FTA:
"I don't know if you've seen Sitar Hero? We did Apu playing this 60-button controller and songs like Pour Some Curry On Me - we made this wonderful parody poster and the guys from Harmonix loved it and we sent them 20 copies of the poster. They just loved it so much." Nice to see Harmonix embraced the parody. I hope they release the "Pour Some Curry On Me" track as part of their marketing campaign.
Anyway, this might be the first time since Jack Thompson came on the scene that anyone's going to have anything bad to say about Rockstar! They shunned the Simpsons! THE SIMPSONS! That's worse than blasphemy around here!
If what you're saying is correct, why are we always up in arms when oppressive governments censor internet access? After all, if the government of China provided the labour in order to provide internet service for their citizens, then China has every right to limit what their citizens do. And so on for other countries. Why do we care about the "Great Firewall of China" or any other government that limits their citizens' activities online? What do we care about the Burmese bloggers?
I don't know the answers, and I don't pretend to. What I do know is that we should probably rethink what we understand as "rights" and "privileges", when it comes to novel technologies that act as mediums for free speech. Maybe the internet should play by different rules, like those that would be provided by a net neutrality act. Maybe not. But what is obvious is that the internet is somehow different than other privileged services, in that it has become a somewhat essential medium for global citizens to convene and engage in free speech.
As I said, I don't know the answers, but I do believe that your approach is not the direction that we should go in.
From a certain point of view
on
Halo 3 Review
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· Score: 4, Funny
From a certain point of view, Halo 3 is without a doubt the biggest game of the year. From a certain point of view? That's like saying, "from the vantage point of having my face two inches away from the backside of a fat lady, her ass is the biggest object in the world!"
I've got a rig at home with four case fans. How many does THAT monster have? Six visible on the side + bottom, up to two more infront of the hard drives, and up to two more right at the back. On top of that, you have up to two on the power supply and the two CPU fans AND the two on the video cards. That's SIXTEEN FANS in one rig!! Jesus, the fans on that thing probably have more combined horsepower than a souped up Civic! And it probably SOUNDS like one too!
Sorry, this is a little off-topic, but I'm curious. I don't really get the specifics of the whole "lobbying" process. Is it just a roundabout way to go about bribing an official? Pay them off prior to them being elected, and threaten to not give them money next election if they don't vote in your favour?
But if so, how did this situation come about? Does Microsoft pre-emptively make campaign contributions to political candidates in major markets just in case such a vote has to be passed? Or do they promise campaign support for the next election? If they promise money for doing something, doesn't that constitute bribery?
I'm genuinely curious. If anyone can shed some light on this, it'd be appreciated.
Excuse me, but I think my English must not be up to par. I read the article you linked to, but what does "This rescues me from the shit" mean? I suppose it's an amusing quote, but it's gibberish. What is the shit? And why does he feel that he needs rescuing from said shit? It seems like a total non sequitur. Please explain this to me.
The resolution of the human eye is relatively minute (it's usually not measured in MP, but I think the best equivelence was quoted around 15 MP at any given time). The easiest way to explain it, I think, is that your eyes are never in the same position for more than a split second. It's constantly moving and looking at any given object from a multitude of different angles. So no, it isn't able to see 220MP, but at the same time, it is (theoretically) able to see a better image with a higher pixel count, because of the fact that your eye is never stationary.
But that doesn't take into account your brain. Your eye transfers raw data to your brain similar to a bitmap/RAW file. The way your brain processes this information, though, is more like a vector image. Our brains "see" lines and shapes much more than it sees individual points of colours. Which makes the answer even more complicated. We don't really see all the pixels, but we're able to piece together most of the pixels while our eyes move about, ALTHOUGH our brain "transforms" that information so it makes more sense to us.
A really neat example that illustrates how the brain processes raw data: close your eyes, and get a friend (or yourself, if you can trust yourself not to cheat) to hold up something that is near the outer edge of your peripheral vision. Open your eyes, but don't move them - keep looking straight ahead so that the object is still near the edge of your peripheral vision. You can SEE the object, and can possibly even tell what it is. But what colour is the object? Even though your eyes are able to see colour even in your peripheral vision, the brain doesn't think that the information of colour is as important as the outline/shape of the object. It is only when something is near the centre of your vision (in other words, where your attention usually is) that you can tell what colour it is.
From my experience using the two, Opera refreshes sooner so you can see the top part of the page sooner, but loads the page slightly slower. Firefox refreshes later so you don't see the page until later, but loads the page slightly faster. The "illusion" is that Opera is faster. The vast majority of the time, the important information is located at or near the top part of the page. The fact that Opera loads the bottom part of the page slower is rendered irrelevent because of that. I'd rather be able to see the top part of the page faster.
Then again, it's down to individual use. For me, Opera is faster because of my surfing habits. For others, Firefox may be preferable.
