The only reason that I've been anticipating VLC on Android is for SMB streaming on my Xoom. The 10.1" screen is perfect for watching a flick in bed, so the tiny screen concern kind of evaporates. I have no interest, whatsoever, in configuring transcoding: I just want my device to be able to play videos natively, and across my existing network.
Can someone who's tried the Beta comment on whether it has SMB support? Bonus points if you can tell me whether Tegra 2 seems to be able to play an average 720p H.264 reasonably well.
Couldn't agree more. Amnesia is the only game that I've ever played where I had to stop playing it too late at night because it creeped me out. I highly recommend playing the game in a dark room with headphones.
But your argument is exactly what my comment about Twilight was meant to prove. Most of us, especially on Slashdot, probably consider the Twilight movies to be neither special or unique. It still made a (relative) killing at the box office.
You're absolutely right: There's a market for just about any kind of movie, even if most of us think it's shit. Which is exactly the point I was trying to get across by highlighting Twilight, and contradicts the GP's point about "Unique + Special = Profit". A movie doesn't need to be either to be considered a success. A success, as far as Hollywood is concerned, is a profitable movie.
It's no coincidence that all of those God awful parody movies made by Friedberg/Seltzer (Epic Movie, Date Movie, Scary Movies) kept being made. They were universally panned by critics, and were the exact opposite of unique and special. They only kept churning them out because there's an audience for them... at least a large enough one to make them profitable.
One of the primary reasons that Best Buy tries to push their extended warranties so hard is because the margin on PC sales are extremely slim. The stores barely make a profit at all off of the sale of a computer, now more than ever. The only decent profit margins are on the higher end gaming computers, or Apple.
When I worked at Best Buy ('99), it was during the emergence of the "e-Machine". If you don't remember those, they were ultra cheap computers ($300 - $700 at a time when the average desktop price was still around $1k). They packed the computers with adware and useless garbage in order to sell at a low price. They also usually had an underpowered processor (usually a Pentium Celeron). We, employees, were told that the store didn't make any money on these computers, so selling add-ons (warranties, MSN subscriptions) were vital. I actually believe them on this point. The problem is, nobody wants to pay a few hundred dollars for a warranty on a $300 computer.
To compound problems, a good slice of our customer base was parents and grandmothers who only want to casually browse the Internet and occasionally e-mail their children/grandchildren. It's nearly impossible to tell these people that they should spend $900 instead of the $300 and be able to sleep at night with a good conscience. So, we found ourselves in a position where we'd sell the cheaper computers with a near impossible warranty attachment rate.
It's even worse these days. You can easily find a great computer for under $500 (without the adware) that will satisfy nearly all consumers needs. The PC gamer enthusiast already builds his own PC's or knows where to buy them online, and does. As the profit margins on computers shrinks even more, the need to attach add-ons increases. Balancing that with customer satisfaction quickly becomes an impossible task. I do agree, though, that it would be smart for Best Buy to offer premium brand computers though it's simply not what most retail consumers are looking for (I think they mostly do "built to order" kiosks for those... at least, they used to).
Best Buy is strictly non-commissioned. I worked there for a year when I was in high school at a store opening, and they made sure that the first thing we said to shoppers, with exuberant pride, was "Just so you know, everybody at Best Buy is not working on commission so we're only going to sell you what you need and never what you don't!". What we didn't say, which is actually the truth, is "... but we do need to give you the hard sell on product service plans (fancy words for extended warranties) or we'll get fired, and that guy hovering over there is our manager who is only listening to how well we can sell one to you". If you worked in the home theater department (I was in PC home/office), add high margin cabling to that.
Those of us who weren't naive knew we were being screwed. The only reward for pushing these products was job security and it's all so we could emphatically tell customers a lie: that we wouldn't try to sell them things they don't need.
This was 13 years ago, too... back when Best Buy was a much better place. I'm sure it's only gotten worse in recent years.
1. Time is money. The time I would spend writing down the information I need to make the purchase at home, then finding it on the web, making sure it's the same product, entering my information to make the order, etc. It just takes too long and the price difference usually isn't enough to make it worth while. Plus, if I get home and the item isn't available online, I have to spend nearly an hour to go back to the store and buy it.
Smartphones are nearly ubiquitous now, and iPhone/Android have an Amazon app (or access to a great Amazon mobile interface in the browser). You can even scan the barcode and it'll immediately bring the product up on Amazon. Storing your information on Amazon, and if you're really concerned about time, enabling 1-click can save lots of time. This should eliminate your concerns over matching product and time wasted entering information.
