Speakeasy even allows you to sell wi-fi net access to your neighbors and gives you a 50% discount to run it and provide the support. I wonder what they'd do if I paid my neighbor $20 monthly to do this, tho - thus decreasing my net cost from $90 to $65 and giving him access for free:P
Subsurface scattering is quite old - I learned about it in my graphics classes, and I've been out of school since 1996... here's a 1993 paper on it.
He points out on his web page "Photon mapping is quite good at simulating subsurface scattering, but it becomes costly for highly scattering materials such as milk and skin. For these materials it is better to use a diffusion approximation. The diffusion approximation is much faster than tracing individual photons, and it is simple enough that a BSSRDF can be formulated."
When you see '1777' and start drooling because of open access permissions:P
When this tech finally gets into the handicam budget used by the porn industry, we'll probably know it by the fact that the guy's dick is 14 feet long and rock hard and the girl's bust is a 44 quintuple Q. This is what is known in the porn industry as "creativity."
It's not always trivial, but by complex math, do you mean implementing complex math (i = sqrt(-1)) or complex as in difficulty? Judging by your "I'm an engineer," I'm guessing the former, probably electrical or computer, which require complex math to calculate things such as inductance. Complex math may be restricted by the computer language - C and Fortran contain complex (imaginary) math libraries, but some languages don't (BASIC and Pascal didn't when I learned them on the Apple ][) which would require the rules to be implemented by hand. Still, many complex math libraries in common use need to be implemented by the programmer - quaternions, for example. These are not simple to understand - take a look at this page and tell me it's straightforward and easy to understand. I've written the things several times for 3d programs and still struggle through the equations when I try to figure them out (most people just skip the figuring out and go straight to the implementation, tho).
Complex equations (as in difficulty), such as solving an integration on a computer from, say, n to infinity, technically would take infinite time on a computer, so artificial bounds are necessary - but what is a good infinity? This varies depending on the accuracy required, what n starts at, sometimes the type of curve/function, etc., so the programmer needs to know approximations of certain characteristics and then estimate the values. On computers, these points are estimated using several learned techniques for estimation. I've learned a few of them in school - Newton-Raphson, Runge-Kutta, Euler's method - I personally haven't used any of them in years, so I don't remember which applies to this particular case, but I know they exist if I ever need them and could probably find the one I need fairly quickly (I know the books I would look in, at the very least). Half of the problem is knowing a where to look for the solution.
We have a limited subset of developers/QA/etc get the latest patches and verify none of their tools are affected, so only a few people would need rollbacks, if necessary, not everybody.
Fortunately for me, I am one of those people - my company was hit by Sasser before 4AM on Friday and I had the patch, unlike most of my coworkers. I had a 6AM meeting that day (one of the "perks" of working with India... groan), and was greeted by a mail system that was shut down and ops people frantically pulling network cables (we had no idea how it spread at the time). The only reason they caught it so early was one of the ops people came in to upgrade our mail server at 4, knowing some employees start at around 6 and found the machine (and others) in the error/reboot state.
We do that because every once in a while, one of these patches breaks an app or the system. Like the Win 2K Service pack that broke Win 2K when all patches had already been installed. Glad I wasn't the one to find that one out!
depends on context - if it's a wireless hot spot, why bother - you get a DHCP address and nobody knows who the heck you are after you leave (unless your PC is searched - the dhcp auto-renew cache file (whatever it's called) would give away the IP you had, which may be enough to give 'em a slim chance in court). It's not like your MAC address is getting logged:) Yeah, the main post is about Comcast, and you probably are wondering why I would even mention a WAP - well, my local coffee shop uses/advertises for Comcast and provides a hotspot, so there you have it.
The second case I was thinking of was basically IP tunneling (for security and anonymity, something like ssh tunnels), but that's technically proxying. I did a google search for "anonymous proxy server" and "public proxy server" - and found tons of 'em (I knew they were out there, just never had a reason to look). Some even support sftp or https, which would give you secure downloads, but if they don't know who you are, who cares;)
Naw, but I remember there was a clause in their contract prohibiting the downloading and/or distribution of illegal material, violating copyrights, running servers of any kind, etc.
contract summary: You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to have a pickle shoved up your ass. Anything you say is in violation of these rights.
That's where anonymous IP re-routing comes in - IP tunneling or bouncing off another router (e.g. open router, internet access point, etc). The only way you could be tracked is if they were watching at the re-routing point or possibly even physically at the point, since many of those services don't keep logs (not that I would know anything about it;)
Unfortunately, in the corporate world, it isn't just support, it's liability. If some programmer for Red Hat sticks in a back door and our source code is stolen, we'd sue Red Hat (probably into the ground). You just can't do that with GenToo, because it's not really a business yet (or at least, much of one). That's why my company only supports Red Hat and SUSE at the moment (not a decision I have any input on, so don't bitch to me about other possible choices that would work, if any). They're decent sized companies with enough assets (and probably insurance) that we stand to get something out of a large lawsuit.
Put simply, you and/or GenToo probably don't carry 500 million plus in liability insurance or the assets to make up the difference that a 2 billion dollar software company would sue you for if their software got stolen through a back-door you put (or allowed) in.
