I know it is popular to sneer at Facebook on Slashdot (which is kind of ironic given the similarities between two community internet sites people spend time posting stuff on hoping it is of interest to others, but mostly not), but this "they are not real friends" argument really baffles me.
It shouldn't baffle you if you've spent any time at all in the real world. On the internet, someone is just a face and a name, and any deeper relationship is delusion. There are no expressions, no gestures, and no intonation, and most importantly, no physical aspect, so talking and interacting are only a shadow of what they are in the real world. I would argue that the depth of friendship is dependent on the depth of interaction, and using the internet as a medium necessarily restricts that.
Social structures change, the way people relate and communicate change. People I have on Facebook are there because I know them (they are still in the hundreds), they sometime share and/or discuss something interesting or funny, and it is sometimes ok to catch up this way, quite a few live in other countries.
"Sometimes sharing or discussing something funny" is NOT a qualification for friendship. Websites do that. TV shows do that. Neither of those entities are friends, and neither are the actors, characters, or writers related to them. I agree that social structures change, but that's exactly why we can draw a distinction between a Facebook friend and a real friend. Having a hundred Facebook friends is the equivalent of a celebrity having a hundred fans. Are they people that say they like you? Sure. Might you like them back? Yeah, it's possible. Could you get something valuable out of the relationship? Sure, why not. But at the end of the day, these are names you know, or rather, names that know you. The relationship is shallow, much more shallow than a true friendship.
"There is no greater love than this, that one lays down his life for his friend." THAT'S a real friend. How many of your Facebook "friends" would do the same? How many of them could EVER conceivably do the same?
if you really need to alt+tab out then you aren't really playing your game anyways.
Well, yeah. There's often quite a bit of down time in MMORPGs, time that could be spent doing something else. If I'm waiting for a party, I don't want to have to sit and stare at the game screen during the entire time.
That's a good point. Once you get to the point that the difference between the slowest browser (not counting IE8) and the fastest browser is ONE ONE-HUNDREDTH OF A SECOND, how much does it really matter any more? And Chrome gets nearly 120 FPS? Do monitors even refresh that quickly?
I understand that some people really do go nuts about benchmarks; my old roommate was one of them. But at the end of the day, those differences are truly negligible. What matters most is how functional the browser is.
Maybe Ebert is one of those people, who, like me, wouldn't consider those things art. Especially with the silence one, which I whole-heartedly disagree with as being called art. Even if the guy's goal was to make people listen to things besides music (rain on the roof, wind, etc.), that's complete BS that he's taking credit for that and calling it "art."
A freeway with two lanes each direction was expanded by 50% by adding an extra lane in each direction by using the shoulder.
However, this didn't work out because the shoulder wasn't strong enough. They had to close the shoulder lanes, going from three lanes to two.
The good news is that this was a reduction in capacity of only 33% so compared to the original 50% increase, you still have extra capacity...
Bonus points... where is the extra capacity?
It should be obvious, but I'll work it out for anyone who is curious.
Let's say each lane is 10 feet wide. That makes each side 20 feet wide. Adding a 10 foot shoulder is a 50 percent increase (10 / 20 =.5). However, when you remove the shoulder, you're now comparing that same ten feet to a bigger area: the road and the shoulder together. This is 30 feet wide, and 10 / 30 =.33. Since the percentage is relative (33% of 30 vs 50% of 20), the capacity stays the same, and there is no extra capacity.
Outsourced work is awful compared to in-house work. The company I work for outsources about half its software testing to China, and probably one of the eight or so Chinese workers is actually decent at it. The rest of us take a productivity hit because we have to manage both them and us, correcting their mistakes and doing their error checking because they don't care enough to.
I dunno, for some games, I've found manuals to be pretty useful: Neverwinter Nights, Civilization, i.e. games with lots of miscellaneous icons and skill trees that require a decent amount of planning. Sure you can put the content in game, but sometimes it's nice to have a reference guide. Plus the art and flavor text is nice sometimes too.
I hear that. I know a lot of manuals these days are just a few pages with the controls and character information, but a Civilization manual is like a freaking novel. Heck, when I downloaded Civ 4 a while back, I pretty much had the advisers do everything for me because it was all so complicated. I still maintain that Civilization II was the best one.;)
So, Schmidt is worried because google was relying on security through obscurity?
Whoever modded you Flamebait was dead wrong. Open disclosure is one of the major principles of security, and security through obscurity is an awful thing to trust in. It's true that openly available systems can be more susceptible to attacks, but a sufficiently robust system should be able to stand up to the scrutiny.