A common mistake is to confuse consist and comprise, saying, for example: The programme is comprised of two short plays.
Irrelevent. In the sentence, "Fructose comprises 50% of table sugar", "50% of table sugar" is the object of the sentence, not just "table sugar". It's the same mistake the ggpp made by thinking that the "of" is, so to speak, attached to the word "comprises" rather than to "50%". The example is not of the same format as the sentence in question. The example is passive, whereas the sentence in question is active.
Which brings me to a little rant. Words rarely mean what they used to mean, even just a mere century back. Most of the evolution of language is to simplify and systemize it in a more orderly fashion. The word "comprise" does, traditionally, have two meanings. However, if the two meanings are interchangeable, it makes the word useless. Take the following example: "Workahol comprises the element workaholine." That sentence, if we accept both definitions of "comprise", is worthless. It is saying nothing, because we don't know whether the element "workaline" is made of "workahol" or "workahol" is made of "workaholine". As a result, there is no distinguishable semantic difference, rendering the sentence meaningless.
Since we can't have the word mean two things at the same time, which must be mutually exclusive, we can only have the word to mean one thing. To figure this out in a systematic fashion, we can take the classic "is [past tense of verb] of" passive structure and turn it to the active structure using the same rules governing other verbs. Since object of the sentence is usually the first noun in the sentence of the passive structure, and it is the second noun in the active structure, we can just apply that to find a working definition of "comprise".
Doing so, we would find that in the passive structure "A is comprised of B" means that A is the "whole thing" that contains B. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that "B comprises A" would render the same semantic meaning.
Before you dismiss this as garbling linguistic theory, this is actually what happens in the mind when you come across a word that you don't recognize. If you come across the passive form of a sentence, you will automatically "convert" it to the active form to uncover the semantic meaning. Since we don't have a clear and distinct definition of "comprise" in the active voice, but somehow have a clear and distinct definition of it in the passive voice, we can use the passive voice to derive the meaning in the active voice. Forcing another meaning, and in fact the OPPOSITE meaning, on to the word would be quite an illogical thing to do.
When A comprises B, it means A is within B, whether it is in whole or in part. When A IS comprised OF B, it means B is within A, whether it is in whole or in part.
Consider another verb for a simpler example: Baked dough makes cookies. Cookies are made of baked dough.
Isn't the situation just the same if you depend to any 3rd party technology (operating systems, languages, platforms, etc) where you don't have a control? Yeah, not everything has to be a democracy. In fact, even in democracies, you hardly get any transparency. So... I honestly have no idea where the question came from. Maybe he's just idealistic.
How would Mac users react if Internet Explorer was ported with the Windows theme? If it's Internet Explorer, the theme would be the last thing I'd be worrying about.
If you really wanted to compare apples to oranges, NYC has a population density of 10,300+, and Seoul has a density of 17,100+.
I think you neglect the effect that tax (which is deeply affected by population density) has on this issue. NY State gets 5-8% income tax, and NYC only gets less than 3.7%. Most of that goes to municipal services, construction, and other such costs. The rest of the 20-35% income tax goes straight to the federal government which has little interest in helping roll out new infrastructure. With South Korea, on the other hand, most of the 20-34% tax goes to economic and technological areas of spending. This allows the South Korean government to spend more cash on helping telecom corporations roll out new infrastructure.
I think that population density deeply affects another issue: tax. Sweden has a higher income tax than Belgium, so the government is able to help provide the necessary funds to telecom companies to roll out the infrastructure. Sweden also has a lower tax rate for corporations, which allows corporations to retain more of their revenue, thus making it more financially feasible to roll out new infrastructure.
In general, the population density is far too low in North America to make it financially feasible for ISPs to lay out improved infrastructure as they become available. In the US of A, the average population density is 31 per square km. In Canada, it's a paltry 3.2 per square km. South Korea, on the other hand, has a population density of 480!!! per square km. Over 15 times that of the U.S., and over 150 times that of Canada. This makes it a lot easier for ISPs to roll out improved infrastructure for the country.
I didn't RTFA, admittedly, but there's a "remove tag" link on Facebook. A lot of people I know use it, and just ask their friends not to tag them. It does the job well enough. And if that doesn't do it, there are privacy settings that can prevent anyone other than yourself or a specific group of people (friends/network/etc) from seeing the photos.
I think it's key for Obsidian to develop games that don't have 50 bugs around every corner. I started the first act of NWN2 5 times, and they all ended up with corrupted save files after crashing, before I gave up on it. For KotOR2, I lost both my main save and my back up save to some weird bug.
Maybe they should worry about ironing out their bugs before they worry about competing with MMOs.
Although an interesting idea, that's about as far as it'll go. There are a few reasons for this. The most important of which:
This will drastically increase the price of produce that starch comes from. We are already seeing this effect from corn-based ethanol.
