If you blast out thousands of anything, you expect to lose a few--epically when you've been as careless as the RIAA has in bringing these cases.
The issue here is that they need to win 100% or the cases will all start to unravel.
The grandparent was implying, correctly, that this means they are living off fear to appeal rather than the law. If the law was absolutely on their side, they might allow for the fact that they are not going to get every sing case right and let things like this drop.
The fact that they are not willing to let go of a single case implies they know their house of cards isn't all that steady.
Or more simply, these devices could have a button on the router in lieu of a default password. You would connect to the router and the web page would say "Press the big red button".
Whenever pressed, the button would allow the MAC Addr that had most recently displayed the web page to set a new password (Possibly could allow full access with just the button, forgoing passwords altogether, but that has some security holes if an attacker happened to be on your wireless at the same time--so does the password thing but at least you could be notified right away if you were being attacked while setting the password.)
Heck, it could even be the power button, it's not like these things need to be 24/7--You could impose that when no password is assigned, a password must be entered within 1 minute of powering up. If you don't enter one, you have to restart it. Once a password was entered, of course, all this would be disabled and you would access it like any other passworded system (can't have a power failure leaving you vulnerable).
If you work on a home router, suggest this to your marketeer.
I really recommend you take some time talking to some Evangelical ("Born Again") Christians. Don't piss them off right away, listen to what they believe and ask questions, it's really interesting (and somewhat entertaining).
They believe that the bible is the Exact word of God. Most that I have talked to believe that there was absolutely no human intervention or interpretation and that it contains no inaccuracies or contradictions.
Honestly I don't remember anyone saying this when I was a child (1970's), I believe it's a newer movement--but then I could have been sheltered from it--I still run into a lot of people who are blind to the fact that Americas' Christians have these beliefs.
This is true fundamentalism. They believe Adam had a rib removed to create Eve, Eve ate a physical Apple, etc. For references, most non-EV Christians believe that this is a story passed down by word of mouth for generations being changed and adapted on the way; that the bible is more about telling you how to live your life than a record of events --for instance that the apple represents knowledge (most often the "Knowledge of Sex") and that Eve's seduction of Adam is what got them kicked out of the garden.
I think all Americans should do their best to understand the Born Again religious movement in this country. Take notice of their drives to teach religion in schools and then try to figure out how long they would tolerate the teaching of any other religion to their children... Understand how quick they are to deride and control others in "Moral" areas such as abortion, sexuality and homosexuality, but how often they tend to apply these morals to others while feeling themselves excluded (or how well the tolerate others controlling them in a similar manner).
I'm not saying that All Christians are the same, but the second you hear the words "Born Again" or Evangelical, I recommend you try to get into a conversation and find out for yourself.
Perhaps the inclusion of TPM in later OSes, chipsets and hard-drives will spur adoption of Linux (which presumably would just not enable such garbage).
Perhaps TPM is going to be one of the best things to ever happen to our community...
>I always found it funny that the sales taxes supposedly go to help the less fortunate
Just a little quibble. Sales tax is never said to help the less fortunate--it is the blindest of taxes--effecting all equally, and therefor is preferred by the rich to lower their tax burden and hated by the poor who can't afford to pay tax and fly under the radar of all other taxes.
Incremental income tax helps the less fortunate, as does real-estate tax (somewhat) and inheritance tax (Significantly more)
Thanks for the info by the way, although you sound somewhat biased, it gives a lot of good data points that those of us in the US aren't exposed to.
It will be interesting when the ability to merge and analyze multiple images becomes possible, even better if it can be done in real-time.
"Vision" can give computers the ability to correct themselves. With visual feedback, suddenly robotic arms don't have to be told what to do via a long stream of coordinates, you could pretty much point.
It could also enable a new form of GUI control where the camera just watches your hand--eliminating the need for a mouse.
Pointing a single camera out the side window of a moving vehicle could give you an accurate, very detailed 3-d representation of the landscape since a video from a car contains many images of the same objects from different locations (required for 3-d image creation).
Comparing such shots to each other over a period of days would allow you to locate changes in huge areas of environment. Chicago could have identified their Bomb Scare two weeks earlier and not endangered their entire population by their inability to notice what they are calling "bomb-like devices".
They could also identify growth of vegetation, new construction, problems in roads and buildings and any other changes that we tend not to notice because they happen over long periods of time.
Because of the ability to only recognize differences, the storage space should be MUCH better than any existing compression mechanisms currently used.