2. When I want to buy something I want it today, not a week from day.
Consider splitting an Amazon Prime membership. Find friends, or look up one of the many threads online where people split them. $75 / 5 for a year's worth of free 2-day shipping, or $3.99 overnight. Trust me; the money spent on a split Prime membership will more than pay for itself in the money you save. Some places even have same-day delivery.
3. If the item I buy is broken or not quite what I expected, I can return it to the store while I'm out shopping. I don't have to pay shipping and handling for this service or worry about repacking the item. And I get immediate confirmation that the item has been received and my refund has been granted.
Amazon's return service is leaps and bounds better than any I've ever encountered. They pay return shipping, and in many cases, will issue you a credit ($5 or $10) for the inconvenience. They'll also advance ship replacement items. Box stores nearly ALWAYS hassle me on returns. I have to argue before they'll even consider giving me a replacement or refund. NEVER with Amazon.
So, sure... with Amazon you may have to wait longer than the instant gratification that you get from picking something off the shelf. In my experience, though, it's absolutely worth it for the majority of my purchases (especially electronics). Big box stores do NOT train their employees on the products that they're selling (trust me, I worked at a Best Buy and Staples over a decade ago); they only train on the upsell... especially in warranties.
Here's a scorecard: Best Buy (or other Big Box): + Instant gratification + Instant returns - Sales reps generally (but not always) don't have much product information. If they do, they won't speak on it much because their bosses only care about how much they can upsell. - Higher prices, and tax - Return process is cumbersome - Unreliable stock
Amazon: + Excellent return process + Items are generally cheaper (and no tax for most people) + Simple ordering + Knowledgeable customer reviews that are unfiltered + No upsell pressure. What you buy is what you want - No instant gratification - Fast shipping costs money (though can be mitigated with a Prime account over time) - Returns can take a day or two to receive
This story reminds me of something that a friend is going through at the moment. He's a recently released felon that's trying to get his life back on track, and has routine visits from his parole officer. The PO was looking through his computer's disk drive and found a file named "LICENSE.txt". He was immediately accused of creating fake driver's licenses, and had to explain in great depth that the file he'd found was a software license (just opening the file and showing the contents didn't even placate this guy).
A few weeks later the PO came to inspect again, and found an e-book titled "Google Hacks". It's a book on optimizing search engine results/etc. The PO accused him of attempting to hack Google and left. He was placed in a halfway home 2 hours away from where he was staying for observation until they could come to a decision on what to do with his "offense". Most of the authorities involved agreed that this was an offense worthy of revoking his parole and sending him back to prison. There were gears in motion to do just that, until someone stepped in and outlined what the book actually was and how it in no way violated any conditions of his parole. They backed off on sending him back to prison, but they'd decided he should be shipped to Texas to live in a halfway house "just in case". He's OK with this, because he's legitimately scared of the vendetta that his PO has against him at this point and will be under the jurisdiction of a different one where he's being sent; though he no longer has the option to live with his family.
Technological ignorance and fear in those with authority is a very, very scary thing.
When I was in grade school, calculators weren't allowed until 7th grade (strictly banned from elementary school). Even then, they had to be simple calculators that couldn't solve complex problems (graphing calculators were strictly disallowed until high school). Approaching it like this forced the students to learn to do new kinds of problems by hand. The expectation was that by the time tools were given, students should already know how to accomplish the same things their calculators do for them.
I don't know whether that's how calculators are still used in grade school or not, but it ought to be (in my opinion).
The same should apply for using spell check on exams. If they're at a level where they should be familiar enough with spelling to do so with a reasonable level of accuracy, then I think a spell checker should be okay.
What concerns me is that once spell checkers are introduced all of the time, the students may start to learn new words and not even attempt to learn to spell them properly (spell checker will do that for them, right?). For it to be equivalent to my logic on calculators above, the students would need to learn to spell the new words properly before being allowed to spell check them. Which isn't realistic to monitor or force upon students, unfortunately.
The same Rampart division, yes. The show is loosely based on it. The characters in the show do have alliances/pay-offs with fictional rap moguls, were involved in a "money train heist" where the money was never found (similar to the bank robbery of Rampart's "David Mack"), and they used similar acronyms/symbols (instead of CRASH, it was STRIKE team and they had cards with symbols for their division).