Re:This has a lot of potential
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Gentoo Linux Musings
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I've tried most of the common linux packaging methods (RPM with SUSE and RedHat, dpkg with Yellow Dog and Debian, and portage with GenToo), and I didn't think any of them were easy enough for anyone unfamiliar with Linux to use. UNIX even sometimes with a GUI has too many things with three or four letter names, and the GNU-acronym fetish (Gnu's Not UNIX) doesn't help - you wouldn't even be able to guess what something like WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is without reading documentation. I remember launching a number of applications in KDE or GNOME because I had no idea what they were at the time (xmms? what the heck does that do?). Many times the icon didn't help, as well (I can't think of any specific ones off the top of my head 'cause I changed most of the names, but, for instance, WINE's wine glass).
The install of GenToo was messy, IMO, but I was a fairly early adopter, so I hope, at the very least, they've cleaned up the README file. As far as installs go, SUSE was among my favorites, but also one of my least favorites to maintain (Red Hat was worse [also RPM], but better than the no-package-manager Slackware distro I used before it), and GenToo was the exact opposite - one of my least favorite to install, and my favorite to maintain (debian was a worse install for me, but mainly because it didn't recognize most of my hardware and I had to download and split disk-image patches and then re-integrate them on the machine to get it on - ages ago, and probably long fixed).
I don't usually go with the latest-and-greatest on my "stable" systems, only on ones I want to play around with - didn't try Red Hat until ~3 (I forget the exact version - versioning was different back then, and it was before the version inflation syndrome), and SUSE until 7. Yellow Dog and Slackware were early versions, though (Slackware, I would say, was probably TOO-early a version, but take that with a grain of salt - it was my first Linux experience, and also the first hard disk install I had ever done).
It probably depends on who you ask. Syberia seemed to sell well, tho I personally found the game dull compared to The Longest Journey (which I played a few weeks before Syberia's release, but 2 years after its release).
I was pretty surprised to see a shelf dedicated to Adventure games at Best Buy - it used to be half a row. I suspect that means they're selling again. Personally, I'd like to see the "Myst" style game die, which was about 3/4 of those games - I'm definitely not a fan. I like the Lucas Arts/Sierra style much better. Basically, I like character driven stories, not dead worlds/puzzle solving, probably because the puzzles are either too easy or too hard. Too hard usually means completely unintuitive for me - I pick up on clues quickly due to years of experience playing games with bad clues like "Our special of the day is duck, I'll be back in a few minutes to take your order" and the next thing you have to type is to type "duck" or you get machine gunned down (my apologies for not exactly quoting the old Apple ][ adventure that I can't even remember the name of, but it's a good example of a bad clue).
Tomb Raider was created by Core, a British company, so it's not really an American game (tho it was geared toward a Western audience). Personally I loved the first game, and hated the rest - the series went from an exploration game heavily influenced by Prince of Persia to nearly a pure shoot 'em up.
My personal peeve is games on rails - a good example is the Joan of Arc game (or at least the demo). That's also one of the things I dislike about Bioware RPGs - you have some freedom, but essentially are herded from one area to the next and can't go back and basically follow one or two plotlines. I would much rather play a game like Fallout, Gothic, GTA, or Morrowind that don't limit freedom artificially but subtly (or not so subtly) prod you in the right direction.
[rant]
I also dislike most licensed games, but unfortunately, a lot of people want stuff they know. I especially dislike movie games, mainly because most of 'em rail you along the same plotline as the movie. Then there's RPG licenses - D&D is a retched RPG ruleset for computer games, but it's popular because D&D players know it and want games with it. I'm amazed at how broken Star Wars KOTOR is (based on D20). Not to say it's a bad game, it's actually pretty good, as RPGs go, just that the rules are broken - you practically don't need skills, which makes skill heavy classes pointless and it's easy to point bash if you put your skill points in the right area. Everyone I know that has played that game says skills don't matter (heck, even most faqs say that). What's the point of an RPG if skills don't matter? [/rant]
Seems practically all games with "sex appeal" in the US these days are tactless - BMX XXX is definitely a good example. Some are intentionally tactless to be funny - like the Leisure Suit Larry series, which works somewhat better because they're making fun of how tactless they are (and like pretty much all US games, sex/sexiness is more implied than shown). The old adventure game Phantasmagoria did it well, I thought - sex in the game meshed with the plot - even if the plot was only so-so and straight out of a B-movie. Many games (especially RPGs) just imply sex, which I don't really have a problem with - it adds a human element to the characters but isn't explicit. What I'd like to see is some repercussions in an RPG - like an NPC (or player) getting pregnant for not using birth control, and having to deal with that... heck, even network TV's dealt with that issue, why not a game? I can just imagine paying 300gp/mo in child support and alimony:)
[rant] Unfortunately, the US has a double standard when it comes to games - pretty much any amount of violence and gore will max out at an M rating (the only attempt at an AO in violence that I know of was the cancelled Thrill Kill), but just implying sex gets you an M rating, and more than 3/10ths of a second of a polygonal breast flash gets an AO rating. You can put 10 times that much nudity in a PG-13 movie for Christ's sake. The Japanese are much more open about nudity, aside from the whole penis/vagina taboo thing. But honestly, which is worse, killing or boobies? Oh my god! I just saw a naturally occurring milk dispenser! For shame! I better say thirty Hail Marys and go get the hairshirt out again... er, if I were Catholic, that is. [/rant]
I agree on Robotech - too much action for network TV and probably even cable TV (outside companies willing to risk big $$ like HBO, but that doesn't really fit their core audience). The biggest obstacle to good sci-fi on network TV, though, is that the networks are moving almost completely to sitcoms and reality TV to cut expense. I wouldn't be surprised if that eventually backfires and they lose share to cable, but I haven't seen any slowdown in popularity yet. Even cable is jumping on that bandwagon... maybe in 10 years, the ONLY things to watch will be reality, sitcom, crime drama, or sports. I imagine I'd throw my TV out around then.