I've always played it with friends, and it's a lot of fun that way. We have some simple "fun competition" rules, like not allowing the purchase of exclusive transport rights, etc. That way the game is about head-to-head long-term planning, rather than finding loopholes to exploit in order to make your opponents hate you.
Take a poll. Chances are most people on this site not only prefer google, or go to it habitually, but likely even have it as their homepage.
Okay, and next take a poll with a sample that's actually representative of the world's computer users. The target market that Microsoft is shooting for is NOT Slashdot users. In fact, since Bing is the default search engine for IE, which is the default browser for Windows, which is used by 90% of the world's computer users, I think it's fair to say that they'll do well enough in the future, especially given that a large chunk of computer users don't even know what a "browser" or a "search engine" is. They just know "I click the blue 'e' to use the internet."
Why are we working so hard on creating protocol droids when utility droids are so much better?
Except that a protocol droid IS a utility droid under the right circumstances. C-3PO knows "over six million forms of communication"; that's extremely useful for diplomats, foreign exchange students, travelers, etc., etc., etc. Not everyone needs a garbage can that can plug into their computer and display low-res holograms. Heck, C-3PO was needed most of the time so that people could understand just what in the world your "clever, handy, and quick" droid was trying to do or say. For a more relevant example, let's say that R2-D2 is a Linux computer C-3PO is a Mac. Tons of people still use the latter, don't they?
Whenever I get wistful about some new shiny I see in the software aisle of Best Buy, I just go home and open Synaptic and download whatever looks like fun and everything just ends up as right as rain.
There you go: "I can't use that, so I'll just stop caring about it." Wasn't that my entire complaint?
(I think maybe the webcam doesn't work, but I don't really care.)
Sorry if this is a little off-topic, but THIS is my biggest problem with both Linux and Linux fanboys (I'm not necessary saying you're the latter; you just caused me to think of it). Core functionality is relatively easy to get, sure, even if it occasionally takes more work than a Windows user like myself is accustomed to. However, it's all the boundary cases that keep Linux from being mainstream: certain drivers not existing, certain hardware not being supported, poor excuses for replacements of legitimate products (OpenOffice versus Microsoft Office, for example), etc.
I've tried hard for two years to like Linux (I installed Ubuntu on two computers during that time and used it reasonably frequently), and it just never happened. But the absolute worst part of all of this is how Linux users often say that people should switch over to their OS because it's free, there aren't any viruses, and everything works just fine. However, they neglect to mention how much work and inside knowledge is required to make everything work, and when people point out things that just work better on a different OS (or work at all, period), they say "well I don't really care about that, so it doesn't matter." I've got news for all of you: we like our OSes because they're simple and functional, with no headaches involved. Maybe if the Linux community started caring when things didn't work, their OS might actually have a shot at competing with the other two.
I'm pretty sure that ANY film promotes heterosexual relationships, not just kids' movies. That's why Brokeback Mountain made such a stir, after all; its portrayal of a homosexual relationship was completely opposite of what every other movie has done, ever.
When 9/11 happened I said to myself, "This is tragic, but I hope the president and Congress doesn't do something foolish, like waste billions of dollars fighting a war, just because ~2000 people died. After all more people die every year from just car accidents, and we don't declare war on Ford or Toyota."
Well my hope was forlorn. If I didn't know any better, I'd think we were re-enacting the downfall of the Ancient Athenian Democracy - death through war and foolish, out-of-control spending.
War may be foolish, but it's a necessary evil in our world. What if we'd approached Pearl Harbor with the mindset of "Yeah, we were attacked, and a few thousand people died, but it's better to just sit there and take it than to do anything about it"? Things would've turned out a lot differently in Europe, I'm sure. Refusing to participate in war doesn't make it go away, after all.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't "playing doctor" intended to be more than simple nudity? I'm not trying to say it's explicitly sexual, but there's a difference between nudity as such and nudity with a sexual connotation. As for your cell phone example, I doubt the parties wanted each others' naked pictures simply because they had a biological curiosity. I somehow get the feeling that there was something more to it, which would be why the law is cracking down on them.
Slashdot Mirror
Democrats are still pretty firmly behind unions. Take a look at what's going on in Wisconsin if you still doubt that.
I know it is popular to sneer at Facebook on Slashdot (which is kind of ironic given the similarities between two community internet sites people spend time posting stuff on hoping it is of interest to others, but mostly not), but this "they are not real friends" argument really baffles me.
It shouldn't baffle you if you've spent any time at all in the real world. On the internet, someone is just a face and a name, and any deeper relationship is delusion. There are no expressions, no gestures, and no intonation, and most importantly, no physical aspect, so talking and interacting are only a shadow of what they are in the real world. I would argue that the depth of friendship is dependent on the depth of interaction, and using the internet as a medium necessarily restricts that.
