Klaas
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Posts posted by Klaas
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I agree that it's way overhyped, but I never liked AoM at all. I've been playing AoE and AoK for countless hours in the past, but I don't know why but AoM wasn't really my thing. Maybe it's the leap towards 3D that bugged me, I never really liked the art in that game, didn't look as "solid" as in AoK.
I have the same feeling about Stronghold for example. Stronhold I was a fantastic game but II is good but a lot worse than the first version. They took out the best part of the whole game, the silly humour, just like ES did with AoM imho (solid artwork).
So I enjoy AoEIII a lot more than AoM now, though it doesn't have the "wow-factor" of AoK.
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Looks very good
Watch out with the marketing though, don't promise things you can't handle (eg. things with which you don't have much experience). It's better to only offer the things you're great at and learn the rest on the road, otherwise it's possible you do a poor job in a certain area which will result in a bad reputation.
Well I don't know what you've done already for your clients, but I wouldn't offer anything related SEO, marketing and DB development without any real-life experience (things I know quite a bit about theoritically but 0 in practice).
Maybe it's better to target the small fish in the pond first, eg. simple static websites or medium dynamic websites for small companies or organisations, and as soon as you have gained much experience there move on to the big ones.
Also, really don't give anyone a money-back guarantee, that's asking for trouble imho, especially if you're still young and not running an official business and don't have a lawyer. There are many companies who would let you do a design and after a few days say they dont like it and ask their money back. It's really something you should only offer for hosting because it's inpractical for someone to move hosts, so it's unlikely they'll abuse it.
What I always do is offer them a few months of free changes, as long as these are reasonable. And in case of a PHP script I'll fix bugs for free of course.
I also wouldn't be so open about outsourcing. There are clients that put their trust in you, so some won't be happy about knowing you outsourced stuff. So it's better to keep that a bit quiet imho
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Well I've been playing it today and I'm not too impressed, but it's a nice game though.
The graphics are nice, but it's not the game with the best graphics as ES is marketing it, not at all really. It's better than AoM for sure, but it's not there yet imo.
The gameplay is very cool though, there's much more strategy involved.
There are a few minor annoyances, though it could be because it's only a demo:
- Pathfinding isn't always that good. I've had to retask lumbermen several times. When selecting a group of cavalry to go somewhere they sometimes simply don't move.
- The railroad train gets extremely laggy when it gets at the end of the trade route. Fortunatly it's only the train, not the game itself.
- It's probably related to my graphics card but anti-aliasing sucks, and I've turned it on and I'm playing on the correct resolution.
- The UI is too big, really annoying imo.
- You can't see much of the home city and its graphics aren't really nice imo.
Overall it's a great game though, but way "over-marketed".
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What about those that don't believe in God Manuel?
Other than that I agree that the most important thing is to be together and live a peaceful and enjoyable life. That's a lot more important than the fact that there is a god or not.
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Ah that's very cool Timbo, thx
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Btw, anyone with an ATI 9800XT here or similar who could tell me how the game looks?
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I can't download it yet because I'm currently on smallband
(3Kb/s, would take 30 hours or so)Well monday I'm on broadband again, so I'm really looking forward to it
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Well in my book death penalty is never right, but in this case it's the Iraqi's decision, so I'm fine with whatever they decide. And of course the Iraqi's should try him.
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Of course guns aren't the only weapon out there but you have to admit that they are the most dangerous in this situation.
Like I said, things like that would be impossible around here because people don't have access to guns, or atleast not that easily. Punishing to use them improperly is too late imho, there may have been victims already because of the improper use.
I also don't know if poverty has that much to do with it because I've seen that in supermarkets more tv's and jewelry than food was stolen. I guess some people just made profit out of the situation, something which would of course happen anywhere, also in Europe.
I guess I have to totally agree with Cory on that subject, firearms and an already high crime rate may be the most important reason why these things happened.
I also heard somewhere on the radio that criminal groups have much influence in NO politics. Can someone confirm that?
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I think another thing that relates to this is why many of those who commit those crimes in NO have firearms. I don't want to make this a discussion about gun control but people shooting at eachother or the police/army/aid personnel is simply unthinkable around here.
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Cuba is already sending many doctors, maybe they have enough already
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Lol good find
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The client took the last one.
Here you can see it in action, although I haven't received any texts yet, and everything has to be translated in 6 languages :/
http://www.gvanlandschoot.be/test123/index.php
Apart from the content I still need to do some enhancements, mainly better text browser support and accessibility (hidden anchors), and a stylesheet for print and pda. It's running on KCMS (yep, that K stands for Klaas
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True Cory, I don't see why a country would invest so much money in a war that changed nothing for the US population while being greedy with money for something that could make homeland security and safety much better.
You know that in the Netherlands something very similar happened in 1953, thousands of people died back then because of a large flood. What the Dutch did after it is building huge sea barriers to stop the sea from flooding the lands. To many people outside the Netherlands it seemed like a madman's project but it served them very well, since then the Netherlands is very safe from disasters like that. So I think it would be very wise of the US government to have a look at the region here, how the Dutch prevent such disasters from happening, even if it costs a whole lot of money for such projects.
