The funny thing about that movie is I hadn't read any Gibson at the time, so I totally missed the references. I laughed at it and made fun of how they got even simple concepts wrong (virus, worm, etc). Having seen it again recently and having read Gibson, the references make a lot more sense, as does the visual hacking stuff - it is obvious the screenwriters read Gibson and then wrote a screenplay without ever even meeting or consulting a real hacker. Of course, the whole thing is inane, but it made it at least a bit more enjoyable to just take it as total fantasy that has nothing to do with reality. That and I still find it hilarious that Zero Cool (the guy that played Eli Stone... real name is escaping me and I'm too lazy to look it up) was Angelina Jolie's first husband.
Yeah, but, lets face it - Apple and Microsoft have a shared vested interest in promoting H.264 and detracting Ogg/Theora - Apple has a patent in the H.264 pool (and a pretty major one), and Microsoft has 30 US patents alone in that pool (and many non-US patents, as well - reference). Steve Jobs has even stated that he intends to create a group to go after Ogg/Theora for patent violations, saying anything to do with video is patented, and has been one of the biggest Ogg/Theora opponents from the beginning.
Apple and Microsoft don't care about free and open standards in web browsers because it doesn't profit them - in fact, I imagine they'd like to cram as many proprietary patents in as possible so they can charge for tools to create them. With H.264 patented for at least the next 20 years, there is a lot of money to be had.
Yep, and which is worse, a Republican that jacks up the debt 18%, or a Democrat that quadruples it and promises that it will be half that by the time he exits office (which still means he doubled it)? I'm not fond of credit card spending, so I have a real problem when the government does it for me.
My other problem with the Democrats and Republicans is they tend to hit extremes because the primaries cater to the extremists, so middle-of-the-roaders tend to end up with very liberal and very conservative choices and they disagree with both.
My personal beliefs are probably closest to the Modern Whig party. It is by far the most pragmatic party I know of, and they don't have what I consider "showstopper" issues like the libertarians belief in going back to a commodity (gold) standard. I like the idea that stuff like abortion, gay marriage, etc are relegated to the state level - the United States is too large to have a unified opinion on these issues, so they should be decided state-to-state. I hope that applies to drug use laws, as well, because I don't think the federal government should have any control on whether California allows Marijuana for any use (illness or recreation). My state bans it for all use, and that is and should be the choice of my state.
Antivirus 2010 is notorious for proxying or injecting into legitimate google results, and for a while it was using the "google proxy" which is a URL that used english-to-english translation (which is blocked by google now) - the last time I saw it it still was using google and I believe injecting results (it definitely didn't send me to another URL and directly entering the IP still got fake results, but it could have remapped the search). In the old days, proxy redirects were dumped into the/etc/hosts file (for Windows, usually Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts) but newer viruses usually store them in the registry or grab them from a compromised site.
I think the Vatican has a long criminal record that shows just what the problem wealth and power can do. You can't just go back 30 years - they were selling indulgences and burning witches and running inquisitions long before that. And why were the Jews hated so much in Europe in the early 1900s? The banning of usury and the forcing of Jews by the Catholics to work socially inferior jobs such as rent collection and loaning money might have just a tiny bit to do with it. For comparison, do you think the KKK would have existed if it weren't for slavery and the south's loss in the US civil war? I don't. The Holy Roman Empire also drove out my mom's ancestors - they were given the choice of rejoining the Catholic Church (after breaking off, following the Lutheran example) or being executed - some did, some fled, some didn't believe Christians would execute other Christians and were executed. How very Christian of them to execute people.
That said, I think they also do a lot of good with their charities and there are a lot of good people in their church. The number of bad Catholics and the number that have caused bad PR incidents is a tiny percentage of the whole. I can't condone a christian church with a leader that sits on a throne in a gold cathedral, but if that shapes you into a morally good person, more power to you.
Our web product minimum version is IE6, so we have to have IE6 on some machines. I'd love to upgrade them to 7 or 8, but we can't until management gives us the go. If I work on one of those machines, I browse in IE6 because it is the only browser on those boxes (they're usually VMs).
The plus side is none of our Linux or UNIX hosts support IE anymore. Solaris and Mac IE was a nightmare to support.
True South America, as Brazil is, in fact, the world leader in beef exports, followed by Australia. I recall Argentina and Uruguay and several Central American countries are in the top 10 as well. Then there's India, which was still exporting more beef than the United States last time I checked (yes, sacred cow country is #3 in exports) I don't think Europe even has a country in the top 10, but maybe as a whole they get in there. That is far more than I really needed to know, picked up from my brother-in-law - he does beef import/export for a living (the majority of his transactions are from Australia to Mexico).
And incidentally, most cows in the US and Canada outside of factory feeding operations are grass fed in the summers and grain fed (corn or barley) for the winter. There is a transition period of about 2 weeks when they switch to grain where the cattle aren't sold for slaughter because they taste funny (or so I heard... that tidbit was from my now retired farmer grandpa). You pretty much can't get through the central US without seeing cattle grazing in the summer, as cattle is a major industry from North Dakota to Texas (and extending into Canada, at least the last time I was there - I saw many farms heading from Thunder Bay, Ontario to northern Manitoba near Hudson Bay).
of course, we have exactly what he's asking for - it's called IPv6 - built in unique ID, built in security (IPsec), and nobody would ever want to use NAT (at least that's what a KAME developer told me, lol).
