I agree. This is like saying that Caller ID should be illegal... when someone calls you, you should have no way whatsoever to find out where they were calling from. Ridiculous.
Not only that, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to call an IP address "personally identifiable information."
I love people like you who seem to think that humans are some species coming from another solar system instead of one that developed naturally right here in this ecosystem. I wonder if the bacteria that changed the atmosphere to contain more oxygen ever thought the way you do.
I do agree with your fundamental point, though: Fuck humans.
I think the word "pollution" should be reserved for environmental impacts that actually harm, or could potentially harm, people's health. It would be a long stretch to claim that you're less healthy because you can't see as many stars as some other people can.
Personally, I think this whole light pollution thing that crops up from time to time is crap. If you want to see stars, get in your car and drive away from cities-- no big deal! Why be an ass and try to force everyone to turn off their lights, that they pay for, because you want to have things your way? This may come as a shock to most of the people who complain about this "issue", but there are large, large swathes of the United States and Canada that are entirely uninhabited! (The vast majority of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico for instance.) Hell, I live in a pretty populus west-coast state at the cutting edge of industry and technological development, home to Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon, and it's mostly empty. Drive an hour and a half from Seattle in virtually any direction and you're in the clear.
What they should focus on, IMO, is getting rid of all the bullcrap that PC games try to pull. Games for Windows games should be prohibited from:
1) Requiring Admin access to run. No I do not want to give permissions to an internet-capable app with dubious coding that goes online. 2) Requiring that games either run directly from CD, or at the very least don't install crappy fake CD drivers to impose their anti-copy code. (And in the process, either break or disable perfectly legitimate software, like virtual CD software.) 3) Requiring at least the same level of QA that goes into console games. It's acceptable for PC games to crash your computer; this should not be acceptable.
You're right, but what makes TF2 different than, say, Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory or the Battlefield series of games? Those all had class-based play, also... and it doesn't look like TF2 is offering anything new here.
You're mis-representing his argument. He's not saying "Macs can run games," that's patently ridiculous, seeing as there's so many games on Mac. What he's saying is "Apple doesn't give game companies much support." What's the most Apple's ever done for game companies? They had "Sprockets" for OS 8 and 9, but they never took it seriously-- Bungie did most of the work on it, from my understanding, and Apple mostly just ignored it until by OS X it was completely obsolete.
Apple's historically always been like this, though. Even classic games like Prince of Persia, Uninvited, or even Myst were done with no support or promotion whatsoever from Apple.
If there is no cost to creating a new Xbox Live account, Microsoft would have a lot more trouble getting rid of griefers and cheaters from the system. As is, if you're booted from Xbox Live, you're out $50. That's basically the reason for the charge.
Besides, the number of free downloads you get during the course of a year of Xbox Live service is worth the charge, IMO. I think I have 6 free Xbox Live Arcade games on my console, and I've owned it less than a year. If you assume each Xbox Live Arcade game is worth $10, I've come out ahead already.
Either your information is way out-of-date, or you're buying computers from Alternate Universe Dell instead of the Dell in our universe.
Dell has included the full OS CD/DVD with every computer they've sold since Windows XP came out. That's the main reason I buy from them and not their competitors. (And I think it contributes a good amount to their success.) The "recovery CD" that came with your Dell doesn't include Windows, it includes all the machine-specific drivers only. The Windows CD/DVD that came with your Dell will work on any piece of hardware as long as you have a valid OEM number. Technically, OEM numbers aren't transferrable between computers, but in reality Microsoft will always re-activate it if you ask.
without playing mother-may-I with Microsoft who may say no way
Have you called them? They approve the reactivation 100% of the time, even if you tell them you're blatantly breaking the license. (I've had them refuse Office once, again when I was blatantly breaking the license, but never Windows.)
Whether there was a hit or not was determined by the shootee, not the shooter (or the server.) Which means that to hit another mech, you had to lead them based on their ping. (For players with a low ping, you could aim directly at their mech and hit them, for high-ping players you had to lead several mech-lengths.) Players would run background downloads or other things specifically to screw up their ping and make themselves virtually invincible.
Compare to Tribes, a game that came out around the same time, where the server would determine hits based on whether the player *saw* their crosshair on the target. If the firing player saw a hit, there was a hit. A much more fair system.
I just don't think that gaming is one of those things that universities need to bend over backwards to support.
