ThunderPeel2001

Phaedrus' Street Crew
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Posts posted by ThunderPeel2001

  2. Posted

    I still have all my old issues of Amiga Power :) And possibly some Your Sinclair around somewhere, too.

    Those were the days...

    Edit: Oh shit! That link is awesome! I'm currently downloading Your Spectrum, Your Sinclair and Crash! Woot! (No Amiga Power, though. It'd be nice to have them on my iPad.)

  4. Posted

    I have been following this post since yesterday, but was reluctant to post as I know I am in the minority. Thanks Jeremy for at least trying to see if from the other side and understand where conservatives are coming from, although many go about defending their views with some pretty poor arguments. I don't believe guns are the problem either, and this is why: At some point in the history of the U.S. preventative measures (gun control) could have been taken but we are long past that point now with our long love affair with guns. I don't have the statistics, but modern day sport rifles or "assault" rifles make up for a ridiculously small percentage of the gun crime in America. Incidents like the one in December are outliers, as are the perpetrators committing these mass shootings. It doesn't make them any less tragic, I just think that this is a attempt to shut up the masses yelling for gun control who don't really understand that legislation like this wont really change anything. I don't have the stats, but the majority of gun violence is attributed to pistols, which are by far the most widely used semi automatic weapons in the country.

    It appears that you're arguing that the requirement for some people to have weapons is more important than a few kids' lives every now and then? (Like my friend's Facebook status pointed out.) Or are you trying to say that it's too late? There's already too many guns around that legislation won't make a difference? (In which case, why are you against it?)

    Moving away from my own idealism, I do wonder what will happen if there's another shooting. Will people see the ban on assault weapons as a failure that didn't make any difference, so why bother? Or will they think that the law didn't go far enough?

    This video addresses the media's part in tragedies like this, and is often posted during discussions like this, because it's excellent:

  5. Posted

    CyberPunk books also share the idea that technology has become more important than humanity -- not in the sense that computers now control world and we are all their slaves (although The Matrix certainly went that route), but in the sense that "life is cheap, but technology is valuable". So "low life and high tech" really does sum it up well, IMO.

    That said, it is tricky to nail an exact definition. I just know there's a certain dystopian element -- In Neuromancer, Case is threatened with ending up as "spare parts" in some backstreet clinic. In Ghost in the Shell, someone has become so cybernetically enhanced they've lost sight of that it means to be human, in Johnny Mnemonic it's revealed that pharma companies have found a cure for the futuristic plague, but they're suppressing it because they make more money from treatment. It's not played for laughs (although I guess Snow Crash was a little silly). So, Tanu, it's not enough for something to be set in a future with cybernetics and virtual reality and hacking.

    You can a sense of the tone just from the opening line from Neuromancer, arguably the prototypical CyberPunk novel:

    The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

  7. Posted

    Isn't Alex lying at the end of A Clockwork Orange, though? I remember picking that up. Also, a self-questioning character isn't one lack depth, even if they end-up on the morally "good" side of things.

    Nope. The 21st chapter is a little controversial. It's apparently a (serious) happy ending, and it was cut by the US publishers until 1986 -- when Burgess asked for it to be reinstated -- because it was felt to be unbelievable. According to Wikipedia, in Kubrick's opinion, the final chapter was unconvincing and inconsistent with the book -- which is why the film omits it.

    Probably makes more sense if Alex IS lying, but I'm guessing Burgess didn't see it that way.

  10. Posted

    My point was that I don't think the nudity in the movie comes across as sexualized. I do not feel the same way about the TV series and the manga (the latter of which contains scenes that are pretty much softcore porn).

    I agree, to a point, but I don't see how you can deny that the film enjoys showing us the naked female form. During the opening mission, doesn't she just get naked for no obvious reason?

  11. Posted

    I will say that childhood problems can have their most extreme manifestations much later if they are not dealt with. Making it to 21 without killing yourself doesn't mean your OK.

    I totally agree, but as it's just speculation that all mad gunmen had bad childhoods, it's hard to say if it will help :-/

  12. Posted

    I think I made my point poorly. That wasn't an argument for or against gun control. I was getting caught up on jeremywc's whole "people will keep killing each other" thing, and trying to illustrate that that doesn't really have much bearing on whether or not gun control is a good idea, which I took to be the purpose of this thread. I personally think that it is.

