I use "PS3 Media Server", and I watch a lot of foreign language stuff (and I've never heard a dub I could stand). When you're browsing the files from the server on the PS3, if you go into the "TRANSCODE" folder in the folder with your media file you can choose between the different audio and subtitle streams. The server software presents each option as a different media file to the PS3 (I guess).
No, it's not ideal, and you can't switch in real time, but you don't have to fiddle with the server itself - you can do everything from the PS3.
I guess you're probably using a different media server - if you are you may want to give the free, open source PS3 Media Server a try. It hiccups sometimes on poorly-encoded files, but that's pretty rare. It will depend on your server and the quality of your network, but it's fully capable of streaming 1080p video and more than capable of doing the more common 720p rips you'll find from torrent sites. It also shouldn't require any setup or anything in most cases, just start it and point it to your media files and it should work.
I've been using Droidwall for quite a while, and I'm going to keep using it for one primary reason - you can choose whether to allow apps access over wifi, 3g, or both. I'm mainly interested in limiting what apps do when I'm using mobile data.
I really hate that it doesn't pop up a notification when it blocks something new, though. Every time I install a new app I forget to enable it in the Droidwall settings, and it sits there not able to connect until I remember.
In fact, the whole interface for Droidwall is pretty awful.
If this new one adds the option to disallow 3g on a per-app basis, then I'd switch immediately. Don't want to knock Droidwall too much because it's great and it's free and everything, but it needs a lot of work!
Your scenario is absurd, because ninjas are small and fit, and mall cops aren't. Mall cops might not have tailor-made uniforms, but they are usually not baggy and it would still be noticeable if a ninja wore the uniform of someone twice his size.
I have to correct myself, it's not flash. It's really, really awful javascript. It felt like a badly done flash interface. I think in its current state it's probably worse than flash would be, actually.
It seems they're sort of attempting that. They give the example of a contributed translated phrase (not word, a whole phrase, so grammar gets parsed and translated correctly) from Zulu to English. Then, someone translates the same phrase from English to Chinese. A Zulu-speaking user could then look up the Zulu phrase, and would find translations for both English and Chinese.
Will there be things lost in translation... of course. But I think it's not a bad idea, because it's relying on human translations, not machine translations. If you run a phrase through babelfish or google translate multiple times, it turns into gibberish (and for many languages just one pass is enough to turn it into gibberish). But if you pass it along a line of human translators, you'll get something usable. Like a game of telephone or chinese whispers, it will surely get modified along the way, ultimately to a point where much of the meaning is distorted or lost. But if there were checks in place to try to limit how far the chain can go (it would be a web, anyway, not a chain) it would be quite good.
The problem I see with it is that the interface is awful - it's entirely flash, and not a particularly good interface even for flash - and if you're relying on volunteer contributors, you've got to make it easy for them. And flash does not do that. Especially if your volunteers for some languages are sitting in a third-world country with a decade-old computer and a dialup connection - and it doesn't even have to be that extreme an example for a badly done flash website to be a big impediment - plenty of people still have problems with flash on linux, and lots of people around the world use linux.
Also, there are several options for English, along with different dialects. The top-level options are English (Asian), English (British), English (Caribbean), and English (Controlled), and then each one has different dialects to choose from. Controlled English? There's no explanation of these options. What should I list my contributed translation as for what I'd consider "standard" western international English? I think it goes under one of the "dialects" of Controlled English, but I'm not sure.
Also, there seems to hardly be anything available. Most languages are blank databases at the moment, apparently.
So you wouldn't be interested in geeky girls (the only people who would potentially ask about an Android device in the way you're implying)?
I've had geek girls ask me about my Nexus One. I'm guessing you wouldn't feel the same way about people who would ask about an iphone (since they're fairly passe at this point), but, I feel a lot cooler when someone asks about my N1 than I would if someone asked about my iPad if I had one.
I don't know that my perfect match is a geek girl who would ask about an Android device I had as a conversation starter, and my girlfriend (who is near-perfect for me) is not like that at all (though she likes the games I have on my N1 - I never play them myself but keep them there for her). But for a random conversation in an airport or something (which I think is what you're implying), I would much prefer talking to some cute geek girl than the kind of person who would randomly ask a stranger about something like an iPad.
Excepting, of course, the first few months that it was out when it was really something new - I sat next to someone on a flight from New York to Bangkok (the first leg anyway, but a long flight in any case) who had one a couple weeks after they had first come out. I hadn't gone into an Apple store to see one for myself at that point, and I was interested to see how it stacked up to the hype. I didn't ask about it - though I would understand why other people would. I just watched what he was doing. I tried one in an Apple store later.