Of course, if you're a little paranoid, you'd realize marketing and governments know exactly who uses every box. Not something I like to think about...
I actually didn't mind the quests or story in DA:O or ME2, but I did find them predictable (same with ME:1).
Things I dislike in games 1) Popup, no chance to detect ambushes - Dragon Age, I'm talking about you, but some MMORPGs have them as well. Reviving squishies all the time because of these is annoying.
2) encounters in every "room" in a dungeon. Dragon Age isn't too bad here, except in the hideously long dwarf dungeon which includes about 15 #1s.
3) Frustrating AI that sometimes ignores what you tell it to do - Dragon Age, again, I'm talking about you when I pause at the start of combat, usually because of #1.
4) Unavoidable Minigames en-masse - ME2, I'm looking at you. Also make the minigame consistent - the pick lock one, for instance, is much harder at high resolutions because you need to drag your mouse that much further (not to mention it has mouse lag on mid-range systems - I had to cut my resolution to 720 just to play that dang minigame on my laptop, but my desktop handled it fine).
5) Yes or No quest options in RPGs, most of which have no consequence or the same ending. Fallout 3 and other Bethsoft games, I'm looking at you. I absolutely love quests like a) kill him b) let him go (he attacks anyway). Really I do. No I do F*CKING NOT already - the illusion of choice is 99 times out of 100 bad game design (the low intelligence answers in Fallout 2 that ended like that were hilarious, but otherwise I agree with Chris Avellone on that one - thankfully he's the designer of Fallout: New Vegas).
6) Characters that don't matter. Bethsoft games, I'm looking at you. Quick - name one memorable Oblivion Character besides the King. Fallout 3 was a bit better but still had only a handful of memorable characters and most of those are only important for tiny bits of the game (Fallout 1 and 2 were similar in that respect, but games like Gothic had wonderful recurring and memorable characters - not great on the gameplay front, but I'm talking characters).
7) Major plotlines that involve saving the world. Ok, maybe I should be more specific - if you have a story about saving the world, make it at least somewhat original and make the journey more important than the boss fight at the end - the big-assed baddie boss fight is so cliche it made cliche babies. I liked the Chaos in the Longest Journey - it tied the plot together and was mysterious for most of the game and was more of a concept than a boss (given, it was a point and click adventure game, but the characters were better developed than any game I've ever played - including every RPG, which is a lot).
8) Gameplay controls dumbed down to make it the same on all platforms. Fallout 3, I'm talking about you and your tab->button 4 to get Map, tab->button 2 to get inventory crap. Really, how hard would it be to map those to i and m like most normal games?
Yep, and its the same model as NetImmerse - er, I mean Gamebryo uses, so I fail to see how Vogel is original in that area. Gamebryo games tend to have dated look and play issues too, but that may be the game programmer's fault.
About the only thing Vogel has is volume of games using the same engine - engine reuse has been done forever. Heck, Ultima 1 and 2 were the same engine and 3 was an enhanced version of the same engine (it used the same file formats, at least, so the scenario editor the gang of ruffians I associated with created moved forward easily).
With the sort of game he does, there is little reason to rewrite from the ground up. OTOH, a 3D game engine that hasn't been updated will perform poorly today if it isn't rewritten for display lists, for example. Another nice thing about rewrites is you can find where your engine performs poorly and see if that performance can be improved by better design.
I haven't played a space shooter in several years, but I think one of the ones off sourceforge had true physics movement (Vegastrike or the Privateer remake or one of those).
As for Parsec, it wasn't fun (yet) and lost its development team.
Personally, I don't see a hardcore space physics game being fun at all - you don't need just vector based movement - there would be no sound, burning, or explosions. I'm even skeptical about explosive decompression. Most combat would take place at massive distances, not up close dogfight style. It would be about as satisfying as eating gravel. A mix of real and movie physics can be fun, but also frustrating - you can get something like Darkstar One, which I enjoyed once I got into it, but the learning curve was high. Supposedly the X series isn't bad, but I haven't played it (X3 is now on Steam I believe), so I don't know what gameplay is like.
and the main hacker nerd in that one is her first husband, Eli Stone... er, Jonny Lee Miller. Though for classic Jolie you need to see Cyborg 2 with Jack Palance. For a torture test, watch them back to back, but admittedly they are a bit more easy on the eyes and sanity than my usual bad movie fare (Troll 2, Vampires vs Zombies, Ratboy, Zombie Nation, Alien From L.A. - stuff like that).
From what I remember of the Star Trek universe, all the races are somewhat human-like because they were seeded that way by some God-like being.
I don't think quadrupeds are more agile than bipeds - in fact, I would argue it the other way around - just watch a dog or cat in action. Bipeds like humans are better designed to scale trees by grabbing branches, however, and bipeds like birds benefit from less weight for unneeded limbs.