Social structures change, the way people relate and communicate change. People I have on Facebook are there because I know them (they are still in the hundreds), they sometime share and/or discuss something interesting or funny, and it is sometimes ok to catch up this way, quite a few live in other countries.
"Sometimes sharing or discussing something funny" is NOT a qualification for friendship. Websites do that. TV shows do that. Neither of those entities are friends, and neither are the actors, characters, or writers related to them. I agree that social structures change, but that's exactly why we can draw a distinction between a Facebook friend and a real friend. Having a hundred Facebook friends is the equivalent of a celebrity having a hundred fans. Are they people that say they like you? Sure. Might you like them back? Yeah, it's possible. Could you get something valuable out of the relationship? Sure, why not. But at the end of the day, these are names you know, or rather, names that know you. The relationship is shallow, much more shallow than a true friendship.
"There is no greater love than this, that one lays down his life for his friend." THAT'S a real friend. How many of your Facebook "friends" would do the same? How many of them could EVER conceivably do the same?
if you really need to alt+tab out then you aren't really playing your game anyways.
Well, yeah. There's often quite a bit of down time in MMORPGs, time that could be spent doing something else. If I'm waiting for a party, I don't want to have to sit and stare at the game screen during the entire time.
So you say you don't have the password. Not that you forgot it, but that you never had it.
Around these parts we call that perjury.
That's a good point. Once you get to the point that the difference between the slowest browser (not counting IE8) and the fastest browser is ONE ONE-HUNDREDTH OF A SECOND, how much does it really matter any more? And Chrome gets nearly 120 FPS? Do monitors even refresh that quickly?
I understand that some people really do go nuts about benchmarks; my old roommate was one of them. But at the end of the day, those differences are truly negligible. What matters most is how functional the browser is.
Meanwhile, in the real world, people actually want the source of all their information to be fast. Go figure.
IWe call movies art. We call literature art. We call silence art. We call a single color art. Hell, we even call graffiti art. The crudest symbols our kind could muster gets to be called art.
Maybe Ebert is one of those people, who, like me, wouldn't consider those things art. Especially with the silence one, which I whole-heartedly disagree with as being called art. Even if the guy's goal was to make people listen to things besides music (rain on the roof, wind, etc.), that's complete BS that he's taking credit for that and calling it "art."
It's not art to say, "Hey! Listen!"
And people wonder why Ubuntu hasn't caught on yet...
"wreaks" means to demolish or damage
Since everyone else is getting caught up in "wrecks" versus "wreaks," the word SHOULD'VE been "reeks."
Probably the PC, since worms do a good job of re-gifting themselves.
A freeway with two lanes each direction was expanded by 50% by adding an extra lane in each direction by using the shoulder.
However, this didn't work out because the shoulder wasn't strong enough. They had to close the shoulder lanes, going from three lanes to two.
The good news is that this was a reduction in capacity of only 33% so compared to the original 50% increase, you still have extra capacity...
Bonus points... where is the extra capacity?
It should be obvious, but I'll work it out for anyone who is curious. Let's say each lane is 10 feet wide. That makes each side 20 feet wide. Adding a 10 foot shoulder is a 50 percent increase (10 / 20 = .5). However, when you remove the shoulder, you're now comparing that same ten feet to a bigger area: the road and the shoulder together. This is 30 feet wide, and 10 / 30 = .33. Since the percentage is relative (33% of 30 vs 50% of 20), the capacity stays the same, and there is no extra capacity.
They're inspected regularly, which is approximately how often the players lose.
So why do glitches only come up when players hit jackpots?
I'd say they deserve a place on the list.
Perhaps...but any entry on a list that puts Lady Gaga as the top artist of the year should be taken with a grain of salt.
Outsourced work is awful compared to in-house work. The company I work for outsources about half its software testing to China, and probably one of the eight or so Chinese workers is actually decent at it. The rest of us take a productivity hit because we have to manage both them and us, correcting their mistakes and doing their error checking because they don't care enough to.
I dunno, for some games, I've found manuals to be pretty useful: Neverwinter Nights, Civilization, i.e. games with lots of miscellaneous icons and skill trees that require a decent amount of planning. Sure you can put the content in game, but sometimes it's nice to have a reference guide. Plus the art and flavor text is nice sometimes too.
I hear that. I know a lot of manuals these days are just a few pages with the controls and character information, but a Civilization manual is like a freaking novel. Heck, when I downloaded Civ 4 a while back, I pretty much had the advisers do everything for me because it was all so complicated. I still maintain that Civilization II was the best one. ;)
So, Schmidt is worried because google was relying on security through obscurity?