The punchline, I suppose, is that I've had far more geek *guys* ask me about my N1:) Still, that's not at all an unpleasant conversation when compared to most potential random conversations with strangers in airports (or wherever), most of which are going to be inane.
That's interesting, as very much an introvert that seems like it's obvious and something I instinctively knew, but when written out it still triggered a bit of an "aha" moment. I too always think extroverted people seem fake, but when you think about it in your way it makes more sense.
Still doesn't make it any less off-putting, though, especially when it's someone that you *would* like to be friends with that's being "fake" with you. I think there are many shades of introversion and extroversion and nobody's all the way at one end, but when I think about it, none of my close friends are very far into the extroverted side of the scale. I'm not sure I could date someone who was very extroverted either - all my girlfriends have been in the middle somewhere. My current girlfriend is the most extroverted of any of them, and I like her the most, so who knows:)
Most Americans who lives in or near, or has simply visited, certain major US cities - particularly NYC but also Chicago, and a few others with decent systems - loves light rail (like subways) too. There are surely pressures from car companies and so on, but public perception is definitely not anti-rail.
Even in NYC, though, you run into problems depending on where you want to go, and for many people a car is still a very frequent necessity. That's besides the fact that if you want to go anywhere *else* in the country, including just NYC's neighboring suburbs, you need a car. The subway in NYC is great, but it pales in comparison to the great European systems (including London and Paris, the only two I'm personally familiar with, but also undeniably some of the best in the world).
Even in cities with lackluster light rail it's often desirable to try to use it over renting a car or taking taxis - but not always. I used it in Los Angeles before I moved there, and that once was enough - it sucks there. But in Bangkok, while a very tiny, overcrowded system compared to the immense size of the city, it's unbelievably useful (or else it wouldn't be absolutely packed through most of the day) and getting anywhere via taxi or walking is incredibly difficult. However, since I've brought up Bangkok, I have to mention my favorite public transit system that I've used - the canal and river boats in Bangkok:)
Yeah... a lot of people don't realize that if you email one of the authors of a paper you're interested in that's behind a paywall, they'll probably send you a PDF free of charge, without checking your credentials or anything... scientists in academia really do want their stuff to be accessible to everyone for free.
Huh, I played Portal 2 all the way through on the PS3 the day it came out, and then went and put the code into my computer "just because". I don't remember having to activate it via the PS3 first, though I suppose it's possible. This was all just hours before the outage started (as far as I can tell) so I guess I was just lucky:)
They give you a slip of paper with a cd key on it in the PS3 game case, why isn't that enough to activate the PC version?
Vote this article down - it's misleading flamebait in the extreme. In particular, it fails to mention that the software was designed to facilitate anonymous filesharing, which would most certainly be used for copyright infringement and illegal purposes. And, the whole thing goes against Dropbox's TOS, even if it isn't used for dubious file sharing purposes.
I don't suppose it's impossible that there are android phones with something other than a glass screen, but typically they do have glass screens...
I agree it's hard to match the build quality of an Apple device (I'm not sure I could ever switch back from my macbook pro, even to a thinkpad, which was my previous laptop) but so long as you don't go for the cheapest android phones (e.g. the ones you most likely saw in Best Buy or wherever...) you'll hardly be greatly dissatisfied.
I have a Nexus One; it feels really nice in the hand. If you nit-pick it's not quite as solid feeling as an iphone because the battery cover can be removed, but it's not loose or anything. It's got a nice heft and the materials are, dare I say, sexy - other than the glass screen, everything is coated with teflon. You *do* have to choose carefully, as there are crappy android phones, but it's better to have that choice to begin with, I think:) Plus, all reviews of these phones online mention the build quality and how it feels, it's not like you'll need to do a ton of research (and if you get one from a carrier they'll have one you can try out anyway; I personally will probably not ever get a phone from a carrier again, though, after buying the N1 unlocked directly from google).
I use a Cyanogenmod-based ROM on a Nexus One, and it stores these cache files. Data wasn't particularly interesting (which was disappointing since I'm a bit of a GPS/GIS geek), it stores a limited amount of locations, and you can clear it completely by unchecking the location services box in the settings - doing that deletes the cache files immediately.
When you uncheck the box, the cache files are immediately deleted. I tried it myself. That doesn't mean the data is irrecoverable, obviously, but it'd no longer be trivial to obtain.
Not that the data is even that interesting on android, since it doesn't keep much cached (or it could just be that I'm not interesting, so my data wasn't interesting, but it only went back about a day or so in my case).
I think you managed to slashdot the firefall server with your comment, which is impressive; considering no one read TFA it's amazing anyone clicks links in comments.