Personally, I think there are lots of possibilities for no radio signals:
1) in the billions of years of earth history, our radio window of time is trivial and even if the alien races developed as fast or faster than us, they could be too far away for that radio signal to get here yet. For all we know, the aliens moved to tachyon communications and closed the radio wave era before we even set up.
2) we have the technology to grow children in vats and sustain the human race and are already doing it to sustain some species like rare sharks that eat the rest of the brood while still in the womb. Once we get over the religious and ethical issues (e.g. superrace), it seems like a natural progression, at least. If the "mom" wanted to breast feed, she could then take hormones for that.
3) We've been sending out radio signals for what, a little more than 110 years, and we didn't start listening until much later. At best you are probably talking about 20000 stars that could have heard us in that time (I recall 100 years being about 15000, so I guesstimated), and much less could respond if they were listening. And that is assuming they are using radio waves, not, say, microwaves. For all we know, radio waves are annoying noises to them and they wear tinfoil hats.
4) The assumptions are based on aliens followed a "European" style technological progression, but the only reason most of the world followed that progression was because of European expansionism. If America had been left untouched by Europe and/or China, how much do you think Native Americans tech would have progressed by now? My guess is not much.
5) Our galaxy is unpredictable, and that probably is true for the majority of galaxies. Just because a meteor struck us and ended the age of dinosaurs doesn't mean it happened there, and maybe having a tiny brain and giant teeth was more valuable for a lot longer there.
6) No aliens have come here yet because they either don't know of us, can't move fast enough to get here, or knowledge is being intentionally repressed by our governments. I personally think warp travel would be possible if we can prove there is a 4th dimension in the same way 2D distances can be shortened in a third dimension (fold the corners of a piece of paper together - they are nearer, right? it even would be possible in 3D if space folds in on itself).
True enough - Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, for that matter, are horrifically bad big budget movies. Note that I said "big budget" - they are not in the same category as stuff like Vampires vs Zombies or Troll 2 (the challenge there is to get through the movie without throwing yourself through a plate glass window to end the pain, and usually that means significant amounts of alcohol and/or drugs).
I don't think finding a 6'2" muscled crazy blond guy would be all that hard - just recruit in the midwest, or if that fails, Austria (we're due for another Ahr nold).
The old one was somewhat campy, but for the time period it aired, quite good as far as story and special effects go - it also cost about 1 million dollars per episode, which was just silly talk back then, which is why BSG 1980 was so bad - the studios wanted to cut costs significantly and that ruined the show.
As for the new BSG, nearly every episode had me groaning about something, but I do like the prequel Caprica so far. The smoking doctor, pre-20th century medicine, female Starbuck (Katie, I'm sorry, but no), terrorism (c'mon - you're running for your life), demands for democracy (again, you're running for your life), anti-medicine cults (who cares? - just let 'em die), etc. all bugged me. Virtual worlds where people behave hedonistically in some spots but more civil in others? That I can buy - sounds a lot like Second Life.
Firefly I'm more mixed about - I really disliked it at first but it grew on me, kinda like Babylon 5. Once I got past the "western in space" aspect, the acting was decent, the characters well developed and the plots were generally good.
As for Katie Sackhoff, I actually liked the remake of Bionic Woman a couple of years ago except her character... but, that show probably would have done better with a different name and less of an action and more of a suspense focus (I think Michelle Ryan would rock in an Alias-like role). Katie's decent on "24," at least the one episode I saw her in (to tell the truth, my interest in that show waned about year 2, but I still catch an episode now and then... and am completely lost).
Well I don't think it helped that Fox airs all of his shows on Friday night, which is generally considered the "death" night for shows. The only reason I saw Dollhouse at all was because of a DVR, and that show was underwhelming - a nice idea, but poorly named (IMO, "dollhouse" is a turn off for boys) and executed. I didn't see Firefly in its initial run (caught it on scifi later) or Buffy at all due to the Friday time slot.
Well I had a supported Windows Vista upgrade a couple of years ago and the upgrade not only failed, it bricked my laptop. The repair DVD to restore XP was a waste of a couple of days and I ended up having to ship it back to the manufacturer. Two weeks after getting it back, the GPU failed (it had the notorious nVidia 8xxx GPU - it actually failed again 3 days after the warranty expired) and back to the manufacturer again for a full wipe. Then they failed to set the Vista code so the laptop wouldn't start, so back to the manufacturer again...
So basically, due to Microsoft's flawed software, manufacturer lock codes on laptops (which are required by Microsoft so Windows can't be pirated and it allows them to bypass activation), my ex-laptop made two special trips to ASUS. That coupled with Vista being a pain in the ass made my experience with it very unpleasant. Incidentally, I do have a Windows 7 laptop now and it works quite well. I'm hoping it lasts longer than my last one (exactly 2 years and 3 days). Incidentally, I don't hate MS software in general, but I do hate their draconian DRM and business practices - in an effort to stop piracy they make non-pirated copies very inconvenient to install and use.
