7/28    What are some of the cool games out there for PC nowadays?s
        \_ I thought morrowind was neat.
         \_ morrowind sucks donkey balls
        \_ C&C Generals if you like rts games.  Why don't you tell us what
           type of games you like?  Then we can help you better.
        \_ My brother has recently played ETM and EF2. He's currently
           working on KOTOR. All of these games looked pretty good.
        \_ Battlefield 1942.  Super-addictive online.  And you get to
           bayonet people.  -John
        \_ I played Warcraft III. The expansion pack just came out but I
           haven't played that yet. The only other games I've played in the
           past five years were Diablo (sucked) and Starcraft (great).
           \_ I just finished single player expansion for WC3. Pretty fun.
              I like the new units.
              \_ Yeah, but the new units have even more micromanagement issues.
                 I pick up War3 occasionally, but it's even more of a clickfest
                 of SC.
                 \_ I think that's the point. They want you to micromanage
                    instead of building mass grunts and sending them off to
                    fight.
                    \_ Another reason why RoN is better: You can select to
                       not allow rushing in which case you receive a huge amount
                       of attrition damage in enemy territory (in addition
                       to tons of other multiplayer options).
        \_ What genre? RTS (Warcraft), FPS (Counterstrike), RPG (Diablo?),
           Adventure (King's Quest), Action (Street Fighter), etc?
        \_ Check out Rise of Nations(RTS) with a unique blend of ideas taken
           from Turn based strategy games(like Civ 3).  Its Awesome.
           Loved Warcraft III, but Rise of Nations is much better,
           cannot go back.  The Multiplayer games rock!
           \_ I hated WC3.  I couldn't even make myself finish the single
              player campaign.  Is RoN the same deal with silly hero units and
              artificially small squads and the standard war craft deal with
              a small variety of units with heavy paper-rock-scissors?
              \_ It does have units in the P-R-S format that you mention, but
                 it has others which are not.  RoN has a HUGE variety of units.
                 It does not have hero units.  It does not have campaigns like
                 Warcraft III, instead it has a 'Conquer the World' scenario
           really good.
                 which plays out differently every time you play.
                 Check out this link to find out how it has changed the RTS
                 genre and why its waaay better than other RTS games:
                 link:csua.org/u/3rn
                 \_ As much as I hear RoN is good, I couldn't stand the high
                    speed of the units.  Reminded me of a clickfest.  The last
                    RTS I really liked was Empire Earth, although it was
                    painful whenever your ally decided to drop a few nukes
                    on you, just for fun.
                    \_ Try playing on the slowers speeds.  It has 4 different
                       speeds.  The normal speed is quite fast, but you can
                       play on 'slow' or 'very slow' and you can even select
                       that technologies are researched fast, units are created
                       fast, etc.
        \_ Play Planescape: Torment.  A few years old, but as someone else
           wrote, "the best book I ever played".  System Shock 2 is also
           really good.  Just make sure you download the patch that prevents
           your guns from degrading, and stops respawns.  You can even do
           SS2 multiplayer, although you have to stay on the same level.
        \_ been playing billy boy's Age of Empires for the past 6 years,
           the most mileage i've gotten out of a game.
        \_ been playing billy boy's Age of Empires on the zone for the past
           6 years, the most mileage i've gotten out of a game.

7/28    Pentagon to create information future market?
        http://csua.org/u/3r6
        \_ 100 bucks on Harry Callahan
        \_ The truth is that the MOTD is the Pentagon's secret futures
           market.
        \_ This is actually old news getting rehashed.  The first story was
           published more than a year ago when they first starting talking
           about it.
        \_ they should just hire real gamer playerkillers to capture em.

7/28    Strange, the thread on learning violin got censored.  Couldn't
        imagine how would it offend anyone.
        \_ Dullness is a sin.
           \_ and *YOU* ultimately decide what is dull what is not?
              \_ Welcome to the motd.  Enjoy your stay. -!op
                 \_ how long have you been in interzone?
              \_ I didn't delete the thread, but I knows dullness when I
                 sees it.
        \_ violin is very hard and you should approach it seriously. If
           you just want a hobby, pick up something else, like guitar
           or biking.
        \- the OP got his answer. --psb
           \_ and he got perfect pitch!

