Instead I bought this older spacesim game from the same developers, along with a flightstick and for 1/5 the price of the new game, plus official addon included. The intro makes my mouth water and the story seems fascinating.
There's a large (mainly german) community supporting the game with mods and meanwhile it should run flawlessly. Egosoft is notorious for launching games in an early-beta condition, but in the long run every issue gets fixed - with much work done by the community. So if you don't hear from me during the weeks to come, I'm most probably cruising in VR space
.Statistics: Posted by Stone1 — Mon Nov 18, 2013 4:01 pm
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Statistics: Posted by Stone1 — Wed Oct 30, 2013 3:40 pm
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Edit: nope, I cannot delete a post, either. There's just the edit function.
So the moderation would still be necessary, if you please.
Yes the film is a bit poor on plot, though well made and the actress is a beauty after all, so if she wants to interact lingually with her interface, so be it - isn't that one of the things that seperates the girls from the boys? And for those viewers who are not as firm in scifi and technics as we are, I guess it's easier to understand.
So you''ve worked out a scifi plot, Harry? Anything worth reading you're willing to share yet? I must confess that since I've read Hyperion/Endymion by Dan Simmons and A Fire Upon The Deep/A Deepness In The Sky by Vernor Vinge (which were the best scifi reads I've had yet, and while looking up the english titles in wikipedia, tadaa! I learned that a third novel in this cycle was published in 2011, now that's great. Have to get that asap). I've not read that many scifi novels since then, because most of them were, compared to the imaginative force and thrilling plots of Vinge, rather disappointing. Even William Gibson's Sourcecode was, compared to the Neuromancer trilogy, rather dull. I just spotted that this one is also part of a trilogy, so mayhaps I'll give it a second chance.
But for that, I first have to reduce the dose of those always fun-to-read crime novels playing in my neighborhood (Bavaria and Upper Austria) which my mom deals me.
Back to the point, if you've got a "beyond the universe" novel in the drawer, me want reading
! I'm getting a mobile 7 inch tablet running an open Android soon, so a digital version would suffice.And now to something completely different: we're getting up to 24°C and plain sunshine this weekend here in central Europe, take that you british islanders! And my weekend starts this afternoon.
Have a nice one, see you.
Statistics: Posted by Stone1 — Thu Oct 24, 2013 2:30 pm
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The movie snippet is mildly intriguing though I had to fight my reflex irritation at some of the technical infrastructure.
Aria has built in HUD and an obviously intelligent computer implanted in her nervous system. Yet it still talks like a toy from the 1980s and she has to address it out loud. Grrrrrrrr....
That said, the premise is potentially interesting (finding herself on a sentient planet - brings to mind "Solaris")
But only qualifies as "mildly intriguing" because, so far, its too light on plot points, motivation, direction etc. It's obviously a taster, presumably designed to attract a budget for the real thing. The director has talent though, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes. If that one fails, perhaps I should pass them my own "beyond the universe" plot...
Statistics: Posted by HarryStottle — Thu Oct 24, 2013 11:10 am
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It displays, via a rather attractive actress, what our future transhuman self(/ves) might be capable of.
Thought that this forum is a good place to share it (and since my last thread in this category ended in personal trivia which should better have been done via email, I started a new topic. Hope that's fine with you, Harry).
Enjoy
Statistics: Posted by Stone1 — Wed Oct 16, 2013 6:20 pm
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It displays, via a rather attractive actress, what our future transhuman self(/ves) might be capable of.
Thought that this forum is a good place to share it (and since my last thread in this category ended in personal trivia which should better have been done via email, I started a new topic. Hope that's fine with you, Harry).
Enjoy
Statistics: Posted by Stone1 — Wed Oct 16, 2013 6:19 pm
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It's back to the diplomacy table in Syria, there's still the chance of a UN-resolution together with Russia and China. Let's hope for the best.
Statistics: Posted by Stone1 — Thu Sep 12, 2013 2:54 pm
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will put up a more considered reply in due course. Syria has definitely become interesting in my absence...
Statistics: Posted by HarryStottle — Wed Sep 11, 2013 11:40 pm
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How should the international community react to the abuse of chemical weapons? Today I read that probably Assad's brother Maher is responsible for the strike, and that the Assad family has already fled to Teheran (this is not officially confirmed, the US think tank Stratfor claims that). If that is true and the responsible leaders have fled already, would a limited strike against military targets like the c-weapons stores and facilities be still justified considering the possible consequences?