Although there are an awful lot of bad things this kind of technology will enable as well--it's going to happen, and the changes to our world should be as massive as the changes brought about by the internet itself, I'm sure I barely scratched the surface.
One should also take into account that Good Musicians have a tendency to actually want to play music and may be moving away from record labels.
Also, music quality seems to be cyclic. Every so often a band (Beatles, Nirvana,...) open up an entire new genre (Rock, Rap, Disco, Hip-Hop, Alternative,...) that inspires an entire new batch of talented kids to give their soul over to it which is what makes Good Music.
Record Labels tend to counter this trend, resisting new genres and styles and flooding the airwaves with the old money grabbing assholes (Metalica anyone?) that have gone through what little talent their souls contained and are just spewing out garbage to make a buck.
Lately much of the really talented people have been going it on their own. Start to listen to alternative music sources, podcasts and stuff like that. You might be surprised.
One of the biggest holds the music industry has is the ability to force certain music onto the airwaves--and to get this music replayed constantly. Like it or not, all of us are influenced towards liking music that we hear repeatedly. People have been drifting away from Radio, which also loosens the industries control.
It's really not as simple as "Music is being stolen", I promise. I haven't bought music for years. I just found that you could write a CD from iTunes and read it back in as MP3s, so I started buying from iTunes. Not because I could give the music away, but because they couldn't take it away or impose their will on me once I had freed the music--that's the only reason I was avoiding paying...
I think the grandparent poster was assuming that pain was additive. This means that if getting spammed had a value of 5 and getting raped had a value of 5,000,000, then 1,000,000 spam would = 1 rape.
The thing that needs to be pointed out to the poster is that they are not additive like that. For instance, how many slaps equates to getting your hands chopped off? For some people, there may actually be a number, but for most of us, epically programmers, there just isn't.
The grandparent may not realize that rape can have the same kind of effect on a person. It's probably just a lack of empathy which is not uncommon among programmers--it's the reason the world thinks nerds are insensitive assholes--most are.
It, more than anything else about MS Windows is driving me into other alternatives.
Apple offers a reasonable 5-pack "Family License" for less than the price of two installs, and they don't seem to make you jump through these hoops.
And I like Linux's pricing even better.
I'm slowly reducing the numbers of Windows PCs in my house. When each one dies of windows rot, I try to move required functionality (games, mostly) onto another PC and replace the common functionality (web browsing, music playing, writing docs, editing music,...) onto a more appropriate platform.
I hope someone from Microsoft reads this topic--eventually if you beat them over the head with enough clues one will have to get through.
My god you don't get it. I've been at this crap for 30 years now. I've done nothing but programming in that time--from assembly to most higher level languages. I've seen enough to know that there are a lot of people out there with a lot of needs.
You have apt-get, an annoying but useful program. It's CLI based and virtually impossible to browse content--for stuff like descriptions and screen-shots, but how could a CLI based program do better?
You have that, and you insist on putting down a program with a slightly different offering targeted at people who are not you--people who want to just browse and hit one button and be running an app instantly.
Yes, this is the ultimate dumbed-down, which is a fantastic achievement.
You act like dumbing something down is being lazy, it's actually amazingly hard--to figure out exactly how much functionality is needed while not allowing the "Extra" options that would require fucking up the interface.
For the most part I like and can use Linux, but I swear, I'd never hire a Unix programmer to do GUI work, they really don't get it. You can't get it right now, keep an open mind and remember me in a dozen years when you suddenly find yourself fighting for simplicity and a reduction of options..
hehe. I haven't played GH as much as Amp or Freq. Love Amplitude, freq is a step behind. To tell you the truth, I don't like GH as much, aside from the guitar gimmick it's actually a few steps behind freq.
Amplitude has a fantastic progression. I was getting use out of easy, normal and hard levels at the same time--there is enough overlap that as I was finishing Normal I could practice on easy and when I got stuck, I could attack the first couple arenas in hard.
As with GH and freq, the toughest level is right out, but who knows--maybe after I get through hard it'll magically become easier just like hard did.
I can see your point of view--for you these download/install apps may not be right.
Can you not accept that for others, the ability to browse a list of apps, view screen shots, click one and have it installed without knowing anything beyond the GUI is a good thing?
I don't think you'll find what you want for Linux, and I think that what you are asking for is a little inflexible, I think you'll find that if you start to use apt-get it will solve 95% of your problems, and for the remaining 5% you'll still have to download, uncompress and probably compile to get it to work.
