're only evil in Britain. In the good ole' USA they're AOK! Well, they're giving non-DRM stuff a shot, so their evil rating has declined somewhat in my view.
On an unrelated note, does anyone else think that the Preview, Submit, Quote buttons are in the wrong order? They should be in order of use...I keep accidentally clicking on Preview instead of Quote. Some man-machine interface this is!
"Democrats should do this, republicans should do that..." this is the exact behavior that is retarding the nation, driving it to insanity, poverty and international disdain. Indeed. The sports team mentality that is so prevalent in politics is a primary source of the idiocy we endure. Even if something is clearly foolish or just plain wrong, there are people who will perform any and all necessary mental contortions to try to justify it, purely on the basis that it's their "team" that did it. The Democrats will shout and point fingers at the unethical Republicans over this latest travesty of justice, while the Republicans will similarly shout and point fingers at those damned liberals. Meanwhile, the country continues to go to hell in a hand-basket.
I will never purchase a game with ingame adverting. No one should. I'm right there with you in terms of dislike for in-game advertising. However, I'm a big Enemy Territory fan and was really excited about the new Enemy Territory game coming soon until I discovered that they intend to use in-game advertising. Now I'm stuck: do I forgo a game I was really looking forward to, or do I get it anyway and just try to ignore the ads? It's not like I have a moral objection to in-game advertising, it just annoys me.
Two other points irritate me. The first is that the additional revenue brought in by in-game advertising doesn't seem to be offset by a decreased purchase cost or increased quality, so the gamer is really getting less value (presence of annoyance) because of this practice. The second point is that there is evidently an entire industry of people who spent their lives irritating the hell out of people for the purposes of commercial "messages" but I am unable to kick them in the nuts. If they are able to make my day less pleasant, I should be able to reciprocate!
I've only restarted my Wii for firmware updates, I bought it in early January. Since then it has probably been "off" maybe two hours. I always leave it in "standby" (with WiiConnect24 or whatever its called enabled).
I just got done playing Zelda: Wind Waker (GC) about three hours ago, right now it is *barely* warm to the touch. Interesting. What sort of surroundings is it in (in terms of ventilation)? As I understand it, the Wii has active cooling when it's on, but not when it's in stand-by. Does your Wii remain cool when in standby mode?
Although it's not "over"heating, and I haven't had any actual problems yet, does anybody else find that their Wii gets quite hot when you leave it in standby mode, with WiiConnect 24 turned on. Mine was getting very hot indeed when in standby mode (evidently something was still putting out a significant amount of heat, but there wasn't even an intermittent fan to cool off the device). I ended up turning the standby mode completely off and now the system is obviously perfectly cool when it's not on. I've heard of a few failures blamed on this heat if the Wii is unused for a week or two, so you may want to consider turning off the standby mode on the Wii if it's a feature you can live without and you don't game on a daily or near-daily basis.
I have seen pictures of military planes with astonishing levels of damage that were flown back to base and landed. Indeed. The famous F-15 comes to mind as proof of military durability (not to mention aviator excellence).
(Ok, so I fall into that category... but I was the one who responded as a pays for one or two games a year... but I play them every day for a long time.) I envy you, as I'm the polar opposite. I rarely finish a game (I'm just now getting closer to finishing the original HL2) but can't stop myself from getting excited about--and subsequently buying--the latest "ooh shiny!"
I suspect it probably points to a fairly fundamental personality trait: I enjoy novelty and learning new systems, but get bored very easily with working my way through levels. I also thoroughly enjoy reading game manuals, again because it's new information. Still, at least my foible represents good financial support for the game industry and I have a library of fantastic games just waiting to be finished!
Sounds like overkill to me. I mean, I'm used to play my games @ 1280x1024 and i feel this resolution, maybe combined with a wee bit of AA, does the trick.
I used to feel this way, running at 1280x1024 on a pretty decent 19" CRT. However, about a year ago I finally upgraded to a 22" widescreen LCD with a native resolution of 1600x1050 and the difference it made was astonishing. Games that supported high resolution (Company of Heroes, WoW, Oblivion, etc.) felt incredibly more open. For contrast, I recently reloaded Enemy Territory on my system, which I have to run in a 1280x1024 window because the full-screen standard resolutions look like crap on my wide-screen. I honestly had a difficult time playing at first, because I felt like I was suddenly playing with blinkers on, unable to see anything that wasn't directly in front of me. Now, I played ET incessantly a couple of years ago so I'm well-used to the game, but the drop down from a wide-screen resolution to a standard resolution was both dramatic and constituted a significant drop in visual enjoyment.
