Well, I am not in the US, and I consume marijuana in a regular basis. It's very popular as a drug, by consumers and by non-consumers that think that stoners are no-future junkies. Reading stuff like this makes me fear penalties for carrying or using marijuana will be increased.
Personally, I started smoking after my digestive system broke because of a medical error (without even an apology from them, and we can't afford a good lawyer, so I have to live with it). Many in my family used to smoke as well, so I was convinced (after much resistance from me, since I don't smoke normal tobacco, and I thought it'd be a "bad thing" since I lived "healthy" without alcohol or tobacco). It was one of the best choices I had, one year ago. Not troubled so much by pain, I started to develop my abilities further, started to make better and deeper social life (my mood became less violent, which helped at work and with friends), and met a lot of stoner people who are really nice. Unfortunately since my stomach is broken I tend to vomit at times when I am stoned, but well, happens if I do exercise too or I have too much heat. Aside from bad aftertaste and sore throat it's not a big deal (it's like once per month or so anyway) Judging from my other family members who have been smoking for ages, they are really healthy as well. Some of my stoner friends only say "I lose a lot of time stoned" as a defect. I haven't known anyone that has died under effects of pot, either directly by overdose or indirectly (like driving and crashing, like alcohol, that is legal but it leads to heavy poisoning, violence in some cases, and shame in other cases).
You know, it kind of hurts me to see statistics like "54% of american parents are extremely worried their kids do marijuana". I don't know if it has side effect as a kid, I started well into adulthood, but my grandpa has been smoking his entire life, and he hasn't either started doing other drugs, nor he was ever violent, or has faced health issues (although he smokes a lot of regular tobacco too, so his voice is all cracked).
It would be nice if I could consume this medicine legally. It's not like law is going to be harsh to me, since it's just a small fine in my country, but I really fear "what if laws get more severe?".
Hello no! I have already seen the detrimental effects of MMORPGS and other online games into adult's personalities, I don't even want to know what can happen to a kid. Was the one in charge of this study a level 90 Paladin?
...but if a game makes automation attractive, it's not a fun game. Every single time I've seen people playing this game, it makes me think of work. You should get paid for work, not pay for work.
Heh! Pretty clever reply. Unfortunately, you are wrong. We only rent the machines and connection, we do not provide WoW and other gaming software unless the client installs it. I might transcribe our rental policy if you feel interested. Amusingly our rate of software piracy is tremendously low...everyone has the original game with them to install, 99% of the times.
I work at a cibercafé, and indeed, several WoW accounts have been stolen the last two weeks, via use of keyloggers. Nothing specially advanced, but we noticed a bit too late. Anyhow, for me, stealing a WoW account is pretty much like stealing a crack addict's pipe, I don't really feel any compassion for the player. That thing is a digital drug.
I read often the concept of "reproduction" when strong, evolutive AI is discussed. I laugh at that idea. Imagine the following concept: There exists an AL (I'll use that to refer to "Artificial Life(form)"), which has achieved the much fabled concept of sentience, and is given awareness of its complete body functions (knowing the status, movement and performance of every part in real time), as well as the ability and knowledge necessary to improve itself (by redesigning and building new parts or entire bodies). Even if that AL had the intelligence of a laboratory rat, given those characteristics, do you think it will try to reproduce? No, that AL will try to evolve itself until it's perfect (by its own standards) and even beyond. We, supposedly, by instinct, try to mix ourselves with a mate to improve the next generation. Because we cannot replace ourselves. An AL with the characteristics exposed above can. If it has a defective leg, it will make a new one. If we humans had a lifespan based on energy/material availability and not dependent on cellular aging, and we could find and correct our flaws, we would strive to make ourselves perfect first of all. If you were colorblind, or you were deaf, mute, or you had a non-functioning limb, you would find the flaw, and correct it.
That is because for us, evolution is dependent on mixing. For them, it would simply be dependent on the availability of the materials and energy needed to evolve further. They don't need a mate to go that far. They don't have the natural impulse to mate as we do. They wouldn't get physical pleasure from mating, which is the reason we feel so inclined to do it (imagine having sex was a painful experience, or simply something you don't get pleasure from, the entire human civilization would have been extinct from its start). If mating wasn't something pleasurable, it wouldn't be so much of a concern to an intelligent being able to improve.
