agreed.

example HL2 is a game ive always thought of as art, the atmosphere and immersiveness are probably mostly why. If you take this strange 'winnable criteria' then yes you can win it, but you win it the same way you finish reading a book. if you stop reading a book half way through (lose a game) then does it cease being art? in summary, this guys an idiot.

There is a luck and a skill side to poker. The luck side keeps the bad players in with their occasional wins, thinking they are good at poker or are overall winners, while the skill side wins money in the long run. The effect of having good or bad cards dealt is described as variance, if you look at a winning poker players profit/loss graph it will be a bumpy road upwards. The individual bumps are short term variance, the overall trend reflects the skill of the player.

How can skill count ? What if you have a middle pair, youre opponent has top pair, and he bets the river. You raise...because you know he's a player that can fold a top pair type hand based on his previous play, and based on your tight image, and based on the cards on the table. He folds the better hand. So its not JUST luck, its strategy and perception of your own image and your opponents playing tendencies.
Skill is also about extracting the maximum amount of value out of your better hands, and FOLDING when you know youre beat.

If you want to read some real poker strategy go to a poker strategy site and browse the theory articles, judging by the discussion here a lot of you will be surprised at the amount of strategy in the game.

And just to answer a previous post by someone, yea phil ivey is (one of) the best poker players, but tournaments are extremly high variance - you need to play a lot of them before you can judge if you are a winning player or not. Cash games are lower variance generally.

and so begins an endless cycle of back and forth between pirates and shipping interests, until in a galaxy or time far far away, the poverty ridden state of the country is improved and the pirates all become salarymen.

the ship captains now without a decent challenge, decide to hunt for white whales

'Potentially' racist? You are being tactful I presume :]

I dunno about how useful a biometric this would be considering how sensitive OAE's are to hearing loss.

If you have a conductive (external/middle ear) hearing loss emissions cannot be detected even if they are present. Also no emissions are seen with larger degrees(~>35dB) of sensorineural (inner ear) loss. A lot of older people have a small deterioration in hearing that they probably dont notice.

You all talk like its obvious that wired transmission would not work...could someone please explain why not?

Space elevators seemed somewhat viable for a while, wouldn't this be easier still? High voltages are transmitted across land without too much hassle... have a balloon lifted power station on the way!

anyway pls elucidate why wired == not work

This probably wouldnt work because not all debris is metal but could you not deflect a lot of it using some very strong magnets placed at either end of the shuttle?

They could pulse on detection of debri with calculated strength to deflect metal debri. Perhaps place the magnets on booms to give distance from the shuttle?

this is an absolute laymen idea but hey, you never know.

An OS is supposed to make things easier...windows is effectively committing seppuku with moves like this.

My only regret about it is the downtime before another/existing OS takes its place. (I use windows for games.)

its the freedom and variety that makes this look like such a good mmorpg. i felt the same way about ultima online..unfortunately i have played neither.

can anyone tell us what eve online is like?

Maybe this guy would get some respect if he wasn't such a little bitch.

Who cares if people don't respect your industry, are you SO hungry for approval from people you have nothing to do with that you lose sleep over the gaming industry being dissed or misunderstood?

How is it even a bad thing to be making things for kids? Its a fantastic thing, if not necessarily the case.

God, when will i stop asking rhetorical questions?

This is the most boring slashdot submission ive seen Zzzzz. So i've decided to jazz it up with a few emoticons..

^_^ japanese cartoon :) standard smiley (not very edgy any more)
>_> - - - - - c[_] guy staring at coffee mug

For people doubting that it could be considered something of an instrument, a la synth, give '20 Dollar' by MIA a listen. Check the backing vocals..

I chose MS word just to troll you sons of bitches.

Ew keep them seperate...thats like getting a big mac meal and putting the whole thing into a blender and....hmmm

*runs to mcdonalds

I personally have had no trouble driving after a smoke. I dont dive into it though, i take a break beforehand if i have to.

The only thing approaching a problem is that i will occasionally 2nd guess my actions on the road...but the result is more cautious and probably safer driving than when sober!