So, no... it's not supposed to be a direct documentary on the Rampart division, but it's similar enough. The show was originally titled "Rampart", even, but was changed to not anger the LAPD.
That said, The Shield is one of the best television series ever produced and it's worth watching all 7 seasons. Each one is better than the last.
You're right, with the caveat that most people tend to try to speak differently when they know they're speaking to digital transcription. The Android voice input also requires that you actually say the punctuation, as well (i.e. Hello comma Mom period Yes comma a visit would be nice exclamation point). So, unfortunately, even with Google's web powered voice transcription, you're still not speaking naturally.
I'm assuming that Google Voice uses the same technology for their automated transcription. In this case, the person will definitely be speaking naturally. The transcriber is spotty at best in that setting. I can usually get the gist of what's being said without needing to actually listen to the message and I appreciate how it applies different style types for things it thinks it could have gotten wrong (guesses are in a lighter shade of gray)... but it's far from perfect.
Thanks for the link to that death threat thing and all, but can you please mark links that will plaster my screen with anime porn as "Not Safe For Work" in the future?
On that same note, we also just banned red light cameras in Bozeman. The city fought to keep them (a few months prior to them being activated), but the state stepped in and told the city that they would under no circumstances be allowed.
I'd actually submitted this article and I absolutely love Bozeman. It's a beautiful place to live. I think our city is a bit out of touch with what the citizens want and we sometimes need the state to intervene. With all of the coverage/press this issue is now getting, I'm sure the same thing will happen with this.
Everything you say is spot on, in my opinion, and I think most professors would agree.
Most of my math/physics profs in college would ONLY assign the even numbers because the answer was in the book. They weren't lazy, and actually checked whether you were arriving at the answer in the correct fashion. We'd get dinged if we omitted steps which weren't obvious, but likewise, we'd get partial credit if parts of our work was correct. This also gave the profs some gauge on which parts of the processes needed to be elaborated on in class, and if not frequently messed up enough, at least mentioned on the assignment so the student could get some insight as to where they went wrong.
The actual answer was usually worth very little compared to the process. If it were the opposite, I barely would have learned anything in those classes.
The Snopes page mentions why something like this hasn't been implemented:
No one in the banking industry seems to want the technology. The banks argue against its implementation, not only on the basis of cost but also because they doubt such an alert would help anyone being coerced into making an ATM withdrawal. Even if police could be summoned via the keying of a special "alert" or "panic" code, they say, law enforcement would likely arrive long after victim and captor had departed. They have also warned of the very real possibility that victims' fumbling around while trying to trigger silent alarms could cause their captors to realize something was up and take those realizations out on their captives. Finally, there is the problem of ATM customers' quickly conjuring up their accustomed PINs in reverse: Even in situations lacking added stress, mentally reconstructing one's PIN backwards is a difficult task for many people. Add to that difficulty the terror of being in the possession of a violent and armed person, and precious few victims might be able to come up with reversed PINs seamlessly enough to fool their captors into believing that everything was proceeding according to plan. As Chuck Stones of the Kansas Bankers Association said in 2004: "I'm not sure anyone here could remember their PIN numbers backward with a gun to their head."
Not entirely. I own a Popcorn Hour A110, and while I do love its ability to play basically any codec I toss at it, the UI leaves a LOT to be desired, which is what the parent mentioned about missing metadata from MKV. Any of the jukebox softwares for it need a ridiculously tedious weeding through of all media stored for them to appear well, and even then, the UI is slow and feels unresponsive. The built-in UI doesn't even have a "sort by date" functionality. This is all due to a very weak auxiliary processor for UI/background tasks.
The end all and be all solution is a video container with metadata information of its contents on a set top box that has a quick, responsive, and intuitive UI. Popcorn is definitely headed in the right direction, but I don't think they're there yet.
Re:Grand Theft Auto? Vintage?
on
Vintage Games
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Small difference, relatively, but GTA III is actually almost 8 years old and not 6 (it was released October 2001).
Vintage is an ambiguous term, so he gets to play loosely with it. Regardless of whether you thought the game was fun or not, it WAS the first notably high selling game that did an open world sandbox well. There are countless games today that mimic the design (the new Red Faction game released yesterday, for one example).
Like it or not, GTA III was very influential for its design and the controversy that the game itself generated for its content.
You'd think video game sales would suffer even more than music sales with the economic woes, since they cost $50 - $60 a purchase compared to an album's $12 - $20 sticker price.