Then after achieving their envisioned perfection, the AL might, but not necessarily,try to replicate itself, which would lead to a new AL which again, would perfect itself again, developing the "individualism". Even if two ALs had the same "mind" and memories, being at two different locations would bear different experiences that can lead to new changes. (Such as, one walks around the mall while other is just sitting around chatting or doing anything else. The one around the mall sees two persons playing cards, chess or something in a table, and it catches its curiosity. That AL would try to learn to play acquiring new knowledge, while the other may gather another form of knowledge to improve itself).
After all, even a simple, non-Turing-passing chatbot is based on knowledge accumulation. Two chatbots with the same programming and different sources of knowledge (AKA geek playing with them) will have totally different knowledge bases. Now if a chatbot was able to identify its flaws, it will find knowledge extremely valuable and then desirable. It would automatically chase a level of perfection, which means no flaws can be perceived. The chatbot concept can also illustrate how an AL (with a physical body) might react...one might find that obtaining knowledge via other sources (such as humans, animals, nature, fiction, other AL...) is fast and efficient while another might try to gather the knowledge itself (by physical adjusting, self-inspection...) based on physical progress.
As far as I can say, it's how I would act if the desire to reproduce was suppressed and I was given total control over my body and life (physically speaking). I would seek perfection for myself, socially and physically, adjusting every detail as soon as I spot a flaw.
I am a tech romanticist, I fear nothing about AI advances (I personally find the "this is creepy" comments people does at times totally ridiculous and based on movies such as Terminator, peh!), and I desire to see machines walking among us before I kick the bucket. Although, truth in hand, I believe the AL will be the ultima
What kind of joke is this? Nintendo favoring European market? With games like 10$ more expensive, horrible translation works and one year late in most cases? We still didn't even get Smash Brothers Brawl and everyone got tired of it already. Etrian Odyssey is here when the second part is almost out in the US...and more expensive of course, just to mention a few examples. And, don't come back at me saying "You got X game in Europe first", because it's one every 100, and generally done as "market test" or to be able to pull out something on the "hot" season (summer, Christmas). They aren't favoring us at all, it's just their enterprise speak that is trying to make you think so.
I used this daily since beta 4 on Linux, superiorly sweet. After getting used to the awesomebar (I don't know, but I imagine some sort of guy shouting AWWWWWYEEEEEAAAAAAAAH!!!!!! when I think of the bar's name...) and the smart bookmarks/tagging I can't go back. My experience has been quite stable...after I disabled flash. Only one random crash a few weeks ago in a site with faulty code. I am very happy so far. Also, if you don't dig the Linux skin or some Stylish (such as Vista Theme) doesn't work, I have seen a small fix in http://hetdegon.deviantart.com/ (of all places...), just replacing the linux chrome.jar from a windows version. (Seriously, why is the linux skin so abominably ugly?)
I don't know, but it sounds quite sensationalistic. I have never cared who the person behind a game is, because this is gaming, not a celebrity contest or a model show. If my favorite game is made by man or a woman of whatever race, it's not what's important. What is important are the reasons that made me like the game. It's like saying that the movie industry needs more midgets...it just makes no sense. Putting it differently, what matters of a game director/coder is the soul, brain and heart. Having those qualities, the rest is not relevant at all.
And so that mother with a baby on her lap plays WoW instead of taking care of her baby? For me, WoW and related are nothing but a hard, psychological drug. Those examples you mention only make it worse.
So by this I am already prepared to take on a massive robotic overlord by turning myself into a robot and owning his armor with a wind piercer and dual cannon fire. I breathe relieved.
Yes, your point is pretty much valid, but knowing what we know about TOR nowadays...it's still relying on a third party. You can't know if the end of the TOR network is run by a person interested on helping people or a data harvester. Same can apply to proxy servers, I think.
>It's damn near impossible to find a Qt based program on Windows, and that's surely a roadblock to adoption, since if I can write an app that uses Qt on Windows, moving to Linux would be easier. But you'd rather just insult the Windows users instead. I know Launchy (Quicksilver-style launcher for windows) is being ported to QT, and I found many others I don't remember at the time using QT as well.
