I agree regarding the usefulness of paper maps, but the parent does have a point. I once ran into a major problem navigating with the latest topo maps - "latest" often means 1970's or 80's, and they were so outdated that paths (former logging roads actually) through dense forest were completely overgrown and/or missing entirely, making navigating them extremely difficult.
Granted, a GPS wouldn't have helped (I had one actually, but not a mapping one) because they would have the same data in this case since it was an extremely rarely-traveled area. But my point is that while topo maps are great, they are far from a perfect source of information.
In case you're wondering I've navigated through backcountry areas in Canada (northern/central Ontario primarily), the western US, and northern Thailand using paper topo maps, and they all have these issues. In fact, they're not really that useful at all for route planning (especially if you're using a vehicle), because of the aforementioned problem. You have to assess the situation when you arrive, or based on someone's previous knowledge of the area, and you may discover that you can't get somewhere you wanted to (this is especially a problem in Thailand, but is not uncommon in North America - my logging road example was in Canada).
I'm a geologist; I once saw the head of the USGS speak and he mentioned that updating the topo maps was a fraction of a percent of their budget. It's unfortunately not really a priority for them, although I'm sure they'd like to do more if they had the money.
They are actually quite good at keeping people out of national parks unless you go in the official entrances (where you have to pay), so you're not that far off from the current reality.
One used to, from what I've heard, be able to get into many national parks (including those with big mountains, like the Tetons) for the purpose of hiking/camping/climbing by going in the back access roads. Now, however, besides being blocked with gates and so on, the back areas are regularly patrolled.
Of course there would be more incentive to get in for free if expensive insurance was required, but I think they'd be able to handle the situation fine. Not that I'm suggesting that's actually a good idea - I think the entrance fees are too high as it is.
I agree completely with your post except for one thing - I don't think watching a recorded demo would be the same as actually playing it. This is a game that I think was meant to be played by yourself, in one sitting (it only takes a couple hours as I recall).
As you note, there are emotional and philosophical elements that are very important to the "experience". The power of these, though, comes from you "being" the character, not from watching the character. It's so interesting because you can definitely evoke these same thoughts in something passive like a movie, but not in the same way - and I don't think you can evoke emotional attachment to the companion cube by watching someone else becoming attached to it.
On the other hand, the power of the game doesn't really come from the puzzles and game mechanics (for the most part - it definitely contributes, and it being something completely new means the process of discovering how it works is very satisfying). You wouldn't have a course just on the game mechanics (although now that I say that I'm sure you could find examples of courses on e.g. Tetris). So if a student really couldn't figure out how to play - and I definitely know people who no matter how much practice are just terrible at games - they could watch a demo recording so at least they could try to participate in the class discussion.
However, it would be like trying to discuss a book in the class after only having seen the movie.
I would like to point out that before tectonics was relatively well understood and accepted (this only happened in the late 1960's), among the various models proposed to explain geological structures on the earth such as mountain belts was this exact idea.
So personally, as someone interested in the history of the field of geology (and a geologist myself), I think this is really pretty awesome. Whoever came up with this idea before really had a great idea - I can't recall when it was but it was likely mid-late 1800's, so too bad he's not still around to see that his theory was plausible.
It was understood well before the 1960's that this couldn't explain the earth's structures - it was not a seriously considered theory for very long for several reasons - but at least the idea is sound.
And to comment on those who are saying that this proves the moon is geologically active, I think this is a pedantic point which depends on how you define "geologically active", and that's the kind of thing that has an obvious simple answer to start with but then gets complex when you have situations like this.
As a geologist I would still define the moon as being inactive. Active to me would imply influences besides simply gravity (although gravity is of course a major driving force in earth-type tectonics, it's not the only factor). If you subdivide the earth into active and inactive areas, even the inactive areas will occasionally have things like earthquakes happen, due to intra-plate stresses or whatever. But you won't get volcanic activity or major tectonic activity in those areas, just like you won't on the moon.
