I'm still surprised by the success of 'Crouching Tiger'. It started out good, up to the point where one of the women floated up into the air as if she were suspended from a wire.
I keep thinking about how the computer games industry compares to fiction publishing. Imagine walking into a book store and only finding 100 titles on the shelves. Suppose you bought the latest Steven King novel, and found that it was filled with 80 pages of full-color pictures, but only 10 pages of text, and cost $50?
Well said! Ultima 7/BG was the first RPG I played (not counting Rogue), and I was amazed at the size and interactivity of its world. Many of us have worked countless hours to keep it alive, and someday make new games in the same style.
I've seen this type of statement a lot over the years. It's like if I'd bought a Ford Escort, and was upset because Ford gouged me on service and parts, and then proclaimed loudly that I was never going to purchase an Escort again, but would, instead, buy a Taurus.
But then, with cars, there are lots of other brands available.
You're right. I recently rebooted my usually-running-Linux machine to its old Warp4 partition a couple days ago. A bit of nostalgia hit me as I realized that the WPS is still a very nice interface, far more consistent than any version of Windows I've seen.
As we're adding a map-editor and a script compiler to the Exult project, it will be possible to 'enhance' Ultima7 (with EA's permission, of course), or create new games in the same style.
Bummer. That was what I worked on at my first job many years ago. It was the first computer I used with a CRT, and also the first one on which I played "Adventure".
It had an unusual stack-based architecture, and a very nice close-to-the-hardware programming language call SPL/3000, derived from Algol60.
He's right on that. A local radio station has been running the following spoof of an XP commercial every morning:
(Madonna music in background)
Q: With XP, can I burn CD's?
A: Yes, you can.
Q: Can I send email?
A: Yes, you can.
Q: Can I create an internet virus?
A: Yes, you can.
Q: Can I download female-on-female animal porn?
A: Yes, you can.
Q: Can I install XP myself without help?
A: Not f***in' likely!
Your numbers are a bit exaggerated. For my dialup:
56k ISP: $13/mo
2nd Phone line: 0
Download time/Mb: ~6 minutes
Time to connect: ~10 seconds (wvdial is great)
Busy signals: Never.
ISP downtime/problems: 0
Plus, my ISP (hevanet.com), whom we've been with for over 7 years, runs BSD, so they provide a shell-login, and have always been Unix-friendly. From what I read here on Slashdot, lots of the broadband companies seem to go out of their way to make life difficult for non-MS users.
I went through this with a boss at a previous company. He decided to set up a small internal web site using Linux/Apache as an experiment, so I offered to let him use my recent copy of SuSE. But he preferred to go out and buy some sort of RedHat 'professional' distribution that cost $300.
...and I've had quite a few over the last 20 years. Some have been really cool, like when I developed an Arabic word-processor and got to attend a computer show in Dubai. Others, like porting old (really OLD) Unix tools to MSDOS and spending half the day in meetings arguing about trivial bits of code, weren't so good.
One of the nice things about high-tech is that nobody cares if you change jobs every couple of years. That said, maybe I should take my own advice...
... Microsoft, which has bought quite a few game companies recently. And, quite coincidentally, their DirectX games seem to have fewer problems than yours.
Good news! In order to make paying your bill more convenient and to keep our costs low, we have signed up with MS Passport so that you can (and MUST) easily pay your bill on the.NET.
This is followed by similar letters from your mortgage bank, phone company, electric utility...
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I'm still surprised by the success of 'Crouching Tiger'. It started out good, up to the point where one of the women floated up into the air as if she were suspended from a wire.
I keep thinking about how the computer games industry compares to fiction publishing. Imagine walking into a book store and only finding 100 titles on the shelves. Suppose you bought the latest Steven King novel, and found that it was filled with 80 pages of full-color pictures, but only 10 pages of text, and cost $50?
Well said! Ultima 7/BG was the first RPG I played (not counting Rogue), and I was amazed at the size and interactivity of its world. Many of us have worked countless hours to keep it alive, and someday make new games in the same style.