From a technical standpoint after MUDs came Neverwinter Nights on AOL, considered the true first graphical MMORPG. Release Date? 1991, then 3D graphical MMORPGs, came in 1996 with Meridian 59. One big problem was number of concurrent users in a single area, which I believe Ultima Online was the first to try to tackle (shards) in 1997.
That said, if you do RTFA, it does say Asheron's Call and Everquest were released or about to be, but nobody at Eidos had ever heard of a MMORPG. They also go on to say the cartoony graphics and much of what their design turned up in World of Warcraft, and are lamenting that they basically had the idea for WoW before Blizzard did, and had they been able to go forward with it, they may have 60%+ of the market instead of Blizzard. I seriously doubt that would happen, just because Blizzard has an incredible track record, but you never know.
Remember C was written for late 1960s-early 1970s era hardware (came out in 1972) and bounds checking actually has an impact on execution speed. C was designed to compile system software (like operating systems) on diverse platforms with an emphasis on portability and speed. Bounds checking compromises speed, so that was left up to the OS developer to decide to implement or not.
It would be nice to have a string class, and ASCII is stable, but someone somewhere will need to decide what form of Unicode to use for wide character strings - ask a westerner and they'll say UTF-8 or UTF-16, ask Asians and they want UTF-16 or UTF-32. Microsoft and Apple seem to favor UTF-16 (even though the BSD underpinnings uses 32 bit wide wchar_t), but when you get to the web and many database companies, they favor UTF-8, probably because of the ASCII compatibility (and asian languages do use one particular ASCII character a lot - space). Also note that UTF-16 does not guarantee the character is 16 bits like many people think, only the older UCS-2 format does, so you can't just parse it and assume every character is 16 bits wide.
Then there's string conversion... every OS has string conversion functions that are OS specific - good luck on getting Microsoft, Apple, Linux, etc to standardize those.
C is a fairly stable language (last updated a decade ago), so the string representation is traditional. If you want string classes move to objective-C or C++ (no, I take that back - avoid C++ like the plague... it takes all the best features of an object oriented language and mangles them horribly into a functional language).
I'm just glad most of my programming is not in C++ these days, its in GLSL shaders (which itself is a fairly sleek C-like language).
Strange because Saké (and by that I mean alcohol in general) has been known to be around for centuries in Japan. Saké the beverage Americans know has been around at least since 300AD, if not earlier, and is brewed similar to beer.
Too bad it has the bitter flavor I dislike also exists in most American beers (which are brewed with cheap rice). I'm also not keen on hoppy beers - hops used to be a preservative and now are mostly for flavor and bitter is not exactly a flavor I like (which is why I'm sensitive to rice brews). On the plus side, when I did have a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surly_Brewing_Company>Surly Furious it took me all night to choke it down (I love Saisons, so I liked their Cynic, but not that one).
Yes, HP may make most of their money in services now, but that industry is volatile and HP has a very diverse portifolio. In fact, I'm pretty sure they are still #2 in services behind IBM, but they are far more profitable than IBM.
Purchases/Mergers in the past 10 years include Compaq - Windows PCs EDS - services 3-Com - networking equipment, routers and switches
I'm not sure of the particulars, but during US drafts some particular religious sects were conscientious objectors - for instance, Mennonites and Amish, and that may apply to some group in Israel, as well. In fact, during WW1 the US sent 45 Mennonites to Leavenworth and basically stripped them naked beat them, and left them in a cell with only a uniform to wear - some refused and died over it (including some ancestors of mine). Because of this religious persecution in the United States, several groups moved to Canada.
Nicotine is an addictive stimulant, but is hardly the reason cigarettes are bad. Tobacco products often contain thousands of chemicals and some of them are poisonous and/or carcinogenic. Certainly your argument holds for why people smoke - they enjoy the drug's effect - but would you inhale asbestos if it was also an upper or downer?
As for the ads, Anti smoking and anti-drug campaigns are actually poor in the US in my opinion - kids are told smoking is bad and pot is bad, then they smoke either or both and think the ads are stupid, then try something much worse, like heroin (which is the latest epidemic, replacing Meth, if you haven't heard). Heroin is a horrifically addictive and destructive drug that doesn't impair motor skills so it is very easy to hide. More potent varieties are snorted, not injected, so "railroad tracks" aren't even a telltale sign like they once were.
I can understand not wanting to cite pleasant effects - an ex heroin addict I know said "heroin was the best high I've ever had and I crave it every day." Sounds great, right? Just skip the ruined lives, common overdoses, bodies ravaged before their time, an addiction rate that is basically 100%, and permanent cravings. But hey - you lose weight, right (since you choose the drug over eating), so we really should focus on the diet capabilities of heroin, right?
Note that I personally feel all drugs should be decriminalized (maybe with limits before age 18), but to buy any particular one you want for recreational use would require an education class on that drug. You would then sign a legal form that says you will not give it away to anyone that has not also attended the class. That would include all regulated drugs like alcohol and tobacco. All would have proportional health fees attached to the cost.