You'll find your Linux experience much more pleasant if you just accept this rather than expecting Linux to act like a system that has one GUI, runs on only one CPU and only supports a couple version of a single OS at a time (rather than a few versions of 30+++ flavors of OS)
Or you can do like I do and only use apps that are in the CNR repository--limited but absolutely useful. After a while it hardly even hurts any more.
CNR works fantastically. Perhaps you don't need to use it.
The biggest points are: - You can't specify where to put files - You can't specify the menu structure (The menu structure matches the CNR store exactly, making it easy to find stuff) - It's trivial to use.
It MUST NOT have options like a CLI or flexibility.
Currently it is extremely easy to use for non-Linux people, in fact it's easier than getting software onto a PC.
With your requirements, I suggest another piece of software.
Isn't it acceptable that different programs handle different needs for different groups of people? Must you really break something for me so that it works like you want?
Please, just accept it the way it is and say, it my be great for you but not me!
If you see CNR as just another entry into the package management/software instillation, you don't get it--please keep quiet and don't ask them to change software that is perfectly suited for others.
There are only 3 keys on Frequency & Amplitude. 5 on GH, but they aren't used until you get into the harder levels. I doubt starting with 3 chords and adding more in at harder levels would cause such complaints--I don't hear people complaining about the 3 buttons in Amp.
How in the world am I having so much trouble explaining this?
Start of exactly as easy as Freq/Amp and get harder. Work from abstractions that bring entire sequences down to a single key-strike (like amp/freq) and move towards less abstract more realistic note sequences (like freq/amp) then take it a step further and go for actual note sequences.
Should be cheaper to buy a real keyboard than GH's controller (which is useless for anything else, btw)--might even find a USB one out there that plugs into the PS/2's built-in USB ports.
Easy levels are identical to amp/freq and could be played on controller or kbd in a way similar to how the 5 keys from GH map to the controller, only the hardest levels would actually require a keyboard.
Of course, the song would contain more complicated music, and when you are past playing the three chords, you move on to a fourth.
Why all the resistance? Is this attempts to get "Funny" mods, or am I really doing that poor a job of explaining this concept?
BTW, anyone else try to map the GH keys to freq/amplitude. You can get SO CLOSE, but the up/down (Strum) on the guitar is hard-wired and the games won't change their left/right mapping (skip tracks) to up/down.
>> Because then, very few people would buy the game (too much up-front cost) and very few people would enjoy it (long learning curve).
I don't think these are issues. Cost has been in the past, but I've seen simple roll-up keyboards that could be used that are way less than a GH guitar. As for the long learning curve, simplifying the song has been the trick to all the existing games. You don't hit every note, you are hitting chords or just the most significant notes in "Easy" mode, but with a real keyboard, I suppose you could have the typical easy-hard modes and then a "You Play" mode where you actually play all the notes for a given track.
You could still use the keyboard to play vocal/other tracks exactly as in freq/amplitude, starting out simple with a few keys.
I'm still talking about a game, just one that leads to, at the very least, a familiarity with chords and notes...
I agree, but I would think that you could pick simple rock songs with 3 or 4 chords and just play those chords at first, allowing the same simplicity without going to "Happy Birthday" (Exactly what I dislike about existing "Tutorial" software)
Why can't these games actually help us play instruments? They do a great job of slowly ramping up your skill and evaluating your playing ability--why not hook them up to a midi keyboard or real guitar then start off slow with some simple tracks, and move to more complicated/difficult tracks?
You could even get different people with different instruments playing different tracks together. Eventually you remove the game and everyone is actually playing music together.
I've just started seriously playing Amplitude (Beat normal, half way through the next level) and I noticed that at some point you stop playing the "Notes" and start following patterns without thinking about it, in fact whenever you think about it, you start missing notes.
I assume that must be what playing real music is like, but I can't seem to get there on my keyboard. A game like this would be the perfect bridge that gets me used to playing the chords and notes slowly.
I know there is teaching "Piano"/midi software out there, I bought some a long time ago, but being written as a teaching program and not a game it doesn't have the same addictive pace, levels of challenge and decent, real music.
If anyone knows of a GOOD midi/keyboard alternative--a game like one of these Harmonix games that also trains on the keyboard, please reply--I'll buy it today.
Sorry, but your post didn't sound very imaginative--more likely is that EQ's attempt wasn't very imaginative. They probably just stuck players in the parts of existing monsters which, as you pointed out, won't work (Especially in a RPG like EQ--a FPS would be a better target)
You would, of course, have to restrict monsters to a certain area, and you'd have to remove the AI "Buffs".