The other thing I hate about network TV is their consistent unbelievable science in sci-fi and characters that are basically untouchable. Dark Angel jumping through a pane of inch-thick glass, falling 4 stories and running away uninjured, for instance. Genetically engineered or not, she's gonna get sliced up and probably break her legs in that fall. Then there's dodging pretty much every bullet... *groan*
Execs should watch Alias to know how to create this kind of character right. She's not invincible, but is superhuman in some ways (and this is explained in a realistic way - a cold war CIA project designed to create superspies), has flaws, shows fear, and yet still succeeds in most (but not all) missions. Missions that fail? That's so refreshing to see in any show. I was also happy to see a Cold Case show that didn't produce enough evidence to pin the murderer as well. Maybe networks are waking up to reality - we don't always win every battle.
My biggest peeve with sci-fi, though is the 20th century medicine in shows like Star Trek and even the new Battlestar Galactica, though. If you can build a spaceship that big, you probably have the med-tech to cure cancer and revive the dead for several minutes - heck, they probably could convert entire body structures. Hmm... today, I think I'll be a Trellian...
To be honest, I actually didn't think the Tick worked well in either live action or cartoon form, probably because it didn't fit the genre. Both had funny moments, but not the laugh-until-you-wet-your-pants moments from the comic book. The live action shows biggest fault was that it was paced too slow. The cartoon had to make sacrifices for its audience and took away too much of the adult humor.
I thought TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) worked much better in both comic and live action, and I'm not really a fan of that series (aside from the first couple of gore-fest comic books). It's probably because it meets people's expectations (superhero=action heavy) and was already dumbed down in the comic book when the writers found they were getting more pre-teen fans/interest than adult spoof audience fans/interest.
I never noticed - I found Andromeda as gripping as the handshakes at a gay bar (it's a euphemism, get over it) so quickly lost interest.
I heard later they added in a bit more conflict, and that may have spiced up the show, but by then I didn't think it was worth the effort to watch. I didn't much care for Sorbo in the lead, either - it was basically his Hercules character in space.
As for Mutant X, well, it's probably been said - the show looked like a low budget X-men written by 13 year old boys targetting 8 year old boys. I didn't actually think the acting was all that bad (for some characters) in the few shows I had the misfortune to see, but my God, I've seen cartoons with better plots. Road Runner had better plots.
Redheads are stereotyped as tempermental (fiery) and more likely to anger a parent. I've known a few that fall into that stereotype, but also a couple that don't (one of them is so mellow he reminds me of a pothead more than redhead). Once you meet one that hits the stereotype, though, you know where this phrase comes from. I have a scar on my arm from being bitten by one to prove it - I had grabbed her arm to buy a few seconds of time for a friend so we could see a picture that she didn't want us to see (and believe me, the only person who thought it was a big deal was her and it certainly wasn't worth the look).
The stepchild part is because stepchildren are more likely to be abused, because they're not the father's (or mother's if the mother is the abuser) own flesh-and-blood. I had heard this part originated from a study on abuse, but I don't know where or when such a study was done.
The phrase is older than that, and as far as I can tell, origin unknown, but has recently become fairly popular again. The Golden Smog song a few years back probably helped its prominence.
I've found one older reference - Little Orphan Annie came out in 1932 in its first incarnation, but this play was published in 1931 (from a google search):
| AUTHOR: George, Charles, 1893-1960. | TITLE: The red-headed stepchild, | a comedy-drama in three acts, | PLACE: Chicago, |PUBLISHER: T.S. Denison & company | YEAR: 1931 | PUB TYPE: Book | FORMAT: 108 p. 18 cm. | SERIES: Denison's select plays
That's rough - I remember that kind of sh*t going on in Jr High, though. In high school, that bias went away (or wasn't as strong) and we invited women in, but rarely had regulars.
On the other hand, my college gaming club had more women than men in it. What made it even more surprising is that the school had a much larger male population than female (something like 2:1). The year after I left and the then-president stepped down (I was VP), both president and vice president were women, although over the next couple of years, the numbers skewed to be mostly male and within 5 years the club I had helped create disintigrated from within (long story).
My wife actually played D&D quite a bit in HS and college, but because she doesn't have sleep-deprivation tolerance like I do, she hasn't had any interest in our weekday evening games that usually wrap up around midnight. Not to say that she was a very good RPer when I did game with her, so it's probably for the better:)
Re:Very interesting
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D&D Is 30
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I think that's because Chainmail was actually a miniatures combat ruleset, not an RPG ruleset. It was, however, the first ruleset roleplayed with, at least unofficially. After doing some roleplaying on top of the Chainmail rules, they created the D&D RPG rules.
Your PCs remind me of a song from the early 90s...