The thrust of his argument is that since the school has a course in video game design/coding/whatever, students actually need to play games. I mean, if the school had a course in cinema and outlawed renting videos from Blockbuster, would you think that makes sense?
1) Saying that you know more about game networking than the crew at Bungie, the crew who have been making games with LAN and Internet play since freakin' Minotaur in 1992, that's just plain stupid. Let's see your credentials if Bungie's coders are so stupid.
Client-server is used because it's the only way to provide fair "hit negotiation" (the server always decides who hits who-- play Mechwarrior III for an example of a game without this) and it prevents cheating, since each client sees only what it absolutely needs to see to function.
The parent would be the prototypical Slashdot post I was making fun of. Just in case anybody needed an example. (Unfortunately it doesn't mention how great Nintendo is... please try harder next time, nschubach!)
So if Apple uses BIOS, and PCs use BIOS, then what the hell are we talking about here? What computer *doesn't* use BIOS if you define it in that way?
Look, I think the general understand is when people say "BIOS sucks" they mean the little DOS-like application that runs on PCs and lets them set your boot drive.
By holding down a key when I boot, I can make my iBook pretend it's an external HD.
To be fair, the Vikings killed their fair share. They just didn't have as big a ship, and the natives were able to scare them off. Vikings weren't exactly that great at the whole "diplomacy" thing.
Dude, he lost company assets worth thousands, possibly millions, of dollars. (What are movie budgets up to now? Hundreds of millions?) This isn't a "home user," by any stretch of the imagination.
It's just posted here so we can get reams of replies talking about how over-rated Halo is, how much the Xbox (made by Microsoft!) sucks, how great Nintendo is in comparison, and how games used to have more "fun" back in the olden days. The network problem is entirely secondary.
So it's pretty much like every other Slashdot Games post.
To be fair, if Microsoft HAD joined the committee and proposed changes, the shrill cries of "embrace and extend!" would have echoed across the Internet, and they wouldn't have been any better off in the long run anyway.
I dunno. My brand new Dell out of the box won't boot with an iPod plugged in... I think it thinks the iPod is a bootable HD, tries to boot from it, and fails, and doesn't ever try the HD after failing. I had to disable USB boot on my Dell.
I've never had that problem on any Apple computer I've owned. Why? Apple doesn't use BIOS. Yet despite that, their computers seem more capable in that area than PCs. (Take, for instance, Target Disk Mode. By holding down a key when I boot, I can make my iBook pretend it's an external HD. Where's that option on my PC BIOS? Not there. Or to use a more shallow example, when you select a disk at boot time on a Mac you get nice clean icons for every bootable disk in a GUI, not a crappy text menu that isn't even smart enough to figure out which disks are bootable and which aren't.)
I heard from contact in Microsoft that the reason they didn't approve/use Open Document format is that it doesn't support all of the features of Office, and they would have had to make a ton of modifications to it to realistically make use of it. I don't know exactly which features it doesn't support that.doc does, but that's what I was told.
There is such a thing as looking out for your fellow man, and making a sacrifice in your own lifestyle, however small, to help out someone else, who would otherwise suffer from your actions, even if they are in another country.
Prove to me that making a change to my lifestyle will help somebody else who would otherwise suffer.
Its tragic that most people wont even consider changing a flipping lightbulb to help reduce energy sue and c02 emissions that may be wipiing out god knows how many people accross the world.
Prove to me that CO2 is "wiping out" people across the world. No I'm not going to just take your word for it, give me proof.
Newsflash -> there is something called climate change happening and its a pretty BAD thing.
Climate change is happening, yes. Why is it a bad thing? That's the part nobody's convinced me of. Surely there must be some good to come from climate change, it can't be universally bad.
Cleverer people than you or I are saying heavy shit is on the horizon unless we do something to stop it.
Then why is there even a debate? If they're so clever, they should be able to prove to everybody beyond a shadow of a doubt that climate change is a bad thing. "Heavy shit" in your terms.
Or why don't you be clever and convince me using some actual data, instead of all this "the sky is falling" bullshit. I'm sick of "the sky is falling."
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. This is like saying that Caller ID should be illegal... when someone calls you, you should have no way whatsoever to find out where they were calling from. Ridiculous.
Not only that, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to call an IP address "personally identifiable information."
I love people like you who seem to think that humans are some species coming from another solar system instead of one that developed naturally right here in this ecosystem. I wonder if the bacteria that changed the atmosphere to contain more oxygen ever thought the way you do.
