alanschu

as you approach the limit, you need more and more CO2 to get that last bit. the example provided by junkscience is a window shade. pull one shade, and you block half the light coming into a room. pull a similar shade over the top and you will not block the rest, only half again. keep doing this repeatedly and the light in the room decreases logarithmically. the same analogy can be used with sound from a speaker. put a 3dB attenuator (power, not voltage) in the line and you lose half of your power. put another in there and you don't lose all of your remaining power, you lose half again even though it is the same size attenuator. in other words, CO2 is sort of an attenuator on re-radiated heat (well, wavelengths which happen to correspond to heat). double it and you absorb half of what you have... capiche? taks <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Where have you heard that the reflected solar energy is already near 100% absorption? The number I remember in my astronomy class (which briefly covered it, since it was discussed when covering Venus) was 75%. How would this explain the runaway greenhouse effect that was believed to occur on Venus?

Grim Fandango is a decidedly more obscure game than Starcraft.

At least the 8 million or so that have bought the game.

DUde, it's totally a man!

Why would it be logarithmic? It would seem that an increase in CO2 molecules would result in a linear increase in how much absorption could go on.

Well, best and most balanced are also subjective terms. I didn't care much for TA either, and prefer SC. But you're right, it's pointless to argue over subjective things.

Clearly.

Pure chocolate cake for me! Chocolate cake, with chocolate icing! Oh, as for Einstein and Newton and whatnot. Physics WAS their recreation.

It wasn't so much because we didn't like his opinion. It was more his rather rude and aggressive approach to things, insulting people even when he was incorrect about something.

This whole thread is about who started the standard and made the biggest impact. Besides, the point still stands that it's 2 months earlier release is hardly "long before" Starcraft did it. When TA was released, the world was still drooling in anticipation for Starcraft.

Gestalt: "The Sum of the Whole is Greater Than its Parts"

Total Annihilation came out 2 months before Starcraft. And how many people played it compared to Starcraft? Starcraft's influence is much, much greater than Total Annihilation's.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> :ph34r: Sucks to be a dev sometimes. :ph34r: <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Back in the day credits used to be hidden via Easter Eggs.

Deciding not to play arguably the definitive adventure game for PC? I hearby strip you of the rank of "PC Gamer" and demote you to chump. Sorry, it had to be done It's too bad it wasn't a popular seller, but that seems to be par for the course for most adventure games. It's style and humour is just too much fun though.

The Bnet version of Warcraft 2 came out after Starcraft. Again tho, Warcraft 2, Red Alert, etc were all only 1 on 1. Something to be said for that step, but Starcraft was somethign else. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I played team games in C&C and Red Alert on Westwood Studios Westwood Chat/Matchmaking service. In any case, Quake demolishes SC for its contribution to online gaming. It came out a year before Starcraft, and anyone lucky enough to have access to a T1 line, or even dual ISDNs would host a server. It resulted in QuakeSpy being created, which ultimately evolved into GameSpy, and spawned the Team Fortress mod that laid the foundation of online, class-based team gameplay. The thing Starcraft has going for it, is that it's arguably still the best and most balanced RTS out there. Not bad for an 8.5 year old game. Kudos to it for having 3 separate factions, that weren't just carbon copies of each other (I hated WC2 for that), with distinctive gameplay styles. But Quake dominated in multiplayer.

I think a lot of the "difficulty" in older games came from the fact that we weren't as good at gaming. Playing older "really hard games" often does not give me a "really hard" experience.

Except that's not what was said. But hey, if you feeling like calling people idiots, have at it.

It makes for quotable quotes.

Don't get sucked into his slippery slope/straw man argument!

I realized that after I posted. Though I won't worry too much about it at the moment as I'm not at home.

You still have greater freedom though. The venture becomes less risky, and results in a larger variety of possible sources of funding. Assuming the game is expensive enough to require funding.

Where can I get that Fionavar? I just did a reinstall with my new computer, and am leery of throwing Norton on there.

Given the fact that some of us actually seem to have done a bit of research on the topic, I'd say we're decidedly less average joe on this subject. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that many people just take what is fed to them on this subject, without doing any critical assessment of it.

I didn't even bother. Was too busy playing with new computer.

I dunno, Farcry took quite a while to load on my new computer. Of course I only saw the one loading screen at the beginning