Amusing. I tried the SuSe liveCD yesterday and I was quite impressed about it. I ran the CD on qemu without acceleration module and vmware player, from a slow Kingston SD memory card (to add insult to injury), the performance while sluggish in parts (resizing panels in krita) was generally quite snappy even in the conditions set by the slow emulated, non-opengl-based system. Resizing and rotation of plasma widgets was pretty fast, and the animations were instant even in qemu. I also took a good look at Krita, something I've been anticipating anxiously and I was impressed. The laggy mouse lines (a complete polygon aiming to do a curve) turned into a curved line in front of my eyes with no delay after the mouse button was released! Krita is looking very promising so far. I also enjoyed my sights of Dolphin 4, although I am more of a Krusader kind of person, it was nice. The widget theme (oxigen, right?) was improved to a point I enjoyed. I specially liked the buttons and the green/orange highlights, I love those colors. I didn't like the window decorations though. The wallpaper is flower-powery, amusing at least, but not something I relate to technology...maybe if it was a cybernetic flower... Is it intentional that using the Plasma "zoom out" function the wallpaper is scaled in a corner and the rest becomes a vast desert of whiteness? While I found the function good to play with widgets the wallpaper not keeping scale makes it a bit of an eyesore. Also, the taskbar screams beta...and I grew to hate the menu. It's simply...slow. All in all, I am looking forward to use this baby soon. I hope Krusader gets there soon:P
Well, I can't speak about MMORPGs because I consider them some sort of drug and should be regulated or banned. I have seen people losing their lives because of that garbage reduced to point and click, with no more ability required than Minesweeper and that rewards the one that grinds levels rather than actual skill. But, in normal games, I have no problem in choosing female characters to play. Why? Because I find them more visually attractive than your hulking, macho character. I generally go like this until gameplay proves me the male character kicks more ass. I really prefer to pick the girl in games like Pokemon, I am really good with May in Guilty Gear, and few persons can beat my Zelda in Super Smash Brosh Melee. Why should I be denied of that? After all, I don't pick them because I feel "identified" with the character. I pick them because I prefer having something nice to look at in the screen. But, then again, I don't know the intent or behavior of MMORPGers....and I prefer to not know any more of them, ever.
It's pretty obvious Martians are learning the pleasure of hardware hacking. They are pretty slow, though. And they forget to turn off devices before hacking. So much for ultra-advanced civilizations...
This is good news for the birds. Now instead of throwing them into a pit we can save them too. Oh? No? Just for us? Heck, my pet chicken is not going to be happy about this...
I am currently employed in a cibercafé. Clients come in and out all the time, and while most are pretty normal some are horrible selfish persons that think you are both their slave and a magician because you have a computer in front of you, thus you can do seven things at once. I have been pretty nasty at some clients, but only on return of their attitude. It's incredibly hard to keep your cool with people like that at times.
An old woman comes wanting to write an email to her daughter and hasn't touched a computer in all of her life? Hell, it'd be monstrous to not try to teach her at least.
The problem is when some "smart" one comes around, believing he knows everything about computers because he downloads music on Kazaa/Ares and knows how to send those annoying screen shake-shakes on MSN Messenger. As soon as a ridiculously insignificant problem arises they don't ask you for guidance, they demand you to fix it asap or they'll go complain to the boss like if I kicked their heads. And it doesn't matter if you explain them or fix it, they will call you again next time. They completely refuse to learn anything yet they can be every day in there.
I hate most of my clients because of that. The object that is keeping them entertained, that allows them to communitate, to learn, is being used as a simple jukebox with chat capabilities. No one of my daily clients has showed a sign of learning anything at all, even fixing problems like MSN Messenger sessions staying open (simple task manager, close all msnmesg.exe (iirc, sleepy now after 12 hours with those freaks), doesn't matter how many times I explained them, tried to make them understand that a freaking ISP-level network problem is not my fault or that if the person they are trying to videochat with doesn't turn on the freaking camera, they won't be able to see it. They even get freaking violent when the printer is out of ink and demand me to get more (on sunday and without supplies left) and stuff like that.
Today a very disgusting woman (in manners) got into the freaking counter, just to get in front of my computer and demanded me to search something in some page I never visited to print it. There are some things wrong with that: First, you don't freaking get inside a counter without permission. Second, it's terribly unpolite to get to someone just demanding and not even saying hello. Third, her tone was incredibly demanding and rough, like if every line she spoke countained a repressed "you slave". Fourth, you can't expect someone that has never been into a database to find information for you if you don't even know what you are searching. I got her out of the freaking counter first, then asked what she wanted properly. She gave me the address while not taking her eyes out of my screen, but since she didn't even know what to search for, and I had no idea, demanded her to use the computers for rental. I am not being paid to do that stuff to such a person. She kept bugging me while I was busy with other clients to help her finding something that she never actually told me what it was. For what I could see from the prints it was some sort of database for employment in a hospital...there's Dr.House mk.II, sirs. I didn't treat her nicely, but at most she only saw my angry face while I was wanting to kick her shaky ass out. (yes, she was shaking all the time, what contributed to make me nervous).