I do agree with your fundamental point, though: Fuck humans.
I think the word "pollution" should be reserved for environmental impacts that actually harm, or could potentially harm, people's health. It would be a long stretch to claim that you're less healthy because you can't see as many stars as some other people can.
Personally, I think this whole light pollution thing that crops up from time to time is crap. If you want to see stars, get in your car and drive away from cities-- no big deal! Why be an ass and try to force everyone to turn off their lights, that they pay for, because you want to have things your way? This may come as a shock to most of the people who complain about this "issue", but there are large, large swathes of the United States and Canada that are entirely uninhabited! (The vast majority of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico for instance.) Hell, I live in a pretty populus west-coast state at the cutting edge of industry and technological development, home to Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon, and it's mostly empty. Drive an hour and a half from Seattle in virtually any direction and you're in the clear.
What they should focus on, IMO, is getting rid of all the bullcrap that PC games try to pull. Games for Windows games should be prohibited from:
1) Requiring Admin access to run. No I do not want to give permissions to an internet-capable app with dubious coding that goes online.
2) Requiring that games either run directly from CD, or at the very least don't install crappy fake CD drivers to impose their anti-copy code. (And in the process, either break or disable perfectly legitimate software, like virtual CD software.)
3) Requiring at least the same level of QA that goes into console games. It's acceptable for PC games to crash your computer; this should not be acceptable.
You're right, but what makes TF2 different than, say, Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory or the Battlefield series of games? Those all had class-based play, also... and it doesn't look like TF2 is offering anything new here.
Bah, early morning typo. That first quote should read "Macs can't run games." One of those nasty typos where you type the opposite of what you mean.
You're mis-representing his argument. He's not saying "Macs can run games," that's patently ridiculous, seeing as there's so many games on Mac. What he's saying is "Apple doesn't give game companies much support." What's the most Apple's ever done for game companies? They had "Sprockets" for OS 8 and 9, but they never took it seriously-- Bungie did most of the work on it, from my understanding, and Apple mostly just ignored it until by OS X it was completely obsolete.
Apple's historically always been like this, though. Even classic games like Prince of Persia, Uninvited, or even Myst were done with no support or promotion whatsoever from Apple.
If there is no cost to creating a new Xbox Live account, Microsoft would have a lot more trouble getting rid of griefers and cheaters from the system. As is, if you're booted from Xbox Live, you're out $50. That's basically the reason for the charge.
Besides, the number of free downloads you get during the course of a year of Xbox Live service is worth the charge, IMO. I think I have 6 free Xbox Live Arcade games on my console, and I've owned it less than a year. If you assume each Xbox Live Arcade game is worth $10, I've come out ahead already.
Either your information is way out-of-date, or you're buying computers from Alternate Universe Dell instead of the Dell in our universe.
Dell has included the full OS CD/DVD with every computer they've sold since Windows XP came out. That's the main reason I buy from them and not their competitors. (And I think it contributes a good amount to their success.) The "recovery CD" that came with your Dell doesn't include Windows, it includes all the machine-specific drivers only. The Windows CD/DVD that came with your Dell will work on any piece of hardware as long as you have a valid OEM number. Technically, OEM numbers aren't transferrable between computers, but in reality Microsoft will always re-activate it if you ask.
without playing mother-may-I with Microsoft who may say no way
Have you called them? They approve the reactivation 100% of the time, even if you tell them you're blatantly breaking the license. (I've had them refuse Office once, again when I was blatantly breaking the license, but never Windows.)
Whether there was a hit or not was determined by the shootee, not the shooter (or the server.) Which means that to hit another mech, you had to lead them based on their ping. (For players with a low ping, you could aim directly at their mech and hit them, for high-ping players you had to lead several mech-lengths.) Players would run background downloads or other things specifically to screw up their ping and make themselves virtually invincible.
Compare to Tribes, a game that came out around the same time, where the server would determine hits based on whether the player *saw* their crosshair on the target. If the firing player saw a hit, there was a hit. A much more fair system.
I just don't think that gaming is one of those things that universities need to bend over backwards to support.
The thrust of his argument is that since the school has a course in video game design/coding/whatever, students actually need to play games. I mean, if the school had a course in cinema and outlawed renting videos from Blockbuster, would you think that makes sense?