English, though, doesn't really use special symbols, so I don't think that's an excuse. Most keyboards - whether Spanish, Japanese, Russian, or Thai - should be usable to type basic English with no issue.
Thai keyboards, which are the only ones from my list I'm familiar with, have the fairly complicated Thai script as the default (a wildly different system from QWERTY), but then they also have QWERTY English letters printed on all the keys. Switching input languages is something everyone knows how to do and which all computers are set up for, and even people with limited English skills (like several Thai people I know) can switch into typing English with no problem.
Of course this may seem as though I'm implying that the English internet is the one true internet, which obviously isn't true, but it's got to be the largest, and with the most influential content. There's nothing stopping non-native speakers from penetrating the English internet if they're so inclined, and the many non-native speakers here on Slashdot attests to that.
I used to think the same way (and I don't have a lawn to tell people to get off of - I'm 23), until I realized that while I had the smallest phone I could find and it was simple enough, I never actually make phone calls or send SMSs. Why am I carrying a device (small as it was) that I only use once or twice a week at most, and rarely for anything essential?
Around the same time I made that realization, I got a free iPod Touch when I bought a Macbook Pro. Now, you'll never see me with an iPhone, but I had to admit the iPod was pretty cool. So I looked into the state of non-iPhone smartphones and in January bought a Nexus One. I still rarely make phone calls, but I use the phone all the time for internet stuff and general PDA kind of stuff. The joke that always comes out in iPhone articles is that it can do everything well... except make phone calls, and it's a phone!
But now I realize that people who say that don't get it... it's a mobile computing device that also makes phone calls, not the other way around.
And by the way, also in January my phone habits changed and I now make daily calls to Thailand at 3 cents/minute through Google Voice from my Nexus One - AT&T charges $1.50 a minute for calls to Thailand. I don't have to dial a long number and enter a pin code or anything... the phone knows to automatically route international calls through Google Voice. Something like 75% of my calls are to one number in Thailand and it would be a pain in the ass to make those calls cheaply with a "dumb" phone. So I can say that my smartphone is actually a very good phone device, in addition to being an awesome internet/computing device:)
I know what you mean since I've been to 3/5 of the mentioned places, but for anyone who hasn't been there "undeveloped" is not really the right word... they're fairly typical lower-class suburban/sorta-rural areas. "Undeveloped" implies something like a third-world country... and while there are places in Canada that resemble that, lower-class areas of south-central Ontario don't really fit that description:)
Actually, blu-rays of older films like Casablanca tend to look incredible... yes you can enjoy that film on awful equipment with a bad source (kind of the point of TFA I think), but it *was* carefully filmed with excellent cinematography and good quality film and so on. Seeing those kinds of films in HD on blu-ray (or another good source) can be spectacular. Same thing with seeing them projected on film.
I've actually seen Casablanca in theaters twice, with good prints. I've also seen it on HD-DVD, and that was excellent, perhaps even better. You don't need a movie theater to enjoy that film, but a good HD source on a decent HDTV will be much more enjoyable than watching the DVD (the official DVD available in the US is quite good actually) on a small screen.
We tend to think of older films as perhaps a little muddy and bland looking, because we're used to seeing poorly-done transfers on small screens on TV. Yet many of these films (Casablanca included) look far better than many modern films if given the proper treatment.
I don't know about that, I *like* seeing the film grain (usually only on older movies, true) on blu-ray (or other HD sources). When you're engrossed in the film you don't notice, but if you take a second to appreciate the cinematography or simply the quality of the transfer, the grain is nice to see and can be aesthetically pleasing. Of course, that's not what we're talking about.
