Who the fuck cares about some tiny country in a tiny planet orbiting a tiny sun in a not-very-significant galaxy? get off your fat ass and start working on the means to reverse entropy, or the universe itself shall cease to exist as we know it.
Douglas Adams said it best, that the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.
You're serious!?!? Give the killers what they want, that's what you're advocating here!?!? They kill innocent people and your reaction is "give them what they demand"?
Spain has given in to all of ETA's demands? wow, I must've missed *those* news.
Why would you think that in the space of a few hundred years that human nature would have radically changed when it hasn't for thousands of years up to now, or this just a rationalization for your personal bias and bigotry?
So, 1800-era Britain was just as bad as 1500-era Spain? which in turn was as bad as the 0-era Roman Empire? or are you just trying to paint an arbitrary distinction between "bad" and "not as bad" only to further your argument?
The US *is* better to have as the major superpower both for its' citizens and the world, especially considering the likely alternatives of Russia or China
No it isn't, because there *are* other alternatives other than Russia or China, more notably, "none". And while some may believe that crap like the PATRIOT ACT would've passed even if the US wasn't a superpower, some others believe that in such case, they would've been open enough to international criticism to understand how moronic that would've been.
You seem to have a lot of hatred and biases. Maybe you should seek help. It's affecting your perception of reality and your ability to use reason and logic.
You seem to have a lot of misguided nationalism and biases. Maybe you should seek help. It's affecting your perception of reality and your ability to use reason, logic, and a map. Best wishes for a speedy recovery, and hopefully you'll soon notice that "Germany" isn't a Chinese province, nor is "Italy" a part of Russia.
Well, Spain, France and Portugal actually *were* all superpowers at one time, and proved they were quite fine with starting wars of aggression and invading other countries, committing genocide, and generally being very, very bad actors indeed, far exceeding the US in greed and ruthlessness
While the "far exceeding" part is a bit debatable, if it is so it's only because humanity itself has advanced throughout time, and the US is the newest "world's largest superpower", so it's clear that they ought to be more civilized than the rest. However, compare Spain's reaction to terrorism to that of the US, and it's clear who is, *today*, the preferable country.
Why is it that the US is looked upon as the worst country to ever hold "superpower" status when history plainly shows this is not so?
The worst? hardly, most people would agree the Roman Empire was even worse, but two simple facts are that a) the US is *NOT* a good country to have as a superpower, not even for US citizens, and b) they are the superpower we have to deal with in our lifetimes. Combine the two, and you'd see why Bush is criticized so much, and Louis XIV isn't: the latter has been out of his country's government for centuries (by virtue of being dead, mostly), while the former isn't.
I'd say that most other countries, if given the power that the US has been wielding for the past 60 years or so, would have been on a total blitzkrieg-like war campaign to completely conquer the world. How do you think things in the world would be if the US had collapsed and the USSR had been left as the sole superpower? Or China?
Or Spain? or France? or Australia? or Ireland? or Canada? or Brazil? or Portugal? or Finland? or Sweden?
The USSR and China are as representative of "most other countries" as Bush is a representative of the whole human race, thank God. And yes, I believe that all the countries I've named, and many others that I didn't, would've done a much better job than the US being "the world's biggest superpower".
Until the people either elect a Democratic 2/3 majority and/or a Democratic President, things are not going to change.
Or a third-party president, or majority in congress. Yes, it'd be pretty damn hard, but if we don't even mention them, how do you think they'll fare with the general populace?
Guess we'll have to rename a lot more things, then, like sin(), cos(), Pi, e, log(), etc. I mean, my programming language's so-called "Pi" isn't even irrational, let alone trascendental! fuckers.
Well, but putting relatively-expensive cards in such a comparison helps give people an idea of the price/performance ratio of the cards.
For example, if card A costs $60 and runs some game at 20fps, card B costs $80 and runs it at 45fps, and card C costs $150 and gets 55fps, then obviously card B is what you should buy.