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The funny thing about that movie is I hadn't read any Gibson at the time, so I totally missed the references. I laughed at it and made fun of how they got even simple concepts wrong (virus, worm, etc). Having seen it again recently and having read Gibson, the references make a lot more sense, as does the visual hacking stuff - it is obvious the screenwriters read Gibson and then wrote a screenplay without ever even meeting or consulting a real hacker. Of course, the whole thing is inane, but it made it at least a bit more enjoyable to just take it as total fantasy that has nothing to do with reality. That and I still find it hilarious that Zero Cool (the guy that played Eli Stone... real name is escaping me and I'm too lazy to look it up) was Angelina Jolie's first husband.
Yeah, but, lets face it - Apple and Microsoft have a shared vested interest in promoting H.264 and detracting Ogg/Theora - Apple has a patent in the H.264 pool (and a pretty major one), and Microsoft has 30 US patents alone in that pool (and many non-US patents, as well - reference). Steve Jobs has even stated that he intends to create a group to go after Ogg/Theora for patent violations, saying anything to do with video is patented, and has been one of the biggest Ogg/Theora opponents from the beginning.
Apple and Microsoft don't care about free and open standards in web browsers because it doesn't profit them - in fact, I imagine they'd like to cram as many proprietary patents in as possible so they can charge for tools to create them. With H.264 patented for at least the next 20 years, there is a lot of money to be had.
Yep, and which is worse, a Republican that jacks up the debt 18%, or a Democrat that quadruples it and promises that it will be half that by the time he exits office (which still means he doubled it)? I'm not fond of credit card spending, so I have a real problem when the government does it for me.
My other problem with the Democrats and Republicans is they tend to hit extremes because the primaries cater to the extremists, so middle-of-the-roaders tend to end up with very liberal and very conservative choices and they disagree with both.
My personal beliefs are probably closest to the Modern Whig party. It is by far the most pragmatic party I know of, and they don't have what I consider "showstopper" issues like the libertarians belief in going back to a commodity (gold) standard. I like the idea that stuff like abortion, gay marriage, etc are relegated to the state level - the United States is too large to have a unified opinion on these issues, so they should be decided state-to-state. I hope that applies to drug use laws, as well, because I don't think the federal government should have any control on whether California allows Marijuana for any use (illness or recreation). My state bans it for all use, and that is and should be the choice of my state.
sounds like all of them lately.
Antivirus 2010 is notorious for proxying or injecting into legitimate google results, and for a while it was using the "google proxy" which is a URL that used english-to-english translation (which is blocked by google now) - the last time I saw it it still was using google and I believe injecting results (it definitely didn't send me to another URL and directly entering the IP still got fake results, but it could have remapped the search). In the old days, proxy redirects were dumped into the /etc/hosts file (for Windows, usually Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts) but newer viruses usually store them in the registry or grab them from a compromised site.
I think the Vatican has a long criminal record that shows just what the problem wealth and power can do. You can't just go back 30 years - they were selling indulgences and burning witches and running inquisitions long before that. And why were the Jews hated so much in Europe in the early 1900s? The banning of usury and the forcing of Jews by the Catholics to work socially inferior jobs such as rent collection and loaning money might have just a tiny bit to do with it. For comparison, do you think the KKK would have existed if it weren't for slavery and the south's loss in the US civil war? I don't. The Holy Roman Empire also drove out my mom's ancestors - they were given the choice of rejoining the Catholic Church (after breaking off, following the Lutheran example) or being executed - some did, some fled, some didn't believe Christians would execute other Christians and were executed. How very Christian of them to execute people.
That said, I think they also do a lot of good with their charities and there are a lot of good people in their church. The number of bad Catholics and the number that have caused bad PR incidents is a tiny percentage of the whole. I can't condone a christian church with a leader that sits on a throne in a gold cathedral, but if that shapes you into a morally good person, more power to you.
Our web product minimum version is IE6, so we have to have IE6 on some machines. I'd love to upgrade them to 7 or 8, but we can't until management gives us the go. If I work on one of those machines, I browse in IE6 because it is the only browser on those boxes (they're usually VMs).
The plus side is none of our Linux or UNIX hosts support IE anymore. Solaris and Mac IE was a nightmare to support.
True South America, as Brazil is, in fact, the world leader in beef exports, followed by Australia. I recall Argentina and Uruguay and several Central American countries are in the top 10 as well. Then there's India, which was still exporting more beef than the United States last time I checked (yes, sacred cow country is #3 in exports) I don't think Europe even has a country in the top 10, but maybe as a whole they get in there. That is far more than I really needed to know, picked up from my brother-in-law - he does beef import/export for a living (the majority of his transactions are from Australia to Mexico).
And incidentally, most cows in the US and Canada outside of factory feeding operations are grass fed in the summers and grain fed (corn or barley) for the winter. There is a transition period of about 2 weeks when they switch to grain where the cattle aren't sold for slaughter because they taste funny (or so I heard... that tidbit was from my now retired farmer grandpa). You pretty much can't get through the central US without seeing cattle grazing in the summer, as cattle is a major industry from North Dakota to Texas (and extending into Canada, at least the last time I was there - I saw many farms heading from Thunder Bay, Ontario to northern Manitoba near Hudson Bay).
of course, we have exactly what he's asking for - it's called IPv6 - built in unique ID, built in security (IPsec), and nobody would ever want to use NAT (at least that's what a KAME developer told me, lol).