I remember noticing the grain on the first Spider-Man film in the theater, and it was obvious to me that it wasn't real since there's so much CG. While it might not have had the effect they'd hoped for, it's definitely noticeable in films of that era and earlier (it's gotten much better) that everything's so clean, particularly CG stuff obviously. The new Star Wars films, for example; the whole thing looks like a cartoon no matter how realistic the CG animations are. Or even worse, the CG that's added to the original films in the special editions... particularly Jabba in Ep. 4, and the fleet of X-Wings and Y-Wings approaching the death star. I hate that shot, because the original (done with models) was good and now it just sticks out.
Adding artificial grain may not have been the right solution, but at least they acknowledged the problem and tried something. Otherwise it completely takes you out of the film, whether you realize it or not.
In photo retouching, if you have to extensively clone something or smooth something out, you sometimes need to add noise so that it blends back in. Same principle (of course, I'm the kind of person that adds *additional* artificial film grain to my digital photos sometimes because I like the way it looks).
Possibly a little bit; the UCs that aren't really well known (like UCR) do not get as much respect as the more well-known UCs (like UCLA), at least within California and the academic community (disclaimer: I was a grad student at a California university but not a UC, and was accepted at UCR and made an extensive visit there before deciding where I went).
I honestly don't believe this was the intention of the summary-writer - as I'm sure you know, slashdot summaries make these kinds of mistakes all the time. And, particularly, making the name of universities vague is actually a very common practice at slashdot, for some reason.
However, by leaving out the "Riverside", people who aren't that familiar with the UC system will think of the UCs they've heard of before, like UCLA, UC Berkeley, etc... the top-notch schools that have a lot of name recognition. Intentionally or not, leaving it at just University of California may have added some legitimacy in some readers' minds, subconsciously anyway. More likely here at slashdot, though, is that most people are at least somewhat familiar with UC and recognized that the summary-writer left the actual name of the school out.
At both universities I've attended Linux was not supported but it worked fine on their networks. They even tried to help me with an issue connecting with WPA - which ultimately is a Linux problem not their network's. I did ultimately get a MBP and was pleasantly surprised how well it worked with all aspects of the network seamlessly, but if you're running Linux chances are you can figure out any problems and don't need help from the it department.
Basically it's no problem and I suspect a lot of people who run Linux like me are realizing how good MBPs are and so are using them as school computers. You don't want to run into problems with Linux right when you need your computer for something important, and OS X is the most stable platform for that while also being very geek friendly.
NPR has an Android app too, I have it on my Nexus One. It's basically the same as the iPhone version as far as I can tell (which I tried on an iPod Touch), but I haven't used either very much (my car was basically permanently tuned to KPCC when I lived in the area the past two years, so I was covered... maybe I'll start using it now that I don't live near such a good station anymore - KCRW is nice to have instead of the other music stations which are awful, but I prefer the interesting talk stuff on KPCC while driving).
I know I'm a bit late to the party, but, in regards to preschoolers learning an arbitrary sequence of meaningless symbols, this is perhaps harder than you think.
I taught the ABC's to a native Thai, 22 years old, and it made me realize how hard this actually is. Of course it's easier if you're intimately familiar with the characters you're using for your random strings already (which preschoolers and those whose native language uses different characters don't), meaning once you know the abc's a second sequence with the same characters won't be as difficult as that. But it's still hard (for most people).
You may also be interested in the film Fitzcarraldo, which also involves an eclectic European inventor who comes up with an ice-making process and brings it to South America. I haven't seen Mosquito Coast but I guarantee you will enjoy Fitzcarraldo a lot more.
I don't think he even actually watched it, because if he had he would have known that they knew it was a bad idea to have an american-flag motorcycle blaring "born in the USA".
They did indeed have such a motorcycle, but as a joke - it was the "encouragement" to not do anything stupid to wreck the bikes they were actually driving (they were used and beat up and they did quite a big trip on them). If they couldn't get their bike to continue without major repairs, they would have to ride the Springsteen bike, which obviously none of them would have actually done. I presume they had it hidden in a support van except when they took it out a few times to taunt them when they had mechanical problems.