"Ring Their Bells", or "The Munchkin's Carol" --by the Sea Wasp (to the tune of Jingle Bells)
"Slashing through the Orcs With a good two-handed blade Over corpses we go And through the gore we wade Mace on helmet rings Making bodies fly What fun to sing our SLAYING song And watch these suckers die!
Chorus: Oh, ring their bells with swords and spells Don't let 'em get away! We're brave and bold for fame and gold We'll make a lot today! Oh, ring their bells with swords and spells Don't let 'em get away! We'll hack and slash and blast and trash And blow these dudes away!
Crashing through the door Into the dragon's nose Our mage whips out a Cone of Cold And out its fire goes! Elven bowstrings sing Making balrogs fall And our thief finds a secret door Into the treasure hall!
(Chorus)
Then appears the Lich With his demon guard Our wizard yawns and wishes We'd run into something HARD... He begins to cast His 19th level spell That damn Lich throws a Gate at us And drops us all in Hell!
(Chorus)
We appear in Hell In front of Satan's Throne Our cleric waves us out the door And takes him on alone! Satan's legions don't Want to let us go Our Techno pulls a bazooka out And NUKES 'em 'til they GLOW!
Oh, ring their bells with prayers and spells Don't let 'em get away! We're brave and bold and CRAZED, we're told To think we'll live the day! Oh, ring their bells with swords and shells Don't let 'em get away! We'll hack and slash and blast and trash And blow these dudes away! Yes, we'll hack and slash and blast and trash And drag our loot away!!"
Ah, and Traveller - the game was a bit slow, as written, but my favorite traveller game was a big hack of the system where our PCs were actually genetically bred and trained, and also highly skilled (2-3 times the skills of ordinary traveller characters). Our first mission was to assassinate the emperor and start the collapse of the empire... then it was running and hiding. Thankfully, our combat suits had hidden our appearances, so ditching the ship and stealing another helped a lot, but any time the GM wanted to herd us somewhere, along came bounty hunters...
I'd agree - very few BSODs with newer versions of Windows.
I've had it happen for these reasons:
Running a windows version of 'tail' from a remote mounted drive that unexpectedly disconnects on Win2K - not sure why, but running tail locally seemed to alleviate the problem.
Having a CAS setting that was too fast for the memory. Problem was, the mobo defaulted to that setting in its standard setting - normally I don't check that sort of thing initially when building machines, so I was surprised to see it.
A memory chip that went bad after three years, and a replacement chip that was also bad. MS's own memory tester found errors in the RAM, so again, not really MS's problem.
Bad video drivers. I forget if this was with my nVidia or ATI card (I think the former), but it was fixed within a few hours and the manufacturer pulled the driver update after a fairly short amount of time.
Wouldn't trust XP or 2K without Virus and Firewall protection, though - something I rarely worry about on my Linux or Mac boxes.
I seriously doubt this is real, or at least without stealing WINE code - and so do the WINE developers.
So you're saying that when I stop by my (black) neighbor and say "Whitey's come over to Par-tay" I'm really being derogatory to the black community? These are the same guys greet their (black) friends with "Hey Nigger!"
In case you don't know, Parrotfish (and Wrasses) are born female and become male after about 5 years (protogynous hermaphrodites, if you want the technical term). A rough guesstimate in human years, that's probably 30-40.
Women get what they want (30-40 year olds with experience) and men get what they want (young nubile females).
What more can you ask:)
Two drawbacks - craving for coral, and the lack of intercourse (males fertilize eggs that are laid)... I'm sure they could fix that somehow.
If that didn't work out, there's always Protandrous hermaphrodites (start as male, become female), but I think that mainly exists in some kind of worm (tapeworm or roundworm or something like that).
Another option is the gobie, which swaps back and forth. Not sure if that would work so well in people, though - I can see one big metamorphasis, but doing it all the time seems pretty extreme... then again, I do have a lot of stored calories I'd like to burn.
btw, I'm a diver, not a marine biologist or geneticist, so this could be a really bad idea. I'm just laying out the options:)
Startups suck - you can build skills fast, but don't expect free time, although pay is often better. Make sure any startup has a solid business plan and sounds like it could be successful (or you won't get the 2+ years of experience most companies ask for).
Big companies suck - I've worked for two of them (both through buyouts). They are only concerned with the bottom line and appeasing investors, so keeping the employees happy is secondary. At one company, I went from 2x/year company parties, a company picnic, release parties and dinners, machines replaced every 2 years, great benefits and an extremely flexible schedule to basically none of that (and we were still raking in dough, but our buyers used it to pad their bottom line). We fund company parties ourselves through an employee operated snack room and are running 4-7 year old machines mainly purchased before the buyout. A recent sell-off of my division will hopefully help, but seriously, check perks. One large company I worked for wouldn't even supply coffee...
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah - I did the same.
:P
Speakeasy even allows you to sell wi-fi net access to your neighbors and gives you a 50% discount to run it and provide the support. I wonder what they'd do if I paid my neighbor $20 monthly to do this, tho - thus decreasing my net cost from $90 to $65 and giving him access for free
Subsurface scattering is quite old - I learned about it in my graphics classes, and I've been out of school since 1996... here's a 1993 paper on it.