If, on the other hand, card B ran it at 25fps and card C at 80fps, you should probably either a) see if card C can be found for ~$70-80 on the used market, or b) wait for the next gen cards, and see if they're more competitive with the higher range.
Well, some of the non-integrated graphic cards are also providing hardware-accelerated HD video playback, so a nice ~$60 video card could be a *very* good investment for the average user, even if the only game they play is solitaire.
Still, this article is *clearly* not aimed at them, but plenty of such comparisons can be found over the 'net (in fact, I think one was posted here a little ago).
Plus, if the Bible actually contained the exact numerical value of Pi we'd still be printing Gutenberg's version, and we wouldn't be any closer to finishing than half a millenia ago.
Trascendental numbers: God's way of showing us that the universe truly is a fucked up place.
Because, as another poster so insightfully said a long time ago, McDonald's is *constant* shit. It tastes like shit in Chicago, it tastes like shit in Pekin, and it tastes like shit in Rio de Janeiro, but it tastes like the *same* shit, and the ability to go to any store of the brand and *know* how food will taste is worth it having taste so shitty for some people.
Why do so many people like Subway?
Beats me, I don't even know which market are they in. One of the perks of being from outside the US.
Why do so many people people drive Toyotas?
Because they (and Japanese brands in general) are much cheaper than German brands, and much, much more reliable than Chinese ones. I'd buy an Audi if I could, don't get me wrong, but alas, I'm not the CEO of a large company.
So, whaddya think happens when a common user has a common need, that isn't filled by the makers of their particular platform of choice? now, whaddya think happens when said users aren't able to fill their need? hint: they don't think "ohh, I'm sure $MAKER is only looking for my best interests, I don't need $FEATURE after all".
Or perhaps a simple thought-experiment: how do you think Microsoft's marketshare would be today, if they had prevented Adobe from selling Photoshop since it "competes" with MS Paint?
Re:Catching up ever so slowly
on
GNOME 2.24 Released
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· Score: 3, Insightful
By the time Windows 2000 came around, there was nothing in the OS that I could not configure using the GUI.
I'm sorry, but most of us don't consider "regedit.exe" a GUI, at least not anymore than "gedit/etc/httpd.conf" is. And without considering the registry, then yes, there's plenty of stuff in Windows that you can't configure from within the GUI.
we got this fancy computer with a fancy operating system, why can't it figure out the right thing to do when an application tries to access memory it's not supposed to?
Mostly they do, by killing the app, they just have the decency of providing you with enough info in case you want to prevent it in the future.
One word: inflation. Let's see you deal with that in a MMORPG with gold selling *and* without severely crippling the capability of trading with other players, or introducing pointless timesinks (Breakable weapons and armor! w00t!).
No, rather it's "other people's opinion are important, but you should weight the cost/benefit of changing them and if you believe that an inmature girl's opinion is worth $150 then you're an even bigger idiot than she is".
My guess is that if it costed $20 you may actually buy the thing instead of sending a strongly-worded letter to your representative about the idiocy of the US' patent law, and as much as Canonical likes money, they probably believe the latter option is the best one for them, long-term.
Plus, extorting money from OEMs is never a bad thing, unless you're Microsoft;)
It either requires strategy to beat the enemies, or it doesn't. Having a penalty for death doesn't change that. If your problem is that it's possible to kill one enemy, die, then return to one less enemy than before, well take heart, because even in care-bear WoW the hardest mob packs and all boss encounters will fully respawn after you die and most mobs respawn after a period of time. That's not a penalty, that's reseting the encounter, and clearly not all you're asking for.
Having not played WoW, I can't speak from experience there, but that does sound like a reasonable "reason to avoid dying". As is having a death penalty. Though it must be noted that with reseting the encounter you're forced not to die *ever* during a battle, whereas with DP you can die during a large battle, it's just that the rewards will be lower.