    Ah, I see. My bad.

    Maybe jeremywc will return and fully explain his point of view :)

  13. Posted

    I don't have the exact numbers, but something like 200-300 people have died in school shootings in the States since 1927, while the number of school-aged children who kill themselves every year is at least a couple of thousand. So if we want to talk about kids having secure, happy lives, gun safety in schools is a diversion.

    The most obvious solution is massive investments in mental healthcare and counseling services, but there's a lot we should be fixing. Teachers need to be highly educated and well trained in actually dealing with kids and the problems they can have. I actually think the role of a teacher has to be rethought -- right now the idea is you fill students' head with trivia and send them packing. Then we need more support staff in schools. I won't go deeper into school reform and talk about how problematic grading is... Bullying is a massive problem and needs to be dealt with. Such behaviour has to be intervened with immediately and both bullies and the bullied need to see that actions have consequences. I don't mean sending kids into institutions, but if a kid makes it impossible for other children to study at a school due to his abusive behaviour, it's the bully who needs to be moved into another school where he can start again. These days it's often the bullied who have to escape.

    And then we can come back to the original topic. We have a lot of people who are fucked up to various degrees. This has massive costs seen in crime, suicides and depression. School The economical costs have to be astronomical, but of course difficult to prove.

    We need to do more to help them now and more to give people the chance to grow up in secure environments. That's how we stop school shootings, but it requires massive institutional and cultural changes that would take years and years even if people agreed to put in the effort, which they won't. Because of austerity bullshit that's going to have some pretty spectacular costs down the road.

    This is a very interesting point! But I think it's a separate point.

    Most insane gunmen are in their 20s or older, not their teens. I do believe something could be done to help depression in teenagers, especially since children in the USA are among the least happy in the first world (the UK, too), but it's a separate issue to protecting perfectly happy children from being shot :(

  14. Posted

    Is anyone actually saying that, though? I don't know, I guess I think it's pretty sensible to tackle things one things at a time. Perhaps gun control would save a lot of lives, perhaps it wouldn't. Then there's another discussion to be had about other stuff like mental health issues and security and whatever.

    Of course gun control would save lives. Is it the only way to save lives? Probably not, but I don't think anyone is arguing that having less weapons wouldn't lead to less deaths...? How many people have to die before the number who would have been saved is enough to warrant gun control? 20 children would still be alive if the US had a ban on guns... is that not enough?

    If you're talking about the realities of enforcing gun control in modern day American, then I completely agree, but it doesn't sound like you are...? :-/

    Mental heath issues are completely moot with regards to gun control, as my friend's status quite succinctly points out. He who is sane today, and therefore may have access to a portable killing machine, may not wake up sane tomorrow. In the case of the latest shooting, they were his mother's guns, anyway. How would the NRA's proposed solution of creating an "Insane Database" have helped in that situation?

    As for security, Nachimir pointed out that both Columbine and Virginia Tech both had armed guards.

    I think a lot of these "other things" have been discussed already. The question is if there's anything new to be said about them.

  16. Posted

    Just started playing this... Loving it so far! It's maybe not quite as polished as a GTA game, but it's damned near close. Plus, to my surprise, it does a lot of things better! (Ok, the car handling isn't super-realistic, but it sure is more fun! And the "undercover cop" trope is a brilliant way of explaining why a morally good character would commit a shit-ton of crimes.)

    I hope this game was successful. I think GTA needs a decent competitor, and I'm really enjoying what I've experienced so far.

    Edit: I see on Steam that there's a lot of DLC. A lot. What's it all for? Is any of it recommended? I feel a bit overwhelmed looking at it all.

  17. Posted

    Finally Steam is downloading The Witcher 2 and I want to keep it downloading all night so I could sneak a half an hour of play before work. What is the best way to prevent Win7 from going to sleep mode while downloading?

    (I know a quick fix solution: temporarily change power settings and set them back later, but I'm thinking of how to make this easier in the future)

    I know ideally Steam would call some Windows API's to indicate it's not idle, but it doesn't seem to do that as the PC just went to sleep a moment ago.

    There is supposedly some programs that prevent sleep mode while they run. But ideally it should go to sleep when the download is finished. Is there something that monitors network activity and if it's over some threshold, keeps it from sleeping?