He points out on his web page "Photon mapping is quite good at simulating subsurface scattering, but it becomes costly for highly scattering materials such as milk and skin. For these materials it is better to use a diffusion approximation. The diffusion approximation is much faster than tracing individual photons, and it is simple enough that a BSSRDF can be formulated."
Here's a BSSRDF from a google search.
When you see '1777' and start drooling because of open access permissions :P
When this tech finally gets into the handicam budget used by the porn industry, we'll probably know it by the fact that the guy's dick is 14 feet long and rock hard and the girl's bust is a 44 quintuple Q. This is what is known in the porn industry as "creativity."
It's not always trivial, but by complex math, do you mean implementing complex math (i = sqrt(-1)) or complex as in difficulty? Judging by your "I'm an engineer," I'm guessing the former, probably electrical or computer, which require complex math to calculate things such as inductance. Complex math may be restricted by the computer language - C and Fortran contain complex (imaginary) math libraries, but some languages don't (BASIC and Pascal didn't when I learned them on the Apple ][) which would require the rules to be implemented by hand. Still, many complex math libraries in common use need to be implemented by the programmer - quaternions, for example. These are not simple to understand - take a look at this page and tell me it's straightforward and easy to understand. I've written the things several times for 3d programs and still struggle through the equations when I try to figure them out (most people just skip the figuring out and go straight to the implementation, tho).
Complex equations (as in difficulty), such as solving an integration on a computer from, say, n to infinity, technically would take infinite time on a computer, so artificial bounds are necessary - but what is a good infinity? This varies depending on the accuracy required, what n starts at, sometimes the type of curve/function, etc., so the programmer needs to know approximations of certain characteristics and then estimate the values. On computers, these points are estimated using several learned techniques for estimation. I've learned a few of them in school - Newton-Raphson, Runge-Kutta, Euler's method - I personally haven't used any of them in years, so I don't remember which applies to this particular case, but I know they exist if I ever need them and could probably find the one I need fairly quickly (I know the books I would look in, at the very least). Half of the problem is knowing a where to look for the solution.
We have a limited subset of developers/QA/etc get the latest patches and verify none of their tools are affected, so only a few people would need rollbacks, if necessary, not everybody.
Fortunately for me, I am one of those people - my company was hit by Sasser before 4AM on Friday and I had the patch, unlike most of my coworkers. I had a 6AM meeting that day (one of the "perks" of working with India... groan), and was greeted by a mail system that was shut down and ops people frantically pulling network cables (we had no idea how it spread at the time). The only reason they caught it so early was one of the ops people came in to upgrade our mail server at 4, knowing some employees start at around 6 and found the machine (and others) in the error/reboot state.
We do that because every once in a while, one of these patches breaks an app or the system. Like the Win 2K Service pack that broke Win 2K when all patches had already been installed. Glad I wasn't the one to find that one out!
depends on context - if it's a wireless hot spot, why bother - you get a DHCP address and nobody knows who the heck you are after you leave (unless your PC is searched - the dhcp auto-renew cache file (whatever it's called) would give away the IP you had, which may be enough to give 'em a slim chance in court). It's not like your MAC address is getting logged :) Yeah, the main post is about Comcast, and you probably are wondering why I would even mention a WAP - well, my local coffee shop uses/advertises for Comcast and provides a hotspot, so there you have it.
;)
The second case I was thinking of was basically IP tunneling (for security and anonymity, something like ssh tunnels), but that's technically proxying. I did a google search for "anonymous proxy server" and "public proxy server" - and found tons of 'em (I knew they were out there, just never had a reason to look). Some even support sftp or https, which would give you secure downloads, but if they don't know who you are, who cares
first thing that came to my mind when I saw this post - funny how minds think alike :)
Naw, but I remember there was a clause in their contract prohibiting the downloading and/or distribution of illegal material, violating copyrights, running servers of any kind, etc.
contract summary:
You have the right to remain silent.
You have the right to have a pickle shoved up your ass.
Anything you say is in violation of these rights.
That's where anonymous IP re-routing comes in - IP tunneling or bouncing off another router (e.g. open router, internet access point, etc). The only way you could be tracked is if they were watching at the re-routing point or possibly even physically at the point, since many of those services don't keep logs (not that I would know anything about it ;)
Unfortunately, in the corporate world, it isn't just support, it's liability. If some programmer for Red Hat sticks in a back door and our source code is stolen, we'd sue Red Hat (probably into the ground). You just can't do that with GenToo, because it's not really a business yet (or at least, much of one). That's why my company only supports Red Hat and SUSE at the moment (not a decision I have any input on, so don't bitch to me about other possible choices that would work, if any). They're decent sized companies with enough assets (and probably insurance) that we stand to get something out of a large lawsuit.
Put simply, you and/or GenToo probably don't carry 500 million plus in liability insurance or the assets to make up the difference that a 2 billion dollar software company would sue you for if their software got stolen through a back-door you put (or allowed) in.
I've tried most of the common linux packaging methods (RPM with SUSE and RedHat, dpkg with Yellow Dog and Debian, and portage with GenToo), and I didn't think any of them were easy enough for anyone unfamiliar with Linux to use. UNIX even sometimes with a GUI has too many things with three or four letter names, and the GNU-acronym fetish (Gnu's Not UNIX) doesn't help - you wouldn't even be able to guess what something like WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is without reading documentation. I remember launching a number of applications in KDE or GNOME because I had no idea what they were at the time (xmms? what the heck does that do?). Many times the icon didn't help, as well (I can't think of any specific ones off the top of my head 'cause I changed most of the names, but, for instance, WINE's wine glass).
