I don't remember that mission, though in San Andreas there was one where everyone was angry. I kept a save game slot just for that mission because it was fun to brawl:)
Perhaps that's why I avoid the pedestrians and other cars, but I think it's just more fun weaving around stuff, and I don't like beating up my nice shiny cars. Some people like to mangle pedestrians and just cause as much damage as possible even if that brings more cops round. Hell, even I very occasionally want to have a cop fight (though I think even then after getting over the novelty of it in the original GTA III, I only started fights in subsequent versions to steal tanks - I haven't even tried starting a big fight in GTA IV yet) - but yeah I get more of a kick out of driving as fast as possible (which means avoiding all obstacles), the missions, searching for items and evading the cops than I do from having all-out war.
When I said I learned to drive out in the country, I meant when I was first learning to drive, therefore I had a better driving style than someone who learned in a city - not that I only learned how to do high speed driving because of that course.. but I certainly felt more aware of my surroundings afterwards, and learned about looking for the 'limit point' on corners to tell how steep a curve is going to be.
It's amazing how you just don't notice roadsigns because you get so used to seeing them on a daily commute, and then you end up ignoring pretty much all the signs apart from speed limits and important junctions when travelling, etc. You can also keep an eye out for houses so you know there will be hidden entrances, etc (perhaps not such a problem in the US, but in Scotland there are little roads and houses all over the place).
Currently most of the traffic collisions we have on our roads are caused by people who are distracted and do not react in time
You should not let yourself become 'distracted' while driving - it is literally the most dangerous thing that most people do.
If people actually were paying attention
If you are paying attention you won't need to react quickly, which is my whole point. Go do some 'advanced' or 'defensive' driving courses or speak to some police drivers if you don't agree with me. I spent a week earlier this year with a guy who has been a police driving instructor for 36 years, and I learned a lot from the experience.
and trained in the skill of driving.. People love to blame speed, visibility, surface conditions, etc, for their failures as a driver, but the physics behind your driving isn't what failed to keep the automobile under control. It was your lack of attention and ability.
I can safely say that I am a skilled driver compared to most people on public roads. You are right that it is driver error causing problems in all these cases. Speed too great for the circumstances. If the surface or, visibility are bad, then it is the driver's responsibility to reduce their speed. A more skilled driver may be better able to control skids, but the whole point is that if you are driving according to the conditions, you will not skid in the first place (excepting perhaps micro-climates but that isn't a very common occurence, and if you hit a patch of ice at 70mph on a bend, no amount of driving skill will save you from crashing).
I was not advocating driving under the speed limit at all, apart from in appropriate situations, such as there being a row of parked cars by the side of the road and you already having noticed that there are kids playing, that kind of thing. When we were doing our advanced driving the instructor was telling the other student to drive faster a lot of the time;) The first corner I came to on a country road he told me to slow down, but after that it was fine. I learned to drive out in the country and he commented that I had a smoother driving style than the other student, which was strange because it's usually girls who have a smoother driving technique. Our instructor was driving up at 110mph on a country road where safe (and mentioned that they had to drive at up to 150mph on motorways when safe when they are doing their instructor training, etc) just in case you think I think being a good driver is all about driving slowly. It's not. Building up driving skill is great and all - but the fact is you shouldn't ever need to correct a skid outside of a racetrack, if you are driving appropriately.
If you find you get distracted often then you should probably keep a running commentary of things like mirror observations, then roadsigns, traffic and corners ahead of you etc. Apparently police drivers still do that out looud in pursuit situations to help them stay more focused, and I just naturally do it after my week of driver training (we had to speak all our observations during the advanced driving test - I still go through everything in my head, though I perhaps forgot a couple of things during my 3 month ban).
I said it wasn't about reaction time (as in jet fighter pilot reactions type thing). You can be reactive sure, but it's better to be proactive and plan ahead. If your reactions or sight are so bad that you don't even notice when a driver is too close in front of you, you shouldn't be driving.
