If you're talking about an online game, I'll agree. Cheats don't hurt offline games, though.
I haven't looked this long enough to know if they are planning online support or not. I assumed off-hand that they weren't, but FPS's aren't really my bag.
So... The source code for an FPS that isn't even close enough to release to set a release date was stolen.
Why not just download Quake's source and be done?? An engine with no data is nearly useless in today's FPS scene. The only possible use it could have would be to crack the game before it even comes out, but as it is so unfinished, even that is pointless.
"Ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking."
I'm not sure exactly how you mean 're-branding', but if you think changing their logo or even their name will make techies think anything but 'newb' when they see it, you're dead wrong.
I think you may also suffer from a perspective problem. Not every person out there thinks of AOL as 'newb-ville'. Most non-geeks actually think it's just a rather large internet service provider that has many 'features' and is very very well known. They have heard jokes about it, I'm sure, but every company out there has its 'haters' and people will make fun of every company. It's just human nature. If we listened to everyone, nobody would ever use any company.
Instead, most people think of AOL as 'safe' ISP that will help protect them from the dangers of the internet. Why is this? Re-branding! They recently went through a major ad campaign that has lasted years and tells people that AOL will protect them from viruses, spam, and other problems. Most of the things they advertised were new services, which is another aspect of re-branding.
This ad campaign didn't faze techies one iota. But the general populace now sees AOL as warm and fuzzy instead of a rabid bunch of fools that has no control over itself. I'm sure there's someone on AOL that isn't a freak, but I haven't met them.
In case you think I'm just talking out of my ass, I should tell you my background. I've worked for many years as a PC Technician. People that come in with problems with AOL don't say 'Get this horrid crap off my computer!' they say 'AOL doesn't work. Can you fix it?' We (sadly) usually just uninstall the latest version and install an old one and tell them not to upgrade because it isn't stable yet. (Always true, fortunately for us.) Even attempting to explain what AOL is never works unless the person is already biased against AOL. After a certain amount of time, you just give up and accept the fact that people believe the marketting. No matter what someone actually knowledgeable says.
So again... Rebranding? Nah, they've already successfully done that. As for whether their 'paradigm shift' is going to work... Well, I doubt it. But that's their decision and anything that hurts AOL is probably good for me.
At this point, the suits will perform a dark ritual that will summon a demon who will command them to find a way to rape the casual gamers and milk them for all they're worth, such as by charging a higher monthly fee for an "accelerated account" that will be capped at the number of hours you can play it per month, but will allow you to advance in the game faster (such as by getting more XP per kill).
You know, I hate you for even dreaming this up, let alone voicing it. You know SOE will find and exploit it post-haste. -sigh-
Real charities will have overhead. I'm not arguing against their '15%' overhead as UW states they average.
I'm arguing against UW's overhead. They aren't a charity. They do not help people. They only give money to the other charities. If you don't believe me, go ask them for help. They will (kindly) direct you to find a real charity. (The local one here doesn't even help you find that charity. They just tell you to go find it yourself. I know. My sister needed help and my mother tried. In the end, we were forced to get through it in-family in the end, as there were no organizations willing to help in our area.)
They take 8% off the top and then give the money to a real charity. This is the % that should be 0%, not the % used by the real charities.
I'm gonna be modded Troll for this, but here we go anyhow.
United way is not a charity.
Oh sure, they may be listed as one and have all the benefits, but they do not help people.
Their function is to collect money and give it to real charities. They never, ever directly help people.
On top of that, they don't give all that money to the charities. They use 8% of it for their paychecks and literature. (This number could be wrong. They apparently don't advertise it anymore as anyone with a brain can figure out that anything above 0% is BAD. They used to advertise that most charities use 15% of the income for administrative expenses, but UW only used 8%. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that's about 23% total, if you give to UW instead of directly to the charity.)
I'm not denying that UW has probably done some good somewhere. It just isn't nearly the sparkling ivory tower they want you to beleive. Add in the insane pressure they put on businesses and employees to donate, even if they don't have money... It's just wrong.
A prior co-worker of mine pledged quite a bit more money per month than she could afford because she felt she had to. She was almost in tears trying to figure out what she was going to do. It took me almost 30 minutes to convince her that she not only didn't have to give, but that she could go to the store manager and recind her pledge and nothing bad would happen to her. This was the worst I'd seen, but it wasn't the only instance of people giving money when they shouldn't be.