In such environment, how would you reaction? I normally manage to keep my cool, but at times it's impossible. Hell, there was a time where I was being robbed and they kept coming complaining about freaking MSN Messenger failing! It's IMPOSSIBLE to have respect for them at all. (no joke. The police came just in time that day and nothing happened but it COULD have happened. I am dead serious on this)
Injury? I bet the kids started to laugh their asses out when the first tit appeared on screen. I can see what happened here. *DINNER TIME*
LOL LOL MOM IT WAS SO FUNNAY AT SCHOOL THE TEACH0R'S COMPUTER SHOWED P0RNS
OH DEAR GOD NO MY CHILD!!!!!!! SOMEONE HAS TO PAY!!! (I need a new car too) Repeat in three more houses and you're done. Bah, kids nowadays know what porn is from seven years old onwards, not like they are going to get a life-lasting trauma or become terrible perverts for that. The years where kids used to play ninjas vs cowboys vs pirates are over. (pirates won, obviously, specially if piratebay gets its own country yarrr)
Jesus. I play a lot of games (mostly shooters like Touhou, Nanostray, Donpachi, ESP.Ra.De, and the likes; action games like Devil May Cry, Armored Core, Chaos Legion...and some JCRPGs like Super Robot Wars (Alpha 3 and OG2 are sweet IMO), pokémon (Dungeon is like cute Nethack) and roguelikes), but I am far more into reality than I wish I could be.
I mean...I spend most of my days working, dealing with life every single minute without being able to escape from it. Not even when I sleep, as all my dreams are stupidly mundane. I must deal with my family, friends and customers normally, as an Average Joe, even if I play some games here and there and I am a geek.
I am far more stuck into reality than I'd like, specially in stressful days. I wish I could divert and forget everything for five minutes, but I could never do such a thing. A shame, actually.
I sort of envy those those people FTA mentions...
Since I need to exchange keyboard setups (from Spanish (Spain setup) to English to Japanese and others at times, I can see usefulness in this thing. Looks flashy too, although looks like it's rather expensive. I wonder if it works in Linux, too?
What I find rather amusing is how Japan is getting only 100000 units and the US 400000. I mean, Japan is normally the place for a Japanese company to make the biggest sales-- They are not MS. Since there are plenty of PSX/PS2 fans in Japan for the license games, Final Fantasies, Dragon Quests, Disgaeas and such, it somehow makes me feel something's not right in that distribution. Are they trying to appeal more to the occidental market? If they do so, they can be burying their own graves. Yes, I know the occidental market is larger, but you know how Japan is too... And, as usual, the European market is the lowest link. Tsk, I should have born in the US.
Just one word about the "visual novel = dating sim = p0rn" thing. Play Planetarian. It's the most touching "game" I've ever seen. Doesn't have porn, it's a really interesting story and has the cutest female character ever designed. The thing basically takes place in a broken future where a biochemical war ensued, making the environment a complete POS. The world's population was decimated by the contamination and a permanent acid rain, and the battle robots released to keep the war on. The game is starred by a "junker" more or less a treasure hunter, who enters a city searching for goods to sell and hopefully some cigs or alcohol (omg like finding diamonds as it's explained), and ends up in a old planetarium that was kept in an acceptable state. The guy decides to stay there to recover from fighting war machines and to get dryed from the constant, toxic rain. In there, he finds an android, Reverie, who used to be the planetarium's guide, and was left in a hibernation state since the city was evacuated because of the war. She has only awakened seven days per year (battery life) waiting for the planetarium's staff to return. This character gets on the nerves of the junker badly, as she really doesn't stop talking. However, she results to be quite a lovely character and the junker starts to get quite fond of her in the end. The end of the game is really touching and if you don't feel anything from it you should be buried alive or something nasty like that. And nope, even if it's a girl and a guy it doesn't go "welcome, may I have you pOnOs?". Jack Thompson would be unable to make anything bad of this (mwahahaha) There is a translated demo somewhere, google for "planetarian" and give it a try, it's really worth it. The only flaw is that it's actually a pretty novel with music and images, so its replay value is null...but it's not expensive to make for it.
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Well, I am not in the US, and I consume marijuana in a regular basis.
It's very popular as a drug, by consumers and by non-consumers that think that stoners are no-future junkies.