Just as a note, though, Counter Strike Source was never free to HL2 owners. Also, finding good counter strike servers is not as easy as you claim. If you want a server that only runs the dust2 map and all kinds of ridiculous server mods, sure, you'll find one. If you want a well-run server with lots of maps like in the old days, with lots of server regulars, you'll be looking for quite a while.
Battlefield Bad Company 2 is already a much more interesting game for serious FPS players and is very popular, and I fully expect Battlefield 3 to be great. Not sure it will be the front-runner exactly, though - the two series attract slightly different crowds; COD games are less serious and attract a lot of teenagers. You don't get as many whiny 13-year-olds in Battlefield games.
I have fun with every COD game - I've been playing them since the original, which was revolutionary at the time - but the Battlefield series engages me more in multiplayer (I've also been playing those since the original, from Battlefield 1942 onward). There's only so much COD multiplayer one can take, but Battlefield remains interesting. Plus they've released map packs for free; I hate paid DLC. I paid for DLC maps once, for COD World At War, and felt ripped off - the new maps weren't that great - and decided to never do it again.
Auto-aim on some games can be really obnoxious actually, and turn you away from where you wanted to point (Call of Duty Black Ops does this on PS3). Most games are subtle, though. You don't really notice it at all in Bad Company 2 for example; in fact I'm just assuming that it does anything at all (I know it's there because there's an option in the menu - yep, you can turn it off).
For a good, balanced game, a subtle bit of help with aiming is a good thing to have. Otherwise it would be near-impossible, except for the 13-year-olds who spend all their time playing. It *is* possible to adapt to the gamepad and to be able to aim decently, even without heavy-handed aim assist. Not like with a mouse, but not as badly as you may think. Just takes a lot of practice. Even with aim assist it takes a lot of practice to get good on a gamepad - but the same is true for using a mouse.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if many people do better on consoles than on PC, and yes, it's partly because of aim assist. I played Counter Strike recently for the first time in years and got destroyed - could hardly get a shot on target. I used to be pretty good at it. Haven't played a computer FPS in years (other than Fallout 3 and NV) so I'm out of practice. Meanwhile I do quite well on the PS3, usually near the top of the score board.
I went to Thailand for about two months last summer. I was just off a 36-hour flight (including a long layover) so I looked terrible, and I was wearing casual clothes. That, combined with that I apparently didn't have a good reason for going there according to them (I was just on vacation after finishing school and told them as such; I don't drink, use drugs or use prostitutes, I'm about the cleanest person possible coming off the plane from Thailand but they don't know that...) meant I was sent to secondary screening with a rude guy who hand-searched every little thing I had, which caused me to miss my connecting flight.
I went again later the same year. I had the same type of visa to Thailand, and was there for a similar amount of time both times. I said essentially the same thing to the first customs person both times (I again didn't really have a "good reason") - I never lied or even exaggerated. Only difference was what I was wearing and whether I was clean-shaven or not. I wore a nice sports jacket, and shaved in the bathroom during my layover in Abu Dhabi. I was pretty much just waved through customs.
I'm in a similar position, BS and MS in a not-overcrowded field (geology), willing to work for peanuts, willing to move anywhere in the world. Living at home with my middle class parents, and have several thousands of dollars of debt so I can't really do anything fun with my "free time". I've submitted hundreds of applications and resumes over the past year (more than a year at this point); no call backs. I got help from my university's career center to make sure I wasn't doing anything bone-headed that was causing this, but at least according to them I'm not, and should appear as a strong candidate.
To add insult to injury, I don't even get call-backs for retail or shitty temp jobs. I like to assume they think I'm overqualified.
"Glad" to hear that I'm not the only one, anyway:)
To reiterate your point: what the fuck, seriously.
Women are pretty well respected in the terms you're referring to in Thailand. And if anything, the typical western guys who go to Thailand looking for a girlfriend are not the enlightened, ideal western man who respects women, and are much worse than typical Thais in their attitudes toward women! Many westerners who go to Thailand for the girls are if not abusive, at least disrespectful both to women in general and Thai culture.
I have spent nearly a year in total in Thailand for various reasons (initially went as a grad student researching the geology there). I met my girlfriend (and future wife) there. She's Thai and is not from the middle or upper classes - actually she came from a hill tribe, one of the poorest demographics, but she's quite sharp and is doing OK for herself with various retail-type jobs after moving to the city (Chiang Mai, not Bangkok). I've interacted a lot with the type of women being referred to in this slashdot thread, though, because my girlfriend knows them - they're relatively poor and are interested in western guys mainly for money.