Ok,
1) Saying that you know more about game networking than the crew at Bungie, the crew who have been making games with LAN and Internet play since freakin' Minotaur in 1992, that's just plain stupid. Let's see your credentials if Bungie's coders are so stupid.
Client-server is used because it's the only way to provide fair "hit negotiation" (the server always decides who hits who-- play Mechwarrior III for an example of a game without this) and it prevents cheating, since each client sees only what it absolutely needs to see to function.
2) Never use the word "Microsoftization" again.
The parent would be the prototypical Slashdot post I was making fun of. Just in case anybody needed an example. (Unfortunately it doesn't mention how great Nintendo is... please try harder next time, nschubach!)
Why? Apple doesn't use BIOS.
Call it BIOS, call it bootstrap. Yes, they do.
So if Apple uses BIOS, and PCs use BIOS, then what the hell are we talking about here? What computer *doesn't* use BIOS if you define it in that way?
Look, I think the general understand is when people say "BIOS sucks" they mean the little DOS-like application that runs on PCs and lets them set your boot drive.
By holding down a key when I boot, I can make my iBook pretend it's an external HD.
That should be your first hint.
Hint to what? What are you even talking about?
To be fair, the Vikings killed their fair share. They just didn't have as big a ship, and the natives were able to scare them off. Vikings weren't exactly that great at the whole "diplomacy" thing.
Dude, he lost company assets worth thousands, possibly millions, of dollars. (What are movie budgets up to now? Hundreds of millions?) This isn't a "home user," by any stretch of the imagination.
Ah, but Windows patched itself. So only one sysadmin needs to come in. ;)
It's just posted here so we can get reams of replies talking about how over-rated Halo is, how much the Xbox (made by Microsoft!) sucks, how great Nintendo is in comparison, and how games used to have more "fun" back in the olden days. The network problem is entirely secondary.
So it's pretty much like every other Slashdot Games post.
To be fair, if Microsoft HAD joined the committee and proposed changes, the shrill cries of "embrace and extend!" would have echoed across the Internet, and they wouldn't have been any better off in the long run anyway.
I dunno. My brand new Dell out of the box won't boot with an iPod plugged in... I think it thinks the iPod is a bootable HD, tries to boot from it, and fails, and doesn't ever try the HD after failing. I had to disable USB boot on my Dell.
I've never had that problem on any Apple computer I've owned. Why? Apple doesn't use BIOS. Yet despite that, their computers seem more capable in that area than PCs. (Take, for instance, Target Disk Mode. By holding down a key when I boot, I can make my iBook pretend it's an external HD. Where's that option on my PC BIOS? Not there. Or to use a more shallow example, when you select a disk at boot time on a Mac you get nice clean icons for every bootable disk in a GUI, not a crappy text menu that isn't even smart enough to figure out which disks are bootable and which aren't.)
We have our own file dialogs (and treeview dialog logic) because the OS offerings were buggy for almost a decade.
Wow, way to guarantee your software will have terrible usability.
I heard from contact in Microsoft that the reason they didn't approve/use Open Document format is that it doesn't support all of the features of Office, and they would have had to make a ton of modifications to it to realistically make use of it. I don't know exactly which features it doesn't support that .doc does, but that's what I was told.
There is such a thing as looking out for your fellow man, and making a sacrifice in your own lifestyle, however small, to help out someone else, who would otherwise suffer from your actions, even if they are in another country.
Prove to me that making a change to my lifestyle will help somebody else who would otherwise suffer.
Its tragic that most people wont even consider changing a flipping lightbulb to help reduce energy sue and c02 emissions that may be wipiing out god knows how many people accross the world.
Prove to me that CO2 is "wiping out" people across the world. No I'm not going to just take your word for it, give me proof.
Newsflash -> there is something called climate change happening and its a pretty BAD thing.
Climate change is happening, yes. Why is it a bad thing? That's the part nobody's convinced me of. Surely there must be some good to come from climate change, it can't be universally bad.
Cleverer people than you or I are saying heavy shit is on the horizon unless we do something to stop it.
Then why is there even a debate? If they're so clever, they should be able to prove to everybody beyond a shadow of a doubt that climate change is a bad thing. "Heavy shit" in your terms.
Or why don't you be clever and convince me using some actual data, instead of all this "the sky is falling" bullshit. I'm sick of "the sky is falling."
But was it detected? Or wasn't it? The suspense is killing me!
It it was "to be discovered" six years ago, surely we'd know if it actually was by now.