My stepdaughter had a pet rabbit (horrible pets, btw), and it used to love chewing on our computer wires.
Horrible pets? How can you say that? They're such sweet animals... They're very affectionate and playful and clean, and chewing things is just about the only kind of mischief they get into...
The trick with the wires is to bunny-proof spaces where the rabbits will be out. Make the cords inaccessible.
And IBM has now developed Watson, a computer designed to beat humans at the game show Jeopardy. Watson, says IBM, is "designed to rival the human mind's ability to understand the actual meaning behind words, distinguish between relevant and irrelevant content, and ultimately, demonstrate confidence to deliver precise final answers
There's to worry about until it learns to phrase those final answers in the form of a question.
... write a critical part of its message somewhere other than the message body, so that people misread the message - THEN I'll be... rather unsurprised, really. It's easy to do. The question is, why would you do it?
"The Mainichi Daily News reports that TOP WOMEN'S shogi player Ichiyo Shimizu took part in a match staged at the University of Tokyo..." Let's see it beat a man!
Yes, that'll be a different challenge entirely. There's a whole set of valid moves in Shogi that involve shifting game pieces around with one's penis - in informal matches women will sometimes use their boobs instead, but no such equivalent has yet been accepted as part of a professional tournament.
Technically there are 9 different games between 2 people
the outcome is different if Player A chooses Paper and Player B chooses Scissors than if Player A chooses Scissors and Player B chooses Paper
But to avoid needless computational overhead, we can consider games where player A chooses X and player B chooses Y to be equivalent to games where player A chooses Y and player B chooses X - it's the same combination of states... So if I choose paper and you choose scissors, we can just go ahead and call that a win for me.
I mean, think about it. Six different types of pieces, most of which only have one particular type of movement they execute. Pawns and kings are the only exception - with pawns having the two-rank initial advancement, en passant, and promotion, and kings being able to castle... The rules really aren't complex. It's just the depth of possible game combinations, and the strategies that can emerge as a result, that make it a complex game..
I haven't played Go a whole lot, just enough to know I'm really not very good at it.:)
Seeing as I have no mod points, I’ll just have to second you. Mine’s a HP LP2475w, which I suspect has about the same kind of panel.
I'm not sure but I think the ZR24w is positioned as a successor to the LP2475w - though what I've heard generally is that the LP model is the better of the two. I think the LP is also more expensive.
I bought an USB accelerometer, intending to tape it to the back of the screen to make it switch the desktop automatically, but I never got around to programming it.)
Heh, that's farther than I got. I was planning to build a USB accelerometer for that purpose, since I couldn't find a decently priced pre-built device along those lines... What kind of accelerometer did you get and how much was it?
I think with the monitor rotated, it doesn't feel "skinny", it's just really tall. I think I'd need to have the monitor a little farther away than I do now for that to work really, really well. But it works well enough that I make use of it sometimes. It's great when I'm viewing scans of magazines or comic books or whatever, having the vertically-oriented screen lets me blow things up huge.
All the monitors are 16x9 now (1920x1080). I have the same problem - I don't want to go "up" to 1920 from 1600x1200 (20" 4:3 flat panel I have from 2002 - cost 1000$) and lose 180 vertical pixels!
I tried to find a 16x10 but there are none in the stores and hard to find even on newegg etc. I asked on some forums and it's just because they aren't making them anymore.
Bummer.
I felt exactly the same when I was getting an LCD. I had been using two CRTs for a total resolution of 3200x1200 (actually, the CRTs I was using weren't quite good enough to display a clear picture at this resolution - but I still didn't want to "lose resolution")
I did wind up getting a 1920x1200 monitor: the HP ZR24w. They do still make 1920x1200 monitors, there's lots of them on Newegg - just go to LCD monitors and search for 1920x1200 resolution. They do tend to be more expensive, though. 1080p monitors go down into the sub-$200 range, while 1920x1200 monitors tend to be $270 and up. The monitor I bought - I'm happy with it, viewing angles are great, but the black levels aren't... But I think it was the right monitor for me. A better monitor would have been a lot more expensive, and a cheaper monitor would have meant compromising either on resolution or viewing angles.
so what happens when they force 3D down our throats?
widescreen 3D tv's that you can't actually use for all. yea!!!!!!!!!
Actually, what this will mean is that higher refresh rates will become more common. Shutter-glasses 3D TVs refresh at 120Hz so they can deliver 60Hz to each eye. But you can still use the TV in non-3D mode, just don't wear the glasses and you've got a display with a 120Hz refresh rate.