My girlfriend, her sister, and her closest friends are not like that. There are plenty of girls who aren't, in other words. It would be a lie to say they're not attracted by the idea of financial security - they typically make maybe $150 US a month and there's not much room for advancement without expensive education. However, the real issue is that the "good" Thai men are taken by the middle and upper class Thai women. If you're a poor Thai girl, you're left with choosing between largely low-life Thais, or western guys. The low-life western guys end up with prostitutes, but if you're a decent western guy you can easily end up with a perfectly nice Thai girl. Also, many Thai girls prefer western guys for their looks - being large (even just from being a little overweight - not too much though) is attractive to many Thai girls (like in olden times in the west, this may have something to do with being large making you appear to be well-off - regardless of the fact that in the west nowadays it's often the poorest people who are the largest! but I mean large in terms of tall and muscular, too, which most Thai men aren't).
Now, I'm a geek, and intelligent. I'm reasonably attractive (not ugly anyway) and just slightly overweight. I have literally never been without a girlfriend since I was 15 - I'm 24 now - and did not go to Thailand for the express purpose of having sex with Thai girls, and never expected to meet anyone. That, unfortunately, is not the attitude of most western men who go there, to put it mildly, so lots of nice Thai girls end up with assholes. Then the girls, once they realize they're with assholes, often turn into gold diggers as they become more and more cynical. In my case I found my girlfriend rather serendipitously (I was not looking for a girlfriend and she was not looking for a boyfriend, but we "clicked" almost immediately) and we are both very happy, and very sincere, in our relationship - regardless of how much money I can give her or her family (none, actually, as I can't find a job).
Thai culture results in women who are respectful, endlessly kind, and ferociously loyal - the opposite of the stereotype western men are familiar with, because the Thai girls western men are familiar with are mostly prostitutes who have strayed far from Thai cultural norms. Thai men are similar on the surface, but it's extremely common for them to have disrespectful attitudes toward women, despite what I said earlier (most men are the low-lifes I mentioned - there are plenty who aren't, but it's common) - it's considered normal to have multiple mistresses even when married, for example. Indeed, Thai men are the main clientele for most prostitutes, not foreigners! So there may be some truth to what you're saying after all. It's a complex society and culture, I'll leave it at that:)
Operation Flashpoint was buggy as heck, and I didn't get far in it. I knew about the DRM stuff but I did have a legitimate copy so didn't think it was that, but in hindsight, it easily could have been. I just thought it was the bugs and that it was a very hard game to begin with.
That was near the end of the era where you could easily install a single copy of a game on several computers and play over a LAN. My brother and some of our friends would do that, and would buy games (yes, just one copy) just because of that capability (most games in the genres we liked had the capability anyway). So we had the one copy of the game installed on several computers.
We ended up having more fun with it via the included level editor than the actual included missions. It was basically an open-ended world you could do anything with, as long as it involved Eastern European vehicles and weaponry and killing enemy soldiers:)
Car thieves just need to swap out the plates in that case. Presumably they're not just cruising around on the streets after stealing the car, anyway, and they get taken somewhere to be refitted into something they can sell, so there's a very narrow window where they would be driving with the original plates.
Obviously, fake plates would be noticed by the system too. But an easy solution is to go to a long-term parking garage and steal the plates off of a car there, so they won't be noticed for a few days. Then you have a couple days at least that you can drive around with the stolen car with little reason to expect your camera system would catch you.
Assuming a private system, hopefully you wouldn't actually have access to the state DMV records anyway, so there can't be a sophisticated database system. And no way to look up out-of-state plates either, so thieves would just stock up on out-of-state plates - even fake ones.
You might catch a few idiotic gang bangers and joy riding kids, but it wouldn't affect the overall problem.
Just as an anecdote, I excelled at German in high school, but nearly failed when I tried it at university. I didn't do it because I had to, though - I had to do some non-science stuff and thought I would do well in German (and I enjoyed it anyway). Nope. I took some interesting history courses instead. The university (University of Rochester) had a very loose curriculum (no "core" classes at all), which is not the case for most universities in the US, so that helped.
I am trying to teach myself Thai now, and it's very, very slow going, even though my girlfriend is Thai. I think the only reason I did well in German in high school is because the classes were too easy, and it's fairly similar to English, which I was already quite good at. I think some people are just better at learning second languages than others.