You see a big problem with timesinks, but don't see a problem with forcing players to re-play many hours of gameplay to return to the exact same point they were? Isn't that the definition of a treadmill, running to stay in place? And especially in the context of Diablo II, where the game was ridiculously easy 99% of the time, and then you'd get a cheap insta-death that would result in the exp penalty. This is your idea of a good system?
Yup. Because in Diablo 2, IIRC, you could never lose a level due to DP so all you needed to permanently advance was to avoid dying long enough to gain a level. The true problem with that system is that it becomes useless after the character reaches his max level, though, which is why I prefer Guild Wars' method.
See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You aren't trying to make the game an actual challenge. You're trying to make it punishing. The actual difficulty of the game isn't the issue, it's that if you fail for whatever reason (lag, cheap insta-deaths, oh and hey maybe actual challenge) that you are penalized.
I'm trying to make it punishing for those who fail, hence giving an incentive not to, hence giving an actual, tangible reason for people to improve their skills at the game instead of having a situation where whoever spends the most time in the game wins.
I agree completely that MMOs need to reduce the timesinks and find another way to keep players paying monthly fees, however I disagree entirely with your concept that "need some skill" means "are punished if you screw up". Because they are not and never will be the same.
True, but a small form of "punishment" can help turn a game from "can be played skillfully and succeed" to "has to be played skillfully to succeed", and many of us prefer the latter category of games. Plus, I've yet to play a RPG without some sort of DP that can't be won through mindless grinding.
If you can't make a game challenging without making it punishing, then you suffer from a greater lack of imagination than the game designers who can't get rid of timesinks.
But why would you want to? as above, it changes the feel of the game, and IMO, for the better.
Besides, if you think death penalties make for greater "challenge", then as far as I'm concerned nothing less than perma-death is acceptable. Nethack, or gtfo. What, scared of the challenge?
I like Nethack a lot, thankyouverymuch, but lag and such can be a bitch, which is why I generally don't like any sort of non-reversible DP and perma-death is the best example of that.
It's challenging because you're encouraged to think how to beat the enemies, instead of simply grinding a huge mob one enemy at a time, dying, respawning, and repeating everything all over again. Now, I don't like the idea of losing your gear either (though it seems EVE managed to implement that quite well), but I don't see the problem with Diablo 2's EXP loss, or Guild Wars' Death Penalty in which you get lowered max HP and Energy until you either return to a town or kill enough enemies without dying to compensate.
MMOs are already "punishing" enough as timesinks, they do not need additional punishment for what is supposed to be FUN!
Then maybe what you need to fix is MMOs being punishing timesinks, instead of worrying that some people want the game to actually need some skill? beats me why people simply accept weekend-long grinds as a way of life in MMOs, yet cry foul against anything resembling challenge.
One question: how exactly do you "vote for cultural homogeniety"? do you vote for a candidate that promises to kick anyone who doesn't fit your profile of a "culturally-homogenous" person from the country? because I remember last time something like that happened, and the results weren't nice.
I always wondered about if accepting the gpl is required. If I decline the gpl license, what right does I have to use the software?
IANAL, but I think you'd only get what Fair Use gives you. Though I can't see why you'd decline it since it gives you an unrestricted license to use the software as you see fit, the GPL's restrictions only apply when you redistribute it, in which case you'd also fall back to Fair Use if you were to decline the license.
firefox will be replacing this with a license agreement. for whom? the end-user;)
Actually if I understand this right, it's for distributors, they just want it to be shown to end-users in case they want to become distributors themselves.
What's ridiculous is that we're having this conversation about mandatory messages in Free Software yet again. Did anybody miss the discussion years ago about the BSD license's advertising clause? go read it, then again, then again until you understand why they're useless and completely irrelevant annoyances, and nothing more.
Slashdot Mirror
Who the fuck cares about some tiny country in a tiny planet orbiting a tiny sun in a not-very-significant galaxy? get off your fat ass and start working on the means to reverse entropy, or the universe itself shall cease to exist as we know it.