    Actually, I think I've seen the PC wake periodically as if by itself. I suppose it might be the network card that is waking it (that setting is enabled). If Steam is downloading at the moment the PC goes to sleep, is it likely the network card will still receive some packets and wake it up?

    Sorry to bump this topic, but I stumbled across it and happen to know the answer now: Yes, if your network adapter is capable of waking your computer, then downloading something will prevent it from going to sleep.

  18. Posted

    The problem is not the law itself, but the current interpretation. Overturning that is a longer and much more complicated process. Some legislative body will have to make a law directly contradicting the current interpretation, the legal challenge to the law will have to make it to the Supreme Court, and then the makeup of the nine justices, who serve for life, will have to have changed enough to ensure a different outcome. The whole process has a half-life of a generation or so. Change doesn't happen fast, with regards to the Constitution, so it's probably better just to do an end-run around the "well-regulated militia" thing with an assault-weapon ban or whatever, rather than carp about the Supreme Court sucking at its job, which it often does.

    Yeah, that's a good point, actually.

  19. Posted

    I found it very interesting that the NASA astronaut doing the tour revealed that the viewport of Earth was a very popular place to spend time. It's kind of romantic. Also, man, who decorated the ISS? It's damned ugly. They need an interior designer to go up there and sort things out.

  20. Posted

    Are we talking about the movie here? Because I always thought there was a point to the nudity in that film. Being that Kusanagi is a full-body cyborg who is unsure that she's even human anymore. How do I word this... A symptom of her existential crisis? Like how in one scene, Batou covers her up, but that seems more for his sense of decency rather than hers.

    Or I am rationalizing too much.

    I think you're absolutely right... but let's just say that it's not surprising that that character was a woman. A sexy woman. :eyebrow:

    Edit: Looks like Argo got there first.

  21. Posted

    Your initial comment stated that the game was "horribly unbalanced" because of the respawn. That, as well as general disdain for the degradation, are common sentiments about the game, and i just want to provide a counter point to it.

    Well, clearly, as I've already acknowledged several times -- thanks to you pointing it out -- it wasn't an issue for everyone. All that said, I'd love to know how you managed to play it so easily. I just got my ass handed to me repeatedly. I mean I barely made it out of the first few levels. It's possibly it's because I spent the entire game with my body pumped full of adrenaline, jumping out of my skin every single time something attacked me. (And I'm not really exaggerating all that much -- I was terrified playing that game... and then the spiders came. And I nearly died.)

    I found BioShock to be much more balanced, but maybe I'm less of a wuss than I used to be? Or maybe that's just a different type of game?

    Hmm. All this talk makes me want to load it up again and see if it's as scary/difficult as I remember it. I still have my original copy here somewhere B)

  24. Posted

    I have definitely never had to speed run through System Shock 2 to cope with the enemy respawn or the degradation. (I mean, I always pretty meticulously explore every corner of the ship and also usually end up doing loads of back-tracking for other tasks like the research goals.)

    You're clearly much better at SS2 than me, then. I've no idea why you think we're having an argument. As I already said, "I was already so terrified while I was playing it, that reducing the spawn/degradation just made it bearable to play."

    Shtup is a pretty nice mod though, you were involved with that?

    Yep, early on.

  25. Posted

    The best piece of advice I've been given so far is this: Try and clear as much of a sector as you can before you move on. This made a huge difference last time I played (but then I warped into a nebula without oxygen when I was already low and all my crew died... gah).

    Also:

    - A Scrap Collecting Arm can be a great help if you get it early enough.

    - Keeping empty rooms open to space will prevent fires from even starting.

    - Doors are worth upgrading.

    - When you're boarded, get your crew to Medibay and open everything else to the vacuum of space -- your boarders will try and attack you in the Medibay, where your energy refills automatically.

    - You can quickly refill your ship with O2 by opening all internal doors. A lot quicker than just waiting for the O2 system to do it.

    - You get more resources if you take out an enemies crew, but not their ship (tip: aim for their O2 and Weapon systems).

    - Always focus on risk/reward: If you're getting hammered by an enemy, focus on leaving the battle. 25 scrap isn't going to be worth it if your hull is fucked.

    - Apparently it's very helpful if you keep pausing -- I can't seem to bring myself to do that, though.