Pacific islands that are/were strip-mined for phosphate got their phosphate from the meters-thick layers of bird crap deposited over thousands of years, so while Canadian geese are indeed vile creatures, it's not like bird crap can't be useful:)
Slashdot Mirror
I use "PS3 Media Server", and I watch a lot of foreign language stuff (and I've never heard a dub I could stand). When you're browsing the files from the server on the PS3, if you go into the "TRANSCODE" folder in the folder with your media file you can choose between the different audio and subtitle streams. The server software presents each option as a different media file to the PS3 (I guess).
No, it's not ideal, and you can't switch in real time, but you don't have to fiddle with the server itself - you can do everything from the PS3.
I guess you're probably using a different media server - if you are you may want to give the free, open source PS3 Media Server a try. It hiccups sometimes on poorly-encoded files, but that's pretty rare. It will depend on your server and the quality of your network, but it's fully capable of streaming 1080p video and more than capable of doing the more common 720p rips you'll find from torrent sites. It also shouldn't require any setup or anything in most cases, just start it and point it to your media files and it should work.
I've been using Droidwall for quite a while, and I'm going to keep using it for one primary reason - you can choose whether to allow apps access over wifi, 3g, or both. I'm mainly interested in limiting what apps do when I'm using mobile data.
I really hate that it doesn't pop up a notification when it blocks something new, though. Every time I install a new app I forget to enable it in the Droidwall settings, and it sits there not able to connect until I remember.
In fact, the whole interface for Droidwall is pretty awful.
If this new one adds the option to disallow 3g on a per-app basis, then I'd switch immediately. Don't want to knock Droidwall too much because it's great and it's free and everything, but it needs a lot of work!
Your scenario is absurd, because ninjas are small and fit, and mall cops aren't. Mall cops might not have tailor-made uniforms, but they are usually not baggy and it would still be noticeable if a ninja wore the uniform of someone twice his size.
I have to correct myself, it's not flash. It's really, really awful javascript. It felt like a badly done flash interface. I think in its current state it's probably worse than flash would be, actually.
It seems they're sort of attempting that. They give the example of a contributed translated phrase (not word, a whole phrase, so grammar gets parsed and translated correctly) from Zulu to English. Then, someone translates the same phrase from English to Chinese. A Zulu-speaking user could then look up the Zulu phrase, and would find translations for both English and Chinese.
Will there be things lost in translation... of course. But I think it's not a bad idea, because it's relying on human translations, not machine translations. If you run a phrase through babelfish or google translate multiple times, it turns into gibberish (and for many languages just one pass is enough to turn it into gibberish). But if you pass it along a line of human translators, you'll get something usable. Like a game of telephone or chinese whispers, it will surely get modified along the way, ultimately to a point where much of the meaning is distorted or lost. But if there were checks in place to try to limit how far the chain can go (it would be a web, anyway, not a chain) it would be quite good.
The problem I see with it is that the interface is awful - it's entirely flash, and not a particularly good interface even for flash - and if you're relying on volunteer contributors, you've got to make it easy for them. And flash does not do that. Especially if your volunteers for some languages are sitting in a third-world country with a decade-old computer and a dialup connection - and it doesn't even have to be that extreme an example for a badly done flash website to be a big impediment - plenty of people still have problems with flash on linux, and lots of people around the world use linux.
Also, there are several options for English, along with different dialects. The top-level options are English (Asian), English (British), English (Caribbean), and English (Controlled), and then each one has different dialects to choose from. Controlled English? There's no explanation of these options. What should I list my contributed translation as for what I'd consider "standard" western international English? I think it goes under one of the "dialects" of Controlled English, but I'm not sure.
Also, there seems to hardly be anything available. Most languages are blank databases at the moment, apparently.
So you wouldn't be interested in geeky girls (the only people who would potentially ask about an Android device in the way you're implying)?
I've had geek girls ask me about my Nexus One. I'm guessing you wouldn't feel the same way about people who would ask about an iphone (since they're fairly passe at this point), but, I feel a lot cooler when someone asks about my N1 than I would if someone asked about my iPad if I had one.
I don't know that my perfect match is a geek girl who would ask about an Android device I had as a conversation starter, and my girlfriend (who is near-perfect for me) is not like that at all (though she likes the games I have on my N1 - I never play them myself but keep them there for her). But for a random conversation in an airport or something (which I think is what you're implying), I would much prefer talking to some cute geek girl than the kind of person who would randomly ask a stranger about something like an iPad.
Excepting, of course, the first few months that it was out when it was really something new - I sat next to someone on a flight from New York to Bangkok (the first leg anyway, but a long flight in any case) who had one a couple weeks after they had first come out. I hadn't gone into an Apple store to see one for myself at that point, and I was interested to see how it stacked up to the hype. I didn't ask about it - though I would understand why other people would. I just watched what he was doing. I tried one in an Apple store later.
