Evening Reading
by Steve Gibson, Jan 16, 2007 6:00pm PSTSo I seem to be in a gaming lull again. More new awesome games please. Dig it?
- How Yahoo blew it - Interbreeding was hot - Skype going after IPTV it's Joost! - Stranded dolphins :( - Crazy stoners want hemp farms - We're all gonna die :(Lastly, it looks like Netflix is rolling out their IP rental system this week. Yay? It's a slow roll though so not everyone gets it at once.
Daily Filter: Planetside 2, Deadlight
Weekend PC digital deals: strategy-o-rama
38 Studios, Harry Potter Kinect - Shacknews Daily: May 25, 2012
Minecraft for Xbox 360 dev working on 'Adventure' update
Demon's Souls servers extended again
Vast mysterious landscapes, day and night cycles and gritty urban combat. One thing that has always appealed to me about not-too-distant future settings is that it makes the scenarios feel a bit more reasonable. Even if there's weird aliens running around, as critical as I can sometimes be about fictional stories, this helps it feel like things aren't too far from being believable. If you throw a post-apocalyptic sense into it like STALKER has, it could make for some great atmosphere, and even spark some nostalgia from the days of playing Fallout. There's also a bit of the alternative reality mode going on for this game too, which is another thing that excites me, I always love having drunken discussions with friends about things such as "What if Hitler won the war?".
What I'm really looking forward to though, isn't centric just around item gathering, or the satisfying kills, but doing things that lead up to some awesome stuff. The open ended world that we're told this game takes place in really gets me quite giddy... I really enjoyed Oblivion, but have never been much of a "Swords and Shields" fan. Rifles and CQB tactics have always tickled my pickle, however.
I vaguely remember seeing a game play video a few years ago where (you) the player comes up on a camp of mercenaries at night. They're all sitting around the fire, bullshitting and telling jokes, drinking coffee, etc. Those small things make me ecstatic to play. With a level of interactivity and atmosphere like that... it won't be so much about running and gunning at that point, as it more would be about soaking up everything in sight, exploring every nook and cranny, skulking around in the dark, and yes... getting those oh so satisfying stealth kills.
I feel I've kept my hopes for this game at a moderate level by not reading all the interviews, watching the video-of-the-week, or looking at all of the screenshots. But I feel I know enough about it to have maintained a good level of anticipation from the date it was announced (November 2001!) to not ever get burnt out about reading the headlines here at Shacknews. Still, my hopes for it to be good, or even a sleeper hit at best, are high as I feel the ambition of the developers make them deserving of some high praise. I just hope it can live up to most of the things they've talked about.
March can't come soon enough.
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If you want Java 1.6, here's some instructions that helped me!
http://rchandran.blogspot.com/2006/12/as-java-se-1.html
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1966 Ford Shelby Cobra 427 “Super Snakeâ€Â: One of two produced, this car was referred to as “The Cobra to end all Cobras.†The “Super Snake†was designed and built especially for Carroll Shelby, and it has been lauded as one of the most significant and valuable autos to cross the block.
http://www.supercars.net/cars/3694.html
$5 million dollars. Mind-blowing stuff.
1) Allegiance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiance_(computer_game)
2) Sacrifice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_%28Computer_Game%29
3) Dungeon Keeper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Keeper
4) Subspace: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_Fire
5) Cannon Fodder: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_Fodder
6) Return Fire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_Fire
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http://www.shackstories.com is now up and you can go sign up. The first topic isn't going out until the 1st though, I want to give people a full month to write their stuff.
P.S. If you don't like the way it looks, I don't want to hear about it right now. I did it in 3 hours.
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I've come to the conclusion that I fucked up pretty badly by avoiding spoilers/FAQs at the start. My characters' LPs are spread all over the joint, and recovering from that is likely to be a painful, laborious process, but I just can't work up the willpower to blitz 22+ hours of playtime and start over. Where's a good place to level-grind and XP/LP farm with clvl 18-21 chars? Storywise, I'm just outside the Tomb of Raithwall.
Areas more likely to yield Ether potions are a huge, huge bonus.
Paging Gauss?
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I hope this is true. HBO allegedly picks up rights to do TV series based on George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire book series. One season per book, executive produced and written by David Benioff.
http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=thud&id=8544
This would be head explodingly awesome.
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http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=13669735
Who would you cast in what role?
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Maybe Lost fans will eventually get some answers? Evidently the producers have been in talks with the network to set a timetable for ending the show.
Regardless, I'm looking forward to February. :D
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we'd already seen that Cell was miserably slow at dhrystone. Of course, that's just dhrystone and no one really cares about that at this point. Toraz and I have been using pngcrush as kind of an alternate system benchmark. It's not a very good benchmark either given that performance seems to somewhat depend on disk access speed, though the most important component is CPU speed.
Using the same png input and -brute -reduce, I have:
AMD FX-57, Intel C Compiler: 66.764 seconds 32-bit, 59.696 seconds 64-bit
Intel X6800 @ 3.47 GHz, Microsoft Compiler: 45.002 seconds 32-bit, 43.515 seconds 64-bit
PS3, Cell BE @ 3.2 GHz, ppe-gcc: 182.87 seconds 32-bit, 194.24 seconds 64-bit
At this, Cell is about 1/2 as efficient per clock as P4, and 1/4 as efficient per clock as Core 2.