You'd have to change the rules quite a bit for monsters...
Perhaps you could only move to a harder area by defeating a set number of players. This would give you a goal at least.
I'm sure monsters would come up with better techniques like luring and surrounding PCs, taking better advantage of land layout and fixed gun emplacements (The monsters have time to prepare, a PC comes onto the scene without any locational advantage). Monsters could sacrifice themselves deliberately when (and only when) it would place the player at a disadvantage.
Perhaps each player-monster could control a team, allowing the player to kill more monsters than there are human enemies.
Monsters could be more RTS--building and maintaining buildings to manufacture and upgrade monsters.
Many games make a level easier after you have failed it a couple times--the challenge in this game would automatically vary randomly.
I dunno, there are bugs to work out but it's nowhere near as bad as you describe.
What technologies do we have that an individual can implement for less?
Nuclear and other large-scale solutions are pointless to debate about because we can't do them ourselves and whining isn't going to have any real effect anyway.
So what are you suggesting--I'm in if it generates significantly more power/$ than solar and can be done without pissing off neighbors (wind--which wouldn't work in my valley anyway)
For one part, the more people that buy them, the less expensive these solutions should be. If we were mass-producing the cells, there is no reason we shouldn't be able to get them down to around $10/sqft, maybe less if some tricky technologist creates the ability to stamp them out in a single pressing process.
There is also the issue of lifetime. If all cells were created and sold at a specific size and with specific side-connectors, there is no reason you couldn't buy them part by part. So you start out by buying a row of 10, a small rectifier that can handle up to 30 cells and maybe some mirrors to increase the yield.
The next year you might buy another 20 cells...
The next year maybe another 30 cells and extend your rectifier with another 30 cell rectifier.
After some amount of time (after you are out of room on your roof) you can start replacing the oldest ones with newer, cheaper and better cells.
In this way you could stretch the expense over years, pay just what you can afford, not pay interest on a huge loan and yet start getting immediate benefit (savings that you could apply to buying more cells).
a plug-and-play system could also include small windmills, refuse burners and any other technology that comes out over the next few decades.
Really the only thing holding us back is standardization (which may be a difficult task since every company obviously wants to maximize their profits by forcing you down their proprietary path and they also love to charge huge margins on people buying in smaller amounts--we need to get these things into costco!)
Yeah, if you used self-replicating, small probes it would be easy to imagine them blasting themselves out of gigantic cannons to attain a decent percentage of the speed of light--slamming into another small, light planetoid and replicating.
You could cover the milky way quite quickly I'd think. Covering the Universe is another matter...
I'd assume it's more like the way we treat aboriginal people--at least until we discover some resource on their land. We tend to observe and try not to interfere. Turns out that if they are aware of us in any way, it changes their development, so I'm sure any aliens out there have figured out that they have to stay hidden from the culture they are observing...
Heck, if it were me I'd even make a few people in strategic positions aware of my existence to ensure that governments kept the whole issue quiet by softly denying and ridiculing the possibility.
I remember a movie where a proud native tribe had turned into a bunch of drunken idiots simply because of their ability to interact with an "advanced" society.
You would feel useless, worthless and pathetic if you found that everything you'd ever done and ever would do means absolutely nothing in relation to what others could do. To know that no matter how good you and everyone you know got at using your most advanced weapon (the blowgun perhaps), that you couldn't even deter a slightly determined group with guns. To know that you could be wiped out in a second, and the only thing that keeps you alive is that you are somewhat entertaining to a few aliens, but that they could easily get bored and start treating you as cattle instead.
How does the best cave-painter or master pot maker compare to our current artists and products except as novelties?
We'd be utterly useless except as a distraction--and that's only as long as we don't know that all our art, products, wars and scheming for oil is absolutely pitiful and trite compared to what's being done all around us.
It would be completely evil to destroy a younger culture by contacting it--we're learning that now (at lest we are kind of learning it--we'll let them be as long as there isn't money to be made off them). If "they" learned that before they left their planets, imagine how much further ahead of us they would be ethically by now...
Slashdot Mirror
If you blast out thousands of anything, you expect to lose a few--epically when you've been as careless as the RIAA has in bringing these cases.
The issue here is that they need to win 100% or the cases will all start to unravel.
The grandparent was implying, correctly, that this means they are living off fear to appeal rather than the law. If the law was absolutely on their side, they might allow for the fact that they are not going to get every sing case right and let things like this drop.