Since this study points to last year, it's in the same time frame as the video game analysis.
My interest in the new Firefox betas is its official support of cross-site HTTP requests (documented at https://developer.mozilla.org/En/HTTP_access_control). It's following the new W3C spec (http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/access-control/) for allowing the XmlHttpRequest to communicate with an external domain without the use of the filthy "script get" hacks. I've just spent some time implementing a proof-of-concept for this stuff, and am impressed with how well it works. It even allows POST requests so you're not limited by the usual GET length limits.
It does require server-side modifications, but they're mostly simple.
I see this as the best new feature of Firefox and plan on adding support for this method of XHR into my applications, with failover to the old "script get" stuff. I only hope that other browsers also embrace this new functionality in the near future.
I've played through GTA4 on the Xbox 360 and would like to disagree with you. It's an excellent game and the amount of assets in the game is mind blowing. Easily the most advanced "sandbox" game ever made, and evolutionary (not revolutionary) for the series. But that's all opinion.
I hate to beat the dead horse of debate, but this really is just one more nail in the coffin of PC gaming. The experience of this game on console was: 1. Buy game 2. Insert game into console 3. Play game Result: Enjoy the game exactly as intended by the publisher without tweaking any settings, installing dependent applications, dodging DRM, or wasting 13gb of disk space. Time spent: 5 minutes, tops.
The PC experience, from what I'm reading on/. and other forums: 1. Purchase game from Steam or other retailer 2. Install game, along with several other TSR applications 3. Create gaming profile for G4W 4. Hit self over head for having a controller other than the support Xbox 360 one. Install another app to remap existing controller to emulate X360 one and probably miss some functionality in the process. Run to store to buy controller or play with keyboard + mouse instead 5. Pray like hell that no other installed application clashes with SecurRom, and disable/remove apps if so 6. Launch game. If it launches successfully, spend at least 10 minutes tweaking video settings to make the game run adequately on hardware. Not for the technologically challenged, who will play with a sub-optimal experience instead Result: Average gaming experience fraught with frustration and annoying applications unnecessarily using resources on your computer. Mandatory hard drive storage space taken. Potentially more expensive, with the purchase of a controller. Time spent: Around an hour.
The problem is that this is becoming commonplace in the arena of PC gaming. I've always been, and will continue to be, a PC gamer (as well as console), but am finding myself preferring the console experience so I don't clutter my computer with garbage and waste time that could be spent enjoying my purchase instead of fighting my computer. With the price of a good graphics card alone approaching the price of an entire console, it's becoming more and more difficult to justify PC gaming. This is sad.
I expect simpler and more innovative games (maybe even indie types) to eventually be the only ones available on PC. Games like World of Goo are affordable, fun, simple to install and run, and don't demand an expensive rig to play. In the end, it's a more enjoyable experience. The AAA games are increasingly becoming a huge hassle, and recent game sales often don't justify the price of development for the platform.
5 minutes? You've been lucky... I usually have to wait around 15 for the first match of Horde, and somewhere around 5 - 10 after the first match (no idea why it makes a difference if it's your first or 15th game, but that's what I've noticed).
Blows my mind that this is an issue. There are no doubt at least 60,000 people playing online at any given time, with thousands waiting in queue to be linked up to a game session. How difficult is it to filter the player ranking through the matchmaking servers to find a good session? Even if you don't align well with other players' rankings, it should still join you to an off balance session rather than make you wait (which I believe it does). I'm babbling, but I just don't understand the problems they could be dealing with. It seems fairly simple, to me.
Anybody else have any idea why this problem is more difficult than I'm imagining? What could account for the lengthy matchmaking process?
I have a 2 year old Macbook (non Pro), and I have had zero problems with the plastic clam shell case (does not twist as per your example). I also think it's aesthetically pleasing enough as-is, but that's opinion.
I'll agree that lighter is better, so I'll agree that the change is functional and style. I still consider the track pad changes to be more significant, though, and would expect to see it as a headlining change over a metal case.
Slashdot Mirror
Before 1979 it was illegal to make beer in small batches (no joke)
Interesting side-note: It was President Jimmy Carter that changed this law. Carter, himself, was a teetotaler.
The only reason that I've been anticipating VLC on Android is for SMB streaming on my Xoom. The 10.1" screen is perfect for watching a flick in bed, so the tiny screen concern kind of evaporates. I have no interest, whatsoever, in configuring transcoding: I just want my device to be able to play videos natively, and across my existing network.