The install of GenToo was messy, IMO, but I was a fairly early adopter, so I hope, at the very least, they've cleaned up the README file. As far as installs go, SUSE was among my favorites, but also one of my least favorites to maintain (Red Hat was worse [also RPM], but better than the no-package-manager Slackware distro I used before it), and GenToo was the exact opposite - one of my least favorite to install, and my favorite to maintain (debian was a worse install for me, but mainly because it didn't recognize most of my hardware and I had to download and split disk-image patches and then re-integrate them on the machine to get it on - ages ago, and probably long fixed).
I don't usually go with the latest-and-greatest on my "stable" systems, only on ones I want to play around with - didn't try Red Hat until ~3 (I forget the exact version - versioning was different back then, and it was before the version inflation syndrome), and SUSE until 7. Yellow Dog and Slackware were early versions, though (Slackware, I would say, was probably TOO-early a version, but take that with a grain of salt - it was my first Linux experience, and also the first hard disk install I had ever done).
It probably depends on who you ask. Syberia seemed to sell well, tho I personally found the game dull compared to The Longest Journey (which I played a few weeks before Syberia's release, but 2 years after its release).
I was pretty surprised to see a shelf dedicated to Adventure games at Best Buy - it used to be half a row. I suspect that means they're selling again. Personally, I'd like to see the "Myst" style game die, which was about 3/4 of those games - I'm definitely not a fan. I like the Lucas Arts/Sierra style much better. Basically, I like character driven stories, not dead worlds/puzzle solving, probably because the puzzles are either too easy or too hard. Too hard usually means completely unintuitive for me - I pick up on clues quickly due to years of experience playing games with bad clues like "Our special of the day is duck, I'll be back in a few minutes to take your order" and the next thing you have to type is to type "duck" or you get machine gunned down (my apologies for not exactly quoting the old Apple ][ adventure that I can't even remember the name of, but it's a good example of a bad clue).
Tomb Raider was created by Core, a British company, so it's not really an American game (tho it was geared toward a Western audience). Personally I loved the first game, and hated the rest - the series went from an exploration game heavily influenced by Prince of Persia to nearly a pure shoot 'em up.
:)
My personal peeve is games on rails - a good example is the Joan of Arc game (or at least the demo). That's also one of the things I dislike about Bioware RPGs - you have some freedom, but essentially are herded from one area to the next and can't go back and basically follow one or two plotlines. I would much rather play a game like Fallout, Gothic, GTA, or Morrowind that don't limit freedom artificially but subtly (or not so subtly) prod you in the right direction.
[rant]
I also dislike most licensed games, but unfortunately, a lot of people want stuff they know. I especially dislike movie games, mainly because most of 'em rail you along the same plotline as the movie. Then there's RPG licenses - D&D is a retched RPG ruleset for computer games, but it's popular because D&D players know it and want games with it. I'm amazed at how broken Star Wars KOTOR is (based on D20). Not to say it's a bad game, it's actually pretty good, as RPGs go, just that the rules are broken - you practically don't need skills, which makes skill heavy classes pointless and it's easy to point bash if you put your skill points in the right area. Everyone I know that has played that game says skills don't matter (heck, even most faqs say that). What's the point of an RPG if skills don't matter?
[/rant]
Seems practically all games with "sex appeal" in the US these days are tactless - BMX XXX is definitely a good example. Some are intentionally tactless to be funny - like the Leisure Suit Larry series, which works somewhat better because they're making fun of how tactless they are (and like pretty much all US games, sex/sexiness is more implied than shown). The old adventure game Phantasmagoria did it well, I thought - sex in the game meshed with the plot - even if the plot was only so-so and straight out of a B-movie. Many games (especially RPGs) just imply sex, which I don't really have a problem with - it adds a human element to the characters but isn't explicit. What I'd like to see is some repercussions in an RPG - like an NPC (or player) getting pregnant for not using birth control, and having to deal with that... heck, even network TV's dealt with that issue, why not a game? I can just imagine paying 300gp/mo in child support and alimony
[rant]
Unfortunately, the US has a double standard when it comes to games - pretty much any amount of violence and gore will max out at an M rating (the only attempt at an AO in violence that I know of was the cancelled Thrill Kill), but just implying sex gets you an M rating, and more than 3/10ths of a second of a polygonal breast flash gets an AO rating. You can put 10 times that much nudity in a PG-13 movie for Christ's sake. The Japanese are much more open about nudity, aside from the whole penis/vagina taboo thing. But honestly, which is worse, killing or boobies? Oh my god! I just saw a naturally occurring milk dispenser! For shame! I better say thirty Hail Marys and go get the hairshirt out again... er, if I were Catholic, that is.