In any case, I'm not sure what any of this has to do with video game addiction camps in China. The original poster started ranting about the actual topic, and then decided that wasn't interesting enough so started on Jeremy Clarkson... I guess the "drug induced rambling" comment was right;)
In most Asian cultures fair (white) skin is considered the most beautiful. If you look at Asian models and actresses in advertising or movies, you'll note that they're all very fair-skinned, probably much more so than any Asian that you may know in person.
In any Asian country you'll find skin whitening products anyplace you find what we might consider essential toiletry-type items. I believe particularly dark-skinned people are looked down upon, as well, meaning it's not just a beauty thing, though not in the same way as color discrimination in the US... it's a class thing; dark skin supposedly means you came from the lower classes who developed dark skin from working in the fields all day. Therefore many people (particularly women) want to lighten their skin.
I needed face wash one time in Thailand, and my method for choosing what toiletries to buy there was basically to find the product with the least English on it (or just with the best package if there was a really good one). I ended up with whitening face wash (which was actually written in english in the fine print, but I didn't look - I noticed later when I realized the guy pictured on it was unusually light-skinned for a Thai). I'm already white, and as far as I could tell it didn't do anything. I'm not sure the more hard-core whitening stuff does a whole lot either, but the ladies love it (certain types anyway - many don't care).
Well, despite the disparaging comments from the others, it is actually a rather good film and definitely worth seeing. It's not going to hold up as well as the great classic Vietnam films (Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, etc.), I don't think, because there are some fairly silly aspects to the script. But it's definitely worth seeing.
I saw it after it won everything at the oscars and after it had been hyped up so much, and I still thought it was great.
And by the way, the blu-ray version is the one to get;) The cinematography is pretty good and the compression on the dvdrip version is awful.
I read your post fairly quickly and noticed the Vin Diesel in your sig at the same time, and in my mind I thought you were referring to a Vin Diesel clinic.
I'm pretty sure they're ipod touches actually, but certainly not windows mobile:)
Pretty slick actually, especially if the store is crowded and the main register area has a huge line of people buying... well I don't know what they're buying if it's not something they'll sell you via the ipods. Only thing I ever bought in there was a macbook pro.
Hey, when I first got my nexus one I tried all the free android tetris games I could find at the time and decided yours was the best one - good work:)
I didn't get the paid version since I never actually play games on my phone, sorry about that;) I guess I just decided I needed to have the best android tetris just in case I'm ever in the middle of nowhere and need tetris.
The official android market is much better than what it sounds like the Nokia market is like, just so you know. There's usually no reason to need to look elsewhere... there's nothing stopping you from installing from other sources (it's a built-in capability and very simple) but they let most anything in the market and apps are managed within the OS very well.
Obviously this kind of situation is an exception, but this particular version of Tetris is far from the best one available on android... and a quick search reveals that several of the other tetris clones are already back up on the market. One of them changed its name to "Tic Tac Toe" but still shows up in tetris/falling block game/etc. searches and has a tetris-y icon. Others look like they may not have even been taken down in the first place, or were put back up unchanged if they were.
Any of the Android file browsers will also let you install apk files right from the phone... just browse to where you put it on the SD card (wherever it got downloaded from the web browser - can do the whole thing from the phone if you want). No need to have a separate app cluttering up your phone just for installing stuff when you can use a file browser, which is useful for other things.
Astro and ES File Manager are good options... they also let you browse network shares and do bluetooth transfers and stuff like that. If you want to browse the entire file system, you probably need Root Explorer but that's a paid app. That has nothing to do with installing apk files, though.
As the other replier noted, the correct alternative is to leave things the way they are. Nothing anyone does is going to prevent people from using phones anonymously if they want to, but it *will* inconvenience and annoy everyone else that needs/wants prepaid cell phones.
Therefore it's a complete waste of time to try to come up with other solutions. That's why nobody's doing it:)
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I agree regarding the usefulness of paper maps, but the parent does have a point. I once ran into a major problem navigating with the latest topo maps - "latest" often means 1970's or 80's, and they were so outdated that paths (former logging roads actually) through dense forest were completely overgrown and/or missing entirely, making navigating them extremely difficult.