Statistics: Posted by Stone1 — Thu Aug 29, 2013 12:07 pm
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I want some of whatever you're smoking.
Let's start as randomly as you've written by dealing with the last question first: The syntax for quoting someone is
{quote="someone"}whatever they said that you want to quote{/quote}
but replace all the curly brackets with square ones.
if you forget, then click the "Quote" button on any post and you'll see the entire text surrounded like the above.
On windoze and booting. Am jealous of the solid state drive. If I could figure out how to use Rollback RX (EazFix for W8) with a solid state drive I might go for it. The joy of booting to ready in less than a minute....
On Magnetic flips. Never been convinced by the doom mongers. Looks like it would cause more problems with our Satellites and Wireless Communications than anything else; which would probably be expensive and inconvenient but neither life nor species threatening.
On South Atlantic Magnetic Anomalies. Not heard of anything new. Are you referring to
On Syria: well at least, this time, there's no dispute about the presence of WMD. The "only" problem is that we have no proof (publicly available at least) as to who used them. Have they learned from Iraq? On the evidence front, wait and see. On the military front, I don't think they'd even consider doing more than a missile campaign but the exact effects of that are completely unpredictable. Would, for example, a desperate Assad, launch a last gasp chemical attack on Israel? And if even a single missile got through the Israeli shield and killed a couple of hundred in, say Tel Aviv, what would Israel do in response? Not a pretty thought. It could escalate VERY seriously. I don't see it triggering a global nuclear exchange, but wouldn't be surprised if one or two local mushrooms sprouted and THAT would cause a complete political meltdown, including, almost certainly, the end of the UN.
On alien embassies: don't get me started!
oh. you have.
why would they need/want an embassy on planet? Safer and less threatening off planet.
why would they need to suppress the magnetic field in a vague and imprecise manner which may or may not be what we're seeing in the southern hemisphere?
Nah, my money is still on digital aliens existing in nothing more substantial than a plasma cloud or possibly some multidimensional construct which allows them to interface with us in an avatar form calculated to mitigate our xenophobia. More importantly, if they're out there at all, they're probably watching us as we speak and have absolutely no intention of intervening or introducing themselves until we're vastly more grown up than we are today. If we're in the realm of complete speculation (which we seem to be today) I would guess that they're using a form of surveillance technology which we're not even capable of detecting and only when we ARE capable of detecting it, will they confirm their existence and begin any kind of dialogue...
Statistics: Posted by HarryStottle — Tue Aug 27, 2013 7:55 pm
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On the Windoze 8 front, at the risk of sounding enthusiastic about microsoft, which I definitely aint, I have to say W8 doesn't suck anywhere near as bad as many have suggested. I'm running 3 of my personal workstations on it and it is definitely an improvement on W7. The start menu nonsense is easily cured by downloading a copy of Start8 which essentially forces W8 to revert to W7 behaviour and does it so convincingly that you can forget you're on W8. So I've actually paid for 3 copies (@ $5 a pop, last of the big spenders). Only when my mouse drifts off to the sides of one of my monitors do I get a reminder that I'm on 8.
It's about twice as fast in most operations and inherently more secure, though I won't touch with a bargepole.
My humble tosh NB300 netbook was about to hit the scrapheap when - out of curiousity more than anything - I decided to install W8 on it and, bejasus, it's made the damn thing usable again! Seriously, it boots from cold to usable in a smidge under 35 seconds (and that's coming up to a year later, none of the usual slowdown). But I have to confess I've deliberately kept it as minimalist as is humanly possible. My two "serious" workstations used to start up in a minute or so but they're back to about 3 minutes, which is still twice as fast as W7 became.
It's a little more stable than W7. I probably BSOD'd that on average once a month, I think I've only BSOD'd W8 twice in the last 10 months or so and I think that was down to an incompatible Nvidia driver.
Was pretty impressed with how well it found drivers for everything except my webcam. Not so impressed with how much of my essential software needed special W8 versions but that got sorted fairly rapidly and, as of now, ignoring the huge unknown of potential backdoors for the MIB, I'm moderately content...
Statistics: Posted by HarryStottle — Mon Aug 26, 2013 6:51 pm
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No, I'm not a foxprogrammer, I just tought myself basic on the C64 and learned (turbo) pascal (for Windoze) at school, later on IBM RPG/400 on the glorious AS/400 and picked up some C++ along the way. But I haven't done any coding for almost a decade. Instead I started playing chess again.
Statistics: Posted by Stone1 — Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:34 pm
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