Gas companies won't let it happen. They don't want to lose their customers to any other stores/retailers.
This is talking about burning a carbohydrate. Carbohydrates contain (dur) Carbon. This article doesn't mention any by-products of the conversion(s), but I assume (perhaps incorrectly, if someone more knowledgable can shed some light on this) that it involves a good amount of CO or CO2.
I just simply don't see it happening. There's just not enough benefits that I can see, both from economic and environmental perspectives.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, this might be the first time since Jack Thompson came on the scene that anyone's going to have anything bad to say about Rockstar! They shunned the Simpsons! THE SIMPSONS! That's worse than blasphemy around here!
Funny, yes, but insightful?
Whoever modded that has got to lay off the MJ. You might not be able to afford it soon.
If what you're saying is correct, why are we always up in arms when oppressive governments censor internet access? After all, if the government of China provided the labour in order to provide internet service for their citizens, then China has every right to limit what their citizens do. And so on for other countries. Why do we care about the "Great Firewall of China" or any other government that limits their citizens' activities online? What do we care about the Burmese bloggers?
I don't know the answers, and I don't pretend to. What I do know is that we should probably rethink what we understand as "rights" and "privileges", when it comes to novel technologies that act as mediums for free speech. Maybe the internet should play by different rules, like those that would be provided by a net neutrality act. Maybe not. But what is obvious is that the internet is somehow different than other privileged services, in that it has become a somewhat essential medium for global citizens to convene and engage in free speech.
As I said, I don't know the answers, but I do believe that your approach is not the direction that we should go in.
Perspective. It's all about perspective.
I've got a rig at home with four case fans. How many does THAT monster have? Six visible on the side + bottom, up to two more infront of the hard drives, and up to two more right at the back. On top of that, you have up to two on the power supply and the two CPU fans AND the two on the video cards. That's SIXTEEN FANS in one rig!! Jesus, the fans on that thing probably have more combined horsepower than a souped up Civic! And it probably SOUNDS like one too!
Sorry, this is a little off-topic, but I'm curious. I don't really get the specifics of the whole "lobbying" process. Is it just a roundabout way to go about bribing an official? Pay them off prior to them being elected, and threaten to not give them money next election if they don't vote in your favour?
But if so, how did this situation come about? Does Microsoft pre-emptively make campaign contributions to political candidates in major markets just in case such a vote has to be passed? Or do they promise campaign support for the next election? If they promise money for doing something, doesn't that constitute bribery?
I'm genuinely curious. If anyone can shed some light on this, it'd be appreciated.
Excuse me, but I think my English must not be up to par. I read the article you linked to, but what does "This rescues me from the shit" mean? I suppose it's an amusing quote, but it's gibberish. What is the shit? And why does he feel that he needs rescuing from said shit? It seems like a total non sequitur. Please explain this to me.
I was trying to be funny, but thanks. :)
But two years from now, when he actually DOES start to do that ... well, you won't be laughing then, will you, funny man?
What's the ticker symbol for Eolas? I uh ... just want to check their um ... corporate history. Nothing to do with the upcoming dividend. No sirree.
If copyright was not an issue, I'd like to see Xenophic Xenu.
The resolution of the human eye is relatively minute (it's usually not measured in MP, but I think the best equivelence was quoted around 15 MP at any given time). The easiest way to explain it, I think, is that your eyes are never in the same position for more than a split second. It's constantly moving and looking at any given object from a multitude of different angles. So no, it isn't able to see 220MP, but at the same time, it is (theoretically) able to see a better image with a higher pixel count, because of the fact that your eye is never stationary.
But that doesn't take into account your brain. Your eye transfers raw data to your brain similar to a bitmap/RAW file. The way your brain processes this information, though, is more like a vector image. Our brains "see" lines and shapes much more than it sees individual points of colours. Which makes the answer even more complicated. We don't really see all the pixels, but we're able to piece together most of the pixels while our eyes move about, ALTHOUGH our brain "transforms" that information so it makes more sense to us.
A really neat example that illustrates how the brain processes raw data: close your eyes, and get a friend (or yourself, if you can trust yourself not to cheat) to hold up something that is near the outer edge of your peripheral vision. Open your eyes, but don't move them - keep looking straight ahead so that the object is still near the edge of your peripheral vision. You can SEE the object, and can possibly even tell what it is. But what colour is the object? Even though your eyes are able to see colour even in your peripheral vision, the brain doesn't think that the information of colour is as important as the outline/shape of the object. It is only when something is near the centre of your vision (in other words, where your attention usually is) that you can tell what colour it is.