That same company I worked for required the store manager to give a certain portion of his paycheck to UW. They were rich, greedy bastards and I didn't mind that, but the mindset is totally wrong. UW should never have such a stranglehold on a company that such a thing can be possible.
Because in Florida (I live here) it doesn't matter what the weather report says, there's always a 50% chance of rain. I gave up listening to the weather reports long ago.
The only time they are right is when they say 'It's raining right now' or 'It's sunny outside.' We don't even need dark clouds for rain, lightning, or both. Sunny showers are not that uncommon.
In short, 30% is just as good as 80% here.
Oh, and btw, if the weather report says 'in 12 hours, a hurricane will hit your town' you can safely sit at home and eat popcorn. It's not going to hit you.
I have to disagree with you, there. Which consoles has the best titles depends on what you want from a game.
Pure Fun: Nintendo FPS/Action: Microsoft RPG/Story: Sony
Each of the big 3 attracts these types of games to their console because that has been what sold the console in past. Nintendo also get a nudge towards innovation and niche, as well, but until the Wii comes out, that nudge isn't strong enough to make someone buy their console.
I see nothing in his comment OR the website that says he paid the developer money or that the developer ever said it would be open source code.
I do see references to having invested his 'spare time' to the project.
I suppose you could argue that time is money, but that would make FOSS into NFOSS and really screw up the whole shebang.
I would love to see the source code released, but unless he really was paid to develop the new system, and either did not deliver a binary or promised code, I doubt you'll get anything out of him, in or out of court.
The lesson here? When making a 'free' system for all to use, you'd best go Open Source all the way. It'll bite you if you don't.
Well, I have to admit it sounded troll-ish after I typed it. It was meant to be informative as the summary completely failed at being anything close to the actual article.
The meta-moderating only works if people do it... Since I'm very lax at it, I can't really complain if others don't, either.
That'd be true if 1.5 had more features than later versions. It doesn't. The only 'feature' is has over the others is the glitch/bug/exploit that allows unsigned code to be easily executed. It has no browser, to streaming video, etc etc. This is a downgrader in every sense of the word.
Maybe during that year the parents will get sick of having to deal with his issues themselves and actually DO something for the kid. He obviously needs more help than they've been giving him, so maybe they should be giving the time for it. A year sounds like a good start. That'd be about 3 months to annoy the parents to distraction, then 6 months of the stick, and 3 months of the carrot. He might actually be ready for normal social interaction after that.
Unfortunately, I suspect the time will not be used wisely and instead they'll try to ship him away to some 'anger management camp' or some crap and again deny their responsibility.
The best thing that ever happened to me was my Dad's belt in 4th grade. All the teachers had paddled me that year and the year before, and it obviously didn't matter one iota. It only took my Dad 1 try. He never had to use the belt again, and the next spanking I got came in the 8th grade because it was that or sit in 'AC' and write the dictionary. I prefered to go back to class, so I demanded they phone my parents for permission and paddle me. The other guy that got in trouble (Bubba) felt forced to do the same and actually cried from the paddling. I smiled all the way back to class as apparently my hide is thicker. (We got in trouble for 'throwing pencils' in class, even though there were actually 5. The other 3 were on the football team, see.)
I didn't understand the lesson intellectually until quite a few years later. All I knew at the time was that I NEVER wanted that belt on my butt again, and I never wanted my father that mad again, either.
So, instead of paying $15/mo for EQ2, $15/mo for AC, and $15/mo for SWG, you want to pay $10/mo for all 3 of those and ALL the others out there?
I want some of what you're smoking.
On the other hand, Sony DOES have a combo subscription. http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/711/711477p1.html I don't link directly to sony because I can't get the info to come up on firefox here from their station site. And I'm too lazy to tab over to my vmware and look it all up in there.
I have doubts that you can accurately simulate a hurricane without the space around the house. Some damage is done directly by the wind, yes, but there's a LOT of damage that is done by the wind blowing things into other things and weakening them.
Do you randomly throw in pieces of tin roof and stop signs to simulate that? And trees? I doubt it, since there isn't enough space in your simulator for that.
As for being "perfectly repeatable", I have doubts for that as well. That assumes that you could build the exact same house over and over. The article even states that the placement of the nails in the house matters, and I can't see anyone being that perfect.
Overall, I think it's a neat project, but unlikely to really provide more insight than 'yeah, wind fscks shit up.'