[/rant]
From the Scifi channel web site:
Top 10 SF Syndicated shows:
Andromeda 1.9
Mutant X 1.7
Stargate SG-1 1.7
She Spies 1.5
The X-Files 1.5
3rd Rock 1.4
Buffy 1.3
Angel 1.2
Beastmaster 1.1
The Outer Limits 1.1
Source: Nielsen Galaxy Report, 4/5/04 - 4/11/04
I agree on Robotech - too much action for network TV and probably even cable TV (outside companies willing to risk big $$ like HBO, but that doesn't really fit their core audience). The biggest obstacle to good sci-fi on network TV, though, is that the networks are moving almost completely to sitcoms and reality TV to cut expense. I wouldn't be surprised if that eventually backfires and they lose share to cable, but I haven't seen any slowdown in popularity yet. Even cable is jumping on that bandwagon... maybe in 10 years, the ONLY things to watch will be reality, sitcom, crime drama, or sports. I imagine I'd throw my TV out around then.
The other thing I hate about network TV is their consistent unbelievable science in sci-fi and characters that are basically untouchable. Dark Angel jumping through a pane of inch-thick glass, falling 4 stories and running away uninjured, for instance. Genetically engineered or not, she's gonna get sliced up and probably break her legs in that fall. Then there's dodging pretty much every bullet... *groan*
Execs should watch Alias to know how to create this kind of character right. She's not invincible, but is superhuman in some ways (and this is explained in a realistic way - a cold war CIA project designed to create superspies), has flaws, shows fear, and yet still succeeds in most (but not all) missions. Missions that fail? That's so refreshing to see in any show. I was also happy to see a Cold Case show that didn't produce enough evidence to pin the murderer as well. Maybe networks are waking up to reality - we don't always win every battle.
My biggest peeve with sci-fi, though is the 20th century medicine in shows like Star Trek and even the new Battlestar Galactica, though. If you can build a spaceship that big, you probably have the med-tech to cure cancer and revive the dead for several minutes - heck, they probably could convert entire body structures. Hmm... today, I think I'll be a Trellian...
To be honest, I actually didn't think the Tick worked well in either live action or cartoon form, probably because it didn't fit the genre. Both had funny moments, but not the laugh-until-you-wet-your-pants moments from the comic book. The live action shows biggest fault was that it was paced too slow. The cartoon had to make sacrifices for its audience and took away too much of the adult humor.
I thought TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) worked much better in both comic and live action, and I'm not really a fan of that series (aside from the first couple of gore-fest comic books). It's probably because it meets people's expectations (superhero=action heavy) and was already dumbed down in the comic book when the writers found they were getting more pre-teen fans/interest than adult spoof audience fans/interest.
I never noticed - I found Andromeda as gripping as the handshakes at a gay bar (it's a euphemism, get over it) so quickly lost interest.
I heard later they added in a bit more conflict, and that may have spiced up the show, but by then I didn't think it was worth the effort to watch. I didn't much care for Sorbo in the lead, either - it was basically his Hercules character in space.
As for Mutant X, well, it's probably been said - the show looked like a low budget X-men written by 13 year old boys targetting 8 year old boys. I didn't actually think the acting was all that bad (for some characters) in the few shows I had the misfortune to see, but my God, I've seen cartoons with better plots. Road Runner had better plots.
Redheads are stereotyped as tempermental (fiery) and more likely to anger a parent. I've known a few that fall into that stereotype, but also a couple that don't (one of them is so mellow he reminds me of a pothead more than redhead). Once you meet one that hits the stereotype, though, you know where this phrase comes from. I have a scar on my arm from being bitten by one to prove it - I had grabbed her arm to buy a few seconds of time for a friend so we could see a picture that she didn't want us to see (and believe me, the only person who thought it was a big deal was her and it certainly wasn't worth the look).
The stepchild part is because stepchildren are more likely to be abused, because they're not the father's (or mother's if the mother is the abuser) own flesh-and-blood. I had heard this part originated from a study on abuse, but I don't know where or when such a study was done.
The phrase is older than that, and as far as I can tell, origin unknown, but has recently become fairly popular again. The Golden Smog song a few years back probably helped its prominence.
I've found one older reference - Little Orphan Annie came out in 1932 in its first incarnation, but this play was published in 1931 (from a google search):
| AUTHOR: George, Charles, 1893-1960.
| TITLE: The red-headed stepchild,
| a comedy-drama in three acts,
| PLACE: Chicago,
|PUBLISHER: T.S. Denison & company
| YEAR: 1931
| PUB TYPE: Book
| FORMAT: 108 p. 18 cm.
| SERIES: Denison's select plays
That's rough - I remember that kind of sh*t going on in Jr High, though. In high school, that bias went away (or wasn't as strong) and we invited women in, but rarely had regulars.
:)
On the other hand, my college gaming club had more women than men in it. What made it even more surprising is that the school had a much larger male population than female (something like 2:1). The year after I left and the then-president stepped down (I was VP), both president and vice president were women, although over the next couple of years, the numbers skewed to be mostly male and within 5 years the club I had helped create disintigrated from within (long story).
My wife actually played D&D quite a bit in HS and college, but because she doesn't have sleep-deprivation tolerance like I do, she hasn't had any interest in our weekday evening games that usually wrap up around midnight. Not to say that she was a very good RPer when I did game with her, so it's probably for the better
I think that's because Chainmail was actually a miniatures combat ruleset, not an RPG ruleset. It was, however, the first ruleset roleplayed with, at least unofficially. After doing some roleplaying on top of the Chainmail rules, they created the D&D RPG rules.
Your PCs remind me of a song from the early 90s...