The punchline, I suppose, is that I've had far more geek *guys* ask me about my N1 :) Still, that's not at all an unpleasant conversation when compared to most potential random conversations with strangers in airports (or wherever), most of which are going to be inane.
That's interesting, as very much an introvert that seems like it's obvious and something I instinctively knew, but when written out it still triggered a bit of an "aha" moment. I too always think extroverted people seem fake, but when you think about it in your way it makes more sense.
Still doesn't make it any less off-putting, though, especially when it's someone that you *would* like to be friends with that's being "fake" with you. I think there are many shades of introversion and extroversion and nobody's all the way at one end, but when I think about it, none of my close friends are very far into the extroverted side of the scale. I'm not sure I could date someone who was very extroverted either - all my girlfriends have been in the middle somewhere. My current girlfriend is the most extroverted of any of them, and I like her the most, so who knows :)
Most Americans who lives in or near, or has simply visited, certain major US cities - particularly NYC but also Chicago, and a few others with decent systems - loves light rail (like subways) too. There are surely pressures from car companies and so on, but public perception is definitely not anti-rail.
Even in NYC, though, you run into problems depending on where you want to go, and for many people a car is still a very frequent necessity. That's besides the fact that if you want to go anywhere *else* in the country, including just NYC's neighboring suburbs, you need a car. The subway in NYC is great, but it pales in comparison to the great European systems (including London and Paris, the only two I'm personally familiar with, but also undeniably some of the best in the world).
Even in cities with lackluster light rail it's often desirable to try to use it over renting a car or taking taxis - but not always. I used it in Los Angeles before I moved there, and that once was enough - it sucks there. But in Bangkok, while a very tiny, overcrowded system compared to the immense size of the city, it's unbelievably useful (or else it wouldn't be absolutely packed through most of the day) and getting anywhere via taxi or walking is incredibly difficult. However, since I've brought up Bangkok, I have to mention my favorite public transit system that I've used - the canal and river boats in Bangkok :)
poor breaking performance
I'd say under the circumstances, the "breaking performance" is probably quite good :)
Yeah... a lot of people don't realize that if you email one of the authors of a paper you're interested in that's behind a paywall, they'll probably send you a PDF free of charge, without checking your credentials or anything... scientists in academia really do want their stuff to be accessible to everyone for free.
Huh, I played Portal 2 all the way through on the PS3 the day it came out, and then went and put the code into my computer "just because". I don't remember having to activate it via the PS3 first, though I suppose it's possible. This was all just hours before the outage started (as far as I can tell) so I guess I was just lucky :)
They give you a slip of paper with a cd key on it in the PS3 game case, why isn't that enough to activate the PC version?
Vote this article down - it's misleading flamebait in the extreme. In particular, it fails to mention that the software was designed to facilitate anonymous filesharing, which would most certainly be used for copyright infringement and illegal purposes. And, the whole thing goes against Dropbox's TOS, even if it isn't used for dubious file sharing purposes.
I don't suppose it's impossible that there are android phones with something other than a glass screen, but typically they do have glass screens...
I agree it's hard to match the build quality of an Apple device (I'm not sure I could ever switch back from my macbook pro, even to a thinkpad, which was my previous laptop) but so long as you don't go for the cheapest android phones (e.g. the ones you most likely saw in Best Buy or wherever...) you'll hardly be greatly dissatisfied.
I have a Nexus One; it feels really nice in the hand. If you nit-pick it's not quite as solid feeling as an iphone because the battery cover can be removed, but it's not loose or anything. It's got a nice heft and the materials are, dare I say, sexy - other than the glass screen, everything is coated with teflon. You *do* have to choose carefully, as there are crappy android phones, but it's better to have that choice to begin with, I think :) Plus, all reviews of these phones online mention the build quality and how it feels, it's not like you'll need to do a ton of research (and if you get one from a carrier they'll have one you can try out anyway; I personally will probably not ever get a phone from a carrier again, though, after buying the N1 unlocked directly from google).
I use a Cyanogenmod-based ROM on a Nexus One, and it stores these cache files. Data wasn't particularly interesting (which was disappointing since I'm a bit of a GPS/GIS geek), it stores a limited amount of locations, and you can clear it completely by unchecking the location services box in the settings - doing that deletes the cache files immediately.
When you uncheck the box, the cache files are immediately deleted. I tried it myself. That doesn't mean the data is irrecoverable, obviously, but it'd no longer be trivial to obtain.
Not that the data is even that interesting on android, since it doesn't keep much cached (or it could just be that I'm not interesting, so my data wasn't interesting, but it only went back about a day or so in my case).