This does seem unreasonably childish when put that way, but maybe this attitude is actually born from something else.
The population growth in the world is WAY too high. We cannot support this type of growth forever. Your decision to enjoy life without kids lets another couple who LOVES kids have more than their 2 and not cause harm.
My only problem with this attitude is that if everyone with a mind of their own did this, we'd have only mindless followers having kids. That's not a genetic trait I want the human race to have.
So I'm on the line of whether this is a good or bad idea. I guess the answer is 'As long as only a few do it, it's fine. If everyone did, it wouldn't be.'
Not that I have -any- say in how you live your life... It's just that the future of the human race concerns me a bit. Though if we haven't killed ourselves off yet, we aren't likely to any time soon.
For the record, I not only don't have children, I don't have a girl to have those children with and haven't for quite some time.
There ARE Ruby IDEs out there, btw, you just have to search a lot harder to find them and they aren't nearly as complete as what you are used to, because of their young age.
I can understand wanting to get news of the DB2 adapter out to the public... But to attach a tutorial to it that is basically just another RoR tutorial seems pointless. The only differences in this article from every other RoR article were in the paragraph that describes how to install the DB2 adapter for RoR.
"Nobody would leave The Realm to start over". Nope, wasn't true.
"Nobody would leave Everquest to start over". Nope.
"Nobody would leave Asheron's Call to start over". Nope.
"Nobody would leave DAoC to start over". Nope.
It's never been true in the past, and it never will be. There will ALWAYS be a better MMO on the horizon, right up until there's a better genre to replace it.
The biggest reason is that you aren't 'starting over.' You are playing a new game. You are starting fresh in a new world with new possibilities, intrigues, and adventures. Successful new games are not about starting over, they are about being new.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're talking about an online game, I'll agree. Cheats don't hurt offline games, though.
I haven't looked this long enough to know if they are planning online support or not. I assumed off-hand that they weren't, but FPS's aren't really my bag.
So... The source code for an FPS that isn't even close enough to release to set a release date was stolen.
Why not just download Quake's source and be done?? An engine with no data is nearly useless in today's FPS scene. The only possible use it could have would be to crack the game before it even comes out, but as it is so unfinished, even that is pointless.
"Ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking."
I'm so gonna get modded down for this. -sigh-
I'm not sure exactly how you mean 're-branding', but if you think changing their logo or even their name will make techies think anything but 'newb' when they see it, you're dead wrong.
I think you may also suffer from a perspective problem. Not every person out there thinks of AOL as 'newb-ville'. Most non-geeks actually think it's just a rather large internet service provider that has many 'features' and is very very well known. They have heard jokes about it, I'm sure, but every company out there has its 'haters' and people will make fun of every company. It's just human nature. If we listened to everyone, nobody would ever use any company.
Instead, most people think of AOL as 'safe' ISP that will help protect them from the dangers of the internet. Why is this? Re-branding! They recently went through a major ad campaign that has lasted years and tells people that AOL will protect them from viruses, spam, and other problems. Most of the things they advertised were new services, which is another aspect of re-branding.
This ad campaign didn't faze techies one iota. But the general populace now sees AOL as warm and fuzzy instead of a rabid bunch of fools that has no control over itself. I'm sure there's someone on AOL that isn't a freak, but I haven't met them.
In case you think I'm just talking out of my ass, I should tell you my background. I've worked for many years as a PC Technician. People that come in with problems with AOL don't say 'Get this horrid crap off my computer!' they say 'AOL doesn't work. Can you fix it?' We (sadly) usually just uninstall the latest version and install an old one and tell them not to upgrade because it isn't stable yet. (Always true, fortunately for us.) Even attempting to explain what AOL is never works unless the person is already biased against AOL. After a certain amount of time, you just give up and accept the fact that people believe the marketting. No matter what someone actually knowledgeable says.
So again... Rebranding? Nah, they've already successfully done that. As for whether their 'paradigm shift' is going to work... Well, I doubt it. But that's their decision and anything that hurts AOL is probably good for me.
You know, I hate you for even dreaming this up, let alone voicing it. You know SOE will find and exploit it post-haste. -sigh-
Maybe you missed the bulletin. The PS3 will be upgradeable. In the land of gaming, 'can be upgraded' is the same as 'must be upgraded.'
From http://news.spong.com/article/10210?cb=894
I thought Vexx was fun. -shrug-
Real charities will have overhead. I'm not arguing against their '15%' overhead as UW states they average.