"Ring Their Bells", or "The Munchkin's Carol"
--by the Sea Wasp
(to the tune of Jingle Bells)
"Slashing through the Orcs
With a good two-handed blade
Over corpses we go
And through the gore we wade
Mace on helmet rings
Making bodies fly
What fun to sing our SLAYING song
And watch these suckers die!
Chorus:
Oh, ring their bells with swords and spells
Don't let 'em get away!
We're brave and bold for fame and gold
We'll make a lot today!
Oh, ring their bells with swords and spells
Don't let 'em get away!
We'll hack and slash and blast and trash
And blow these dudes away!
Crashing through the door
Into the dragon's nose
Our mage whips out a Cone of Cold
And out its fire goes!
Elven bowstrings sing
Making balrogs fall
And our thief finds a secret door
Into the treasure hall!
(Chorus)
Then appears the Lich
With his demon guard
Our wizard yawns and wishes
We'd run into something HARD...
He begins to cast
His 19th level spell
That damn Lich throws a Gate at us
And drops us all in Hell!
(Chorus)
We appear in Hell
In front of Satan's Throne
Our cleric waves us out the door
And takes him on alone!
Satan's legions don't
Want to let us go
Our Techno pulls a bazooka out
And NUKES 'em 'til they GLOW!
Oh, ring their bells with prayers and spells
Don't let 'em get away!
We're brave and bold and CRAZED, we're told
To think we'll live the day!
Oh, ring their bells with swords and shells
Don't let 'em get away!
We'll hack and slash and blast and trash
And blow these dudes away!
Yes, we'll hack and slash and blast and trash
And drag our loot away!!"
Ah, and Traveller - the game was a bit slow, as written, but my favorite traveller game was a big hack of the system where our PCs were actually genetically bred and trained, and also highly skilled (2-3 times the skills of ordinary traveller characters). Our first mission was to assassinate the emperor and start the collapse of the empire... then it was running and hiding. Thankfully, our combat suits had hidden our appearances, so ditching the ship and stealing another helped a lot, but any time the GM wanted to herd us somewhere, along came bounty hunters...
I'd agree - very few BSODs with newer versions of Windows.
I've had it happen for these reasons:
Running a windows version of 'tail' from a remote mounted drive that unexpectedly disconnects on Win2K - not sure why, but running tail locally seemed to alleviate the problem.
Having a CAS setting that was too fast for the memory. Problem was, the mobo defaulted to that setting in its standard setting - normally I don't check that sort of thing initially when building machines, so I was surprised to see it.
A memory chip that went bad after three years, and a replacement chip that was also bad. MS's own memory tester found errors in the RAM, so again, not really MS's problem.
Bad video drivers. I forget if this was with my nVidia or ATI card (I think the former), but it was fixed within a few hours and the manufacturer pulled the driver update after a fairly short amount of time.
Wouldn't trust XP or 2K without Virus and Firewall protection, though - something I rarely worry about on my Linux or Mac boxes.
I seriously doubt this is real, or at least without stealing WINE code - and so do the WINE developers.
I know people that would say that and be serious about it, so it's hard to tell because I don't know you.
:)
Sarcasm should at least hint at being non-serious. What kind of a jackass would post something like that and not mean it?
I mean
[sarcasm]
What kind of jackass would post something like that and not mean it?
[/sarcasm]
Right...
So you're saying that when I stop by my (black) neighbor and say "Whitey's come over to Par-tay" I'm really being derogatory to the black community? These are the same guys greet their (black) friends with "Hey Nigger!"
I just don't buy it.
In case you don't know, Parrotfish (and Wrasses) are born female and become male after about 5 years (protogynous hermaphrodites, if you want the technical term). A rough guesstimate in human years, that's probably 30-40.
:)
:)
Women get what they want (30-40 year olds with experience) and men get what they want (young nubile females).
What more can you ask
Two drawbacks - craving for coral, and the lack of intercourse (males fertilize eggs that are laid)... I'm sure they could fix that somehow.
If that didn't work out, there's always Protandrous hermaphrodites (start as male, become female), but I think that mainly exists in some kind of worm (tapeworm or roundworm or something like that).
Another option is the gobie, which swaps back and forth. Not sure if that would work so well in people, though - I can see one big metamorphasis, but doing it all the time seems pretty extreme... then again, I do have a lot of stored calories I'd like to burn.
btw, I'm a diver, not a marine biologist or geneticist, so this could be a really bad idea. I'm just laying out the options
Thankfully, I don't get paid in Rupees :)
Finding a happy medium is good.
Startups suck - you can build skills fast, but don't expect free time, although pay is often better. Make sure any startup has a solid business plan and sounds like it could be successful (or you won't get the 2+ years of experience most companies ask for).
Big companies suck - I've worked for two of them (both through buyouts). They are only concerned with the bottom line and appeasing investors, so keeping the employees happy is secondary. At one company, I went from 2x/year company parties, a company picnic, release parties and dinners, machines replaced every 2 years, great benefits and an extremely flexible schedule to basically none of that (and we were still raking in dough, but our buyers used it to pad their bottom line). We fund company parties ourselves through an employee operated snack room and are running 4-7 year old machines mainly purchased before the buyout. A recent sell-off of my division will hopefully help, but seriously, check perks. One large company I worked for wouldn't even supply coffee...