From my experience using the two, Opera refreshes sooner so you can see the top part of the page sooner, but loads the page slightly slower. Firefox refreshes later so you don't see the page until later, but loads the page slightly faster. The "illusion" is that Opera is faster. The vast majority of the time, the important information is located at or near the top part of the page. The fact that Opera loads the bottom part of the page slower is rendered irrelevent because of that. I'd rather be able to see the top part of the page faster.
Then again, it's down to individual use. For me, Opera is faster because of my surfing habits. For others, Firefox may be preferable.
Irrelevent. In the sentence, "Fructose comprises 50% of table sugar", "50% of table sugar" is the object of the sentence, not just "table sugar". It's the same mistake the ggpp made by thinking that the "of" is, so to speak, attached to the word "comprises" rather than to "50%". The example is not of the same format as the sentence in question. The example is passive, whereas the sentence in question is active.
Which brings me to a little rant. Words rarely mean what they used to mean, even just a mere century back. Most of the evolution of language is to simplify and systemize it in a more orderly fashion. The word "comprise" does, traditionally, have two meanings. However, if the two meanings are interchangeable, it makes the word useless. Take the following example: "Workahol comprises the element workaholine." That sentence, if we accept both definitions of "comprise", is worthless. It is saying nothing, because we don't know whether the element "workaline" is made of "workahol" or "workahol" is made of "workaholine". As a result, there is no distinguishable semantic difference, rendering the sentence meaningless.
Since we can't have the word mean two things at the same time, which must be mutually exclusive, we can only have the word to mean one thing. To figure this out in a systematic fashion, we can take the classic "is [past tense of verb] of" passive structure and turn it to the active structure using the same rules governing other verbs. Since object of the sentence is usually the first noun in the sentence of the passive structure, and it is the second noun in the active structure, we can just apply that to find a working definition of "comprise".
Doing so, we would find that in the passive structure "A is comprised of B" means that A is the "whole thing" that contains B. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that "B comprises A" would render the same semantic meaning.
Before you dismiss this as garbling linguistic theory, this is actually what happens in the mind when you come across a word that you don't recognize. If you come across the passive form of a sentence, you will automatically "convert" it to the active form to uncover the semantic meaning. Since we don't have a clear and distinct definition of "comprise" in the active voice, but somehow have a clear and distinct definition of it in the passive voice, we can use the passive voice to derive the meaning in the active voice. Forcing another meaning, and in fact the OPPOSITE meaning, on to the word would be quite an illogical thing to do.
No, you just need an English lesson.
When A comprises B, it means A is within B, whether it is in whole or in part.
When A IS comprised OF B, it means B is within A, whether it is in whole or in part.
Consider another verb for a simpler example:
Baked dough makes cookies.
Cookies are made of baked dough.
If you really wanted to compare apples to oranges, NYC has a population density of 10,300+, and Seoul has a density of 17,100+.
I think you neglect the effect that tax (which is deeply affected by population density) has on this issue. NY State gets 5-8% income tax, and NYC only gets less than 3.7%. Most of that goes to municipal services, construction, and other such costs. The rest of the 20-35% income tax goes straight to the federal government which has little interest in helping roll out new infrastructure. With South Korea, on the other hand, most of the 20-34% tax goes to economic and technological areas of spending. This allows the South Korean government to spend more cash on helping telecom corporations roll out new infrastructure.
I think that population density deeply affects another issue: tax. Sweden has a higher income tax than Belgium, so the government is able to help provide the necessary funds to telecom companies to roll out the infrastructure. Sweden also has a lower tax rate for corporations, which allows corporations to retain more of their revenue, thus making it more financially feasible to roll out new infrastructure.
... and not South Korea.
In general, the population density is far too low in North America to make it financially feasible for ISPs to lay out improved infrastructure as they become available. In the US of A, the average population density is 31 per square km. In Canada, it's a paltry 3.2 per square km. South Korea, on the other hand, has a population density of 480!!! per square km. Over 15 times that of the U.S., and over 150 times that of Canada. This makes it a lot easier for ISPs to roll out improved infrastructure for the country.
I didn't RTFA, admittedly, but there's a "remove tag" link on Facebook. A lot of people I know use it, and just ask their friends not to tag them. It does the job well enough. And if that doesn't do it, there are privacy settings that can prevent anyone other than yourself or a specific group of people (friends/network/etc) from seeing the photos.
NWN2 and KotOR2?
I think it's key for Obsidian to develop games that don't have 50 bugs around every corner. I started the first act of NWN2 5 times, and they all ended up with corrupted save files after crashing, before I gave up on it. For KotOR2, I lost both my main save and my back up save to some weird bug.
Maybe they should worry about ironing out their bugs before they worry about competing with MMOs.
I just simply don't see it happening. There's just not enough benefits that I can see, both from economic and environmental perspectives.
Will I turn into Fungus-man? Or will I suddenly grow twice my size? Or will I get an extra life?
I believe my logic professor once called this type of misleading argument by the following name: Bullshit.