Douglas Adams said it best, that the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.
You're serious!?!? Give the killers what they want, that's what you're advocating here!?!? They kill innocent people and your reaction is "give them what they demand"?
Spain has given in to all of ETA's demands? wow, I must've missed *those* news.
Why would you think that in the space of a few hundred years that human nature would have radically changed when it hasn't for thousands of years up to now, or this just a rationalization for your personal bias and bigotry?
So, 1800-era Britain was just as bad as 1500-era Spain? which in turn was as bad as the 0-era Roman Empire? or are you just trying to paint an arbitrary distinction between "bad" and "not as bad" only to further your argument?
The US *is* better to have as the major superpower both for its' citizens and the world, especially considering the likely alternatives of Russia or China
No it isn't, because there *are* other alternatives other than Russia or China, more notably, "none". And while some may believe that crap like the PATRIOT ACT would've passed even if the US wasn't a superpower, some others believe that in such case, they would've been open enough to international criticism to understand how moronic that would've been.
You seem to have a lot of hatred and biases. Maybe you should seek help. It's affecting your perception of reality and your ability to use reason and logic.
You seem to have a lot of misguided nationalism and biases. Maybe you should seek help. It's affecting your perception of reality and your ability to use reason, logic, and a map. Best wishes for a speedy recovery, and hopefully you'll soon notice that "Germany" isn't a Chinese province, nor is "Italy" a part of Russia.
Well, Spain, France and Portugal actually *were* all superpowers at one time, and proved they were quite fine with starting wars of aggression and invading other countries, committing genocide, and generally being very, very bad actors indeed, far exceeding the US in greed and ruthlessness
While the "far exceeding" part is a bit debatable, if it is so it's only because humanity itself has advanced throughout time, and the US is the newest "world's largest superpower", so it's clear that they ought to be more civilized than the rest. However, compare Spain's reaction to terrorism to that of the US, and it's clear who is, *today*, the preferable country.
Why is it that the US is looked upon as the worst country to ever hold "superpower" status when history plainly shows this is not so?
The worst? hardly, most people would agree the Roman Empire was even worse, but two simple facts are that a) the US is *NOT* a good country to have as a superpower, not even for US citizens, and b) they are the superpower we have to deal with in our lifetimes. Combine the two, and you'd see why Bush is criticized so much, and Louis XIV isn't: the latter has been out of his country's government for centuries (by virtue of being dead, mostly), while the former isn't.
I'd say that most other countries, if given the power that the US has been wielding for the past 60 years or so, would have been on a total blitzkrieg-like war campaign to completely conquer the world. How do you think things in the world would be if the US had collapsed and the USSR had been left as the sole superpower? Or China?
Or Spain? or France? or Australia? or Ireland? or Canada? or Brazil? or Portugal? or Finland? or Sweden?
The USSR and China are as representative of "most other countries" as Bush is a representative of the whole human race, thank God. And yes, I believe that all the countries I've named, and many others that I didn't, would've done a much better job than the US being "the world's biggest superpower".
Until the people either elect a Democratic 2/3 majority and/or a Democratic President, things are not going to change.
Or a third-party president, or majority in congress. Yes, it'd be pretty damn hard, but if we don't even mention them, how do you think they'll fare with the general populace?
Guess we'll have to rename a lot more things, then, like sin(), cos(), Pi, e, log(), etc. I mean, my programming language's so-called "Pi" isn't even irrational, let alone trascendental! fuckers.
Well, but putting relatively-expensive cards in such a comparison helps give people an idea of the price/performance ratio of the cards.
For example, if card A costs $60 and runs some game at 20fps, card B costs $80 and runs it at 45fps, and card C costs $150 and gets 55fps, then obviously card B is what you should buy.
If, on the other hand, card B ran it at 25fps and card C at 80fps, you should probably either a) see if card C can be found for ~$70-80 on the used market, or b) wait for the next gen cards, and see if they're more competitive with the higher range.