I think you managed to slashdot the firefall server with your comment, which is impressive; considering no one read TFA it's amazing anyone clicks links in comments.
Just as a note, though, Counter Strike Source was never free to HL2 owners. Also, finding good counter strike servers is not as easy as you claim. If you want a server that only runs the dust2 map and all kinds of ridiculous server mods, sure, you'll find one. If you want a well-run server with lots of maps like in the old days, with lots of server regulars, you'll be looking for quite a while.
Battlefield Bad Company 2 is already a much more interesting game for serious FPS players and is very popular, and I fully expect Battlefield 3 to be great. Not sure it will be the front-runner exactly, though - the two series attract slightly different crowds; COD games are less serious and attract a lot of teenagers. You don't get as many whiny 13-year-olds in Battlefield games.
I have fun with every COD game - I've been playing them since the original, which was revolutionary at the time - but the Battlefield series engages me more in multiplayer (I've also been playing those since the original, from Battlefield 1942 onward). There's only so much COD multiplayer one can take, but Battlefield remains interesting. Plus they've released map packs for free; I hate paid DLC. I paid for DLC maps once, for COD World At War, and felt ripped off - the new maps weren't that great - and decided to never do it again.
Auto-aim on some games can be really obnoxious actually, and turn you away from where you wanted to point (Call of Duty Black Ops does this on PS3). Most games are subtle, though. You don't really notice it at all in Bad Company 2 for example; in fact I'm just assuming that it does anything at all (I know it's there because there's an option in the menu - yep, you can turn it off).
For a good, balanced game, a subtle bit of help with aiming is a good thing to have. Otherwise it would be near-impossible, except for the 13-year-olds who spend all their time playing. It *is* possible to adapt to the gamepad and to be able to aim decently, even without heavy-handed aim assist. Not like with a mouse, but not as badly as you may think. Just takes a lot of practice. Even with aim assist it takes a lot of practice to get good on a gamepad - but the same is true for using a mouse.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if many people do better on consoles than on PC, and yes, it's partly because of aim assist. I played Counter Strike recently for the first time in years and got destroyed - could hardly get a shot on target. I used to be pretty good at it. Haven't played a computer FPS in years (other than Fallout 3 and NV) so I'm out of practice. Meanwhile I do quite well on the PS3, usually near the top of the score board.
I went to Thailand for about two months last summer. I was just off a 36-hour flight (including a long layover) so I looked terrible, and I was wearing casual clothes. That, combined with that I apparently didn't have a good reason for going there according to them (I was just on vacation after finishing school and told them as such; I don't drink, use drugs or use prostitutes, I'm about the cleanest person possible coming off the plane from Thailand but they don't know that...) meant I was sent to secondary screening with a rude guy who hand-searched every little thing I had, which caused me to miss my connecting flight.
I went again later the same year. I had the same type of visa to Thailand, and was there for a similar amount of time both times. I said essentially the same thing to the first customs person both times (I again didn't really have a "good reason") - I never lied or even exaggerated. Only difference was what I was wearing and whether I was clean-shaven or not. I wore a nice sports jacket, and shaved in the bathroom during my layover in Abu Dhabi. I was pretty much just waved through customs.
I'm in a similar position, BS and MS in a not-overcrowded field (geology), willing to work for peanuts, willing to move anywhere in the world. Living at home with my middle class parents, and have several thousands of dollars of debt so I can't really do anything fun with my "free time". I've submitted hundreds of applications and resumes over the past year (more than a year at this point); no call backs. I got help from my university's career center to make sure I wasn't doing anything bone-headed that was causing this, but at least according to them I'm not, and should appear as a strong candidate.
To add insult to injury, I don't even get call-backs for retail or shitty temp jobs. I like to assume they think I'm overqualified.
"Glad" to hear that I'm not the only one, anyway :)
To reiterate your point: what the fuck, seriously.
Women are pretty well respected in the terms you're referring to in Thailand. And if anything, the typical western guys who go to Thailand looking for a girlfriend are not the enlightened, ideal western man who respects women, and are much worse than typical Thais in their attitudes toward women! Many westerners who go to Thailand for the girls are if not abusive, at least disrespectful both to women in general and Thai culture.
I have spent nearly a year in total in Thailand for various reasons (initially went as a grad student researching the geology there). I met my girlfriend (and future wife) there. She's Thai and is not from the middle or upper classes - actually she came from a hill tribe, one of the poorest demographics, but she's quite sharp and is doing OK for herself with various retail-type jobs after moving to the city (Chiang Mai, not Bangkok). I've interacted a lot with the type of women being referred to in this slashdot thread, though, because my girlfriend knows them - they're relatively poor and are interested in western guys mainly for money.