Granted, a GPS wouldn't have helped (I had one actually, but not a mapping one) because they would have the same data in this case since it was an extremely rarely-traveled area. But my point is that while topo maps are great, they are far from a perfect source of information.
In case you're wondering I've navigated through backcountry areas in Canada (northern/central Ontario primarily), the western US, and northern Thailand using paper topo maps, and they all have these issues. In fact, they're not really that useful at all for route planning (especially if you're using a vehicle), because of the aforementioned problem. You have to assess the situation when you arrive, or based on someone's previous knowledge of the area, and you may discover that you can't get somewhere you wanted to (this is especially a problem in Thailand, but is not uncommon in North America - my logging road example was in Canada).
I'm a geologist; I once saw the head of the USGS speak and he mentioned that updating the topo maps was a fraction of a percent of their budget. It's unfortunately not really a priority for them, although I'm sure they'd like to do more if they had the money.
They are actually quite good at keeping people out of national parks unless you go in the official entrances (where you have to pay), so you're not that far off from the current reality.
One used to, from what I've heard, be able to get into many national parks (including those with big mountains, like the Tetons) for the purpose of hiking/camping/climbing by going in the back access roads. Now, however, besides being blocked with gates and so on, the back areas are regularly patrolled.
Of course there would be more incentive to get in for free if expensive insurance was required, but I think they'd be able to handle the situation fine. Not that I'm suggesting that's actually a good idea - I think the entrance fees are too high as it is.
I agree completely with your post except for one thing - I don't think watching a recorded demo would be the same as actually playing it. This is a game that I think was meant to be played by yourself, in one sitting (it only takes a couple hours as I recall).
As you note, there are emotional and philosophical elements that are very important to the "experience". The power of these, though, comes from you "being" the character, not from watching the character. It's so interesting because you can definitely evoke these same thoughts in something passive like a movie, but not in the same way - and I don't think you can evoke emotional attachment to the companion cube by watching someone else becoming attached to it.
On the other hand, the power of the game doesn't really come from the puzzles and game mechanics (for the most part - it definitely contributes, and it being something completely new means the process of discovering how it works is very satisfying). You wouldn't have a course just on the game mechanics (although now that I say that I'm sure you could find examples of courses on e.g. Tetris). So if a student really couldn't figure out how to play - and I definitely know people who no matter how much practice are just terrible at games - they could watch a demo recording so at least they could try to participate in the class discussion.
However, it would be like trying to discuss a book in the class after only having seen the movie.
I would like to point out that before tectonics was relatively well understood and accepted (this only happened in the late 1960's), among the various models proposed to explain geological structures on the earth such as mountain belts was this exact idea.
So personally, as someone interested in the history of the field of geology (and a geologist myself), I think this is really pretty awesome. Whoever came up with this idea before really had a great idea - I can't recall when it was but it was likely mid-late 1800's, so too bad he's not still around to see that his theory was plausible.
It was understood well before the 1960's that this couldn't explain the earth's structures - it was not a seriously considered theory for very long for several reasons - but at least the idea is sound.
And to comment on those who are saying that this proves the moon is geologically active, I think this is a pedantic point which depends on how you define "geologically active", and that's the kind of thing that has an obvious simple answer to start with but then gets complex when you have situations like this.
As a geologist I would still define the moon as being inactive. Active to me would imply influences besides simply gravity (although gravity is of course a major driving force in earth-type tectonics, it's not the only factor). If you subdivide the earth into active and inactive areas, even the inactive areas will occasionally have things like earthquakes happen, due to intra-plate stresses or whatever. But you won't get volcanic activity or major tectonic activity in those areas, just like you won't on the moon.
English, though, doesn't really use special symbols, so I don't think that's an excuse. Most keyboards - whether Spanish, Japanese, Russian, or Thai - should be usable to type basic English with no issue.