Can someone who's tried the Beta comment on whether it has SMB support? Bonus points if you can tell me whether Tegra 2 seems to be able to play an average 720p H.264 reasonably well.
Couldn't agree more. Amnesia is the only game that I've ever played where I had to stop playing it too late at night because it creeped me out. I highly recommend playing the game in a dark room with headphones.
But your argument is exactly what my comment about Twilight was meant to prove. Most of us, especially on Slashdot, probably consider the Twilight movies to be neither special or unique. It still made a (relative) killing at the box office.
You're absolutely right: There's a market for just about any kind of movie, even if most of us think it's shit. Which is exactly the point I was trying to get across by highlighting Twilight, and contradicts the GP's point about "Unique + Special = Profit". A movie doesn't need to be either to be considered a success. A success, as far as Hollywood is concerned, is a profitable movie.
It's no coincidence that all of those God awful parody movies made by Friedberg/Seltzer (Epic Movie, Date Movie, Scary Movies) kept being made. They were universally panned by critics, and were the exact opposite of unique and special. They only kept churning them out because there's an audience for them... at least a large enough one to make them profitable.
That logic falls apart when you consider that the last Twilight movie made $300.5M at the box office.
One of the primary reasons that Best Buy tries to push their extended warranties so hard is because the margin on PC sales are extremely slim. The stores barely make a profit at all off of the sale of a computer, now more than ever. The only decent profit margins are on the higher end gaming computers, or Apple.
When I worked at Best Buy ('99), it was during the emergence of the "e-Machine". If you don't remember those, they were ultra cheap computers ($300 - $700 at a time when the average desktop price was still around $1k). They packed the computers with adware and useless garbage in order to sell at a low price. They also usually had an underpowered processor (usually a Pentium Celeron). We, employees, were told that the store didn't make any money on these computers, so selling add-ons (warranties, MSN subscriptions) were vital. I actually believe them on this point. The problem is, nobody wants to pay a few hundred dollars for a warranty on a $300 computer.
To compound problems, a good slice of our customer base was parents and grandmothers who only want to casually browse the Internet and occasionally e-mail their children/grandchildren. It's nearly impossible to tell these people that they should spend $900 instead of the $300 and be able to sleep at night with a good conscience. So, we found ourselves in a position where we'd sell the cheaper computers with a near impossible warranty attachment rate.
It's even worse these days. You can easily find a great computer for under $500 (without the adware) that will satisfy nearly all consumers needs. The PC gamer enthusiast already builds his own PC's or knows where to buy them online, and does. As the profit margins on computers shrinks even more, the need to attach add-ons increases. Balancing that with customer satisfaction quickly becomes an impossible task. I do agree, though, that it would be smart for Best Buy to offer premium brand computers though it's simply not what most retail consumers are looking for (I think they mostly do "built to order" kiosks for those... at least, they used to).
Best Buy is strictly non-commissioned. I worked there for a year when I was in high school at a store opening, and they made sure that the first thing we said to shoppers, with exuberant pride, was "Just so you know, everybody at Best Buy is not working on commission so we're only going to sell you what you need and never what you don't!". What we didn't say, which is actually the truth, is "... but we do need to give you the hard sell on product service plans (fancy words for extended warranties) or we'll get fired, and that guy hovering over there is our manager who is only listening to how well we can sell one to you". If you worked in the home theater department (I was in PC home/office), add high margin cabling to that.
Those of us who weren't naive knew we were being screwed. The only reward for pushing these products was job security and it's all so we could emphatically tell customers a lie: that we wouldn't try to sell them things they don't need.
This was 13 years ago, too... back when Best Buy was a much better place. I'm sure it's only gotten worse in recent years.
1. Time is money. The time I would spend writing down the information I need to make the purchase at home, then finding it on the web, making sure it's the same product, entering my information to make the order, etc. It just takes too long and the price difference usually isn't enough to make it worth while. Plus, if I get home and the item isn't available online, I have to spend nearly an hour to go back to the store and buy it.
Smartphones are nearly ubiquitous now, and iPhone/Android have an Amazon app (or access to a great Amazon mobile interface in the browser). You can even scan the barcode and it'll immediately bring the product up on Amazon. Storing your information on Amazon, and if you're really concerned about time, enabling 1-click can save lots of time. This should eliminate your concerns over matching product and time wasted entering information.
