IMHO, the best "demos" are actually a limited version of the full game. Not neutered, but limited perhaps by time (can only play a 30m session) or level-cap, etc. Then you can just purchase/activate the content you've already downloaded (provided it is a downloadable game), and continue on your merry way.
Torchlight was great for that. You could get through the first boss, try out all 3 heroes, and weren't really limited on anything that was accessible in the full version of the game, by that point in time. It sold very well, and even ported over to console just recently, where it is also doing well.
With the "conventional" release model and an influx of developers and publishers, and subsequently a flood of varying-quality games, people are sick of paying retail prices for questionable content.
I can't tell you how many games I've thought looked cool/neat/worth-a-try on the box, but ended up absolutely terrible when I played them. Dungeon Lords, anyone?
Now we've got several games which have proven their worth already, and can sell on their own, which are bundled together in an awesome pack. For avid gamers (especially those on a budget), this is a huge deal. For indie developers, this is another chance to show that the traditional retail system is not the only way to conduct business.
I'm a huge pro-gun advocate (if you didn't already surmise), but I always appreciate logical argument from the entire spectrum of gun debate. To control guns is, in essence, to limit their distribution and to make more difficult their acquisition. I do think that certain things should require training, licenses, etc.; I've got 8 years of military training, 10+ years of shooting personally owned firearms, and 5 years of defensive carry experience. To limit someone like ME from having access to whatever-the-fuck-I-decide-to-afford is foolish. I've proved my ability to lawfully abide and conduct myself in a safe manner through numerous means, and have the legal documentation to prove so. Why would I be willing to accept any legislation which constrains my RKBA?
I also understand that things like the "Assault Weapons Ban" ideology are purely a device which the media and politicians use to make things sound more extravagant than they are.
Also, cars are far more dangerous than small arms. Think solely about the physics involved: a 2 ton vehicle moving at 50 mph has far more energy than a 200gr (200 grains = 0.0285714286 pounds, according to google) )bullet moving at ~700 mph, and could tear through more people or structural material by far. It takes far longer to train to be a safe driver -- one who is cognizant of his surroundings, maintains proper speed and stopping distances, etc. -- than it does to be a safe handler of firearms. How many laws and rules must you understand just in order to drive a car? There are only 4 major rules you absolutely need to know to handle a gun.
1. All guns are always loaded
2. Only point a gun at something you intend to destroy
3. Consider your target and everything behind/beyond it.
4. Finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire.
I'd say that's a pretty easy set of rules to remember.
And here we agree 100%. Right now I find the Republicans to be slightly more insane the the Democrats, but neither of them are doing a very good job of looking out of the American people's interests. I think the re-election thing plays a roll, but also the fact that both sides are infected with bat-shit crazy ideology right now, and would hold that ideology above any human consequences. The only thing going for the Democrats is that they are more fractious and factional than the Republicans at the moment.
Yeah I think the "slightly more insane" portion comes from the fact that they've currently got the majority in the House. SotH tends to be more vocal than the Senate Majority Leader, perhaps since they're a notch up on the food chain (right below the Vice-POTUS, for those that don't know the American system). It's easier to have your one, collectively crazy voice heard as compared to the rabble of a bunch of smaller crazy voices:P
"I am not in favor of concealed weapons. I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations. "
That's just one snippet. There are plenty to be found, including within his voting history while in the Senate. Even his most recent speech about gun control has plenty of language indicating he'd like much stricter legislation.
No tinfoil hat required.
FYI: The Nat'l Park gun laws began well before Obama took office. The NRA/ILA and other pro-gun organizations have been pushing for that for years. It merely went legally into effect under the Obama administration.
Don't attribute something to the wrong person. Obama is still very anti-gun, in that he would love to disarm the masses under the guise of "safety and security for America".
I don't agree with either party. They all seem to be more concerned with getting reelected than actually doing the job for which they've been elected in the first place.
Valve has got an excellent method of dealing with piracy. While not perfect, it does tend to cut back on the "I can't afford it, so I'll just steal it" attitude. You really can't argue price points when you can purchase a 12-game bundle for $20US, even if only half of the games are ones you'd actually play.
They can afford to charge lower prices because they have a great content delivery method, which cuts out the whole packing/shipping process. There is virtually no extra cost for delivering one or one thousand extra copies, and therefore overhead is minimized = profits maximized.
I have to agree, at least in part, with TFA. Proliferate your business in a method economical and accessible to the consumer, and you're far more likely to cut down on piracy. After all, if everybody has your product at a price they're willing to afford, there is no reason for piracy.