Of course, if you're a little paranoid, you'd realize marketing and governments know exactly who uses every box. Not something I like to think about...
I actually didn't mind the quests or story in DA:O or ME2, but I did find them predictable (same with ME:1).
Things I dislike in games
1) Popup, no chance to detect ambushes - Dragon Age, I'm talking about you, but some MMORPGs have them as well. Reviving squishies all the time because of these is annoying.
2) encounters in every "room" in a dungeon. Dragon Age isn't too bad here, except in the hideously long dwarf dungeon which includes about 15 #1s.
3) Frustrating AI that sometimes ignores what you tell it to do - Dragon Age, again, I'm talking about you when I pause at the start of combat, usually because of #1.
4) Unavoidable Minigames en-masse - ME2, I'm looking at you. Also make the minigame consistent - the pick lock one, for instance, is much harder at high resolutions because you need to drag your mouse that much further (not to mention it has mouse lag on mid-range systems - I had to cut my resolution to 720 just to play that dang minigame on my laptop, but my desktop handled it fine).
5) Yes or No quest options in RPGs, most of which have no consequence or the same ending. Fallout 3 and other Bethsoft games, I'm looking at you. I absolutely love quests like a) kill him b) let him go (he attacks anyway). Really I do. No I do F*CKING NOT already - the illusion of choice is 99 times out of 100 bad game design (the low intelligence answers in Fallout 2 that ended like that were hilarious, but otherwise I agree with Chris Avellone on that one - thankfully he's the designer of Fallout: New Vegas).
6) Characters that don't matter. Bethsoft games, I'm looking at you. Quick - name one memorable Oblivion Character besides the King. Fallout 3 was a bit better but still had only a handful of memorable characters and most of those are only important for tiny bits of the game (Fallout 1 and 2 were similar in that respect, but games like Gothic had wonderful recurring and memorable characters - not great on the gameplay front, but I'm talking characters).
7) Major plotlines that involve saving the world. Ok, maybe I should be more specific - if you have a story about saving the world, make it at least somewhat original and make the journey more important than the boss fight at the end - the big-assed baddie boss fight is so cliche it made cliche babies. I liked the Chaos in the Longest Journey - it tied the plot together and was mysterious for most of the game and was more of a concept than a boss (given, it was a point and click adventure game, but the characters were better developed than any game I've ever played - including every RPG, which is a lot).
8) Gameplay controls dumbed down to make it the same on all platforms. Fallout 3, I'm talking about you and your tab->button 4 to get Map, tab->button 2 to get inventory crap. Really, how hard would it be to map those to i and m like most normal games?
Yep, and its the same model as NetImmerse - er, I mean Gamebryo uses, so I fail to see how Vogel is original in that area. Gamebryo games tend to have dated look and play issues too, but that may be the game programmer's fault.
About the only thing Vogel has is volume of games using the same engine - engine reuse has been done forever. Heck, Ultima 1 and 2 were the same engine and 3 was an enhanced version of the same engine (it used the same file formats, at least, so the scenario editor the gang of ruffians I associated with created moved forward easily).
With the sort of game he does, there is little reason to rewrite from the ground up. OTOH, a 3D game engine that hasn't been updated will perform poorly today if it isn't rewritten for display lists, for example. Another nice thing about rewrites is you can find where your engine performs poorly and see if that performance can be improved by better design.
I haven't played a space shooter in several years, but I think one of the ones off sourceforge had true physics movement (Vegastrike or the Privateer remake or one of those).
As for Parsec, it wasn't fun (yet) and lost its development team.
Personally, I don't see a hardcore space physics game being fun at all - you don't need just vector based movement - there would be no sound, burning, or explosions. I'm even skeptical about explosive decompression. Most combat would take place at massive distances, not up close dogfight style. It would be about as satisfying as eating gravel. A mix of real and movie physics can be fun, but also frustrating - you can get something like Darkstar One, which I enjoyed once I got into it, but the learning curve was high. Supposedly the X series isn't bad, but I haven't played it (X3 is now on Steam I believe), so I don't know what gameplay is like.
and the main hacker nerd in that one is her first husband, Eli Stone... er, Jonny Lee Miller. Though for classic Jolie you need to see Cyborg 2 with Jack Palance. For a torture test, watch them back to back, but admittedly they are a bit more easy on the eyes and sanity than my usual bad movie fare (Troll 2, Vampires vs Zombies, Ratboy, Zombie Nation, Alien From L.A. - stuff like that).
From what I remember of the Star Trek universe, all the races are somewhat human-like because they were seeded that way by some God-like being.
I don't think quadrupeds are more agile than bipeds - in fact, I would argue it the other way around - just watch a dog or cat in action. Bipeds like humans are better designed to scale trees by grabbing branches, however, and bipeds like birds benefit from less weight for unneeded limbs.