My girlfriend, her sister, and her closest friends are not like that. There are plenty of girls who aren't, in other words. It would be a lie to say they're not attracted by the idea of financial security - they typically make maybe $150 US a month and there's not much room for advancement without expensive education. However, the real issue is that the "good" Thai men are taken by the middle and upper class Thai women. If you're a poor Thai girl, you're left with choosing between largely low-life Thais, or western guys. The low-life western guys end up with prostitutes, but if you're a decent western guy you can easily end up with a perfectly nice Thai girl. Also, many Thai girls prefer western guys for their looks - being large (even just from being a little overweight - not too much though) is attractive to many Thai girls (like in olden times in the west, this may have something to do with being large making you appear to be well-off - regardless of the fact that in the west nowadays it's often the poorest people who are the largest! but I mean large in terms of tall and muscular, too, which most Thai men aren't).
Now, I'm a geek, and intelligent. I'm reasonably attractive (not ugly anyway) and just slightly overweight. I have literally never been without a girlfriend since I was 15 - I'm 24 now - and did not go to Thailand for the express purpose of having sex with Thai girls, and never expected to meet anyone. That, unfortunately, is not the attitude of most western men who go there, to put it mildly, so lots of nice Thai girls end up with assholes. Then the girls, once they realize they're with assholes, often turn into gold diggers as they become more and more cynical. In my case I found my girlfriend rather serendipitously (I was not looking for a girlfriend and she was not looking for a boyfriend, but we "clicked" almost immediately) and we are both very happy, and very sincere, in our relationship - regardless of how much money I can give her or her family (none, actually, as I can't find a job).
Thai culture results in women who are respectful, endlessly kind, and ferociously loyal - the opposite of the stereotype western men are familiar with, because the Thai girls western men are familiar with are mostly prostitutes who have strayed far from Thai cultural norms. Thai men are similar on the surface, but it's extremely common for them to have disrespectful attitudes toward women, despite what I said earlier (most men are the low-lifes I mentioned - there are plenty who aren't, but it's common) - it's considered normal to have multiple mistresses even when married, for example. Indeed, Thai men are the main clientele for most prostitutes, not foreigners! So there may be some truth to what you're saying after all. It's a complex society and culture, I'll leave it at that :)
Operation Flashpoint was buggy as heck, and I didn't get far in it. I knew about the DRM stuff but I did have a legitimate copy so didn't think it was that, but in hindsight, it easily could have been. I just thought it was the bugs and that it was a very hard game to begin with.
That was near the end of the era where you could easily install a single copy of a game on several computers and play over a LAN. My brother and some of our friends would do that, and would buy games (yes, just one copy) just because of that capability (most games in the genres we liked had the capability anyway). So we had the one copy of the game installed on several computers.
We ended up having more fun with it via the included level editor than the actual included missions. It was basically an open-ended world you could do anything with, as long as it involved Eastern European vehicles and weaponry and killing enemy soldiers :)
Car thieves just need to swap out the plates in that case. Presumably they're not just cruising around on the streets after stealing the car, anyway, and they get taken somewhere to be refitted into something they can sell, so there's a very narrow window where they would be driving with the original plates.
Obviously, fake plates would be noticed by the system too. But an easy solution is to go to a long-term parking garage and steal the plates off of a car there, so they won't be noticed for a few days. Then you have a couple days at least that you can drive around with the stolen car with little reason to expect your camera system would catch you.
Assuming a private system, hopefully you wouldn't actually have access to the state DMV records anyway, so there can't be a sophisticated database system. And no way to look up out-of-state plates either, so thieves would just stock up on out-of-state plates - even fake ones.
You might catch a few idiotic gang bangers and joy riding kids, but it wouldn't affect the overall problem.
Just as an anecdote, I excelled at German in high school, but nearly failed when I tried it at university. I didn't do it because I had to, though - I had to do some non-science stuff and thought I would do well in German (and I enjoyed it anyway). Nope. I took some interesting history courses instead. The university (University of Rochester) had a very loose curriculum (no "core" classes at all), which is not the case for most universities in the US, so that helped.
I am trying to teach myself Thai now, and it's very, very slow going, even though my girlfriend is Thai. I think the only reason I did well in German in high school is because the classes were too easy, and it's fairly similar to English, which I was already quite good at. I think some people are just better at learning second languages than others.
Pacific islands that are/were strip-mined for phosphate got their phosphate from the meters-thick layers of bird crap deposited over thousands of years, so while Canadian geese are indeed vile creatures, it's not like bird crap can't be useful :)