I'm arguing against UW's overhead. They aren't a charity. They do not help people. They only give money to the other charities. If you don't believe me, go ask them for help. They will (kindly) direct you to find a real charity. (The local one here doesn't even help you find that charity. They just tell you to go find it yourself. I know. My sister needed help and my mother tried. In the end, we were forced to get through it in-family in the end, as there were no organizations willing to help in our area.)
They take 8% off the top and then give the money to a real charity. This is the % that should be 0%, not the % used by the real charities.
I'm gonna be modded Troll for this, but here we go anyhow.
United way is not a charity.
Oh sure, they may be listed as one and have all the benefits, but they do not help people.
Their function is to collect money and give it to real charities. They never, ever directly help people.
On top of that, they don't give all that money to the charities. They use 8% of it for their paychecks and literature. (This number could be wrong. They apparently don't advertise it anymore as anyone with a brain can figure out that anything above 0% is BAD. They used to advertise that most charities use 15% of the income for administrative expenses, but UW only used 8%. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that's about 23% total, if you give to UW instead of directly to the charity.)
I'm not denying that UW has probably done some good somewhere. It just isn't nearly the sparkling ivory tower they want you to beleive. Add in the insane pressure they put on businesses and employees to donate, even if they don't have money... It's just wrong.
A prior co-worker of mine pledged quite a bit more money per month than she could afford because she felt she had to. She was almost in tears trying to figure out what she was going to do. It took me almost 30 minutes to convince her that she not only didn't have to give, but that she could go to the store manager and recind her pledge and nothing bad would happen to her. This was the worst I'd seen, but it wasn't the only instance of people giving money when they shouldn't be.
That same company I worked for required the store manager to give a certain portion of his paycheck to UW. They were rich, greedy bastards and I didn't mind that, but the mindset is totally wrong. UW should never have such a stranglehold on a company that such a thing can be possible.
Well at least one of your wishes came true.
Because in Florida (I live here) it doesn't matter what the weather report says, there's always a 50% chance of rain. I gave up listening to the weather reports long ago.
The only time they are right is when they say 'It's raining right now' or 'It's sunny outside.' We don't even need dark clouds for rain, lightning, or both. Sunny showers are not that uncommon.
In short, 30% is just as good as 80% here.
Oh, and btw, if the weather report says 'in 12 hours, a hurricane will hit your town' you can safely sit at home and eat popcorn. It's not going to hit you.
I have to disagree with you, there. Which consoles has the best titles depends on what you want from a game.
Pure Fun: Nintendo
FPS/Action: Microsoft
RPG/Story: Sony
Each of the big 3 attracts these types of games to their console because that has been what sold the console in past. Nintendo also get a nudge towards innovation and niche, as well, but until the Wii comes out, that nudge isn't strong enough to make someone buy their console.
Actually, I just find it a serious pain in the butt to read comments that I don't care about on subjects I didn't read in the first place. ;)
Maybe they should have half as many comments in a meta-mod session and just have twice as many people do it.
I have to agree with the karma thing, though... I just wish there was a positive reinforcement, rather than negative.
I do see references to having invested his 'spare time' to the project.
I suppose you could argue that time is money, but that would make FOSS into NFOSS and really screw up the whole shebang.
I would love to see the source code released, but unless he really was paid to develop the new system, and either did not deliver a binary or promised code, I doubt you'll get anything out of him, in or out of court.
The lesson here? When making a 'free' system for all to use, you'd best go Open Source all the way. It'll bite you if you don't.
Well, I have to admit it sounded troll-ish after I typed it. It was meant to be informative as the summary completely failed at being anything close to the actual article.
The meta-moderating only works if people do it... Since I'm very lax at it, I can't really complain if others don't, either.
Relatively recent origins? You mean, like, everyone on Earth today was born within the last 125 years? Duh!
Oh, you mean ancestry... Yeah, every dates back to the monkey-that-wasn't-a-monkey having babies. Duh.
More recent than that?
OH! Maybe you mean: Everyone is connected by a common ancestor a LOT more recently than people think is possible!
Maybe you just should have said that.
That'd be true if 1.5 had more features than later versions. It doesn't. The only 'feature' is has over the others is the glitch/bug/exploit that allows unsigned code to be easily executed. It has no browser, to streaming video, etc etc. This is a downgrader in every sense of the word.