The real question is what other compromises are made for the sake of getting that high refresh rate... I don't know the answer to that one. (It could be "none" for all I know.)
Still, computer monitors tend to be 16:10 and hdtv's are 16:9.
Not true. Most of the computer monitors out there, especially the cheap ones, are 16:9, 1920x1080. 16:10 is available as a reasonably common, more expensive alternative.
Or, it could be that some people don't like dealing with horizontal bars when viewing 1080p content.
We're not all cheapskate consumers, you know...some of us just buy::gasp:: what serves our purposes.
But this is a monitor for a computer that's going to be used interactively... Is it really sensible to make important hardware decisions based on what's the best fit for playing video? That's one task a computer can be used for - and it's not even a task that requires a computer - and you allow that to guide the process of monitor selection?
It's fine if you're OK with that. But to me, it's just unfortunate that this is the direction the market as a whole has gone. I think aspect ratios closer to 4:3 are better for general computing.
It's sad, but it seems everyone has fallen for the 'wider is better' idea.
Because folks are viewing more TV and movies on their computers?
Yeah, maybe. It's not uncommon for computer owners to use their computers only for things for which a full-function, general purpose computer isn't really necessary.
I watch video on my computer, too: Though, of course, I watch a lot of old stuff - and most of that is 4:3. So even for watching video, widescreen isn't always better.
But that aside: personally, I want my computer to be a useful tool and not just a video player. I'm not always productive, but that's kind of my goal with the computer. I want to make things, write code, whatever. So "the best monitor for playing video" is not at all a priority for me. Rather, "the best monitor for working with the computer" is what I'm interested in. The computer and its monitor still represent a sizable investment, so it's worth being picky.
When I upgraded my monitor - if I could have gotten a big 4:3 LCD at a reasonable price I probably would have. But 4:3 LCDs are rare these days, and usually pretty high-end I guess. And for the most part, they're 1600x1200, so I would be getting lower resolution than 16:9 and 16:10 monitors. In the end I got a 16:10 monitor (1920x1200) - it's good stuff, though a bit wide for rotation. I was very adamant about not wanting to lose vertical resolution, though, so 16:10 instead of the more common 16:9 was a sticking point for me...
What monitors do you recommend that have worthwhile vertical viewing angles? I tried rotating one of my screens but it seems the cheapo Dell displays at my office just aren't designed for above/below viewing. Makes me wonder who was on the design team that thought adding rotation to a cheap panel that has no vertical viewability was a good idea...
People want monitors cheap, so the manufacturers make cheap monitors. The most common type of panel is the Twisted Nematic (TN) - which has fairly limited viewing range and color depth. (According to Wikipedia - most TN panels are actually only 6 bit per color channel, they fake 24-bit color via flickering and dithering)
I got the HP ZR24W - it's a 24" 1920x1200 monitor that sells for around $400. It's my first LCD monitor (apart from laptops). Its panel is some variant of the In-Plane Switching technology (IPS) - which is generally said to have slower switching time than TN panels, but better viewing angles and better color.
Really, it's kind of low-end as IPS panels go. The black levels are brighter than I'd like, but in general I've really enjoyed the monitor. It's a great improvement over the two 19" CRTs I was using before (combined total resolution: 3200x1200 pixels - but the clarity wasn't nearly as good as with the LCD) I've also got it mounted to a monitor arm (E-Bay special! Dirt cheap!) so I can move it around and rotate it and stuff. I do use it sometimes in rotated mode - the main problem there is that it's such a wide monitor, when rotated it becomes a very tall monitor... Almost uncomfortably tall. I find myself longing for the old 4x3 aspect ratio.:) But I'm very happy with my purchase. Going to a better IPS monitor would have meant spending at least another two hundred dollars... And going cheaper would have probably meant a TN panel or a loss of vertical resolution, or both. (There is a 22" model, the ZR22w - which is basically the same except smaller and only 1080 pixels high instead of 1200...) Viewing angle was a big issue for me, as was vertical resolution...
a) More young people die on motorcycles than in Afghanistan.
b) Are we really helping these people by listening to their whining and telling them they're so special, that everybody should bend over backwards to make them feel better?
Yeah, screw those guys and their "check twice, save a life" signs!
What liberties are being thrown away? EA is a private company that has chosen, with no government influence, to alter the content of their own game in an effort to avoid offending people.