Well, some of the non-integrated graphic cards are also providing hardware-accelerated HD video playback, so a nice ~$60 video card could be a *very* good investment for the average user, even if the only game they play is solitaire.
Still, this article is *clearly* not aimed at them, but plenty of such comparisons can be found over the 'net (in fact, I think one was posted here a little ago).
Plus, if the Bible actually contained the exact numerical value of Pi we'd still be printing Gutenberg's version, and we wouldn't be any closer to finishing than half a millenia ago.
Trascendental numbers: God's way of showing us that the universe truly is a fucked up place.
I'd rather have innovative commercial failures than me-too successes, *specially* from EA. Though I would've appreciated a 3rd-person perspective ;)
Why do so many people go to McDonald's?
Because, as another poster so insightfully said a long time ago, McDonald's is *constant* shit. It tastes like shit in Chicago, it tastes like shit in Pekin, and it tastes like shit in Rio de Janeiro, but it tastes like the *same* shit, and the ability to go to any store of the brand and *know* how food will taste is worth it having taste so shitty for some people.
Why do so many people like Subway?
Beats me, I don't even know which market are they in. One of the perks of being from outside the US.
Why do so many people people drive Toyotas?
Because they (and Japanese brands in general) are much cheaper than German brands, and much, much more reliable than Chinese ones. I'd buy an Audi if I could, don't get me wrong, but alas, I'm not the CEO of a large company.
So, whaddya think happens when a common user has a common need, that isn't filled by the makers of their particular platform of choice? now, whaddya think happens when said users aren't able to fill their need? hint: they don't think "ohh, I'm sure $MAKER is only looking for my best interests, I don't need $FEATURE after all".
Or perhaps a simple thought-experiment: how do you think Microsoft's marketshare would be today, if they had prevented Adobe from selling Photoshop since it "competes" with MS Paint?
By the time Windows 2000 came around, there was nothing in the OS that I could not configure using the GUI.
I'm sorry, but most of us don't consider "regedit.exe" a GUI, at least not anymore than "gedit /etc/httpd.conf" is. And without considering the registry, then yes, there's plenty of stuff in Windows that you can't configure from within the GUI.
The operation completed successfully.
C'mon, at least the hex-filled BSODs admit there was something wrong in the first place.
we got this fancy computer with a fancy operating system, why can't it figure out the right thing to do when an application tries to access memory it's not supposed to?
Mostly they do, by killing the app, they just have the decency of providing you with enough info in case you want to prevent it in the future.
One word: inflation. Let's see you deal with that in a MMORPG with gold selling *and* without severely crippling the capability of trading with other players, or introducing pointless timesinks (Breakable weapons and armor! w00t!).
No, rather it's "other people's opinion are important, but you should weight the cost/benefit of changing them and if you believe that an inmature girl's opinion is worth $150 then you're an even bigger idiot than she is".
My guess is that if it costed $20 you may actually buy the thing instead of sending a strongly-worded letter to your representative about the idiocy of the US' patent law, and as much as Canonical likes money, they probably believe the latter option is the best one for them, long-term.
Plus, extorting money from OEMs is never a bad thing, unless you're Microsoft ;)
Come on... how is this an argument. Emacs is clearly superior.
...ever since it got a Vi-compatible mode. Good OS + good editor > good editor alone ;)
It either requires strategy to beat the enemies, or it doesn't. Having a penalty for death doesn't change that. If your problem is that it's possible to kill one enemy, die, then return to one less enemy than before, well take heart, because even in care-bear WoW the hardest mob packs and all boss encounters will fully respawn after you die and most mobs respawn after a period of time. That's not a penalty, that's reseting the encounter, and clearly not all you're asking for.
Having not played WoW, I can't speak from experience there, but that does sound like a reasonable "reason to avoid dying". As is having a death penalty. Though it must be noted that with reseting the encounter you're forced not to die *ever* during a battle, whereas with DP you can die during a large battle, it's just that the rewards will be lower.