A caveat to this is that my poor 7600GT is now unable to keep up with some games due to the high resolution I run (that and my insistence on good quality visual settings too) so I'm probably going to have to upgrade my card in the relatively near future. Despite this, I'd heartily recommend you try gaming at a decent wide-screen resolution if you haven't done so already, as you really owe it to yourself as a gamer. While I'd agree that there's probably a point of diminishing returns in terms of monitor size and pixel count, I would also definitely argue that gaming at 1280x1024 is a poor option for the modern PC gamer.
I find it interesting that most of the responses to your post seem to suggest the US would stop/hinder other space elevator efforts, whereas I read your post to mean that it would be a repeat of the space race. In fairness, I think that both options are a defensible supposition, but the former would almost certainly involve warfare on the scale we haven't seen since the last World War and thus is rather less so. Any nation (or amalgamation of nations effectively operating as a single entity, such as the EU) with sufficient resources and technology to attempt a space-elevator would necessarily be a first-world power. An attempt by the US to stop/hinder the activities of such a power would be an undertaking vastly more difficult and dangerous than bombing/threatening/negotiating a second- or third-world nation into submission.
Of course, any world-power that possessed a space-elevator would have a strategic and economic advantage of staggering magnitude over any nations that did not. This point underlies my assertion that the US government could not, in good conscience, permit another power exclusive possession of such a resource. Thus, the US would be faced with three options: another space-race, a partnership in the building of the elevator, or military/economic actions to prevent the building of the elevator.
Despite my extreme dislike for the current administration, I have a lot of faith in the people of my adopted country (UK --> US) and I do indeed think that a new space-race would ensue the moment another nation began work on a space-elevator (or indeed any other appropriately advanced space technology). To be honest, I wish it would happen. A US choosing to focus its energies primarily on space would likely be a better international neighbour, inspire a new generation of science/technology/engineering students, and perhaps even give its population a healthy focus and source of pride to jolt them out of their lassitude.
Yes, I am pretty damn stoked! I played System Shock 2 and LOVED it. I haven't been this excited for a game since Myth: The Fallen Lords came out (that was in 1997)! Here's hoping it's every bit as great as I'm anticipating, and then some!;) Concur, although I have to say that I'm absolutely terrified that having a console version will screw up the UI/control scheme. I know, I know, consoles are great and I'm a PC fanboi, but the travesty that was Oblivion (in terms of the UI) has really made me headshy. Hope springs eternal, however, so with luck the PC version of Bioshock will have an appropriately tight control scheme and solid UI.
You speak of Federal funding. This US centric view is quite funny. Why is it not possible that one of the newer emerging economies would start to fund such ventures. China is spending more on space these days, as is the EU or even a cartel of corporates. Granted the state of the art in nanotech is still a bit lacking, but recent successes are rather inspiring. The funny thing is that the one impetus that would absolutely, positively guarantee that the US would build a space elevator is if the EU, Russia, or China started work on one. Have no doubt: no-one on the planet will be permitted to build a space-elevator before the US or without US involvement; the federal/military complex in this nation wouldn't permit it.
In the US, unlike other countries such as the UK, it is not automatically assumed that the winner (either by decision or by default) will receive court-cost reimbursement. IANAL, but I understand that a request for such recompense must generally be submitted to a judge for approval, and the judge decides whether and how much compensation for court-costs is appropriate. I probably have that a bit confused, but it should give you the gist.
Mod parent up for being the fastest to the joke that needed to be stated The terrifying thing is that when I read the headline, I initially read it as "fruit fucker" instead of "fruit picker". Those bastards at PA have a lot to answer for!
Why do we need these words? They're almost as annoying as a teenage girl that won't stop using "omigod". What's wrong with the words "critic" and "vandal"? I can't speak to the former, but the latter of your suggestions doesn't capture the meaning of "griefer". A vandal is almost ubiquitously understood to mean one who destroys or defaces something tangible (to include semi-tangible things like web-pages), at least in my experience. In contrast, a "griefer" ruins the gameplay experience for a group of people. I suppose that one might argue that such an individual "vandalises" gameplay, but this strikes me as an awkward and inaccurate usage of the word. Personally, I'd expect a gaming "vandal" to disrupt a server or game assets, while a griefer disrupts only gameplay.
I'm telling you people, this is just a harbinger of what's to come. A thousand years from now, as the Google empire reigns with an iron fist over the cringing masses of humanity, records will tell of that legendary sage Puff of Logic and his predictions of Google's rise to empire!
Since Spore hasn't been released, what kind of copyrights currently exist given that it's not a salable product? Since the principle of evolution is hardly subject to copyright and there's ample prior art in terms of games that involve the progression of species/civilisations, presumably another firm could produce such a game with impunity. I suspect that they'd only run into issues if they produced a product that was unreasonably close (or identical) to assets within the game, such as visual appearance, logos, and so on.