And frankly I think blaming God or people's way of life is really rediculous. Why is there never a disaster in Belgium or Scandinavia like that, the most liberal regions in the world, where abortion, euthaniasia and gays are considered as something perfectly normal? It won't help the people in Louisiana giving remarks like that, in fact it's pretty offensive to all those who lost their friends or relatives imo.
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Thanks for the info everyone. Dia is imho the best alternative but sadly my mom isn't computer-savvy enough to be very productive with it. I'll have a look at smartdraw and openoffice.org draw
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Because Opera turned 10 yesterday they're giving out free registration codes to disable the ads. I'm not sure but I think that tomorrow the registration period will end so be fast!
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The rise of fundamentalism for Muslims is imho related to social standards. If people are poor and, as Matteo said, if Western culture brings bad things for those people, they will easily become more enraged.
OTOH fundamentalists like Bin Laden and others from rich families may have different reasons, eg. getting power out of it.
A good example imho is Iran. The Shah of Iran westernized the country a lot but that also resulted in less respect for all the ethnic groups and an opressive fascist regime (comparable to Sadam in Iraq). The fact that in Iran westernisation and support from the Western countries went hand in hand with an oppressive regime resulted in religious fundamentalism targeted against the West.
The same is happening in Saoudi-Arabia, where Muslim immigrants are treated like slaves by the rich Saoudis.
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Well I would disagree that it is all our own fault Matteo, the things you listed are very important but imho not the only thing. There are many immigrants who only come here to seek a better life, and that's ok with me, but there are also many who seek a better life but don't bother to do anything for it and expect everything to go the way they want. A company I've worked with had to sack someone like that, because she didn't want to follow the company's rules, she wanted to work when she wanted, not the hours the company gave her (which were reasonable hours btw). She even threatened to sue them for racism, so you get the picture.
Even the social workers among the Muslim teenagers themself say that is a big problem, that they expect that everything falls in their hands without doing anything for it because they think Belgium is a rich country.
Fortunatly we have those social workers who do something about that problem, atleast one positive thing our government is supporting.
@Mithrandil
I don't know where you heard that but she had a lot of evidence to prove it, she taped the whole thing you know.
Anyway, why would a Muslim female journalist, working for a leftist newspaper invent something like that? Our government is simply acting as if there's nothing going on here, but you know their "good news story" mentality. I just don't understand why they don't investigate the problem and why they don't do anything constructive about the immigration problems, besides denying there is a problem. It's time to wake up before it's too late imho. (with too late I mean before extreme-right gets even more votes).
Yesterday a PS-politician (socialists in Brussels) said that he's going to oppose the way the flemish minister of infrastructure is handling the spread of immigrants. He literally said that it's best that they go live in the cities where they have more job opportunities and can stick together. The flemish minister OTOH is spreading them throughout Flanders because recent studies have proved they integrate much better into society that way and can get jobs quite easier (because they get free public transport to go to job interviews and such).
What makes me angry about this is that Brussels has a very high number of unemployed people and that number is so high due to the many unemployed immigrants. So where does that PS-politician get the idea that they get better job opportunities in Brussels? The numbers show otherwise.
It might be a coincidence but the PS gets many Muslim votes, call me paranoid but I think that might be a reason for making such rediculous statements. They probably don't want to loose a big chunk of their electorate in Brussels and loose their votes to the flemish socialists.
Next to that the OCMW's (social institution providing food, money and a roof to the poor) in the cities can't bear the number of immigrants anymore, while those ouside the cities can. The result is that more and more immigrants get bad houses and have to live in very bad life conditions, because the OCMW's can't afford anything better.
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Yes, I agree banning headscarves or any other religious sign, isn't going to help anything.
That most Muslims are moderates is definatly true, but the fact is that the fundamentalists are growing in numbers and that we have many social problems with the moderate Muslims, especially the teenagers.
A Muslim journalist once did an undercover research in one of the towns of Brussels where there is a high density of Muslims. The outcome was that there were several fundamentalist Muslim groups recruiting young Muslims to train them to use weapons and bombs. The sad thing is that our government didn't respond to it, with the result that it's probably still happening.
The problems with Muslim teenagers are mostly related to their social status imo. Many are poor and probably don't have a future, so I guess that's what the problem is, not their culture or religion. But again our government isn't doing much about it, the only ones who really do something positive for those teenagers are integrated Muslim social workers, and we don't have many of them :/
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My mom has to make many workflow diagrams for her job, so I was wondering if anyone knows a good program for this stuff. Currently we've been using MS Visio, which is excellent, but it's just a student version that will stop working after 1st september.
I've also been looking into Dia but although it offers great functionality the diagrams look quite ugly and outdated, and it has quite a steep learning curve.
So essentially I'm looking for something as beautiful and user-friendly as Visio, but that's quite cheap or free.
Alternatively a program that can open .vsd (2003) files would be great too
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It's even so that his so-called fact that birth rates are lower than death-rates isn't true. It is for a few countries but not Belgium for example, our population is growing very slowly again the past 5 years, due to higher birth rates.