That make sense. All of the Rubidium oscillator's I've worked with derived timing from satellite constellations. As you said, they do tend to hold timing for quite a long time -- in 4 years I only needed to calibrate a pair of them once. Solid!
[tangent]Could just be the particular versions, but the Rb's have always been smaller than their Cs counterparts.
Many geosync satellites (defense, etc) are in excess of 40000 km. Some more, some less, but being that far away allows them a broader footprint while still maintaining a relatively focused receiver/transmitter.
Standard atomic clocks are a Cesium or Rubidium based standard. Usually good to anywhere between 9 and 14 significant digits in accuracy. The GPS system can actually take a specially calculated average from numerous ground-based sources in order to correct itself on the go.
Overall, the GPS system is more accurate than any single atomic time keeping device, because it derives its timing from multiple sources, rather than a single oscillation system.
The timing where I used to work was normally sub-7 nanoseconds from GPS. Not bad at all.
The Army keeps knuckleheads like you from having their home country occupied and forced to speak another language.
The Marine CORPS is great at starting a fight, the Army is meant to sustain and finish one. They're only a small organization; by no means "emormous". The Marines simply don't have the logistical backbone to be able to stay in continued conflict as long as the Army -- hence why they deploy more frequently, yet for shorter durations. This is why the Army took up the fight in WW2 Europe, where the Marines did the brunt of fighting in the Pacific -- Island Hopping is more suited to their strategy and tactical base. Also, the Marines are a Corps within the Dept. of the Navy; they function as the grunts for Navy operations, in the most basic of terms (it's more complex, but I'm not going to elaborate on 200+ years of military history in a paragraph).
Agreed that the organizations can be wasteful, just as SUVs and huge automobiles are as well. More fuel-guzzling high-mass vehicles = greater wear and tear on the surface of the roads, and therefore greater costs to maintain the infrastructure. It's great to have a truck when you need it, but commuting to your cushy office gov't job certainly doesn't require a 4WD Turbodiesel Pickup.
Because it is more cost effective to let every troop carry his phone on an FTX (or whatever kind of -X you want to call it) than to strap him up with a GPS beacon or ASIPS radio.
That being said, he's a Jump Master and should have known better than to have it anywhere but in a very secure container/pocket.
SWG was an amazingly social game in its early form. One of the best parts of the game was joining up with 19 random players (iirc 20 was the max group size) and ravaging the interplanetary countrysides to be [temporarily] free of Banthaas, Rancors, and a slew of other critters and enemies. You didn't have guaranteed archetypes, as all skills could be learned by all characters -- so many players chose to have some healing abilities combined with ranged and melee damage potential, perhaps even a couple of pets (old school CH ftw!).
You also had an immense amount of people RPing on the same servers where others were raiding and PVPing. You had town politics, owned property, instanced and non-instanced zones, a player-driven economy, and lots more.
Before the "combat revamp", the game was uniquely fun. Once they broke it down into X-number unique classes with zero cross-train ability, it just was not as enjoyable of a game.
When I was at PAX East, I didn't even bother checking out GW2. The lines were not that long numerically, but each person got about an hour of gameplay to themselves! I'm not waiting in line for 2 hours just to try a beta version of a game that seems too-familiar to so many others at first glance.
Yes. While it used to be atrocious (think Half-Life 2's "preload", or lack thereof) it has gotten the infrastructure it needs over the last several years to handle massive amounts of bandwidth. I guess a client which hosts in excess of 3 million users at a time has to have some fat pipes pushing the data...especially when a good chunk of them are preloading a few gigs at a time.
Honestly, I rarely even purchase retail games anymore. For PC games (usually preferred) I get them through Steam if available. If they're DS or 360, I use Gamefly to check them out and use the "Keep it" option if I really enjoy the game and find it has high replay value.
And may or may not be known as "Hamato Yoshi" depending on the variant of the story/comic.
Though it's difficult to tell if you're being as facetious as my post, or you simply didn't notice that my comment preceded any other TMNT references. Text-only can be misleading.
That's because the military truck batteries are 24VDC. You can run all of their equipment off a truck's alternator, if it is wired up properly. Alternator --> UPS --> Further Distribution.
It makes sense to have the same voltages across the board, so that you can reduce the need for variants of hardware.
Definitely true. Battery banks tend to need regular, and often costly, maintenance. And you can still cause lots of damage to them by tripping them or incorrectly swapping switchgears/breakers, etc. I've done my time repairing those, and concur.
Devoid of "open" homosexuality. The middle east has plenty of gays, they just hide behind their culture and keep it on the low...else they may be flogged/honor killed/imprisoned.