The fact that they are not willing to let go of a single case implies they know their house of cards isn't all that steady.
Would you expect that an applet running in your browser right now could access your companies database?
I know that you can override applet security, but I don't know if it's trivial--typically a page can only talk to the server from whence it came.
Damn, I want to mod that as -1 offtopic just so I can give it another +1 funny
Or more simply, these devices could have a button on the router in lieu of a default password. You would connect to the router and the web page would say "Press the big red button".
Whenever pressed, the button would allow the MAC Addr that had most recently displayed the web page to set a new password (Possibly could allow full access with just the button, forgoing passwords altogether, but that has some security holes if an attacker happened to be on your wireless at the same time--so does the password thing but at least you could be notified right away if you were being attacked while setting the password.)
Heck, it could even be the power button, it's not like these things need to be 24/7--You could impose that when no password is assigned, a password must be entered within 1 minute of powering up. If you don't enter one, you have to restart it. Once a password was entered, of course, all this would be disabled and you would access it like any other passworded system (can't have a power failure leaving you vulnerable).
If you work on a home router, suggest this to your marketeer.
I really recommend you take some time talking to some Evangelical ("Born Again") Christians. Don't piss them off right away, listen to what they believe and ask questions, it's really interesting (and somewhat entertaining).
They believe that the bible is the Exact word of God. Most that I have talked to believe that there was absolutely no human intervention or interpretation and that it contains no inaccuracies or contradictions.
Honestly I don't remember anyone saying this when I was a child (1970's), I believe it's a newer movement--but then I could have been sheltered from it--I still run into a lot of people who are blind to the fact that Americas' Christians have these beliefs.
This is true fundamentalism. They believe Adam had a rib removed to create Eve, Eve ate a physical Apple, etc. For references, most non-EV Christians believe that this is a story passed down by word of mouth for generations being changed and adapted on the way; that the bible is more about telling you how to live your life than a record of events --for instance that the apple represents knowledge (most often the "Knowledge of Sex") and that Eve's seduction of Adam is what got them kicked out of the garden.
I think all Americans should do their best to understand the Born Again religious movement in this country. Take notice of their drives to teach religion in schools and then try to figure out how long they would tolerate the teaching of any other religion to their children... Understand how quick they are to deride and control others in "Moral" areas such as abortion, sexuality and homosexuality, but how often they tend to apply these morals to others while feeling themselves excluded (or how well the tolerate others controlling them in a similar manner).
I'm not saying that All Christians are the same, but the second you hear the words "Born Again" or Evangelical, I recommend you try to get into a conversation and find out for yourself.
Perhaps the inclusion of TPM in later OSes, chipsets and hard-drives will spur adoption of Linux (which presumably would just not enable such garbage).
Perhaps TPM is going to be one of the best things to ever happen to our community...
>I always found it funny that the sales taxes supposedly go to help the less fortunate
Just a little quibble. Sales tax is never said to help the less fortunate--it is the blindest of taxes--effecting all equally, and therefor is preferred by the rich to lower their tax burden and hated by the poor who can't afford to pay tax and fly under the radar of all other taxes.
Incremental income tax helps the less fortunate, as does real-estate tax (somewhat) and inheritance tax (Significantly more)
Thanks for the info by the way, although you sound somewhat biased, it gives a lot of good data points that those of us in the US aren't exposed to.
It will be interesting when the ability to merge and analyze multiple images becomes possible, even better if it can be done in real-time.
"Vision" can give computers the ability to correct themselves. With visual feedback, suddenly robotic arms don't have to be told what to do via a long stream of coordinates, you could pretty much point.
It could also enable a new form of GUI control where the camera just watches your hand--eliminating the need for a mouse.
Pointing a single camera out the side window of a moving vehicle could give you an accurate, very detailed 3-d representation of the landscape since a video from a car contains many images of the same objects from different locations (required for 3-d image creation).
Comparing such shots to each other over a period of days would allow you to locate changes in huge areas of environment. Chicago could have identified their Bomb Scare two weeks earlier and not endangered their entire population by their inability to notice what they are calling "bomb-like devices".
They could also identify growth of vegetation, new construction, problems in roads and buildings and any other changes that we tend not to notice because they happen over long periods of time.
Because of the ability to only recognize differences, the storage space should be MUCH better than any existing compression mechanisms currently used.
Although there are an awful lot of bad things this kind of technology will enable as well--it's going to happen, and the changes to our world should be as massive as the changes brought about by the internet itself, I'm sure I barely scratched the surface.