Reading stuff like this makes me fear penalties for carrying or using marijuana will be increased.
Personally, I started smoking after my digestive system broke because of a medical error (without even an apology from them, and we can't afford a good lawyer, so I have to live with it).
Many in my family used to smoke as well, so I was convinced (after much resistance from me, since I don't smoke normal tobacco, and I thought it'd be a "bad thing" since I lived "healthy" without alcohol or tobacco). It was one of the best choices I had, one year ago.
Not troubled so much by pain, I started to develop my abilities further, started to make better and deeper social life (my mood became less violent, which helped at work and with friends), and met a lot of stoner people who are really nice. Unfortunately since my stomach is broken I tend to vomit at times when I am stoned, but well, happens if I do exercise too or I have too much heat. Aside from bad aftertaste and sore throat it's not a big deal (it's like once per month or so anyway)
Judging from my other family members who have been smoking for ages, they are really healthy as well. Some of my stoner friends only say "I lose a lot of time stoned" as a defect. I haven't known anyone that has died under effects of pot, either directly by overdose or indirectly (like driving and crashing, like alcohol, that is legal but it leads to heavy poisoning, violence in some cases, and shame in other cases).
You know, it kind of hurts me to see statistics like "54% of american parents are extremely worried their kids do marijuana". I don't know if it has side effect as a kid, I started well into adulthood, but my grandpa has been smoking his entire life, and he hasn't either started doing other drugs, nor he was ever violent, or has faced health issues (although he smokes a lot of regular tobacco too, so his voice is all cracked).
It would be nice if I could consume this medicine legally. It's not like law is going to be harsh to me, since it's just a small fine in my country, but I really fear "what if laws get more severe?".
Hello no! I have already seen the detrimental effects of MMORPGS and other online games into adult's personalities, I don't even want to know what can happen to a kid.
Was the one in charge of this study a level 90 Paladin?
...but if a game makes automation attractive, it's not a fun game.
Every single time I've seen people playing this game, it makes me think of work.
You should get paid for work, not pay for work.
Heh! Pretty clever reply.
Unfortunately, you are wrong. We only rent the machines and connection, we do not provide WoW and other gaming software unless the client installs it. I might transcribe our rental policy if you feel interested.
Amusingly our rate of software piracy is tremendously low...everyone has the original game with them to install, 99% of the times.
I work at a cibercafé, and indeed, several WoW accounts have been stolen the last two weeks, via use of keyloggers. Nothing specially advanced, but we noticed a bit too late.
Anyhow, for me, stealing a WoW account is pretty much like stealing a crack addict's pipe, I don't really feel any compassion for the player. That thing is a digital drug.
I read often the concept of "reproduction" when strong, evolutive AI is discussed.
I laugh at that idea.
Imagine the following concept:
There exists an AL (I'll use that to refer to "Artificial Life(form)"), which has achieved the much fabled concept of sentience, and is given awareness of its complete body functions (knowing the status, movement and performance of every part in real time), as well as the ability and knowledge necessary to improve itself (by redesigning and building new parts or entire bodies).
Even if that AL had the intelligence of a laboratory rat, given those characteristics, do you think it will try to reproduce? No, that AL will try to evolve itself until it's perfect (by its own standards) and even beyond.
We, supposedly, by instinct, try to mix ourselves with a mate to improve the next generation. Because we cannot replace ourselves. An AL with the characteristics exposed above can.
If it has a defective leg, it will make a new one.
If we humans had a lifespan based on energy/material availability and not dependent on cellular aging, and we could find and correct our flaws, we would strive to make ourselves perfect first of all. If you were colorblind, or you were deaf, mute, or you had a non-functioning limb, you would find the flaw, and correct it.
That is because for us, evolution is dependent on mixing. For them, it would simply be dependent on the availability of the materials and energy needed to evolve further. They don't need a mate to go that far. They don't have the natural impulse to mate as we do.
They wouldn't get physical pleasure from mating, which is the reason we feel so inclined to do it (imagine having sex was a painful experience, or simply something you don't get pleasure from, the entire human civilization would have been extinct from its start). If mating wasn't something pleasurable, it wouldn't be so much of a concern to an intelligent being able to improve.
Then after achieving their envisioned perfection, the AL might, but not necessarily,try to replicate itself, which would lead to a new AL which again, would perfect itself again, developing the "individualism". Even if two ALs had the same "mind" and memories, being at two different locations would bear different experiences that can lead to new changes. (Such as, one walks around the mall while other is just sitting around chatting or doing anything else. The one around the mall sees two persons playing cards, chess or something in a table, and it catches its curiosity. That AL would try to learn to play acquiring new knowledge, while the other may gather another form of knowledge to improve itself).