Slashdot Mirror
IMHO, the best "demos" are actually a limited version of the full game. Not neutered, but limited perhaps by time (can only play a 30m session) or level-cap, etc. Then you can just purchase/activate the content you've already downloaded (provided it is a downloadable game), and continue on your merry way.
Torchlight was great for that. You could get through the first boss, try out all 3 heroes, and weren't really limited on anything that was accessible in the full version of the game, by that point in time. It sold very well, and even ported over to console just recently, where it is also doing well.
With the "conventional" release model and an influx of developers and publishers, and subsequently a flood of varying-quality games, people are sick of paying retail prices for questionable content.
I can't tell you how many games I've thought looked cool/neat/worth-a-try on the box, but ended up absolutely terrible when I played them. Dungeon Lords, anyone?
Now we've got several games which have proven their worth already, and can sell on their own, which are bundled together in an awesome pack. For avid gamers (especially those on a budget), this is a huge deal. For indie developers, this is another chance to show that the traditional retail system is not the only way to conduct business.
I, for one, welcome our new DRM-free overlords.
Nor is the series, unfortunately.
How many times has Jack Bauer died, btw? Several, I'm sure.
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas Edison
I also understand that things like the "Assault Weapons Ban" ideology are purely a device which the media and politicians use to make things sound more extravagant than they are.
Also, cars are far more dangerous than small arms. Think solely about the physics involved: a 2 ton vehicle moving at 50 mph has far more energy than a 200gr (200 grains = 0.0285714286 pounds, according to google) )bullet moving at ~700 mph, and could tear through more people or structural material by far. It takes far longer to train to be a safe driver -- one who is cognizant of his surroundings, maintains proper speed and stopping distances, etc. -- than it does to be a safe handler of firearms. How many laws and rules must you understand just in order to drive a car? There are only 4 major rules you absolutely need to know to handle a gun.
1. All guns are always loaded
2. Only point a gun at something you intend to destroy
3. Consider your target and everything behind/beyond it.
4. Finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire.
I'd say that's a pretty easy set of rules to remember.
And here we agree 100%. Right now I find the Republicans to be slightly more insane the the Democrats, but neither of them are doing a very good job of looking out of the American people's interests. I think the re-election thing plays a roll, but also the fact that both sides are infected with bat-shit crazy ideology right now, and would hold that ideology above any human consequences. The only thing going for the Democrats is that they are more fractious and factional than the Republicans at the moment.
Yeah I think the "slightly more insane" portion comes from the fact that they've currently got the majority in the House. SotH tends to be more vocal than the Senate Majority Leader, perhaps since they're a notch up on the food chain (right below the Vice-POTUS, for those that don't know the American system). It's easier to have your one, collectively crazy voice heard as compared to the rabble of a bunch of smaller crazy voices :P
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_obama.html
Read more.
"I am not in favor of concealed weapons. I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations. "
That's just one snippet. There are plenty to be found, including within his voting history while in the Senate. Even his most recent speech about gun control has plenty of language indicating he'd like much stricter legislation.
No tinfoil hat required.
FYI: The Nat'l Park gun laws began well before Obama took office. The NRA/ILA and other pro-gun organizations have been pushing for that for years. It merely went legally into effect under the Obama administration.
Don't attribute something to the wrong person. Obama is still very anti-gun, in that he would love to disarm the masses under the guise of "safety and security for America".
I don't agree with either party. They all seem to be more concerned with getting reelected than actually doing the job for which they've been elected in the first place.
Valve has got an excellent method of dealing with piracy. While not perfect, it does tend to cut back on the "I can't afford it, so I'll just steal it" attitude. You really can't argue price points when you can purchase a 12-game bundle for $20US, even if only half of the games are ones you'd actually play.
They can afford to charge lower prices because they have a great content delivery method, which cuts out the whole packing/shipping process. There is virtually no extra cost for delivering one or one thousand extra copies, and therefore overhead is minimized = profits maximized.
I have to agree, at least in part, with TFA. Proliferate your business in a method economical and accessible to the consumer, and you're far more likely to cut down on piracy. After all, if everybody has your product at a price they're willing to afford, there is no reason for piracy.
That make sense. All of the Rubidium oscillator's I've worked with derived timing from satellite constellations. As you said, they do tend to hold timing for quite a long time -- in 4 years I only needed to calibrate a pair of them once. Solid!
[tangent]Could just be the particular versions, but the Rb's have always been smaller than their Cs counterparts.
Many geosync satellites (defense, etc) are in excess of 40000 km. Some more, some less, but being that far away allows them a broader footprint while still maintaining a relatively focused receiver/transmitter.
Raspberry?