One should also take into account that Good Musicians have a tendency to actually want to play music and may be moving away from record labels.
...) open up an entire new genre (Rock, Rap, Disco, Hip-Hop, Alternative, ...) that inspires an entire new batch of talented kids to give their soul over to it which is what makes Good Music.
Also, music quality seems to be cyclic. Every so often a band (Beatles, Nirvana,
Record Labels tend to counter this trend, resisting new genres and styles and flooding the airwaves with the old money grabbing assholes (Metalica anyone?) that have gone through what little talent their souls contained and are just spewing out garbage to make a buck.
Lately much of the really talented people have been going it on their own. Start to listen to alternative music sources, podcasts and stuff like that. You might be surprised.
One of the biggest holds the music industry has is the ability to force certain music onto the airwaves--and to get this music replayed constantly. Like it or not, all of us are influenced towards liking music that we hear repeatedly. People have been drifting away from Radio, which also loosens the industries control.
It's really not as simple as "Music is being stolen", I promise. I haven't bought music for years. I just found that you could write a CD from iTunes and read it back in as MP3s, so I started buying from iTunes. Not because I could give the music away, but because they couldn't take it away or impose their will on me once I had freed the music--that's the only reason I was avoiding paying...
I think the grandparent poster was assuming that pain was additive. This means that if getting spammed had a value of 5 and getting raped had a value of 5,000,000, then 1,000,000 spam would = 1 rape.
The thing that needs to be pointed out to the poster is that they are not additive like that. For instance, how many slaps equates to getting your hands chopped off? For some people, there may actually be a number, but for most of us, epically programmers, there just isn't.
The grandparent may not realize that rape can have the same kind of effect on a person. It's probably just a lack of empathy which is not uncommon among programmers--it's the reason the world thinks nerds are insensitive assholes--most are.
It, more than anything else about MS Windows is driving me into other alternatives.
...) onto a more appropriate platform.
Apple offers a reasonable 5-pack "Family License" for less than the price of two installs, and they don't seem to make you jump through these hoops.
And I like Linux's pricing even better.
I'm slowly reducing the numbers of Windows PCs in my house. When each one dies of windows rot, I try to move required functionality (games, mostly) onto another PC and replace the common functionality (web browsing, music playing, writing docs, editing music,
I hope someone from Microsoft reads this topic--eventually if you beat them over the head with enough clues one will have to get through.
"Roughly 81 percent of the U.S. online population has illegally viewed a full-length movie at some point in the past by theater hopping"
Although I made that up, theater hopping must cost the movie industry MUCH more than illegal downloads.
Where is the outrage at all this thievery???
My wife and I still do theater hop whenever there are two decent movies out at the same time (which is pretty rare these days)
My god you don't get it. I've been at this crap for 30 years now. I've done nothing but programming in that time--from assembly to most higher level languages. I've seen enough to know that there are a lot of people out there with a lot of needs.
You have apt-get, an annoying but useful program. It's CLI based and virtually impossible to browse content--for stuff like descriptions and screen-shots, but how could a CLI based program do better?
You have that, and you insist on putting down a program with a slightly different offering targeted at people who are not you--people who want to just browse and hit one button and be running an app instantly.
Yes, this is the ultimate dumbed-down, which is a fantastic achievement.
You act like dumbing something down is being lazy, it's actually amazingly hard--to figure out exactly how much functionality is needed while not allowing the "Extra" options that would require fucking up the interface.
For the most part I like and can use Linux, but I swear, I'd never hire a Unix programmer to do GUI work, they really don't get it. You can't get it right now, keep an open mind and remember me in a dozen years when you suddenly find yourself fighting for simplicity and a reduction of options..
hehe. I haven't played GH as much as Amp or Freq. Love Amplitude, freq is a step behind. To tell you the truth, I don't like GH as much, aside from the guitar gimmick it's actually a few steps behind freq.
Amplitude has a fantastic progression. I was getting use out of easy, normal and hard levels at the same time--there is enough overlap that as I was finishing Normal I could practice on easy and when I got stuck, I could attack the first couple arenas in hard.
As with GH and freq, the toughest level is right out, but who knows--maybe after I get through hard it'll magically become easier just like hard did.
Why wouldn't apt-get be appropriate for such a situation? Why does one app have to do every single thing?
I can see your point of view--for you these download/install apps may not be right.
Can you not accept that for others, the ability to browse a list of apps, view screen shots, click one and have it installed without knowing anything beyond the GUI is a good thing?