Personally, I think there are lots of possibilities for no radio signals:
1) in the billions of years of earth history, our radio window of time is trivial and even if the alien races developed as fast or faster than us, they could be too far away for that radio signal to get here yet. For all we know, the aliens moved to tachyon communications and closed the radio wave era before we even set up.
2) we have the technology to grow children in vats and sustain the human race and are already doing it to sustain some species like rare sharks that eat the rest of the brood while still in the womb. Once we get over the religious and ethical issues (e.g. superrace), it seems like a natural progression, at least. If the "mom" wanted to breast feed, she could then take hormones for that.
3) We've been sending out radio signals for what, a little more than 110 years, and we didn't start listening until much later. At best you are probably talking about 20000 stars that could have heard us in that time (I recall 100 years being about 15000, so I guesstimated), and much less could respond if they were listening. And that is assuming they are using radio waves, not, say, microwaves. For all we know, radio waves are annoying noises to them and they wear tinfoil hats.
4) The assumptions are based on aliens followed a "European" style technological progression, but the only reason most of the world followed that progression was because of European expansionism. If America had been left untouched by Europe and/or China, how much do you think Native Americans tech would have progressed by now? My guess is not much.
5) Our galaxy is unpredictable, and that probably is true for the majority of galaxies. Just because a meteor struck us and ended the age of dinosaurs doesn't mean it happened there, and maybe having a tiny brain and giant teeth was more valuable for a lot longer there.
6) No aliens have come here yet because they either don't know of us, can't move fast enough to get here, or knowledge is being intentionally repressed by our governments. I personally think warp travel would be possible if we can prove there is a 4th dimension in the same way 2D distances can be shortened in a third dimension (fold the corners of a piece of paper together - they are nearer, right? it even would be possible in 3D if space folds in on itself).
True enough - Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, for that matter, are horrifically bad big budget movies. Note that I said "big budget" - they are not in the same category as stuff like Vampires vs Zombies or Troll 2 (the challenge there is to get through the movie without throwing yourself through a plate glass window to end the pain, and usually that means significant amounts of alcohol and/or drugs).
I don't think finding a 6'2" muscled crazy blond guy would be all that hard - just recruit in the midwest, or if that fails, Austria (we're due for another Ahr nold).
the new one or the old one or both?
The old one was somewhat campy, but for the time period it aired, quite good as far as story and special effects go - it also cost about 1 million dollars per episode, which was just silly talk back then, which is why BSG 1980 was so bad - the studios wanted to cut costs significantly and that ruined the show.
As for the new BSG, nearly every episode had me groaning about something, but I do like the prequel Caprica so far. The smoking doctor, pre-20th century medicine, female Starbuck (Katie, I'm sorry, but no), terrorism (c'mon - you're running for your life), demands for democracy (again, you're running for your life), anti-medicine cults (who cares? - just let 'em die), etc. all bugged me. Virtual worlds where people behave hedonistically in some spots but more civil in others? That I can buy - sounds a lot like Second Life.
Firefly I'm more mixed about - I really disliked it at first but it grew on me, kinda like Babylon 5. Once I got past the "western in space" aspect, the acting was decent, the characters well developed and the plots were generally good.
As for Katie Sackhoff, I actually liked the remake of Bionic Woman a couple of years ago except her character... but, that show probably would have done better with a different name and less of an action and more of a suspense focus (I think Michelle Ryan would rock in an Alias-like role). Katie's decent on "24," at least the one episode I saw her in (to tell the truth, my interest in that show waned about year 2, but I still catch an episode now and then... and am completely lost).
Well I don't think it helped that Fox airs all of his shows on Friday night, which is generally considered the "death" night for shows. The only reason I saw Dollhouse at all was because of a DVR, and that show was underwhelming - a nice idea, but poorly named (IMO, "dollhouse" is a turn off for boys) and executed. I didn't see Firefly in its initial run (caught it on scifi later) or Buffy at all due to the Friday time slot.
and RIAA, MPAA, ASCAP, God, showers, deodorant, and most squishy things.
the flame war for jokingly including God may now commence.
Well I had a supported Windows Vista upgrade a couple of years ago and the upgrade not only failed, it bricked my laptop. The repair DVD to restore XP was a waste of a couple of days and I ended up having to ship it back to the manufacturer. Two weeks after getting it back, the GPU failed (it had the notorious nVidia 8xxx GPU - it actually failed again 3 days after the warranty expired) and back to the manufacturer again for a full wipe. Then they failed to set the Vista code so the laptop wouldn't start, so back to the manufacturer again...
So basically, due to Microsoft's flawed software, manufacturer lock codes on laptops (which are required by Microsoft so Windows can't be pirated and it allows them to bypass activation), my ex-laptop made two special trips to ASUS. That coupled with Vista being a pain in the ass made my experience with it very unpleasant. Incidentally, I do have a Windows 7 laptop now and it works quite well. I'm hoping it lasts longer than my last one (exactly 2 years and 3 days). Incidentally, I don't hate MS software in general, but I do hate their draconian DRM and business practices - in an effort to stop piracy they make non-pirated copies very inconvenient to install and use.