In other words, people who are working for free shouldn't write what they're interested in, but should work on what you want.
If that's your attitude, I can see why you find those developers 'code and abusive'.
On mine, NT 4.0 runs fine, but so does SuSE 7.0 with KDE 2.2 installed.
How about Synopsis? I interviewed there last year, and they seemed pretty enthused about Linux.
Don't be silly; those all connect via USB 3.0. So all we need is the one driver.
But those cheap WinPhasers might be a problem.
Anyone else notice that so many things having to do with space-flight or fusion are always about 10 years away?
I've seen this type of statement a lot over the years. It's like if I'd bought a Ford Escort, and was upset because Ford gouged me on service and parts, and then proclaimed loudly that I was never going to purchase an Escort again, but would, instead, buy a Taurus.
But then, with cars, there are lots of other brands available.
You're right. I recently rebooted my usually-running-Linux machine to its old Warp4 partition a couple days ago. A bit of nostalgia hit me as I realized that the WPS is still a very nice interface, far more consistent than any version of Windows I've seen.
As we're adding a map-editor and a script compiler to the Exult project, it will be possible to 'enhance' Ultima7 (with EA's permission, of course), or create new games in the same style.
Didn't that series come from a German developer? I think SirTech was just the publisher/translator for the English versions.
Bummer. That was what I worked on at my first job many years ago. It was the first computer I used with a CRT, and also the first one on which I played "Adventure".
It had an unusual stack-based architecture, and a very nice close-to-the-hardware programming language call SPL/3000, derived from Algol60.
... I'd like to see them run an ad featuring French-speaking nuns.
And that will be - $200 or so? - for a legal copy of Win2K?
While I'm glad he's chimed in on this, I'd say he's just as, if not more, "uncompromising" and "abrasive" as RMS.
He's right on that. A local radio station has been running the following spoof of an XP commercial every morning:
(Madonna music in background)
Q: With XP, can I burn CD's?
A: Yes, you can.
Q: Can I send email?
A: Yes, you can.
Q: Can I create an internet virus?
A: Yes, you can.
Q: Can I download female-on-female animal porn?
A: Yes, you can.
Q: Can I install XP myself without help?
A: Not f***in' likely!
Your numbers are a bit exaggerated. For my dialup:
56k ISP: $13/mo
2nd Phone line: 0
Download time/Mb: ~6 minutes
Time to connect: ~10 seconds (wvdial is great)
Busy signals: Never.
ISP downtime/problems: 0
Plus, my ISP (hevanet.com), whom we've been with for over 7 years, runs BSD, so they provide a shell-login, and have always been Unix-friendly. From what I read here on Slashdot, lots of the broadband companies seem to go out of their way to make life difficult for non-MS users.
"You aren't the boss. Why not?"
Probably because I like writing software, and spend most of my free time writing open-source.
I went through this with a boss at a previous company. He decided to set up a small internal web site using Linux/Apache as an experiment, so I offered to let him use my recent copy of SuSE. But he preferred to go out and buy some sort of RedHat 'professional' distribution that cost $300.
...and I've had quite a few over the last 20 years. Some have been really cool, like when I developed an Arabic word-processor and got to attend a computer show in Dubai. Others, like porting old (really OLD) Unix tools to MSDOS and spending half the day in meetings arguing about trivial bits of code, weren't so good.
One of the nice things about high-tech is that nobody cares if you change jobs every couple of years. That said, maybe I should take my own advice...
You have to ask yourself: Is it software development that you're tired of, or is it academia?
You might want to try working outside college, either at a part-time job, or on an open-source project.
... Microsoft, which has bought quite a few game companies recently. And, quite coincidentally, their DirectX games seem to have fewer problems than yours.
eythay illway evernay igurefay isthay outway!
Good news! In order to make paying your bill more convenient and to keep our costs low, we have signed up with MS Passport so that you can (and MUST) easily pay your bill on the
This is followed by similar letters from your mortgage bank, phone company, electric utility...