I don't think you'll find what you want for Linux, and I think that what you are asking for is a little inflexible, I think you'll find that if you start to use apt-get it will solve 95% of your problems, and for the remaining 5% you'll still have to download, uncompress and probably compile to get it to work.
You'll find your Linux experience much more pleasant if you just accept this rather than expecting Linux to act like a system that has one GUI, runs on only one CPU and only supports a couple version of a single OS at a time (rather than a few versions of 30+++ flavors of OS)
Or you can do like I do and only use apps that are in the CNR repository--limited but absolutely useful. After a while it hardly even hurts any more.
CNR works fantastically. Perhaps you don't need to use it.
The biggest points are:
- You can't specify where to put files
- You can't specify the menu structure (The menu structure matches the CNR store exactly, making it easy to find stuff)
- It's trivial to use.
It MUST NOT have options like a CLI or flexibility.
Currently it is extremely easy to use for non-Linux people, in fact it's easier than getting software onto a PC.
With your requirements, I suggest another piece of software.
Isn't it acceptable that different programs handle different needs for different groups of people? Must you really break something for me so that it works like you want?
Please, just accept it the way it is and say, it my be great for you but not me!
If you see CNR as just another entry into the package management/software instillation, you don't get it--please keep quiet and don't ask them to change software that is perfectly suited for others.
There are only 3 keys on Frequency & Amplitude. 5 on GH, but they aren't used until you get into the harder levels. I doubt starting with 3 chords and adding more in at harder levels would cause such complaints--I don't hear people complaining about the 3 buttons in Amp.
How in the world am I having so much trouble explaining this?
Start of exactly as easy as Freq/Amp and get harder. Work from abstractions that bring entire sequences down to a single key-strike (like amp/freq) and move towards less abstract more realistic note sequences (like freq/amp) then take it a step further and go for actual note sequences.
Should be cheaper to buy a real keyboard than GH's controller (which is useless for anything else, btw)--might even find a USB one out there that plugs into the PS/2's built-in USB ports.
Easy levels are identical to amp/freq and could be played on controller or kbd in a way similar to how the 5 keys from GH map to the controller, only the hardest levels would actually require a keyboard.
Of course, the song would contain more complicated music, and when you are past playing the three chords, you move on to a fourth.
Why all the resistance? Is this attempts to get "Funny" mods, or am I really doing that poor a job of explaining this concept?
BTW, anyone else try to map the GH keys to freq/amplitude. You can get SO CLOSE, but the up/down (Strum) on the guitar is hard-wired and the games won't change their left/right mapping (skip tracks) to up/down.
>> Because then, very few people would buy the game (too much up-front cost) and very few people would enjoy it (long learning curve).
I don't think these are issues. Cost has been in the past, but I've seen simple roll-up keyboards that could be used that are way less than a GH guitar. As for the long learning curve, simplifying the song has been the trick to all the existing games. You don't hit every note, you are hitting chords or just the most significant notes in "Easy" mode, but with a real keyboard, I suppose you could have the typical easy-hard modes and then a "You Play" mode where you actually play all the notes for a given track.
You could still use the keyboard to play vocal/other tracks exactly as in freq/amplitude, starting out simple with a few keys.
I'm still talking about a game, just one that leads to, at the very least, a familiarity with chords and notes...
I agree, but I would think that you could pick simple rock songs with 3 or 4 chords and just play those chords at first, allowing the same simplicity without going to "Happy Birthday" (Exactly what I dislike about existing "Tutorial" software)
Why can't these games actually help us play instruments? They do a great job of slowly ramping up your skill and evaluating your playing ability--why not hook them up to a midi keyboard or real guitar then start off slow with some simple tracks, and move to more complicated/difficult tracks?
You could even get different people with different instruments playing different tracks together. Eventually you remove the game and everyone is actually playing music together.
I've just started seriously playing Amplitude (Beat normal, half way through the next level) and I noticed that at some point you stop playing the "Notes" and start following patterns without thinking about it, in fact whenever you think about it, you start missing notes.
I assume that must be what playing real music is like, but I can't seem to get there on my keyboard. A game like this would be the perfect bridge that gets me used to playing the chords and notes slowly.
I know there is teaching "Piano"/midi software out there, I bought some a long time ago, but being written as a teaching program and not a game it doesn't have the same addictive pace, levels of challenge and decent, real music.