You are quite right.
Still, it's sickening. Sickening that we've created a social environment in which free speech is met with ostracism, sickening that EA hasn't the backbone to stand up to it. (Though at the same time, why should it be on their shoulders, right?)
Aren't they doing this a bit early considering it is still almost 53 years until first contact will occur?
What are you talking about? An alien starship crash-landed on an island in the south pacific eleven years ago. It's been reconstructed and relaunched as our most powerful warship; we had a brief war with an overwhelmingly powerful alien army, and life on the surface of the Earth was almost completely obliterated back in March.
Slashdot Mirror
My stepdaughter had a pet rabbit (horrible pets, btw), and it used to love chewing on our computer wires.
Horrible pets? How can you say that? They're such sweet animals... They're very affectionate and playful and clean, and chewing things is just about the only kind of mischief they get into...
The trick with the wires is to bunny-proof spaces where the rabbits will be out. Make the cords inaccessible.
Rabbits are actually lagomorphs, not rodents.
Who knew that Sam & Max would turn out to be so educational?
"Akara is apparently a Buddhist term meaning 10^224"
Buddhists have a term for 10^224?
"apparently". :)
According to TFA,
There's to worry about until it learns to phrase those final answers in the form of a question.
s = "What is " + s + "?";
... write a critical part of its message somewhere other than the message body, so that people misread the message - THEN I'll be... rather unsurprised, really. It's easy to do. The question is, why would you do it?
"The Mainichi Daily News reports that TOP WOMEN'S shogi player Ichiyo Shimizu took part in a match staged at the University of Tokyo..." Let's see it beat a man!
Yes, that'll be a different challenge entirely. There's a whole set of valid moves in Shogi that involve shifting game pieces around with one's penis - in informal matches women will sometimes use their boobs instead, but no such equivalent has yet been accepted as part of a professional tournament.
Technically there are 9 different games between 2 people
the outcome is different if Player A chooses Paper and Player B chooses Scissors than if Player A chooses Scissors and Player B chooses Paper
But to avoid needless computational overhead, we can consider games where player A chooses X and player B chooses Y to be equivalent to games where player A chooses Y and player B chooses X - it's the same combination of states... So if I choose paper and you choose scissors, we can just go ahead and call that a win for me.
No thank you, I already ate.
Chess has actual complex rules.
It really doesn't.
I mean, think about it. Six different types of pieces, most of which only have one particular type of movement they execute. Pawns and kings are the only exception - with pawns having the two-rank initial advancement, en passant, and promotion, and kings being able to castle... The rules really aren't complex. It's just the depth of possible game combinations, and the strategies that can emerge as a result, that make it a complex game..
I haven't played Go a whole lot, just enough to know I'm really not very good at it. :)
Seeing as I have no mod points, I’ll just have to second you. Mine’s a HP LP2475w, which I suspect has about the same kind of panel.
I'm not sure but I think the ZR24w is positioned as a successor to the LP2475w - though what I've heard generally is that the LP model is the better of the two. I think the LP is also more expensive.
I bought an USB accelerometer, intending to tape it to the back of the screen to make it switch the desktop automatically, but I never got around to programming it.)
Heh, that's farther than I got. I was planning to build a USB accelerometer for that purpose, since I couldn't find a decently priced pre-built device along those lines... What kind of accelerometer did you get and how much was it?
I think with the monitor rotated, it doesn't feel "skinny", it's just really tall. I think I'd need to have the monitor a little farther away than I do now for that to work really, really well. But it works well enough that I make use of it sometimes. It's great when I'm viewing scans of magazines or comic books or whatever, having the vertically-oriented screen lets me blow things up huge.
All the monitors are 16x9 now (1920x1080). I have the same problem - I don't want to go "up" to 1920 from 1600x1200 (20" 4:3 flat panel I have from 2002 - cost 1000$) and lose 180 vertical pixels!
I tried to find a 16x10 but there are none in the stores and hard to find even on newegg etc. I asked on some forums and it's just because they aren't making them anymore.
Bummer.