Historically, the gaming sphere is so used to "clones" that I think copyright really doesn't seem to have as much teeth in the community as it does in the music/film industries.
This fuels my fear that Spore will be another in a long line of games that sound absolutely fantastic in terms of potential, but end up terribly disappointing. I'm excited as hell about Spore and I'm hoping that the release push-back just represents an intent to release the game only when its potential has been realised. Blizzard tends to have this attitude (although they're smart enough not to talk release dates until they're pretty solid) so hope springs eternal.
Still, on balance, I'd prefer that a game be delayed and subsequently released in good form, rather than the developers saying "the hell with it" and releasing a half-baked version.
I have no idea how much this damaged my credit rating, but I assume significantly. I had a similar experience, albeit with Qwest. Back before cable broadband was available in the city, Qwest DSL was the only thing going. I ordered their best tier service and, along with activation, received three modems. Clearly I only needed one modem, so I called Qwest, obtained return information, and sent the surplus modems back. The next month I received a phone bill for more than $700, since, while the first modem was "free", the second and third were evidently $300 each.
To cut a long story short, it took me more than a year (along with a hell of a lot of phone-calls and paperwork hunting) to get them to sort it out. I was sent to collections no less than four times, and evidently amassed a 'note' on my account that was so long that customer service reps exclaimed with surprise when I directed them to it. Like you, I was deeply concerned about the negative effect upon my credit score. However, when I took advantage of my yearly free credit-check, I found no record of the problem at all. Evidently the entire fiasco had no effect on my rating of any kind. I'd suggest that you do a credit check to find if your situation is similar.
But you seem to be saying that, because such situations do occur, then it would be healthy to severely punish medical errors to the point where most doctors' first instinct is to do nothing, run another test, etc. Even though there may be times when that state of affairs would help certain patients, on the balance I think it would make medical care worse. Indeed it would. My understanding is that the cost of defensive medicine (defensive in terms of liability) is not just measured in dollars; invasive, harmful, or otherwise painful tests are often done in a full-court-press just to say that every possibility was checked, regardless of whether such tests are indicated. That we, as a society, demand a level of perfection from our doctors that is simply unreasonable to expect from any human merely exacerbates matters. A doctor cannot openly say "guys, I screwed this one up, so learn from my mistakes" because the family will be howling for compensation and the lawyers will be trying to hush it all up. A failure to act (doing nothing, as the GPP suggests) is just as damning as doing the wrong thing, so what other choice does a physician have than to fire the medical artillery, even if he thinks only a BB gun is indicated?
I should immediately point out that IANAD but I hope to play one in front of an admissions committee soon, so I may be talking out of my rear. However, the above seems to be the sentiment of most doctors I've spoken to. I just got done with the MCAT recently, so this topic is a bit close to my heart!
An interesting site with a good take on the situation is here.
Not really wanting to get into the argument here, but it should be noted that the video cards would represent an extreme bottleneck there, not to mention the RAM. My personal system is a dual-core with 2GB of RAM and a 7600GT bottlenecks it. I'm not sure that having two dual-core processors would really be much help on a system so limited on RAM and video capacity. The second system isn't particularly impressive for the price, even accounting for the LCD.
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On an unrelated note, does anyone else think that the Preview, Submit, Quote buttons are in the wrong order? They should be in order of use...I keep accidentally clicking on Preview instead of Quote. Some man-machine interface this is!
Two other points irritate me. The first is that the additional revenue brought in by in-game advertising doesn't seem to be offset by a decreased purchase cost or increased quality, so the gamer is really getting less value (presence of annoyance) because of this practice. The second point is that there is evidently an entire industry of people who spent their lives irritating the hell out of people for the purposes of commercial "messages" but I am unable to kick them in the nuts. If they are able to make my day less pleasant, I should be able to reciprocate!
It's funny how people move around, isn't it? I'm an aviator moving into medicine. Now we just need a doctor to become an IT professional...
I suspect it probably points to a fairly fundamental personality trait: I enjoy novelty and learning new systems, but get bored very easily with working my way through levels. I also thoroughly enjoy reading game manuals, again because it's new information. Still, at least my foible represents good financial support for the game industry and I have a library of fantastic games just waiting to be finished!
Sounds like overkill to me. I mean, I'm used to play my games @ 1280x1024 and i feel this resolution, maybe combined with a wee bit of AA, does the trick.