If anyone knows of a GOOD midi/keyboard alternative--a game like one of these Harmonix games that also trains on the keyboard, please reply--I'll buy it today.
Sorry, but your post didn't sound very imaginative--more likely is that EQ's attempt wasn't very imaginative. They probably just stuck players in the parts of existing monsters which, as you pointed out, won't work (Especially in a RPG like EQ--a FPS would be a better target)
You would, of course, have to restrict monsters to a certain area, and you'd have to remove the AI "Buffs".
You'd have to change the rules quite a bit for monsters...
Perhaps you could only move to a harder area by defeating a set number of players. This would give you a goal at least.
I'm sure monsters would come up with better techniques like luring and surrounding PCs, taking better advantage of land layout and fixed gun emplacements (The monsters have time to prepare, a PC comes onto the scene without any locational advantage). Monsters could sacrifice themselves deliberately when (and only when) it would place the player at a disadvantage.
Perhaps each player-monster could control a team, allowing the player to kill more monsters than there are human enemies.
Monsters could be more RTS--building and maintaining buildings to manufacture and upgrade monsters.
Many games make a level easier after you have failed it a couple times--the challenge in this game would automatically vary randomly.
I dunno, there are bugs to work out but it's nowhere near as bad as you describe.
What technologies do we have that an individual can implement for less?
Nuclear and other large-scale solutions are pointless to debate about because we can't do them ourselves and whining isn't going to have any real effect anyway.
So what are you suggesting--I'm in if it generates significantly more power/$ than solar and can be done without pissing off neighbors (wind--which wouldn't work in my valley anyway)
So rather than complaining, how do we fix it?
For one part, the more people that buy them, the less expensive these solutions should be. If we were mass-producing the cells, there is no reason we shouldn't be able to get them down to around $10/sqft, maybe less if some tricky technologist creates the ability to stamp them out in a single pressing process.
There is also the issue of lifetime. If all cells were created and sold at a specific size and with specific side-connectors, there is no reason you couldn't buy them part by part. So you start out by buying a row of 10, a small rectifier that can handle up to 30 cells and maybe some mirrors to increase the yield.
The next year you might buy another 20 cells...
The next year maybe another 30 cells and extend your rectifier with another 30 cell rectifier.
After some amount of time (after you are out of room on your roof) you can start replacing the oldest ones with newer, cheaper and better cells.
In this way you could stretch the expense over years, pay just what you can afford, not pay interest on a huge loan and yet start getting immediate benefit (savings that you could apply to buying more cells).
a plug-and-play system could also include small windmills, refuse burners and any other technology that comes out over the next few decades.
Really the only thing holding us back is standardization (which may be a difficult task since every company obviously wants to maximize their profits by forcing you down their proprietary path and they also love to charge huge margins on people buying in smaller amounts--we need to get these things into costco!)
Yeah, if you used self-replicating, small probes it would be easy to imagine them blasting themselves out of gigantic cannons to attain a decent percentage of the speed of light--slamming into another small, light planetoid and replicating.
You could cover the milky way quite quickly I'd think. Covering the Universe is another matter...
I'd assume it's more like the way we treat aboriginal people--at least until we discover some resource on their land. We tend to observe and try not to interfere. Turns out that if they are aware of us in any way, it changes their development, so I'm sure any aliens out there have figured out that they have to stay hidden from the culture they are observing...
Heck, if it were me I'd even make a few people in strategic positions aware of my existence to ensure that governments kept the whole issue quiet by softly denying and ridiculing the possibility.
I remember a movie where a proud native tribe had turned into a bunch of drunken idiots simply because of their ability to interact with an "advanced" society.
You would feel useless, worthless and pathetic if you found that everything you'd ever done and ever would do means absolutely nothing in relation to what others could do. To know that no matter how good you and everyone you know got at using your most advanced weapon (the blowgun perhaps), that you couldn't even deter a slightly determined group with guns. To know that you could be wiped out in a second, and the only thing that keeps you alive is that you are somewhat entertaining to a few aliens, but that they could easily get bored and start treating you as cattle instead.
How does the best cave-painter or master pot maker compare to our current artists and products except as novelties?
We'd be utterly useless except as a distraction--and that's only as long as we don't know that all our art, products, wars and scheming for oil is absolutely pitiful and trite compared to what's being done all around us.
It would be completely evil to destroy a younger culture by contacting it--we're learning that now (at lest we are kind of learning it--we'll let them be as long as there isn't money to be made off them). If "they" learned that before they left their planets, imagine how much further ahead of us they would be ethically by now...