7/29    GAO: Young Americans to Face Tax Hikes for SSA
        http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/954162/posts

7/29    Does there exist a plug-in, extension, or some other solution for
        Mozilla to share the bookmarks across many different workstations?
        (NFS won't help in this case)
        \_ rsync
        \_ You want one master bookmark list?  You want to merge them from
           all users into one master list they all share?  What do you want
           to do?
        \_ Switch back to Netscape 4.8 and use it's roaming feature

7/29    Just in case you're wondering, it's still a bad idea to respond in
        any way to spammers.  I asked to be removed, having read of an
        occasionally honorable spammer, and I'm paying for it.
        \_ Actually, I just started replying on my yahoo account, which I
           don't care that much about anyway, and I am getting fewer spams.
           Not a lot fewer, but fewer nonetheless. At least, I'm not getting
           spams that are in the same format of the ones I replied to anymore.
           YMMV
           \_ But the bad ones will resell you to all the other bad ones so
              over time you'll end up with a lot more, not less.
              \_ Hmm, perhaps. But seeing as doing nothing increases my spam
                 count anyway, and since seemingly just about every spammer
                 already has my email address, it couldn't hurt much to try.
                 \_ It depends.  Do you want your spam count to rise slowly
                    forever or take a short dip and then rise quickly forever?
        \_ Will the spam to my account ever die down if I don't reply at all?
           \_ unlikely.

7/29    State Prison Inmates, by Offense,
        Gender, Race, and Hispanic Origin, 2000
        http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0778436.html
        \_ Would someone please tell me what they mean by
           'Hispanic Origin'?  Thanks. --PeterM
        \_ Just watch out for those 300 Female rapists
           \_ Did they rape male or other female?
              \_ haven't you seen "Freeway"? - danh
                 \_ No.
              \_ How can a female possibly rape a male with a soft penis?
                 \_ "get hard or I'll blow your brains out."
                 \_ i bet they're tracking female
                    on female sexual assaults. - danh
                 (unless his penis is hard, but in which case he's excited and
                 it won't be a rape.)
                 \_ she can hold him down on the pool table and suck his dick
                 \_ Erection != rape? I don't think so, bud. If she's wet it
                    is not rape? Try to use that one in court.
                 \_ sometimes people say "rape with a foreign object", although
                    more often it's "sexual penetration with a foreign object"
                 \_ I guess statutory rape didn't occur to any of you.

7/29    I want to zero-initialize an array of somewhat large structs.
        What's the best, most portable way to do so?  C++, embedded
        systems, stack-based array. TIA.
        \_ memset()?
        \_ the best way is probably to have a brace initializer
           that initializes the first struct explicitly (to all 0's).
           the rest of them will then be default initialized (to all 0's).
           this is also most portable because it will take into account
           weird systems, where e.g., the null pointer is not
           internally represented by all-bits-zero. -jl
           \_ do you mean MyStruct array[100] = { }; or
              MyStruct array[100]; array[0] = { }; ?
              \_ the former, though I meant you should have something
                 in between the braces to initialize the first element.
                 actually, gcc seems to accept just the braces, but
                 looking at the grammar, this appears not to be legal.
                 someone feel free to clarify this point. also note that
                 your latter option is assignment, not initialization. -jl
                 \_ It's legal as written -- an empty initializer list is
                    explicitly allowed.  --mconst
                    \_ reference? section 6.5.7 of the c standard doesn't
                        appear to mention any such thing, nor does the
                        grammar.
                        \_ The original poster asked about C++; the C++
                           standard allows it (8.5, paragraph 1).  It's
                           not allowed in C.  --mconst
                        \_ C++
                          \_ not portable
                             \_ Yes, portable.
        \_ do you mean all-bits-zero or each field in each struct assigned
           to zero?  If the former, why not use memset?
           \_ Sorry, I'm not that great at this-- is there a difference
              b/w all bits zero and all fields zero?  I really just want
              to initialize it to something "non-garbage" to distinguish
              between a struct that's been written to and one that has not
              been.  Thanks
              \_ Yes.  null pointers are not necessarily all-bits-zero.
                 floating point numbers have two representations for the
                 value 0 (although one of them is all-bits-zero).
              \_ they are the same in c++. 0 is guaranteed to convert to
                 the null pointer [conv.ptr].
                 \_ To be pedantic, any constant integer expression which
                    evaluates to 0 is guaranteed to convert to the null pointer
                    (say, (1-1) for example).

7/29    Kiana is hot.
        http://www.milfhunter.com/view.htm?id=nd5000&trailer=kiana.wmv
        \_ domain name alone should be an indication of work-safe-ness.
           \_ you're just jealous you didn't grab it first.  :-)
        \_ man, i didn't know it was not worksafe, i'm dead :(

7/29    who had that rcs archived motd again?
        \_ C'mon people.  Take a little initiative
           # locate motd,v
        \_ ~mehlhaff/tmp/motd,v

7/29    Looking for cool URLs to share at work, like the spinning wheels
        and the matrix ping-pong ones.
        \_ Bigger, but:
           http://www.theforce.net/theater/fxprojects/ryandork/index.shtml
        \_ http://www.memepool.com to be on the leading edge of cool dork.