When I was doing my advanced driver training earlier this year*, we were taught to look at cars on junctions ahead of us, to make sure they were "safe and settled" and the like. You can make sure that a driver has seen you, and if not then slow down. Sure, you can just ignore him and then react if he pulls out, but superfast reaction times are very limited as a driving safety skill. You often react better to something if you are expecting it anyway.
* yep, kind of stupid that I just passed it in January then was caught speeding (for the first time ever, after years of speeding and no points) a couple of months later - especially annoying since I'd been driving a lot more sensibly in populated areas, but I made a choice to go quickly on the motorway to go help out a friend who needed a lift (awww, well now I've learned just to let people suffer for their own poor planning!).
I've been playing WipEout HD a lot this week - I'm in the top 40 in the global rankings for some of the events, surely that entitles me to some kind of insurance discount!?
And as for GTA, I don't aim for the pedestrians like some people do, so that has to count for something:)
Avoiding accidents is rarely about reaction time. If you have to react to something in front of you, then you've already been making some bad decisions in the previous moments. Real life driving is not like a racing game (says the guy who was banned from driving for 3 months when he got caught at 114mph in March this year).
Actually I was referring to unleaded when talking about international fuel differences, since AFAIK diesel isn't very pervasive in the US (perhaps the infrastructure is there but Americans are into big petrol burning engines when they want torque, rather than just taking the practical option.. another guy here was talking about getting a 7.5 litre engine just to pull a caravan..).
I drive a diesel myself. I think all diesel in the UK is low sulphur stuff... though some is 'ultra low'.
Nothing wrong with trying to one-up each other when it comes to being greener, but I doubt it was just a one-upmanship type thing. Everything doesn't have to be a contest..
I was using a sempron as an example of a poor processor - it's the AMD equivalent of a Celeron.
Yes, I was just pulling the statistics out of my ass. You are a pretty special case though. Even if you take every person on slashdot into account, it is still a tiny percentage of worldwide computer users. Your average home user has no clue. Even if they know not to buy a celeron/sempron, they will probably still end up with cheap RAM, a 5,400 RPM HD and stick with their onboard sound and graphics - unless of course they are a gamer who takes their hardware seriously. It's still just from anecdotal evidence, but I even know people who like games but have no idea about hardware- so those who aren't even into their games and just want a computer to write word documents and check their email will be lucky to end up with a decent system (unless they happen to be rich and just get something mid-high range).
Fair enough, if you really don't need the power then why pay for it - but then again, those same people buying cheap systems are going to end up with Vista on it and it will just further reinforce the general hatred or apathy towards computers that people seem to have, when everything runs as if it's submerged in treacle.
It appears I've stumbled on a hotly contested debate similar to the nature/nurture debates that are constantly going on in the fields of psychology. When it comes to those debates I'd usually say the answer lies with neither field, it lies with both.
Yes, I am ignorant as to what you thought a natural right is (though I've just looked it up on wikipedia and apparently its what is referred to as inalienable rights in the US constitution). No, we never covered anything like that in school. Presumably you are American, and I'm not surprised that you'd cover your constitution in school, given the amount of times I've heard people bang on about it. Just because people in my country don't make such a big deal about rights doesn't mean we don't appreciate them, we just don't feel the need to talk about the all the time (while our government takes us up the rear).
Anyway, I think that yes people tend to do what is best for the majority to avoid friction and simply because the majority is stronger. We are naturally inclined to protect our genepool as well so that can come into it. The idea that natural or 'inalienable rights' have to be written down to me seems a little absurd though - if they are so obvious and natural, why bother to write them down? It's because some people (and corporations etc) don't recognise these 'rights' and for the benefit of the majority they have to be made law. That's just my opinion anyway, and clearly the world has wildly varying views on this topic.
Re:Tron!? This aint no dangblammed Tron!
on
Perfecting a Tron Game
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I remember some strange orange console from when I was really young (probably about 3), can't even remember what games it had. Could have been something like this.
The first console I remember probably was our Commodore 100 when I was 3 or 4, I used to type in programs from the manual to draw circles and triangles..