2. When I want to buy something I want it today, not a week from day.
Consider splitting an Amazon Prime membership. Find friends, or look up one of the many threads online where people split them. $75 / 5 for a year's worth of free 2-day shipping, or $3.99 overnight. Trust me; the money spent on a split Prime membership will more than pay for itself in the money you save. Some places even have same-day delivery.
3. If the item I buy is broken or not quite what I expected, I can return it to the store while I'm out shopping. I don't have to pay shipping and handling for this service or worry about repacking the item. And I get immediate confirmation that the item has been received and my refund has been granted.
Amazon's return service is leaps and bounds better than any I've ever encountered. They pay return shipping, and in many cases, will issue you a credit ($5 or $10) for the inconvenience. They'll also advance ship replacement items. Box stores nearly ALWAYS hassle me on returns. I have to argue before they'll even consider giving me a replacement or refund. NEVER with Amazon.
So, sure... with Amazon you may have to wait longer than the instant gratification that you get from picking something off the shelf. In my experience, though, it's absolutely worth it for the majority of my purchases (especially electronics). Big box stores do NOT train their employees on the products that they're selling (trust me, I worked at a Best Buy and Staples over a decade ago); they only train on the upsell... especially in warranties.
Here's a scorecard:
Best Buy (or other Big Box):
+ Instant gratification
+ Instant returns
- Sales reps generally (but not always) don't have much product information. If they do, they won't speak on it much because their bosses only care about how much they can upsell.
- Higher prices, and tax
- Return process is cumbersome
- Unreliable stock
Amazon:
+ Excellent return process
+ Items are generally cheaper (and no tax for most people)
+ Simple ordering
+ Knowledgeable customer reviews that are unfiltered
+ No upsell pressure. What you buy is what you want
- No instant gratification
- Fast shipping costs money (though can be mitigated with a Prime account over time)
- Returns can take a day or two to receive
This story reminds me of something that a friend is going through at the moment. He's a recently released felon that's trying to get his life back on track, and has routine visits from his parole officer. The PO was looking through his computer's disk drive and found a file named "LICENSE.txt". He was immediately accused of creating fake driver's licenses, and had to explain in great depth that the file he'd found was a software license (just opening the file and showing the contents didn't even placate this guy).
A few weeks later the PO came to inspect again, and found an e-book titled "Google Hacks". It's a book on optimizing search engine results/etc. The PO accused him of attempting to hack Google and left. He was placed in a halfway home 2 hours away from where he was staying for observation until they could come to a decision on what to do with his "offense". Most of the authorities involved agreed that this was an offense worthy of revoking his parole and sending him back to prison. There were gears in motion to do just that, until someone stepped in and outlined what the book actually was and how it in no way violated any conditions of his parole. They backed off on sending him back to prison, but they'd decided he should be shipped to Texas to live in a halfway house "just in case". He's OK with this, because he's legitimately scared of the vendetta that his PO has against him at this point and will be under the jurisdiction of a different one where he's being sent; though he no longer has the option to live with his family.
Technological ignorance and fear in those with authority is a very, very scary thing.
hey hayyyyyy
When I was in grade school, calculators weren't allowed until 7th grade (strictly banned from elementary school). Even then, they had to be simple calculators that couldn't solve complex problems (graphing calculators were strictly disallowed until high school). Approaching it like this forced the students to learn to do new kinds of problems by hand. The expectation was that by the time tools were given, students should already know how to accomplish the same things their calculators do for them.
I don't know whether that's how calculators are still used in grade school or not, but it ought to be (in my opinion).
The same should apply for using spell check on exams. If they're at a level where they should be familiar enough with spelling to do so with a reasonable level of accuracy, then I think a spell checker should be okay.
What concerns me is that once spell checkers are introduced all of the time, the students may start to learn new words and not even attempt to learn to spell them properly (spell checker will do that for them, right?). For it to be equivalent to my logic on calculators above, the students would need to learn to spell the new words properly before being allowed to spell check them. Which isn't realistic to monitor or force upon students, unfortunately.
I bet you're a blast at parties.
The same Rampart division, yes. The show is loosely based on it. The characters in the show do have alliances/pay-offs with fictional rap moguls, were involved in a "money train heist" where the money was never found (similar to the bank robbery of Rampart's "David Mack"), and they used similar acronyms/symbols (instead of CRASH, it was STRIKE team and they had cards with symbols for their division).