Thai keyboards, which are the only ones from my list I'm familiar with, have the fairly complicated Thai script as the default (a wildly different system from QWERTY), but then they also have QWERTY English letters printed on all the keys. Switching input languages is something everyone knows how to do and which all computers are set up for, and even people with limited English skills (like several Thai people I know) can switch into typing English with no problem.
Of course this may seem as though I'm implying that the English internet is the one true internet, which obviously isn't true, but it's got to be the largest, and with the most influential content. There's nothing stopping non-native speakers from penetrating the English internet if they're so inclined, and the many non-native speakers here on Slashdot attests to that.
I used to think the same way (and I don't have a lawn to tell people to get off of - I'm 23), until I realized that while I had the smallest phone I could find and it was simple enough, I never actually make phone calls or send SMSs. Why am I carrying a device (small as it was) that I only use once or twice a week at most, and rarely for anything essential?
Around the same time I made that realization, I got a free iPod Touch when I bought a Macbook Pro. Now, you'll never see me with an iPhone, but I had to admit the iPod was pretty cool. So I looked into the state of non-iPhone smartphones and in January bought a Nexus One. I still rarely make phone calls, but I use the phone all the time for internet stuff and general PDA kind of stuff. The joke that always comes out in iPhone articles is that it can do everything well... except make phone calls, and it's a phone!
But now I realize that people who say that don't get it... it's a mobile computing device that also makes phone calls, not the other way around.
And by the way, also in January my phone habits changed and I now make daily calls to Thailand at 3 cents/minute through Google Voice from my Nexus One - AT&T charges $1.50 a minute for calls to Thailand. I don't have to dial a long number and enter a pin code or anything... the phone knows to automatically route international calls through Google Voice. Something like 75% of my calls are to one number in Thailand and it would be a pain in the ass to make those calls cheaply with a "dumb" phone. So I can say that my smartphone is actually a very good phone device, in addition to being an awesome internet/computing device :)
I know what you mean since I've been to 3/5 of the mentioned places, but for anyone who hasn't been there "undeveloped" is not really the right word... they're fairly typical lower-class suburban/sorta-rural areas. "Undeveloped" implies something like a third-world country... and while there are places in Canada that resemble that, lower-class areas of south-central Ontario don't really fit that description :)
Actually, blu-rays of older films like Casablanca tend to look incredible... yes you can enjoy that film on awful equipment with a bad source (kind of the point of TFA I think), but it *was* carefully filmed with excellent cinematography and good quality film and so on. Seeing those kinds of films in HD on blu-ray (or another good source) can be spectacular. Same thing with seeing them projected on film.
I've actually seen Casablanca in theaters twice, with good prints. I've also seen it on HD-DVD, and that was excellent, perhaps even better. You don't need a movie theater to enjoy that film, but a good HD source on a decent HDTV will be much more enjoyable than watching the DVD (the official DVD available in the US is quite good actually) on a small screen.
We tend to think of older films as perhaps a little muddy and bland looking, because we're used to seeing poorly-done transfers on small screens on TV. Yet many of these films (Casablanca included) look far better than many modern films if given the proper treatment.
I don't know about that, I *like* seeing the film grain (usually only on older movies, true) on blu-ray (or other HD sources). When you're engrossed in the film you don't notice, but if you take a second to appreciate the cinematography or simply the quality of the transfer, the grain is nice to see and can be aesthetically pleasing. Of course, that's not what we're talking about.
I remember noticing the grain on the first Spider-Man film in the theater, and it was obvious to me that it wasn't real since there's so much CG. While it might not have had the effect they'd hoped for, it's definitely noticeable in films of that era and earlier (it's gotten much better) that everything's so clean, particularly CG stuff obviously. The new Star Wars films, for example; the whole thing looks like a cartoon no matter how realistic the CG animations are. Or even worse, the CG that's added to the original films in the special editions... particularly Jabba in Ep. 4, and the fleet of X-Wings and Y-Wings approaching the death star. I hate that shot, because the original (done with models) was good and now it just sticks out.