In Belgium we don't have such a law but most public schools (public = of the state, not the English version) have a rule that religious signs are forbidden in class. So in many school Muslim girls aren't allowed to wear head scrafs, but it applies as well to anyone else (big crosses and such aren't allowed either).
So yes, this isn't something against Muslims but simply to promote equality in school.
Something I wish to add is that I have a big problem that people always refer to Muslims, as if we have problems with all Muslims or Muslims are the only problem. It's good to realise that many problems we have with Muslims are also related to ourselves, the fact that they're different and that we can't accept that. That's something we should try to overcome imho, as long as it regards things that are legal.
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Well a constitution can be amended, so in the end it's possible. That Muslims are in a great minority is true for the whole of Belgium but not for several cities (mainly Antwerp, Brussels and Mechelen).
Anyway, I agree that people are overreacting about Muslims and Europe turning into a Muslim region. I think there's another problem, mainly the fight that's going on between those who are pro multiculturalism and those who're pro assimilation, with integration being neglected too often.
I'll explain those terms a little first since people give a different meaning depending on the context to them:
Multiculturalism: several cultures living together, without integration into one, dominant culture
Integration: still several cultures living together though one is dominant and the others are expected to follow some basic "rules"
Assimilation: there is only one culture, other cultures are not tolerated unless they assimilate completely.
Anyway, the real problem imo is that multiculturalism has failed. I think our politicians didn't give enough attention to the problem of immigration and several cultures living together, they just thought it would work and that allowing ghettos would get rid of the problems of two cultures living together.
In fact, a Dutch female Ph D of foreign descent, did a study on 30 years immigration in the Netherlands and Belgium with the conclusion that the government never had a clear view on what to do about the problems regarding immigration. They invested too much time in creating ghettos, thinking that such separation would be a good thing, while it resulted in much less integration and many more problems.
OTOH you have those who oppose multiculturalism, often people coming from the extreme right or conservative political spectrum, and often calling for assimilation. As we've discussed fairly often on this forum already, extreme right is rising quite a bit in Europe, and I think one of the main reasons is that multiculturalism has failed badly, that it is impossible to make two very different cultures live together without some form of integration.
Sadly the opposers are fanatic, and imho assimilation is a very fanatic and inhumane idea. It might be good for the "white European", but we should keep our dignity and help foreign people as much as we can with respect for their culture.
What's missing here imo is a political ideology that promotes integration of Muslims in society. There are a few parties (mainly the liberals, nationalists and christian-democrats) that promote it but they haven't given a clear answer yet to the immigration problem, nor are they radical enough fearing to be regarded as fanatics that promote assimilation. Hopefully they'll get the guts to press for more integration.
What integration would mean to me in practice is this:
First of all there should be a moderate immigration stop, only allowing political refugees. I would even cater for less strict rules regarding allowing political refugees in our country.
Secondly, and this is the most important thing imo, is trying to make sure that foreign people don't have a reason to immigrate to Europe. By this I mean that Europe has a clear humanitarian goal to promote the wellness of the people in other, poor, countries.
Thirdly, and this is the radical part, Muslims and other foreigners of 1st generation, who repeatedly commit crimes, should be expatriated to their country. If they don't want to follow our laws they have no reason to live here imho. Either they accept our laws or atleast accept them but battle them in a legal manner, either they go back to their or another country.
Anyway, that's my POV on this issue. Be radical, but not fanatic and respect human rights.
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I hope Zeusthor doesn't mind I'm quoting him from another thread, but this pretty much sums up what I've been trying to tell in my last posts:
You can't prove or disprove god and you can't use science or religion to form an elaborate case for either side. Science is our understanding of the universe by obervation. It may or may not be true, but if the shoe fits? While Religion is a theory of our relationship with the universe which is immaterial. It's an idea rather than an observation. You can disprove science because it's being observed and you can lend your observations to disprove it, but you can't disprove religion because the whole basis of disproving ideas is to look for vulnerabilities in them. There are no vulnerabilities in religion because there is no observation involved.So, instead of making a case for either side, I'll just make it very simple for you. You're wasting your time smile.gif
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Yiuel, I agree that thanks to the Catholic Church much of the classic scientific and cultural heritage has been saved.
But, and I'm speaking only about the 19th-first half of 20th century Flanders now, the high authorities of the Church did keep the common (with a stress mark on common) people "stupid". Stupid not in the literal sense of the word, but they didn't give them the knowledge that would result in two things:
- that the common people would rise up against the industrial and land nobility
- that the common people would loose faith in the Church as an institution
The lower class of the Catholic Church itself did give people that knowledge, because they were much more Christian than the bishops and the cardinals. Christian socialism is something that is still strong here today, the largest trade union in Belgium is not the socialist but the Catholic. But many common priests lost their job (and even their life) because they did that.
Age of Empires III Demo Impressions
in Gaming Discussion & Match-making
Posted
Another flaw I have to add is the AI. I was playing against the Brits on expert today and to get started it was pretty hard. They launched repeated large attacks, but as soon as I knew the units they were always using it was easy to defend. But what bugged me is that they stopped attacking me after 30 mins and only produced around 10 military units.