So, no... it's not supposed to be a direct documentary on the Rampart division, but it's similar enough. The show was originally titled "Rampart", even, but was changed to not anger the LAPD.
That said, The Shield is one of the best television series ever produced and it's worth watching all 7 seasons. Each one is better than the last.
You're right, with the caveat that most people tend to try to speak differently when they know they're speaking to digital transcription. The Android voice input also requires that you actually say the punctuation, as well (i.e. Hello comma Mom period Yes comma a visit would be nice exclamation point). So, unfortunately, even with Google's web powered voice transcription, you're still not speaking naturally.
I'm assuming that Google Voice uses the same technology for their automated transcription. In this case, the person will definitely be speaking naturally. The transcriber is spotty at best in that setting. I can usually get the gist of what's being said without needing to actually listen to the message and I appreciate how it applies different style types for things it thinks it could have gotten wrong (guesses are in a lighter shade of gray)... but it's far from perfect.
Thanks for the link to that death threat thing and all, but can you please mark links that will plaster my screen with anime porn as "Not Safe For Work" in the future?
On that same note, we also just banned red light cameras in Bozeman. The city fought to keep them (a few months prior to them being activated), but the state stepped in and told the city that they would under no circumstances be allowed.
I'd actually submitted this article and I absolutely love Bozeman. It's a beautiful place to live. I think our city is a bit out of touch with what the citizens want and we sometimes need the state to intervene. With all of the coverage/press this issue is now getting, I'm sure the same thing will happen with this.
Everything you say is spot on, in my opinion, and I think most professors would agree.
Most of my math/physics profs in college would ONLY assign the even numbers because the answer was in the book. They weren't lazy, and actually checked whether you were arriving at the answer in the correct fashion. We'd get dinged if we omitted steps which weren't obvious, but likewise, we'd get partial credit if parts of our work was correct. This also gave the profs some gauge on which parts of the processes needed to be elaborated on in class, and if not frequently messed up enough, at least mentioned on the assignment so the student could get some insight as to where they went wrong.
The actual answer was usually worth very little compared to the process. If it were the opposite, I barely would have learned anything in those classes.
This idea already did the rounds in the form of an Internet rumor a couple of years back: http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/pinalert.asp
The Snopes page mentions why something like this hasn't been implemented:
No one in the banking industry seems to want the technology. The banks argue against its implementation, not only on the basis of cost but also because they doubt such an alert would help anyone being coerced into making an ATM withdrawal. Even if police could be summoned via the keying of a special "alert" or "panic" code, they say, law enforcement would likely arrive long after victim and captor had departed. They have also warned of the very real possibility that victims' fumbling around while trying to trigger silent alarms could cause their captors to realize something was up and take those realizations out on their captives. Finally, there is the problem of ATM customers' quickly conjuring up their accustomed PINs in reverse: Even in situations lacking added stress, mentally reconstructing one's PIN backwards is a difficult task for many people. Add to that difficulty the terror of being in the possession of a violent and armed person, and precious few victims might be able to come up with reversed PINs seamlessly enough to fool their captors into believing that everything was proceeding according to plan. As Chuck Stones of the Kansas Bankers Association said in 2004: "I'm not sure anyone here could remember their PIN numbers backward with a gun to their head."
Not entirely. I own a Popcorn Hour A110, and while I do love its ability to play basically any codec I toss at it, the UI leaves a LOT to be desired, which is what the parent mentioned about missing metadata from MKV. Any of the jukebox softwares for it need a ridiculously tedious weeding through of all media stored for them to appear well, and even then, the UI is slow and feels unresponsive. The built-in UI doesn't even have a "sort by date" functionality. This is all due to a very weak auxiliary processor for UI/background tasks.
The end all and be all solution is a video container with metadata information of its contents on a set top box that has a quick, responsive, and intuitive UI. Popcorn is definitely headed in the right direction, but I don't think they're there yet.
Small difference, relatively, but GTA III is actually almost 8 years old and not 6 (it was released October 2001).
Vintage is an ambiguous term, so he gets to play loosely with it. Regardless of whether you thought the game was fun or not, it WAS the first notably high selling game that did an open world sandbox well. There are countless games today that mimic the design (the new Red Faction game released yesterday, for one example).
Like it or not, GTA III was very influential for its design and the controversy that the game itself generated for its content.