After all, even a simple, non-Turing-passing chatbot is based on knowledge accumulation. Two chatbots with the same programming and different sources of knowledge (AKA geek playing with them) will have totally different knowledge bases. Now if a chatbot was able to identify its flaws, it will find knowledge extremely valuable and then desirable. It would automatically chase a level of perfection, which means no flaws can be perceived. The chatbot concept can also illustrate how an AL (with a physical body) might react...one might find that obtaining knowledge via other sources (such as humans, animals, nature, fiction, other AL...) is fast and efficient while another might try to gather the knowledge itself (by physical adjusting, self-inspection...) based on physical progress.
As far as I can say, it's how I would act if the desire to reproduce was suppressed and I was given total control over my body and life (physically speaking). I would seek perfection for myself, socially and physically, adjusting every detail as soon as I spot a flaw.
I am a tech romanticist, I fear nothing about AI advances (I personally find the "this is creepy" comments people does at times totally ridiculous and based on movies such as Terminator, peh!), and I desire to see machines walking among us before I kick the bucket.
Although, truth in hand, I believe the AL will be the ultima
What kind of joke is this? Nintendo favoring European market? With games like 10$ more expensive, horrible translation works and one year late in most cases? We still didn't even get Smash Brothers Brawl and everyone got tired of it already. Etrian Odyssey is here when the second part is almost out in the US...and more expensive of course, just to mention a few examples.
And, don't come back at me saying "You got X game in Europe first", because it's one every 100, and generally done as "market test" or to be able to pull out something on the "hot" season (summer, Christmas).
They aren't favoring us at all, it's just their enterprise speak that is trying to make you think so.
I used this daily since beta 4 on Linux, superiorly sweet. After getting used to the awesomebar (I don't know, but I imagine some sort of guy shouting AWWWWWYEEEEEAAAAAAAAH!!!!!! when I think of the bar's name...) and the smart bookmarks/tagging I can't go back. My experience has been quite stable...after I disabled flash. Only one random crash a few weeks ago in a site with faulty code. I am very happy so far.
Also, if you don't dig the Linux skin or some Stylish (such as Vista Theme) doesn't work, I have seen a small fix in http://hetdegon.deviantart.com/ (of all places...), just replacing the linux chrome.jar from a windows version. (Seriously, why is the linux skin so abominably ugly?)
I don't know, but it sounds quite sensationalistic. I have never cared who the person behind a game is, because this is gaming, not a celebrity contest or a model show. If my favorite game is made by man or a woman of whatever race, it's not what's important. What is important are the reasons that made me like the game.
It's like saying that the movie industry needs more midgets...it just makes no sense.
Putting it differently, what matters of a game director/coder is the soul, brain and heart. Having those qualities, the rest is not relevant at all.
And so that mother with a baby on her lap plays WoW instead of taking care of her baby?
For me, WoW and related are nothing but a hard, psychological drug. Those examples you mention only make it worse.
So by this I am already prepared to take on a massive robotic overlord by turning myself into a robot and owning his armor with a wind piercer and dual cannon fire. I breathe relieved.
Yes, your point is pretty much valid, but knowing what we know about TOR nowadays...it's still relying on a third party. You can't know if the end of the TOR network is run by a person interested on helping people or a data harvester. Same can apply to proxy servers, I think.
>It's damn near impossible to find a Qt based program on Windows, and that's surely a roadblock to adoption, since if I can write an app that uses Qt on Windows, moving to Linux would be easier. But you'd rather just insult the Windows users instead.
I know Launchy (Quicksilver-style launcher for windows) is being ported to QT, and I found many others I don't remember at the time using QT as well.
Amusing. I tried the SuSe liveCD yesterday and I was quite impressed about it. I ran the CD on qemu without acceleration module and vmware player, from a slow Kingston SD memory card (to add insult to injury), the performance while sluggish in parts (resizing panels in krita) was generally quite snappy even in the conditions set by the slow emulated, non-opengl-based system. :P
Resizing and rotation of plasma widgets was pretty fast, and the animations were instant even in qemu. I also took a good look at Krita, something I've been anticipating anxiously and I was impressed. The laggy mouse lines (a complete polygon aiming to do a curve) turned into a curved line in front of my eyes with no delay after the mouse button was released! Krita is looking very promising so far. I also enjoyed my sights of Dolphin 4, although I am more of a Krusader kind of person, it was nice.