From a technical standpoint after MUDs came Neverwinter Nights on AOL, considered the true first graphical MMORPG. Release Date? 1991, then 3D graphical MMORPGs, came in 1996 with Meridian 59. One big problem was number of concurrent users in a single area, which I believe Ultima Online was the first to try to tackle (shards) in 1997.
That said, if you do RTFA, it does say Asheron's Call and Everquest were released or about to be, but nobody at Eidos had ever heard of a MMORPG. They also go on to say the cartoony graphics and much of what their design turned up in World of Warcraft, and are lamenting that they basically had the idea for WoW before Blizzard did, and had they been able to go forward with it, they may have 60%+ of the market instead of Blizzard. I seriously doubt that would happen, just because Blizzard has an incredible track record, but you never know.
Remember C was written for late 1960s-early 1970s era hardware (came out in 1972) and bounds checking actually has an impact on execution speed. C was designed to compile system software (like operating systems) on diverse platforms with an emphasis on portability and speed. Bounds checking compromises speed, so that was left up to the OS developer to decide to implement or not.
It would be nice to have a string class, and ASCII is stable, but someone somewhere will need to decide what form of Unicode to use for wide character strings - ask a westerner and they'll say UTF-8 or UTF-16, ask Asians and they want UTF-16 or UTF-32. Microsoft and Apple seem to favor UTF-16 (even though the BSD underpinnings uses 32 bit wide wchar_t), but when you get to the web and many database companies, they favor UTF-8, probably because of the ASCII compatibility (and asian languages do use one particular ASCII character a lot - space). Also note that UTF-16 does not guarantee the character is 16 bits like many people think, only the older UCS-2 format does, so you can't just parse it and assume every character is 16 bits wide.
Then there's string conversion... every OS has string conversion functions that are OS specific - good luck on getting Microsoft, Apple, Linux, etc to standardize those.
C is a fairly stable language (last updated a decade ago), so the string representation is traditional. If you want string classes move to objective-C or C++ (no, I take that back - avoid C++ like the plague... it takes all the best features of an object oriented language and mangles them horribly into a functional language).
I'm just glad most of my programming is not in C++ these days, its in GLSL shaders (which itself is a fairly sleek C-like language).
Strange because Saké (and by that I mean alcohol in general) has been known to be around for centuries in Japan. Saké the beverage Americans know has been around at least since 300AD, if not earlier, and is brewed similar to beer.
Too bad it has the bitter flavor I dislike also exists in most American beers (which are brewed with cheap rice). I'm also not keen on hoppy beers - hops used to be a preservative and now are mostly for flavor and bitter is not exactly a flavor I like (which is why I'm sensitive to rice brews). On the plus side, when I did have a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surly_Brewing_Company>Surly Furious it took me all night to choke it down (I love Saisons, so I liked their Cynic, but not that one).
Yes, HP may make most of their money in services now, but that industry is volatile and HP has a very diverse portifolio. In fact, I'm pretty sure they are still #2 in services behind IBM, but they are far more profitable than IBM.
Purchases/Mergers in the past 10 years include
Compaq - Windows PCs
EDS - services
3-Com - networking equipment, routers and switches
I'm not sure of the particulars, but during US drafts some particular religious sects were conscientious objectors - for instance, Mennonites and Amish, and that may apply to some group in Israel, as well. In fact, during WW1 the US sent 45 Mennonites to Leavenworth and basically stripped them naked beat them, and left them in a cell with only a uniform to wear - some refused and died over it (including some ancestors of mine). Because of this religious persecution in the United States, several groups moved to Canada.
Nicotine is an addictive stimulant, but is hardly the reason cigarettes are bad. Tobacco products often contain thousands of chemicals and some of them are poisonous and/or carcinogenic. Certainly your argument holds for why people smoke - they enjoy the drug's effect - but would you inhale asbestos if it was also an upper or downer?
As for the ads, Anti smoking and anti-drug campaigns are actually poor in the US in my opinion - kids are told smoking is bad and pot is bad, then they smoke either or both and think the ads are stupid, then try something much worse, like heroin (which is the latest epidemic, replacing Meth, if you haven't heard). Heroin is a horrifically addictive and destructive drug that doesn't impair motor skills so it is very easy to hide. More potent varieties are snorted, not injected, so "railroad tracks" aren't even a telltale sign like they once were.
I can understand not wanting to cite pleasant effects - an ex heroin addict I know said "heroin was the best high I've ever had and I crave it every day." Sounds great, right? Just skip the ruined lives, common overdoses, bodies ravaged before their time, an addiction rate that is basically 100%, and permanent cravings. But hey - you lose weight, right (since you choose the drug over eating), so we really should focus on the diet capabilities of heroin, right?
Note that I personally feel all drugs should be decriminalized (maybe with limits before age 18), but to buy any particular one you want for recreational use would require an education class on that drug. You would then sign a legal form that says you will not give it away to anyone that has not also attended the class. That would include all regulated drugs like alcohol and tobacco. All would have proportional health fees attached to the cost.