Adding artificial grain may not have been the right solution, but at least they acknowledged the problem and tried something. Otherwise it completely takes you out of the film, whether you realize it or not.
In photo retouching, if you have to extensively clone something or smooth something out, you sometimes need to add noise so that it blends back in. Same principle (of course, I'm the kind of person that adds *additional* artificial film grain to my digital photos sometimes because I like the way it looks).
Possibly a little bit; the UCs that aren't really well known (like UCR) do not get as much respect as the more well-known UCs (like UCLA), at least within California and the academic community (disclaimer: I was a grad student at a California university but not a UC, and was accepted at UCR and made an extensive visit there before deciding where I went).
I honestly don't believe this was the intention of the summary-writer - as I'm sure you know, slashdot summaries make these kinds of mistakes all the time. And, particularly, making the name of universities vague is actually a very common practice at slashdot, for some reason.
However, by leaving out the "Riverside", people who aren't that familiar with the UC system will think of the UCs they've heard of before, like UCLA, UC Berkeley, etc... the top-notch schools that have a lot of name recognition. Intentionally or not, leaving it at just University of California may have added some legitimacy in some readers' minds, subconsciously anyway. More likely here at slashdot, though, is that most people are at least somewhat familiar with UC and recognized that the summary-writer left the actual name of the school out.
At both universities I've attended Linux was not supported but it worked fine on their networks. They even tried to help me with an issue connecting with WPA - which ultimately is a Linux problem not their network's. I did ultimately get a MBP and was pleasantly surprised how well it worked with all aspects of the network seamlessly, but if you're running Linux chances are you can figure out any problems and don't need help from the it department.
Basically it's no problem and I suspect a lot of people who run Linux like me are realizing how good MBPs are and so are using them as school computers. You don't want to run into problems with Linux right when you need your computer for something important, and OS X is the most stable platform for that while also being very geek friendly.
NPR has an Android app too, I have it on my Nexus One. It's basically the same as the iPhone version as far as I can tell (which I tried on an iPod Touch), but I haven't used either very much (my car was basically permanently tuned to KPCC when I lived in the area the past two years, so I was covered... maybe I'll start using it now that I don't live near such a good station anymore - KCRW is nice to have instead of the other music stations which are awful, but I prefer the interesting talk stuff on KPCC while driving).
I know I'm a bit late to the party, but, in regards to preschoolers learning an arbitrary sequence of meaningless symbols, this is perhaps harder than you think.
I taught the ABC's to a native Thai, 22 years old, and it made me realize how hard this actually is. Of course it's easier if you're intimately familiar with the characters you're using for your random strings already (which preschoolers and those whose native language uses different characters don't), meaning once you know the abc's a second sequence with the same characters won't be as difficult as that. But it's still hard (for most people).
In case you were wondering, some of us did appreciate the License to Kill reference :)
You may also be interested in the film Fitzcarraldo, which also involves an eclectic European inventor who comes up with an ice-making process and brings it to South America. I haven't seen Mosquito Coast but I guarantee you will enjoy Fitzcarraldo a lot more.
I don't think he even actually watched it, because if he had he would have known that they knew it was a bad idea to have an american-flag motorcycle blaring "born in the USA".
They did indeed have such a motorcycle, but as a joke - it was the "encouragement" to not do anything stupid to wreck the bikes they were actually driving (they were used and beat up and they did quite a big trip on them). If they couldn't get their bike to continue without major repairs, they would have to ride the Springsteen bike, which obviously none of them would have actually done. I presume they had it hidden in a support van except when they took it out a few times to taunt them when they had mechanical problems.