The widget theme (oxigen, right?) was improved to a point I enjoyed. I specially liked the buttons and the green/orange highlights, I love those colors. I didn't like the window decorations though. The wallpaper is flower-powery, amusing at least, but not something I relate to technology...maybe if it was a cybernetic flower... Is it intentional that using the Plasma "zoom out" function the wallpaper is scaled in a corner and the rest becomes a vast desert of whiteness? While I found the function good to play with widgets the wallpaper not keeping scale makes it a bit of an eyesore. Also, the taskbar screams beta...and I grew to hate the menu. It's simply...slow.
All in all, I am looking forward to use this baby soon. I hope Krusader gets there soon
Well, I can't speak about MMORPGs because I consider them some sort of drug and should be regulated or banned. I have seen people losing their lives because of that garbage reduced to point and click, with no more ability required than Minesweeper and that rewards the one that grinds levels rather than actual skill.
But, in normal games, I have no problem in choosing female characters to play. Why? Because I find them more visually attractive than your hulking, macho character. I generally go like this until gameplay proves me the male character kicks more ass.
I really prefer to pick the girl in games like Pokemon, I am really good with May in Guilty Gear, and few persons can beat my Zelda in Super Smash Brosh Melee. Why should I be denied of that?
After all, I don't pick them because I feel "identified" with the character. I pick them because I prefer having something nice to look at in the screen.
But, then again, I don't know the intent or behavior of MMORPGers....and I prefer to not know any more of them, ever.
It's pretty obvious Martians are learning the pleasure of hardware hacking.
They are pretty slow, though. And they forget to turn off devices before hacking.
So much for ultra-advanced civilizations...
This is good news for the birds. Now instead of throwing them into a pit we can save them too.
Oh? No? Just for us? Heck, my pet chicken is not going to be happy about this...
I am currently employed in a cibercafé. Clients come in and out all the time, and while most are pretty normal some are horrible selfish persons that think you are both their slave and a magician because you have a computer in front of you, thus you can do seven things at once. I have been pretty nasty at some clients, but only on return of their attitude. It's incredibly hard to keep your cool with people like that at times.
An old woman comes wanting to write an email to her daughter and hasn't touched a computer in all of her life? Hell, it'd be monstrous to not try to teach her at least.
The problem is when some "smart" one comes around, believing he knows everything about computers because he downloads music on Kazaa/Ares and knows how to send those annoying screen shake-shakes on MSN Messenger. As soon as a ridiculously insignificant problem arises they don't ask you for guidance, they demand you to fix it asap or they'll go complain to the boss like if I kicked their heads. And it doesn't matter if you explain them or fix it, they will call you again next time. They completely refuse to learn anything yet they can be every day in there.
I hate most of my clients because of that. The object that is keeping them entertained, that allows them to communitate, to learn, is being used as a simple jukebox with chat capabilities. No one of my daily clients has showed a sign of learning anything at all, even fixing problems like MSN Messenger sessions staying open (simple task manager, close all msnmesg.exe (iirc, sleepy now after 12 hours with those freaks), doesn't matter how many times I explained them, tried to make them understand that a freaking ISP-level network problem is not my fault or that if the person they are trying to videochat with doesn't turn on the freaking camera, they won't be able to see it. They even get freaking violent when the printer is out of ink and demand me to get more (on sunday and without supplies left) and stuff like that.
Today a very disgusting woman (in manners) got into the freaking counter, just to get in front of my computer and demanded me to search something in some page I never visited to print it. There are some things wrong with that:
First, you don't freaking get inside a counter without permission.
Second, it's terribly unpolite to get to someone just demanding and not even saying hello.
Third, her tone was incredibly demanding and rough, like if every line she spoke countained a repressed "you slave".
Fourth, you can't expect someone that has never been into a database to find information for you if you don't even know what you are searching.
I got her out of the freaking counter first, then asked what she wanted properly. She gave me the address while not taking her eyes out of my screen, but since she didn't even know what to search for, and I had no idea, demanded her to use the computers for rental. I am not being paid to do that stuff to such a person. She kept bugging me while I was busy with other clients to help her finding something that she never actually told me what it was. For what I could see from the prints it was some sort of database for employment in a hospital...there's Dr.House mk.II, sirs. I didn't treat her nicely, but at most she only saw my angry face while I was wanting to kick her shaky ass out. (yes, she was shaking all the time, what contributed to make me nervous).