It used to be fine for me online unless I was trying to have a Skype conversation at the same time (it was still slightly playable even then though). That was just on 1Mb ADSL a couple of years ago.
I think the summary is wrong personally, speed of your vehicle isn't always the most important factor - at least for online play. I've seen people do some amazing stuff (and done a small amount myself) with the lag buffer thingy: when you run into a wall you don't die immediately - you die after a certain amount of time that is defined by the server. If you are clever about it you can go between 2 trails that seem to be right next to each other, and you can keep turning to face the wall and face away again, creating teeeeeny tiny little walls for your opponents to run into if they try running up the side of your trail, etc. It's great fun, very tactical and skillful all rolled up. I enjoyed the teamplay games the best, with the maps rotating every 10-20 minutes or so into different challenges (some maps were incredibly tiny but with a large time buffer before dying, some maps you could go in 6 directions instead of 4, etc). Standard deathmatch was always fun too of course, and was the best way to hone your skills.
Unfortunately for me the linux version's inputs seemed to be quite laggy compared to the Windows one. Maybe it was just my keyboard driver or something though.
The graphics are excellent IMO! For me this game is mostly about that sound and the great gameplay. What more do you want out of a game that is based on CGI from an 80s movie?
The fact that the site is down shows that a lot of other people do in fact find this interesting and newsworthy. They say they will make the second batch in 2009, so it sounds like the first batch could be out by the end of 2008. They have already designed all the hardware, they just need some money up-front to build the 3000 units.
I ordered mine last night anyway (I had signed up to the pre-order mailing list):)
Intrinsic or natural rights that people believe they have
Nature doesn't seem to recognise these rights, so I highly doubt they're natural.
I think human rights are a good thing, but they are an entirely human concept, just as 'animal rights' or indeed any sort of rights are. In nature, might is right. People, plants and animals are regularly destroyed by natural disasters, or each other.
if you need even need a normal anti-virus, you're to stupid to work with computers.
What if you want to download a freeware program to perform a task, but want to know if it's infected? What if your system has a zero day exploit and has been infected without you knowing? Anti-virus scanners are unfortunately a necessity when it comes to using pre-compiled binaries.
If you are never going to connect to the net or removable storage, and only use software that you have written yourself, then yes - anti-virus is unecessary
There is no difference between a suggestion and a demand when the person making it has no power over the target.
Yes there is. There may be no difference in the results, but there is a difference in the method.
As for your second point (and your sig), quit trolling with weak pseudo-logic. He wasn't complaining that they were complaining: he was complaining at where their complaints were directed. You're allowed to complain about complainers when the original complaints are moronic!
I'm Scottish. I don't know what you're on about myths for, the quality of fuel in america is lower than the UK (have a google and see - I'm not trying to brag, it's just a fact). Then when you go to somewhere like Japan, they only sell 98-100 RON stuff which is regarded as the good stuff here in the UK.
1.8 isn't exactly excess, I'd say it's about average for a family sized car. In a small car it would be pretty decent. I've currently got a 1.9TDI Skoda Fabia, it pulls quite nicely.
The smallest engine I ever had (not counting my motorbike:p ) was in my first car, a 1.6 litre Golf MkII. Largest so far was a 2.2 VTEC in my Prelude. I wouldn't want to go anything below a 1.6 unless it was in a super light car, otherwise it would be excruciatingly slow!
Slashdot Mirror
the system monitors a list of politically charged words that includes words related to the religious group Falun Gong
I hope one of those words is 'lol'
I can tell that at least one moderator today is a complete dumbass of a driver..
I don't remember that mission, though in San Andreas there was one where everyone was angry. I kept a save game slot just for that mission because it was fun to brawl :)
Perhaps that's why I avoid the pedestrians and other cars, but I think it's just more fun weaving around stuff, and I don't like beating up my nice shiny cars. Some people like to mangle pedestrians and just cause as much damage as possible even if that brings more cops round. Hell, even I very occasionally want to have a cop fight (though I think even then after getting over the novelty of it in the original GTA III, I only started fights in subsequent versions to steal tanks - I haven't even tried starting a big fight in GTA IV yet) - but yeah I get more of a kick out of driving as fast as possible (which means avoiding all obstacles), the missions, searching for items and evading the cops than I do from having all-out war.