Maybe during that year the parents will get sick of having to deal with his issues themselves and actually DO something for the kid. He obviously needs more help than they've been giving him, so maybe they should be giving the time for it. A year sounds like a good start. That'd be about 3 months to annoy the parents to distraction, then 6 months of the stick, and 3 months of the carrot. He might actually be ready for normal social interaction after that.
Unfortunately, I suspect the time will not be used wisely and instead they'll try to ship him away to some 'anger management camp' or some crap and again deny their responsibility.
The best thing that ever happened to me was my Dad's belt in 4th grade. All the teachers had paddled me that year and the year before, and it obviously didn't matter one iota. It only took my Dad 1 try. He never had to use the belt again, and the next spanking I got came in the 8th grade because it was that or sit in 'AC' and write the dictionary. I prefered to go back to class, so I demanded they phone my parents for permission and paddle me. The other guy that got in trouble (Bubba) felt forced to do the same and actually cried from the paddling. I smiled all the way back to class as apparently my hide is thicker. (We got in trouble for 'throwing pencils' in class, even though there were actually 5. The other 3 were on the football team, see.)
I didn't understand the lesson intellectually until quite a few years later. All I knew at the time was that I NEVER wanted that belt on my butt again, and I never wanted my father that mad again, either.
This kid has obviously never felt either.
So, instead of paying $15/mo for EQ2, $15/mo for AC, and $15/mo for SWG, you want to pay $10/mo for all 3 of those and ALL the others out there?
I want some of what you're smoking.
On the other hand, Sony DOES have a combo subscription. http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/711/711477p1.html I don't link directly to sony because I can't get the info to come up on firefox here from their station site. And I'm too lazy to tab over to my vmware and look it all up in there.
Think of the children! AND Terrorists!!
That poor server has been slashdotted, of course... but you can still see thumbnails at Google Images. http://images.google.com/images?q=lady+vivamus&sa= N&tab=wi
I have doubts that you can accurately simulate a hurricane without the space around the house. Some damage is done directly by the wind, yes, but there's a LOT of damage that is done by the wind blowing things into other things and weakening them.
Do you randomly throw in pieces of tin roof and stop signs to simulate that? And trees? I doubt it, since there isn't enough space in your simulator for that.
As for being "perfectly repeatable", I have doubts for that as well. That assumes that you could build the exact same house over and over. The article even states that the placement of the nails in the house matters, and I can't see anyone being that perfect.
Overall, I think it's a neat project, but unlikely to really provide more insight than 'yeah, wind fscks shit up.'
This does seem unreasonably childish when put that way, but maybe this attitude is actually born from something else.
The population growth in the world is WAY too high. We cannot support this type of growth forever. Your decision to enjoy life without kids lets another couple who LOVES kids have more than their 2 and not cause harm.
My only problem with this attitude is that if everyone with a mind of their own did this, we'd have only mindless followers having kids. That's not a genetic trait I want the human race to have.
So I'm on the line of whether this is a good or bad idea. I guess the answer is 'As long as only a few do it, it's fine. If everyone did, it wouldn't be.'
Not that I have -any- say in how you live your life... It's just that the future of the human race concerns me a bit. Though if we haven't killed ourselves off yet, we aren't likely to any time soon.
For the record, I not only don't have children, I don't have a girl to have those children with and haven't for quite some time.
It's simple. It hasn't been out as long.
There ARE Ruby IDEs out there, btw, you just have to search a lot harder to find them and they aren't nearly as complete as what you are used to, because of their young age.
I can understand wanting to get news of the DB2 adapter out to the public... But to attach a tutorial to it that is basically just another RoR tutorial seems pointless. The only differences in this article from every other RoR article were in the paragraph that describes how to install the DB2 adapter for RoR.
-yawn-
"Nobody would leave WoW to start over"
Are you kidding?? Let's try that again.
"Nobody would leave The Realm to start over".
Nope, wasn't true.
"Nobody would leave Everquest to start over".
Nope.
"Nobody would leave Asheron's Call to start over".
Nope.
"Nobody would leave DAoC to start over".
Nope.
It's never been true in the past, and it never will be. There will ALWAYS be a better MMO on the horizon, right up until there's a better genre to replace it.
The biggest reason is that you aren't 'starting over.' You are playing a new game. You are starting fresh in a new world with new possibilities, intrigues, and adventures. Successful new games are not about starting over, they are about being new.