You see a big problem with timesinks, but don't see a problem with forcing players to re-play many hours of gameplay to return to the exact same point they were? Isn't that the definition of a treadmill, running to stay in place? And especially in the context of Diablo II, where the game was ridiculously easy 99% of the time, and then you'd get a cheap insta-death that would result in the exp penalty. This is your idea of a good system?
Yup. Because in Diablo 2, IIRC, you could never lose a level due to DP so all you needed to permanently advance was to avoid dying long enough to gain a level. The true problem with that system is that it becomes useless after the character reaches his max level, though, which is why I prefer Guild Wars' method.
See, that's exactly what I'm talking about. You aren't trying to make the game an actual challenge. You're trying to make it punishing. The actual difficulty of the game isn't the issue, it's that if you fail for whatever reason (lag, cheap insta-deaths, oh and hey maybe actual challenge) that you are penalized.
I'm trying to make it punishing for those who fail, hence giving an incentive not to, hence giving an actual, tangible reason for people to improve their skills at the game instead of having a situation where whoever spends the most time in the game wins.
I agree completely that MMOs need to reduce the timesinks and find another way to keep players paying monthly fees, however I disagree entirely with your concept that "need some skill" means "are punished if you screw up". Because they are not and never will be the same.
True, but a small form of "punishment" can help turn a game from "can be played skillfully and succeed" to "has to be played skillfully to succeed", and many of us prefer the latter category of games. Plus, I've yet to play a RPG without some sort of DP that can't be won through mindless grinding.
If you can't make a game challenging without making it punishing, then you suffer from a greater lack of imagination than the game designers who can't get rid of timesinks.
But why would you want to? as above, it changes the feel of the game, and IMO, for the better.
Besides, if you think death penalties make for greater "challenge", then as far as I'm concerned nothing less than perma-death is acceptable. Nethack, or gtfo. What, scared of the challenge?
I like Nethack a lot, thankyouverymuch, but lag and such can be a bitch, which is why I generally don't like any sort of non-reversible DP and perma-death is the best example of that.
It's challenging because you're encouraged to think how to beat the enemies, instead of simply grinding a huge mob one enemy at a time, dying, respawning, and repeating everything all over again. Now, I don't like the idea of losing your gear either (though it seems EVE managed to implement that quite well), but I don't see the problem with Diablo 2's EXP loss, or Guild Wars' Death Penalty in which you get lowered max HP and Energy until you either return to a town or kill enough enemies without dying to compensate.
MMOs are already "punishing" enough as timesinks, they do not need additional punishment for what is supposed to be FUN!
Then maybe what you need to fix is MMOs being punishing timesinks, instead of worrying that some people want the game to actually need some skill? beats me why people simply accept weekend-long grinds as a way of life in MMOs, yet cry foul against anything resembling challenge.
One question: how exactly do you "vote for cultural homogeniety"? do you vote for a candidate that promises to kick anyone who doesn't fit your profile of a "culturally-homogenous" person from the country? because I remember last time something like that happened, and the results weren't nice.
I always wondered about if accepting the gpl is required. If I decline the gpl license, what right does I have to use the software?
IANAL, but I think you'd only get what Fair Use gives you. Though I can't see why you'd decline it since it gives you an unrestricted license to use the software as you see fit, the GPL's restrictions only apply when you redistribute it, in which case you'd also fall back to Fair Use if you were to decline the license.
firefox will be replacing this with a license agreement. for whom? the end-user ;)
Actually if I understand this right, it's for distributors, they just want it to be shown to end-users in case they want to become distributors themselves.
What's ridiculous is that we're having this conversation about mandatory messages in Free Software yet again. Did anybody miss the discussion years ago about the BSD license's advertising clause? go read it, then again, then again until you understand why they're useless and completely irrelevant annoyances, and nothing more.