Normally, I'd agree that this makes perfect sense... but video games are certainly a luxury sale that's very similar to music, and sales actually went UP a reported 18% as of last October (reference: http://venturebeat.com/2008/11/13/in-the-middle-of-economic-storm-us-video-game-sales-grew-18-percent-in-october/).
You'd think video game sales would suffer even more than music sales with the economic woes, since they cost $50 - $60 a purchase compared to an album's $12 - $20 sticker price.
Since this study points to last year, it's in the same time frame as the video game analysis.
My interest in the new Firefox betas is its official support of cross-site HTTP requests (documented at https://developer.mozilla.org/En/HTTP_access_control). It's following the new W3C spec (http://dev.w3.org/2006/waf/access-control/) for allowing the XmlHttpRequest to communicate with an external domain without the use of the filthy "script get" hacks. I've just spent some time implementing a proof-of-concept for this stuff, and am impressed with how well it works. It even allows POST requests so you're not limited by the usual GET length limits.
It does require server-side modifications, but they're mostly simple.
I see this as the best new feature of Firefox and plan on adding support for this method of XHR into my applications, with failover to the old "script get" stuff. I only hope that other browsers also embrace this new functionality in the near future.
I've played through GTA4 on the Xbox 360 and would like to disagree with you. It's an excellent game and the amount of assets in the game is mind blowing. Easily the most advanced "sandbox" game ever made, and evolutionary (not revolutionary) for the series. But that's all opinion.
I hate to beat the dead horse of debate, but this really is just one more nail in the coffin of PC gaming. The experience of this game on console was:
1. Buy game
2. Insert game into console
3. Play game
Result: Enjoy the game exactly as intended by the publisher without tweaking any settings, installing dependent applications, dodging DRM, or wasting 13gb of disk space. Time spent: 5 minutes, tops.
The PC experience, from what I'm reading on /. and other forums:
1. Purchase game from Steam or other retailer
2. Install game, along with several other TSR applications
3. Create gaming profile for G4W
4. Hit self over head for having a controller other than the support Xbox 360 one. Install another app to remap existing controller to emulate X360 one and probably miss some functionality in the process. Run to store to buy controller or play with keyboard + mouse instead
5. Pray like hell that no other installed application clashes with SecurRom, and disable/remove apps if so
6. Launch game. If it launches successfully, spend at least 10 minutes tweaking video settings to make the game run adequately on hardware. Not for the technologically challenged, who will play with a sub-optimal experience instead
Result: Average gaming experience fraught with frustration and annoying applications unnecessarily using resources on your computer. Mandatory hard drive storage space taken. Potentially more expensive, with the purchase of a controller. Time spent: Around an hour.
The problem is that this is becoming commonplace in the arena of PC gaming. I've always been, and will continue to be, a PC gamer (as well as console), but am finding myself preferring the console experience so I don't clutter my computer with garbage and waste time that could be spent enjoying my purchase instead of fighting my computer. With the price of a good graphics card alone approaching the price of an entire console, it's becoming more and more difficult to justify PC gaming. This is sad.
I expect simpler and more innovative games (maybe even indie types) to eventually be the only ones available on PC. Games like World of Goo are affordable, fun, simple to install and run, and don't demand an expensive rig to play. In the end, it's a more enjoyable experience. The AAA games are increasingly becoming a huge hassle, and recent game sales often don't justify the price of development for the platform.
5 minutes? You've been lucky... I usually have to wait around 15 for the first match of Horde, and somewhere around 5 - 10 after the first match (no idea why it makes a difference if it's your first or 15th game, but that's what I've noticed).
Blows my mind that this is an issue. There are no doubt at least 60,000 people playing online at any given time, with thousands waiting in queue to be linked up to a game session. How difficult is it to filter the player ranking through the matchmaking servers to find a good session? Even if you don't align well with other players' rankings, it should still join you to an off balance session rather than make you wait (which I believe it does). I'm babbling, but I just don't understand the problems they could be dealing with. It seems fairly simple, to me.
Anybody else have any idea why this problem is more difficult than I'm imagining? What could account for the lengthy matchmaking process?
Good points.
I have a 2 year old Macbook (non Pro), and I have had zero problems with the plastic clam shell case (does not twist as per your example). I also think it's aesthetically pleasing enough as-is, but that's opinion.
I'll agree that lighter is better, so I'll agree that the change is functional and style. I still consider the track pad changes to be more significant, though, and would expect to see it as a headlining change over a metal case.