The camera bit sounds a little over the top, surely an led and a receiver???
The original article makes no mention of a camera -- this appears to be sloppy summarizing on the submitter's part. The article says it's done with "infrared sensors", which sounds saner.
That's/. for you. Even the submitter hasn't read the article.
The reporting of this war has verged on pornography, with too many reporters getting excited about bombs and tanks and too little attention being paid to the human cost.
There's an article on this very subject in yesterday's Guardian. Draws some very interesting parallels between porn and war footage: "This... is the kind of spectacular vision you get in porn - where the point is to see the sex act from every angle. It's narcissistic." (Linda Williams, professor of film studies and rhetoric at UC Berkley)
Text Adventures were "Text" Adventures because they didn't have the graphics horsepower around back then that they have now.
So? The fact that a genre was influenced by the technical limitations of the time does not in any way invalidate it. It's not a "fad" merely because it doesn't push today's hardware to the limits.
I've seen a lot of comments here along similar lines: "text adventures are irrelevant because we can do graphics now". And novels are irrelevant because printing technology lets us mass-reproduce graphic novels easily?
The fact is, if you add graphics to a text adventure, it's no longer a text adventure. Within their limitations (and every genre has limitations) they are a thoroughly absorbing and well-developed art form.
These misunderstandings arise because the charm of a text adventure can't be conveyed with a screenshot, or by trying it out for a few minutes. The beauty is in the depth, and this can only be appreciated by actually playing the damn thing:-).
And I would say that I have failed to find any game that satisfies me the way that a good text adventure does
Amen to that. My girlfriend recently discovered Xemacs' built-in text adventure, so I introduced her to Graham Nelson's excellent Curses and she was hooked for days.
By comparison, Vice City entertained her for about half an hour.
Personally I find that only text adventures (and Nethack:-) are capable of holding my attention for more than a couple of days.
I seem to remember them doing something very similar in Afghanistan (sorry, don't have time to dredge up a link). But in that case, they didn't need the capacity (not that I heard, anyway): they bought the pictures from the commercial imaging satellites to stop anyone else getting their hands on them. ISTR news agencies being less than happy with it at the time...
Read what you will but you cannot claim the UK government does not have support at home for the action.
Bollocks. Of course I can, and I have an ICM poll to back my claims up. 44% of the public opposed to war, 38% supportive. I'd be delighted to know where you got your figures fr... oh, hang on, you don't have any, it was an entirely unsupported assertion (cue shouts of "You're new around here, aren't you?").
As to political support, bear in mind that many Labour ministers are unwilling to oppose a war publicly for fear of damaging the party. Nobody wants Blair's head on a plate, since he's the most successful leader they've had in years. But the parent post referred to "popular support" so this is not really relevant.
So after 8 hours staring at a screen and tapping at a keyboard, I can head down the pub to... stare at a screen and tap at a keyboard?
Thanks, but no thanks. Pubs, IMHO, are for beer and conversation. I find them pleasant precisely because I'm not plugged in, wired up and in constant electronic communication with the world and its dog.
That said, the Progress bar is already pretty loud and flashy, and has little in the way of decent beer, so there's little to lose.
Just in case anyone's tempted to write it off as an urban myth, here is a link to the original report in The Lancet, a very well-respected UK medical journal. (Free reg. reqd.)
Our approximation and abstraction of reality becomes indiscernible as technology continues to mediate our everyday experience. Tele-presence art, however, attempts to be less concerned with the technological feat than with the breaking down of unidirectional communication structures distinguishing both visual arts and mass media. Within the installation, Fly, the utopian rhetoric invested within the notion of telepresence is ultimately usurped by the ultra-trite, supra-insignificant act of possession.
Yeesh. Since when is "because it would be so cool!" not a sufficient reason?
Electronic paper is one of those things that alawys seems to be just round the corner, but it really does seem to be nearing a useful state now.
Electronic paper, IMO, would be the ideal solution: you have the stuff in an electronic format, and "print" out whichever bit you're currently interested in onto a (say) 64-page electronic paper booklet which is entirely reusable. You get all the advantages of the electronic format (greppable, updateable, cheap and light) as well as most of those of the dead-tree format (read it on the toilet, doesn't occupy screen area).
As far as I can see the only dead-tree advantages you'd lose would be annotation (though touch-sensitive film might solve this) and, of course, the impressive bookshelf factor.
Re:Am I the only geek who HATES Nethack?
on
Nethack 3.4.1 Released
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Starving? Pray to your diety! Makes perfect sense!
Or eat some food. Or kill an animal, then eat it. Or drink some fruit juice. Larry Wall didn't invent TMTOWTDI, you know.
As for praying to your deity... well, if you believe in an interventionist deity, and you're starving to death, what would *you* say the natural response is? I find it quite realistic to have prayer as a last resort when you are cursed, starving, or dying by violence, and the system of sacrifices to placate the gods certainly has parallels in a lot of belief systems.