Standard atomic clocks are a Cesium or Rubidium based standard. Usually good to anywhere between 9 and 14 significant digits in accuracy. The GPS system can actually take a specially calculated average from numerous ground-based sources in order to correct itself on the go.
Overall, the GPS system is more accurate than any single atomic time keeping device, because it derives its timing from multiple sources, rather than a single oscillation system.
The timing where I used to work was normally sub-7 nanoseconds from GPS. Not bad at all.
Redundancy.
You put all of your eggs in one basket, and sooner or later that basket is going to be wiped out by a tsunami/quake.
The Army keeps knuckleheads like you from having their home country occupied and forced to speak another language.
The Marine CORPS is great at starting a fight, the Army is meant to sustain and finish one. They're only a small organization; by no means "emormous". The Marines simply don't have the logistical backbone to be able to stay in continued conflict as long as the Army -- hence why they deploy more frequently, yet for shorter durations. This is why the Army took up the fight in WW2 Europe, where the Marines did the brunt of fighting in the Pacific -- Island Hopping is more suited to their strategy and tactical base. Also, the Marines are a Corps within the Dept. of the Navy; they function as the grunts for Navy operations, in the most basic of terms (it's more complex, but I'm not going to elaborate on 200+ years of military history in a paragraph).
Agreed that the organizations can be wasteful, just as SUVs and huge automobiles are as well. More fuel-guzzling high-mass vehicles = greater wear and tear on the surface of the roads, and therefore greater costs to maintain the infrastructure. It's great to have a truck when you need it, but commuting to your cushy office gov't job certainly doesn't require a 4WD Turbodiesel Pickup.
Because it is more cost effective to let every troop carry his phone on an FTX (or whatever kind of -X you want to call it) than to strap him up with a GPS beacon or ASIPS radio.
That being said, he's a Jump Master and should have known better than to have it anywhere but in a very secure container/pocket.
Gotta love that a Jump Master didn't have the sense to secure his phone properly, huh?
If he was an Army JM he'd have that thing on a dummy cord, like everything else!
I wonder if one day, someone will invent a bike that has an engine and can reach this sort of speed...
SWG was an amazingly social game in its early form. One of the best parts of the game was joining up with 19 random players (iirc 20 was the max group size) and ravaging the interplanetary countrysides to be [temporarily] free of Banthaas, Rancors, and a slew of other critters and enemies. You didn't have guaranteed archetypes, as all skills could be learned by all characters -- so many players chose to have some healing abilities combined with ranged and melee damage potential, perhaps even a couple of pets (old school CH ftw!).
You also had an immense amount of people RPing on the same servers where others were raiding and PVPing. You had town politics, owned property, instanced and non-instanced zones, a player-driven economy, and lots more.
Before the "combat revamp", the game was uniquely fun. Once they broke it down into X-number unique classes with zero cross-train ability, it just was not as enjoyable of a game.
When I was at PAX East, I didn't even bother checking out GW2. The lines were not that long numerically, but each person got about an hour of gameplay to themselves! I'm not waiting in line for 2 hours just to try a beta version of a game that seems too-familiar to so many others at first glance.
Yes. While it used to be atrocious (think Half-Life 2's "preload", or lack thereof) it has gotten the infrastructure it needs over the last several years to handle massive amounts of bandwidth. I guess a client which hosts in excess of 3 million users at a time has to have some fat pipes pushing the data...especially when a good chunk of them are preloading a few gigs at a time.
Honestly, I rarely even purchase retail games anymore. For PC games (usually preferred) I get them through Steam if available. If they're DS or 360, I use Gamefly to check them out and use the "Keep it" option if I really enjoy the game and find it has high replay value.
And may or may not be known as "Hamato Yoshi" depending on the variant of the story/comic.
Though it's difficult to tell if you're being as facetious as my post, or you simply didn't notice that my comment preceded any other TMNT references. Text-only can be misleading.
That's because the military truck batteries are 24VDC. You can run all of their equipment off a truck's alternator, if it is wired up properly. Alternator --> UPS --> Further Distribution.
It makes sense to have the same voltages across the board, so that you can reduce the need for variants of hardware.
Definitely true. Battery banks tend to need regular, and often costly, maintenance. And you can still cause lots of damage to them by tripping them or incorrectly swapping switchgears/breakers, etc. I've done my time repairing those, and concur.
...but what does TMNT have to do with this?
Devoid of "open" homosexuality. The middle east has plenty of gays, they just hide behind their culture and keep it on the low...else they may be flogged/honor killed/imprisoned.
Think of what this will do to the Energizer Bunny, you insensitive clods!