When I said I learned to drive out in the country, I meant when I was first learning to drive, therefore I had a better driving style than someone who learned in a city - not that I only learned how to do high speed driving because of that course.. but I certainly felt more aware of my surroundings afterwards, and learned about looking for the 'limit point' on corners to tell how steep a curve is going to be.
It's amazing how you just don't notice roadsigns because you get so used to seeing them on a daily commute, and then you end up ignoring pretty much all the signs apart from speed limits and important junctions when travelling, etc. You can also keep an eye out for houses so you know there will be hidden entrances, etc (perhaps not such a problem in the US, but in Scotland there are little roads and houses all over the place).
That's not true at all.
Not at all?
Currently most of the traffic collisions we have on our roads are caused by people who are distracted and do not react in time
You should not let yourself become 'distracted' while driving - it is literally the most dangerous thing that most people do.
If people actually were paying attention
If you are paying attention you won't need to react quickly, which is my whole point. Go do some 'advanced' or 'defensive' driving courses or speak to some police drivers if you don't agree with me. I spent a week earlier this year with a guy who has been a police driving instructor for 36 years, and I learned a lot from the experience.
and trained in the skill of driving.. People love to blame speed, visibility, surface conditions, etc, for their failures as a driver, but the physics behind your driving isn't what failed to keep the automobile under control. It was your lack of attention and ability.
I can safely say that I am a skilled driver compared to most people on public roads. You are right that it is driver error causing problems in all these cases. Speed too great for the circumstances. If the surface or, visibility are bad, then it is the driver's responsibility to reduce their speed. A more skilled driver may be better able to control skids, but the whole point is that if you are driving according to the conditions, you will not skid in the first place (excepting perhaps micro-climates but that isn't a very common occurence, and if you hit a patch of ice at 70mph on a bend, no amount of driving skill will save you from crashing).
I was not advocating driving under the speed limit at all, apart from in appropriate situations, such as there being a row of parked cars by the side of the road and you already having noticed that there are kids playing, that kind of thing. When we were doing our advanced driving the instructor was telling the other student to drive faster a lot of the time ;) The first corner I came to on a country road he told me to slow down, but after that it was fine. I learned to drive out in the country and he commented that I had a smoother driving style than the other student, which was strange because it's usually girls who have a smoother driving technique. Our instructor was driving up at 110mph on a country road where safe (and mentioned that they had to drive at up to 150mph on motorways when safe when they are doing their instructor training, etc) just in case you think I think being a good driver is all about driving slowly. It's not. Building up driving skill is great and all - but the fact is you shouldn't ever need to correct a skid outside of a racetrack, if you are driving appropriately.
If you find you get distracted often then you should probably keep a running commentary of things like mirror observations, then roadsigns, traffic and corners ahead of you etc. Apparently police drivers still do that out looud in pursuit situations to help them stay more focused, and I just naturally do it after my week of driver training (we had to speak all our observations during the advanced driving test - I still go through everything in my head, though I perhaps forgot a couple of things during my 3 month ban).
I said it wasn't about reaction time (as in jet fighter pilot reactions type thing). You can be reactive sure, but it's better to be proactive and plan ahead. If your reactions or sight are so bad that you don't even notice when a driver is too close in front of you, you shouldn't be driving.
When I was doing my advanced driver training earlier this year*, we were taught to look at cars on junctions ahead of us, to make sure they were "safe and settled" and the like. You can make sure that a driver has seen you, and if not then slow down. Sure, you can just ignore him and then react if he pulls out, but superfast reaction times are very limited as a driving safety skill. You often react better to something if you are expecting it anyway.