I used to feel this way, running at 1280x1024 on a pretty decent 19" CRT. However, about a year ago I finally upgraded to a 22" widescreen LCD with a native resolution of 1600x1050 and the difference it made was astonishing. Games that supported high resolution (Company of Heroes, WoW, Oblivion, etc.) felt incredibly more open. For contrast, I recently reloaded Enemy Territory on my system, which I have to run in a 1280x1024 window because the full-screen standard resolutions look like crap on my wide-screen. I honestly had a difficult time playing at first, because I felt like I was suddenly playing with blinkers on, unable to see anything that wasn't directly in front of me. Now, I played ET incessantly a couple of years ago so I'm well-used to the game, but the drop down from a wide-screen resolution to a standard resolution was both dramatic and constituted a significant drop in visual enjoyment.
A caveat to this is that my poor 7600GT is now unable to keep up with some games due to the high resolution I run (that and my insistence on good quality visual settings too) so I'm probably going to have to upgrade my card in the relatively near future. Despite this, I'd heartily recommend you try gaming at a decent wide-screen resolution if you haven't done so already, as you really owe it to yourself as a gamer. While I'd agree that there's probably a point of diminishing returns in terms of monitor size and pixel count, I would also definitely argue that gaming at 1280x1024 is a poor option for the modern PC gamer.
Of course, any world-power that possessed a space-elevator would have a strategic and economic advantage of staggering magnitude over any nations that did not. This point underlies my assertion that the US government could not, in good conscience, permit another power exclusive possession of such a resource. Thus, the US would be faced with three options: another space-race, a partnership in the building of the elevator, or military/economic actions to prevent the building of the elevator.
Despite my extreme dislike for the current administration, I have a lot of faith in the people of my adopted country (UK --> US) and I do indeed think that a new space-race would ensue the moment another nation began work on a space-elevator (or indeed any other appropriately advanced space technology). To be honest, I wish it would happen. A US choosing to focus its energies primarily on space would likely be a better international neighbour, inspire a new generation of science/technology/engineering students, and perhaps even give its population a healthy focus and source of pride to jolt them out of their lassitude.
In the US, unlike other countries such as the UK, it is not automatically assumed that the winner (either by decision or by default) will receive court-cost reimbursement. IANAL, but I understand that a request for such recompense must generally be submitted to a judge for approval, and the judge decides whether and how much compensation for court-costs is appropriate. I probably have that a bit confused, but it should give you the gist.
I can't speak to the former, but the latter of your suggestions doesn't capture the meaning of "griefer". A vandal is almost ubiquitously understood to mean one who destroys or defaces something tangible (to include semi-tangible things like web-pages), at least in my experience. In contrast, a "griefer" ruins the gameplay experience for a group of people. I suppose that one might argue that such an individual "vandalises" gameplay, but this strikes me as an awkward and inaccurate usage of the word. Personally, I'd expect a gaming "vandal" to disrupt a server or game assets, while a griefer disrupts only gameplay.
I'm telling you people, this is just a harbinger of what's to come. A thousand years from now, as the Google empire reigns with an iron fist over the cringing masses of humanity, records will tell of that legendary sage Puff of Logic and his predictions of Google's rise to empire!
This fuels my fear that Spore will be another in a long line of games that sound absolutely fantastic in terms of potential, but end up terribly disappointing. I'm excited as hell about Spore and I'm hoping that the release push-back just represents an intent to release the game only when its potential has been realised. Blizzard tends to have this attitude (although they're smart enough not to talk release dates until they're pretty solid) so hope springs eternal.
Still, on balance, I'd prefer that a game be delayed and subsequently released in good form, rather than the developers saying "the hell with it" and releasing a half-baked version.
We hates the squeakers, Precious, we hates them!
To cut a long story short, it took me more than a year (along with a hell of a lot of phone-calls and paperwork hunting) to get them to sort it out. I was sent to collections no less than four times, and evidently amassed a 'note' on my account that was so long that customer service reps exclaimed with surprise when I directed them to it. Like you, I was deeply concerned about the negative effect upon my credit score. However, when I took advantage of my yearly free credit-check, I found no record of the problem at all. Evidently the entire fiasco had no effect on my rating of any kind. I'd suggest that you do a credit check to find if your situation is similar.
cheers.
I should immediately point out that IANAD but I hope to play one in front of an admissions committee soon, so I may be talking out of my rear. However, the above seems to be the sentiment of most doctors I've spoken to. I just got done with the MCAT recently, so this topic is a bit close to my heart! An interesting site with a good take on the situation is here.
Not really wanting to get into the argument here, but it should be noted that the video cards would represent an extreme bottleneck there, not to mention the RAM. My personal system is a dual-core with 2GB of RAM and a 7600GT bottlenecks it. I'm not sure that having two dual-core processors would really be much help on a system so limited on RAM and video capacity. The second system isn't particularly impressive for the price, even accounting for the LCD.