Whoever modded you Flamebait was dead wrong. Open disclosure is one of the major principles of security, and security through obscurity is an awful thing to trust in. It's true that openly available systems can be more susceptible to attacks, but a sufficiently robust system should be able to stand up to the scrutiny.
I've always played it with friends, and it's a lot of fun that way. We have some simple "fun competition" rules, like not allowing the purchase of exclusive transport rights, etc. That way the game is about head-to-head long-term planning, rather than finding loopholes to exploit in order to make your opponents hate you.
Bing *HAS* failed.
Take a poll. Chances are most people on this site not only prefer google, or go to it habitually, but likely even have it as their homepage.
Okay, and next take a poll with a sample that's actually representative of the world's computer users. The target market that Microsoft is shooting for is NOT Slashdot users. In fact, since Bing is the default search engine for IE, which is the default browser for Windows, which is used by 90% of the world's computer users, I think it's fair to say that they'll do well enough in the future, especially given that a large chunk of computer users don't even know what a "browser" or a "search engine" is. They just know "I click the blue 'e' to use the internet."
Why are we working so hard on creating protocol droids when utility droids are so much better?
Except that a protocol droid IS a utility droid under the right circumstances. C-3PO knows "over six million forms of communication"; that's extremely useful for diplomats, foreign exchange students, travelers, etc., etc., etc. Not everyone needs a garbage can that can plug into their computer and display low-res holograms. Heck, C-3PO was needed most of the time so that people could understand just what in the world your "clever, handy, and quick" droid was trying to do or say. For a more relevant example, let's say that R2-D2 is a Linux computer C-3PO is a Mac. Tons of people still use the latter, don't they?
Whenever I get wistful about some new shiny I see in the software aisle of Best Buy, I just go home and open Synaptic and download whatever looks like fun and everything just ends up as right as rain.
There you go: "I can't use that, so I'll just stop caring about it." Wasn't that my entire complaint?
(I think maybe the webcam doesn't work, but I don't really care.)
Sorry if this is a little off-topic, but THIS is my biggest problem with both Linux and Linux fanboys (I'm not necessary saying you're the latter; you just caused me to think of it). Core functionality is relatively easy to get, sure, even if it occasionally takes more work than a Windows user like myself is accustomed to. However, it's all the boundary cases that keep Linux from being mainstream: certain drivers not existing, certain hardware not being supported, poor excuses for replacements of legitimate products (OpenOffice versus Microsoft Office, for example), etc.
I've tried hard for two years to like Linux (I installed Ubuntu on two computers during that time and used it reasonably frequently), and it just never happened. But the absolute worst part of all of this is how Linux users often say that people should switch over to their OS because it's free, there aren't any viruses, and everything works just fine. However, they neglect to mention how much work and inside knowledge is required to make everything work, and when people point out things that just work better on a different OS (or work at all, period), they say "well I don't really care about that, so it doesn't matter." I've got news for all of you: we like our OSes because they're simple and functional, with no headaches involved. Maybe if the Linux community started caring when things didn't work, their OS might actually have a shot at competing with the other two.
I'm pretty sure that ANY film promotes heterosexual relationships, not just kids' movies. That's why Brokeback Mountain made such a stir, after all; its portrayal of a homosexual relationship was completely opposite of what every other movie has done, ever.
No it doesn't. For a straight piece to be truly useful, you need to put it in the right sized hole.
War is foolish.
When 9/11 happened I said to myself, "This is tragic, but I hope the president and Congress doesn't do something foolish, like waste billions of dollars fighting a war, just because ~2000 people died. After all more people die every year from just car accidents, and we don't declare war on Ford or Toyota."
Well my hope was forlorn. If I didn't know any better, I'd think we were re-enacting the downfall of the Ancient Athenian Democracy - death through war and foolish, out-of-control spending.
War may be foolish, but it's a necessary evil in our world. What if we'd approached Pearl Harbor with the mindset of "Yeah, we were attacked, and a few thousand people died, but it's better to just sit there and take it than to do anything about it"? Things would've turned out a lot differently in Europe, I'm sure. Refusing to participate in war doesn't make it go away, after all.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't "playing doctor" intended to be more than simple nudity? I'm not trying to say it's explicitly sexual, but there's a difference between nudity as such and nudity with a sexual connotation. As for your cell phone example, I doubt the parties wanted each others' naked pictures simply because they had a biological curiosity. I somehow get the feeling that there was something more to it, which would be why the law is cracking down on them.