* yep, kind of stupid that I just passed it in January then was caught speeding (for the first time ever, after years of speeding and no points) a couple of months later - especially annoying since I'd been driving a lot more sensibly in populated areas, but I made a choice to go quickly on the motorway to go help out a friend who needed a lift (awww, well now I've learned just to let people suffer for their own poor planning!).
True, I leave my MBP open at about 20 degrees here at work even when running with all external input/output gubbins, otherwise it gets rather noisy!
I keep my drinks on the other side of the desk though :)
I've been playing WipEout HD a lot this week - I'm in the top 40 in the global rankings for some of the events, surely that entitles me to some kind of insurance discount!?
And as for GTA, I don't aim for the pedestrians like some people do, so that has to count for something :)
Avoiding accidents is rarely about reaction time. If you have to react to something in front of you, then you've already been making some bad decisions in the previous moments. Real life driving is not like a racing game (says the guy who was banned from driving for 3 months when he got caught at 114mph in March this year).
Actually I was referring to unleaded when talking about international fuel differences, since AFAIK diesel isn't very pervasive in the US (perhaps the infrastructure is there but Americans are into big petrol burning engines when they want torque, rather than just taking the practical option.. another guy here was talking about getting a 7.5 litre engine just to pull a caravan..).
I drive a diesel myself. I think all diesel in the UK is low sulphur stuff... though some is 'ultra low'.
Nothing wrong with trying to one-up each other when it comes to being greener, but I doubt it was just a one-upmanship type thing. Everything doesn't have to be a contest..
There's not much point you trying to tell me what the fuel ratings in my country are like when you don't even know where I live.
http://www.petrolprices.com/about-fuel.html
TESCO actually sells 99 RON for their super unleaded.
Of course it doesn't matter to me much at the moment because I have a diesel :p
http://www.motorbike-search-engine.co.uk/motorcycle-glossary-p.php. It's just how we brits say.. uh how you say in American.. pin.. pingggg.. pinging?
I was using a sempron as an example of a poor processor - it's the AMD equivalent of a Celeron.
Yes, I was just pulling the statistics out of my ass. You are a pretty special case though. Even if you take every person on slashdot into account, it is still a tiny percentage of worldwide computer users. Your average home user has no clue. Even if they know not to buy a celeron/sempron, they will probably still end up with cheap RAM, a 5,400 RPM HD and stick with their onboard sound and graphics - unless of course they are a gamer who takes their hardware seriously. It's still just from anecdotal evidence, but I even know people who like games but have no idea about hardware- so those who aren't even into their games and just want a computer to write word documents and check their email will be lucky to end up with a decent system (unless they happen to be rich and just get something mid-high range).
Fair enough, if you really don't need the power then why pay for it - but then again, those same people buying cheap systems are going to end up with Vista on it and it will just further reinforce the general hatred or apathy towards computers that people seem to have, when everything runs as if it's submerged in treacle.
I'm Scottish, I think we just use RON. Normal unleaded is 95 octane, 'super' is usually 98-100.
It appears I've stumbled on a hotly contested debate similar to the nature/nurture debates that are constantly going on in the fields of psychology. When it comes to those debates I'd usually say the answer lies with neither field, it lies with both.
Yes, I am ignorant as to what you thought a natural right is (though I've just looked it up on wikipedia and apparently its what is referred to as inalienable rights in the US constitution). No, we never covered anything like that in school. Presumably you are American, and I'm not surprised that you'd cover your constitution in school, given the amount of times I've heard people bang on about it. Just because people in my country don't make such a big deal about rights doesn't mean we don't appreciate them, we just don't feel the need to talk about the all the time (while our government takes us up the rear).
Anyway, I think that yes people tend to do what is best for the majority to avoid friction and simply because the majority is stronger. We are naturally inclined to protect our genepool as well so that can come into it. The idea that natural or 'inalienable rights' have to be written down to me seems a little absurd though - if they are so obvious and natural, why bother to write them down? It's because some people (and corporations etc) don't recognise these 'rights' and for the benefit of the majority they have to be made law. That's just my opinion anyway, and clearly the world has wildly varying views on this topic.