Also, flops 2.0 results:
./flops20ps3
FLOPS C Program (Double Precision), V2.0 18 Dec 1992
Module Error RunTime MFLOPS
(usec)
1 4.0146e-13 0.0393 356.6879
2 -1.4166e-13 0.0270 258.9595
3 4.7184e-14 0.0289 588.9039
4 -1.2546e-13 0.0488 307.5937
5 -1.3800e-13 0.0746 388.8132
6 3.2374e-13 0.0510 568.1923
7 -8.4583e-11 0.1079 111.1915
8 3.4855e-13 0.0539 556.1993
Iterations = 512000000
NullTime (usec) = 0.0000
MFLOPS(1) = 317.0279
MFLOPS(2) = 225.4540
MFLOPS(3) = 361.0580
MFLOPS(4) = 498.3315
.. none of this makes use of the SPE's, of course.
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1) Is Toronto always this cold?
2) Are Toronto women always this hot?
3) Are Wiis available back in the states yet?
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I bought an electric guitar starter pack on Sunday (Squier Strat), but I think I should have gone with a bass instead.
So, I'm planning on going back and getting a bass, but the question is: do I keep the guitar and have both or go for the straight exchange?
let's assume money isn't too big of an issue
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anyone subscribing to shaw's nitro internet service (25Mb)? just wondering about reliability and consistency
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I went to the dentist last week for the first time in over 2 years, and they did a cleaning and some X-rays. Then they said I need 3 fillings, but didn't show me pictures of the X-ray. My bullshit detector didn't go off until they broke out some instrument that measures the density of my teeth. They used it on the teeth that need fillings and of course the machine lights up and makes a noise. It seemed pretty contrived to me, but I'm no dentist.
My experience in dealing with auto repair shops comes to mind, and I'm beginning to doubt I really need these fillings. My out of pocket expense would be around $250, the insurance is only covering about 45% of the total bill.
My teeth don't hurt - AT ALL. What's the good work, wise dentist menz?
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http://www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen2/full22.html
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http://www.supcomuniverse.com/
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Tricia Helfer (#6 on BSG) is in this months Playboy.
Unf Unf Unf
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At the moment I'm trying to hook up my computer to a Sony SXRD through the VGA in on the tv ( I dont have a DVI -> HDMI cable yet.. I need to find one on the cheap if you know of a site!). Has anyone done this before? Apparently its supposed to be really simple because they don't have any intstructions in the manual and just say what resolutions work.
I simply plugged my computer in and nothing appares to happen, it doesn't show up on any of the video modes on the TV although my computer does show a new default monitor (I tried with and without my LCD plugged in to DVI still).
I tried searching the avsforums, alas no luck.
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http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2007/012007/01172007/251373
The production model is expected to be a 64 megajoule rail gun cabale of fireing a 3.2 kilogram bullet with the explosive force of a tomohawk missle up to 250 nautical miles with the ability to shoot 95 miles straight up(ie into space).
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http://www.games.net/video/player.cfm?vId=104200
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Um this thing is pretty sexy, safari makes shack look pretty ugly (fonts are homose). I wish shack had a designer who didn't suck at the fonts. They didn't have a 17" in the store. So I settled on the 15. I don't think I"m unhappy with the purchase.
So what's some must have shit for this thing?
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I'm writing a short paper about the Shack as a community for a class I'm taking, and I'd like to get some impressions from some other Shackers.
Can you tell me some about what you think of the Shack, why you're here, and especially what your first and continuing impressions were/are? Positive, negative, and neutral opinions are welcome.
Background info like age, gender, occupation, and how you first came here would also be nice, but aren't required.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ_mlwnAmr0
The final payoff is about a minute in, amusing all the way through though.
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They need a female one
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A few months ago, I'm all like "honey, all the shackers are posting pics of their wives and girlfriends. I'm gonna do the same" *snicker*
She responds with: "what, are you stupid? they're all a bunch of horny teenagers. do it and I kill you"
flash forward to last night, where I see her posting our family Christmas photo on http://www.gymbofriends.com/
wtf?
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Can WOW run on ubuntu? I'm asking for a friend who wants to ditch windows because the only game his pc will run is WOW and he wants to nerd out for a bit in linux.
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Who do you look up to as a programmer? As in who is your programming hero/inspiration?
I have business heros, marketing heros, design heros, but I don't know that I have any programming heros... (I like larry wall, but that's more for great quotables)
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Uhh...our stronghold could use some reinforcement. There's a lvl 30 Advocate at full health vs. my lvl 10 Pariah.
No good can come of this. :(
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http://pc.ign.com/articles/755/755915p1.html
The "Black Box," available only for the PC platform, will contain Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2 at a retail price of $39.99. The "Orange Box" will be available for the PC, X360 and PS3, and will contain Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One & Two, Portal and Team Fortress 2. Retail price: $59.99.
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http://www.sparklyfresh.com/pics/thxprl.jpg
http://www.sparklyfresh.com/pics/dnf.jpg
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http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-01-17.html
Interesting study in how to pass sources as legit though.
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