In such environment, how would you reaction? I normally manage to keep my cool, but at times it's impossible. Hell, there was a time where I was being robbed and they kept coming complaining about freaking MSN Messenger failing! It's IMPOSSIBLE to have respect for them at all. (no joke. The police came just in time that day and nothing happened but it COULD have happened. I am dead serious on this)
Injury? I bet the kids started to laugh their asses out when the first tit appeared on screen. I can see what happened here.
*DINNER TIME*
LOL LOL MOM IT WAS SO FUNNAY AT SCHOOL THE TEACH0R'S COMPUTER SHOWED P0RNS
OH DEAR GOD NO MY CHILD!!!!!!! SOMEONE HAS TO PAY!!! (I need a new car too)
Repeat in three more houses and you're done.
Bah, kids nowadays know what porn is from seven years old onwards, not like they are going to get a life-lasting trauma or become terrible perverts for that.
The years where kids used to play ninjas vs cowboys vs pirates are over. (pirates won, obviously, specially if piratebay gets its own country yarrr)
"Impressively, the robot can actually also find a place to hide, and then hunt for its human playmate"
Hunt...? HUNT? Oh my God we are going to DIE!
Jesus. I play a lot of games (mostly shooters like Touhou, Nanostray, Donpachi, ESP.Ra.De, and the likes; action games like Devil May Cry, Armored Core, Chaos Legion...and some JCRPGs like Super Robot Wars (Alpha 3 and OG2 are sweet IMO), pokémon (Dungeon is like cute Nethack) and roguelikes), but I am far more into reality than I wish I could be.
I mean...I spend most of my days working, dealing with life every single minute without being able to escape from it. Not even when I sleep, as all my dreams are stupidly mundane. I must deal with my family, friends and customers normally, as an Average Joe, even if I play some games here and there and I am a geek.
I am far more stuck into reality than I'd like, specially in stressful days. I wish I could divert and forget everything for five minutes, but I could never do such a thing. A shame, actually.
I sort of envy those those people FTA mentions...
If I wasn't European I'd REALLY agree with you.
Since I need to exchange keyboard setups (from Spanish (Spain setup) to English to Japanese and others at times, I can see usefulness in this thing. Looks flashy too, although looks like it's rather expensive.
I wonder if it works in Linux, too?
What I find rather amusing is how Japan is getting only 100000 units and the US 400000. I mean, Japan is normally the place for a Japanese company to make the biggest sales-- They are not MS.
Since there are plenty of PSX/PS2 fans in Japan for the license games, Final Fantasies, Dragon Quests, Disgaeas and such, it somehow makes me feel something's not right in that distribution. Are they trying to appeal more to the occidental market? If they do so, they can be burying their own graves.
Yes, I know the occidental market is larger, but you know how Japan is too...
And, as usual, the European market is the lowest link. Tsk, I should have born in the US.
Just one word about the "visual novel = dating sim = p0rn" thing.
Play Planetarian. It's the most touching "game" I've ever seen. Doesn't have porn, it's a really interesting story and has the cutest female character ever designed.
The thing basically takes place in a broken future where a biochemical war ensued, making the environment a complete POS. The world's population was decimated by the contamination and a permanent acid rain, and the battle robots released to keep the war on.
The game is starred by a "junker" more or less a treasure hunter, who enters a city searching for goods to sell and hopefully some cigs or alcohol (omg like finding diamonds as it's explained), and ends up in a old planetarium that was kept in an acceptable state. The guy decides to stay there to recover from fighting war machines and to get dryed from the constant, toxic rain.
In there, he finds an android, Reverie, who used to be the planetarium's guide, and was left in a hibernation state since the city was evacuated because of the war. She has only awakened seven days per year (battery life) waiting for the planetarium's staff to return. This character gets on the nerves of the junker badly, as she really doesn't stop talking. However, she results to be quite a lovely character and the junker starts to get quite fond of her in the end.
The end of the game is really touching and if you don't feel anything from it you should be buried alive or something nasty like that.
And nope, even if it's a girl and a guy it doesn't go "welcome, may I have you pOnOs?". Jack Thompson would be unable to make anything bad of this (mwahahaha)
There is a translated demo somewhere, google for "planetarian" and give it a try, it's really worth it.
The only flaw is that it's actually a pretty novel with music and images, so its replay value is null...but it's not expensive to make for it.