I remember some strange orange console from when I was really young (probably about 3), can't even remember what games it had. Could have been something like this.
The first console I remember probably was our Commodore 100 when I was 3 or 4, I used to type in programs from the manual to draw circles and triangles..
It used to be fine for me online unless I was trying to have a Skype conversation at the same time (it was still slightly playable even then though). That was just on 1Mb ADSL a couple of years ago.
I think the summary is wrong personally, speed of your vehicle isn't always the most important factor - at least for online play. I've seen people do some amazing stuff (and done a small amount myself) with the lag buffer thingy: when you run into a wall you don't die immediately - you die after a certain amount of time that is defined by the server. If you are clever about it you can go between 2 trails that seem to be right next to each other, and you can keep turning to face the wall and face away again, creating teeeeeny tiny little walls for your opponents to run into if they try running up the side of your trail, etc. It's great fun, very tactical and skillful all rolled up. I enjoyed the teamplay games the best, with the maps rotating every 10-20 minutes or so into different challenges (some maps were incredibly tiny but with a large time buffer before dying, some maps you could go in 6 directions instead of 4, etc). Standard deathmatch was always fun too of course, and was the best way to hone your skills.
Unfortunately for me the linux version's inputs seemed to be quite laggy compared to the Windows one. Maybe it was just my keyboard driver or something though.
The graphics are excellent IMO! For me this game is mostly about that sound and the great gameplay. What more do you want out of a game that is based on CGI from an 80s movie?
When I checked my mail I think it was about 6 hours after they sent out the notification, but I still got a unit :)
The fact that the site is down shows that a lot of other people do in fact find this interesting and newsworthy. They say they will make the second batch in 2009, so it sounds like the first batch could be out by the end of 2008. They have already designed all the hardware, they just need some money up-front to build the 3000 units.
I ordered mine last night anyway (I had signed up to the pre-order mailing list) :)
Intrinsic or natural rights that people believe they have
Nature doesn't seem to recognise these rights, so I highly doubt they're natural.
I think human rights are a good thing, but they are an entirely human concept, just as 'animal rights' or indeed any sort of rights are. In nature, might is right. People, plants and animals are regularly destroyed by natural disasters, or each other.
It's okay - you're worth it
if you need even need a normal anti-virus, you're to stupid to work with computers.
What if you want to download a freeware program to perform a task, but want to know if it's infected? What if your system has a zero day exploit and has been infected without you knowing? Anti-virus scanners are unfortunately a necessity when it comes to using pre-compiled binaries.
If you are never going to connect to the net or removable storage, and only use software that you have written yourself, then yes - anti-virus is unecessary
There is no difference between a suggestion and a demand when the person making it has no power over the target.
Yes there is. There may be no difference in the results, but there is a difference in the method.
As for your second point (and your sig), quit trolling with weak pseudo-logic. He wasn't complaining that they were complaining: he was complaining at where their complaints were directed. You're allowed to complain about complainers when the original complaints are moronic!
The scarring on my eyes must give it away!
Apparently it's called pinging in the US, but here we say pinking (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_knocking ) *shrug* I own a diesel, some petrol (gas) stations have started to sell higher quality diesel as well as higher quality unleaded.
I'm Scottish. I don't know what you're on about myths for, the quality of fuel in america is lower than the UK (have a google and see - I'm not trying to brag, it's just a fact). Then when you go to somewhere like Japan, they only sell 98-100 RON stuff which is regarded as the good stuff here in the UK.
1.8 isn't exactly excess, I'd say it's about average for a family sized car. In a small car it would be pretty decent. I've currently got a 1.9TDI Skoda Fabia, it pulls quite nicely.
The smallest engine I ever had (not counting my motorbike :p ) was in my first car, a 1.6 litre Golf MkII. Largest so far was a 2.2 VTEC in my Prelude. I wouldn't want to go anything below a 1.6 unless it was in a super light car, otherwise it would be excruciatingly slow!