As to the realism of prayer actually *working*, I think maybe I'll leave that can of flames unopened for now:-).
I've seen Amazon reviews pasted into/. for a +5 Informative, but I have to admire your sheer gall in pasting in a comment on the same thread from half an hour ago.
Good idea, though. This being Slashdot, nobody checks for dupes;-).
Hmm, looks like this is a habit of yours. I'm continually amazed that people consider/. karma a sufficiently precious commodity to bother with this kind of thing...
and actually perform your own tests (which it's quite plain you didn't, because if you had, you'd have seen exactly what I did).
One thing, though: it may have been changed between the time Opera did their tests and you did yours. this post seems to suggest so, anyway.
Re:Learning the etymology of a word helps a lot
on
A Word a Day
·
· Score: 3, Informative
It's find learning what it means, but if you rattle along to its dictionary.com entry you find out it comes from the word 'malaprop'
Well, to be more precise, it comes from Mrs Malaprop, a character in Sheridan's The Rivals, who comes out with a lot of malapropisms. I don't think `malaprop' itself is an English word, though the ever-promiscuous WordNet disagrees. Of course, the chances are that the resemblance to mal à propos was intentional...
Remember, always check sources before opening mouth
Indeed. You appear to have checked source instead of sources. While WordNet recognises "expandible", Webster's and OED appear not to (neither does OOo's spell checker). So to settle the confusion, before posting that comment I consulted the Source Of All Truth, i.e. Google. 2,430 hits for "expandible" in English, vs. 318,000 for "expandable". So since two respected dictionaries and popular usage appeared to back my opinion, I decided to stick with it. Especially since the comment wasn't meant particularly seriously...
to reduce the odds of sounding like a complete fuckwit.
Take it easy. It's only spelling, you know. Hardly worth getting worked up about.
Slashdot Mirror
.The submitters link points to Unified Markup Language.
;)
Ahem. That's Unified Modelling* Language -- AFAIK it isn't in any way a markup language.
* Remove one L if outside UK
If you can get 768 pages into a nutshell, you've got to be talking about some pretty big nuts...
The camera bit sounds a little over the top, surely an led and a receiver???
/. for you. Even the submitter hasn't read the article.
The original article makes no mention of a camera -- this appears to be sloppy summarizing on the submitter's part. The article says it's done with "infrared sensors", which sounds saner.
That's
The reporting of this war has verged on pornography, with too many reporters getting excited about bombs and tanks and too little attention being paid to the human cost.
There's an article on this very subject in yesterday's Guardian. Draws some very interesting parallels between porn and war footage: "This... is the kind of spectacular vision you get in porn - where the point is to see the sex act from every angle. It's narcissistic." (Linda Williams, professor of film studies and rhetoric at UC Berkley)
Text Adventures were "Text" Adventures because they didn't have the graphics horsepower around back then that they have now.
:-).
So? The fact that a genre was influenced by the technical limitations of the time does not in any way invalidate it. It's not a "fad" merely because it doesn't push today's hardware to the limits.
I've seen a lot of comments here along similar lines: "text adventures are irrelevant because we can do graphics now". And novels are irrelevant because printing technology lets us mass-reproduce graphic novels easily?
The fact is, if you add graphics to a text adventure, it's no longer a text adventure. Within their limitations (and every genre has limitations) they are a thoroughly absorbing and well-developed art form.
These misunderstandings arise because the charm of a text adventure can't be conveyed with a screenshot, or by trying it out for a few minutes. The beauty is in the depth, and this can only be appreciated by actually playing the damn thing
And I would say that I have failed to find any game that satisfies me the way that a good text adventure does
:-) are capable of holding my attention for more than a couple of days.
Amen to that. My girlfriend recently discovered Xemacs' built-in text adventure, so I introduced her to Graham Nelson's excellent Curses and she was hooked for days.
By comparison, Vice City entertained her for about half an hour.
Personally I find that only text adventures (and Nethack
Great! I'm taking the rest of the day off, see you suckers later ;-).
I seem to remember them doing something very similar in Afghanistan (sorry, don't have time to dredge up a link). But in that case, they didn't need the capacity (not that I heard, anyway): they bought the pictures from the commercial imaging satellites to stop anyone else getting their hands on them. ISTR news agencies being less than happy with it at the time...
Read what you will but you cannot claim the UK government does not have support at home for the action.
Bollocks. Of course I can, and I have an ICM poll to back my claims up. 44% of the public opposed to war, 38% supportive. I'd be delighted to know where you got your figures fr... oh, hang on, you don't have any, it was an entirely unsupported assertion (cue shouts of "You're new around here, aren't you?").
As to political support, bear in mind that many Labour ministers are unwilling to oppose a war publicly for fear of damaging the party. Nobody wants Blair's head on a plate, since he's the most successful leader they've had in years. But the parent post referred to "popular support" so this is not really relevant.