In any case, I'm not sure what any of this has to do with video game addiction camps in China. The original poster started ranting about the actual topic, and then decided that wasn't interesting enough so started on Jeremy Clarkson... I guess the "drug induced rambling" comment was right ;)
In most Asian cultures fair (white) skin is considered the most beautiful. If you look at Asian models and actresses in advertising or movies, you'll note that they're all very fair-skinned, probably much more so than any Asian that you may know in person.
In any Asian country you'll find skin whitening products anyplace you find what we might consider essential toiletry-type items. I believe particularly dark-skinned people are looked down upon, as well, meaning it's not just a beauty thing, though not in the same way as color discrimination in the US... it's a class thing; dark skin supposedly means you came from the lower classes who developed dark skin from working in the fields all day. Therefore many people (particularly women) want to lighten their skin.
I needed face wash one time in Thailand, and my method for choosing what toiletries to buy there was basically to find the product with the least English on it (or just with the best package if there was a really good one). I ended up with whitening face wash (which was actually written in english in the fine print, but I didn't look - I noticed later when I realized the guy pictured on it was unusually light-skinned for a Thai). I'm already white, and as far as I could tell it didn't do anything. I'm not sure the more hard-core whitening stuff does a whole lot either, but the ladies love it (certain types anyway - many don't care).
Well, despite the disparaging comments from the others, it is actually a rather good film and definitely worth seeing. It's not going to hold up as well as the great classic Vietnam films (Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, etc.), I don't think, because there are some fairly silly aspects to the script. But it's definitely worth seeing.
I saw it after it won everything at the oscars and after it had been hyped up so much, and I still thought it was great.
And by the way, the blu-ray version is the one to get ;) The cinematography is pretty good and the compression on the dvdrip version is awful.
I read your post fairly quickly and noticed the Vin Diesel in your sig at the same time, and in my mind I thought you were referring to a Vin Diesel clinic.
I'm pretty sure they're ipod touches actually, but certainly not windows mobile :)
Pretty slick actually, especially if the store is crowded and the main register area has a huge line of people buying... well I don't know what they're buying if it's not something they'll sell you via the ipods. Only thing I ever bought in there was a macbook pro.
Hey, when I first got my nexus one I tried all the free android tetris games I could find at the time and decided yours was the best one - good work :)
I didn't get the paid version since I never actually play games on my phone, sorry about that ;) I guess I just decided I needed to have the best android tetris just in case I'm ever in the middle of nowhere and need tetris.
The official android market is much better than what it sounds like the Nokia market is like, just so you know. There's usually no reason to need to look elsewhere... there's nothing stopping you from installing from other sources (it's a built-in capability and very simple) but they let most anything in the market and apps are managed within the OS very well.
Obviously this kind of situation is an exception, but this particular version of Tetris is far from the best one available on android... and a quick search reveals that several of the other tetris clones are already back up on the market. One of them changed its name to "Tic Tac Toe" but still shows up in tetris/falling block game/etc. searches and has a tetris-y icon. Others look like they may not have even been taken down in the first place, or were put back up unchanged if they were.
Any of the Android file browsers will also let you install apk files right from the phone... just browse to where you put it on the SD card (wherever it got downloaded from the web browser - can do the whole thing from the phone if you want). No need to have a separate app cluttering up your phone just for installing stuff when you can use a file browser, which is useful for other things.
Astro and ES File Manager are good options... they also let you browse network shares and do bluetooth transfers and stuff like that. If you want to browse the entire file system, you probably need Root Explorer but that's a paid app. That has nothing to do with installing apk files, though.
There are other markets. Try "SlideMe" for example. And there are plenty of websites offering the .apk files for direct download and install.
Not having your app on the official market is still going to hurt its popularity immensely, though, and people won't get updates and so on.
As the other replier noted, the correct alternative is to leave things the way they are. Nothing anyone does is going to prevent people from using phones anonymously if they want to, but it *will* inconvenience and annoy everyone else that needs/wants prepaid cell phones.
Therefore it's a complete waste of time to try to come up with other solutions. That's why nobody's doing it :)