So after 8 hours staring at a screen and tapping at a keyboard, I can head down the pub to... stare at a screen and tap at a keyboard?
Thanks, but no thanks. Pubs, IMHO, are for beer and conversation. I find them pleasant precisely because I'm not plugged in, wired up and in constant electronic communication with the world and its dog.
That said, the Progress bar is already pretty loud and flashy, and has little in the way of decent beer, so there's little to lose.
I didn't see confirmation of the story though...
Just in case anyone's tempted to write it off as an urban myth, here is a link to the original report in The Lancet, a very well-respected UK medical journal. (Free reg. reqd.)
Ouch.
When you got up close, however, you noticed the paint was peeling, the widow sashes were rotted away,
If my house were full of bereaved women wearing decomposing ribbons, I wouldn't be worrying about the peeling paint...
According to a Sunday Times report the other day, Microsoft is the "best" UK employer. Scary quote from the article:
;-).
"We aren't the Moonies, but it is like a family. I met my wife, Moira, at work and when we got married the canteen even offered to bake our cake!"
I expect their children will automatically be indentured at the age of 16
well, try it for yourself
Easier said than done. The release version isn't available for download and I have better things to spend $98 on.
From the site:
Our approximation and abstraction of reality becomes indiscernible as technology continues to mediate our everyday experience. Tele-presence art, however, attempts to be less concerned with the technological feat than with the breaking down of unidirectional communication structures distinguishing both visual arts and mass media. Within the installation, Fly, the utopian rhetoric invested within the notion of telepresence is ultimately usurped by the ultra-trite, supra-insignificant act of possession.
Yeesh. Since when is "because it would be so cool!" not a sufficient reason?
Electronic paper is one of those things that alawys seems to be just round the corner, but it really does seem to be nearing a useful state now.
Electronic paper, IMO, would be the ideal solution: you have the stuff in an electronic format, and "print" out whichever bit you're currently interested in onto a (say) 64-page electronic paper booklet which is entirely reusable. You get all the advantages of the electronic format (greppable, updateable, cheap and light) as well as most of those of the dead-tree format (read it on the toilet, doesn't occupy screen area).
As far as I can see the only dead-tree advantages you'd lose would be annotation (though touch-sensitive film might solve this) and, of course, the impressive bookshelf factor.
1. Bring Nethack to today when it comes to graphics and sound
Have you seen Falcon's Eye?
Starving? Pray to your diety! Makes perfect sense!
:-).
Or eat some food. Or kill an animal, then eat it. Or drink some fruit juice. Larry Wall didn't invent TMTOWTDI, you know.
As for praying to your deity... well, if you believe in an interventionist deity, and you're starving to death, what would *you* say the natural response is? I find it quite realistic to have prayer as a last resort when you are cursed, starving, or dying by violence, and the system of sacrifices to placate the gods certainly has parallels in a lot of belief systems.
As to the realism of prayer actually *working*, I think maybe I'll leave that can of flames unopened for now
At one point, NetHack had everything but the kitchen sink. Then they added the kitchen sink. What more could you want? :-)
Does someone want to modernize Logo for OS X? That would rock! ;)
Ask, and ye shall receive:
ACSLogo for Mac OS X
I've seen Amazon reviews pasted into /. for a +5 Informative, but I have to admire your sheer gall in pasting in a comment on the same thread from half an hour ago.
;-).
/. karma a sufficiently precious commodity to bother with this kind of thing...
Good idea, though. This being Slashdot, nobody checks for dupes
Hmm, looks like this is a habit of yours. I'm continually amazed that people consider
and actually perform your own tests (which it's quite plain you didn't, because if you had, you'd have seen exactly what I did).
One thing, though: it may have been changed between the time Opera did their tests and you did yours. this post seems to suggest so, anyway.
It's find learning what it means, but if you rattle along to its dictionary.com entry you find out it comes from the word 'malaprop'
Well, to be more precise, it comes from Mrs Malaprop, a character in Sheridan's The Rivals, who comes out with a lot of malapropisms. I don't think `malaprop' itself is an English word, though the ever-promiscuous WordNet disagrees. Of course, the chances are that the resemblance to mal à propos was intentional...
Remember, always check sources before opening mouth
Indeed. You appear to have checked source instead of sources. While WordNet recognises "expandible", Webster's and OED appear not to (neither does OOo's spell checker). So to settle the confusion, before posting that comment I consulted the Source Of All Truth, i.e. Google. 2,430 hits for "expandible" in English, vs. 318,000 for "expandable". So since two respected dictionaries and popular usage appeared to back my opinion, I decided to stick with it. Especially since the comment wasn't meant particularly seriously...
to reduce the odds of sounding like a complete fuckwit.
Take it easy. It's only spelling, you know. Hardly worth getting worked up about.
maybe they meant to say expendible?
Do you mean that maybe they meant to say expendable?