I felt exactly the same when I was getting an LCD. I had been using two CRTs for a total resolution of 3200x1200 (actually, the CRTs I was using weren't quite good enough to display a clear picture at this resolution - but I still didn't want to "lose resolution")
I did wind up getting a 1920x1200 monitor: the HP ZR24w. They do still make 1920x1200 monitors, there's lots of them on Newegg - just go to LCD monitors and search for 1920x1200 resolution. They do tend to be more expensive, though. 1080p monitors go down into the sub-$200 range, while 1920x1200 monitors tend to be $270 and up. The monitor I bought - I'm happy with it, viewing angles are great, but the black levels aren't... But I think it was the right monitor for me. A better monitor would have been a lot more expensive, and a cheaper monitor would have meant compromising either on resolution or viewing angles.
so what happens when they force 3D down our throats?
widescreen 3D tv's that you can't actually use for all. yea!!!!!!!!!
Actually, what this will mean is that higher refresh rates will become more common. Shutter-glasses 3D TVs refresh at 120Hz so they can deliver 60Hz to each eye. But you can still use the TV in non-3D mode, just don't wear the glasses and you've got a display with a 120Hz refresh rate.
The real question is what other compromises are made for the sake of getting that high refresh rate... I don't know the answer to that one. (It could be "none" for all I know.)
Still, computer monitors tend to be 16:10 and hdtv's are 16:9.
Not true. Most of the computer monitors out there, especially the cheap ones, are 16:9, 1920x1080. 16:10 is available as a reasonably common, more expensive alternative.
Or, it could be that some people don't like dealing with horizontal bars when viewing 1080p content.
We're not all cheapskate consumers, you know...some of us just buy ::gasp:: what serves our purposes.
But this is a monitor for a computer that's going to be used interactively... Is it really sensible to make important hardware decisions based on what's the best fit for playing video? That's one task a computer can be used for - and it's not even a task that requires a computer - and you allow that to guide the process of monitor selection?
It's fine if you're OK with that. But to me, it's just unfortunate that this is the direction the market as a whole has gone. I think aspect ratios closer to 4:3 are better for general computing.
It's sad, but it seems everyone has fallen for the 'wider is better' idea.
Because folks are viewing more TV and movies on their computers?
Yeah, maybe. It's not uncommon for computer owners to use their computers only for things for which a full-function, general purpose computer isn't really necessary.
I watch video on my computer, too: Though, of course, I watch a lot of old stuff - and most of that is 4:3. So even for watching video, widescreen isn't always better.
But that aside: personally, I want my computer to be a useful tool and not just a video player. I'm not always productive, but that's kind of my goal with the computer. I want to make things, write code, whatever. So "the best monitor for playing video" is not at all a priority for me. Rather, "the best monitor for working with the computer" is what I'm interested in. The computer and its monitor still represent a sizable investment, so it's worth being picky.
When I upgraded my monitor - if I could have gotten a big 4:3 LCD at a reasonable price I probably would have. But 4:3 LCDs are rare these days, and usually pretty high-end I guess. And for the most part, they're 1600x1200, so I would be getting lower resolution than 16:9 and 16:10 monitors. In the end I got a 16:10 monitor (1920x1200) - it's good stuff, though a bit wide for rotation. I was very adamant about not wanting to lose vertical resolution, though, so 16:10 instead of the more common 16:9 was a sticking point for me...
What monitors do you recommend that have worthwhile vertical viewing angles? I tried rotating one of my screens but it seems the cheapo Dell displays at my office just aren't designed for above/below viewing. Makes me wonder who was on the design team that thought adding rotation to a cheap panel that has no vertical viewability was a good idea...
People want monitors cheap, so the manufacturers make cheap monitors. The most common type of panel is the Twisted Nematic (TN) - which has fairly limited viewing range and color depth. (According to Wikipedia - most TN panels are actually only 6 bit per color channel, they fake 24-bit color via flickering and dithering)
I got the HP ZR24W - it's a 24" 1920x1200 monitor that sells for around $400. It's my first LCD monitor (apart from laptops). Its panel is some variant of the In-Plane Switching technology (IPS) - which is generally said to have slower switching time than TN panels, but better viewing angles and better color.
Really, it's kind of low-end as IPS panels go. The black levels are brighter than I'd like, but in general I've really enjoyed the monitor. It's a great improvement over the two 19" CRTs I was using before (combined total resolution: 3200x1200 pixels - but the clarity wasn't nearly as good as with the LCD) I've also got it mounted to a monitor arm (E-Bay special! Dirt cheap!) so I can move it around and rotate it and stuff. I do use it sometimes in rotated mode - the main problem there is that it's such a wide monitor, when rotated it becomes a very tall monitor... Almost uncomfortably tall. I find myself longing for the old 4x3 aspect ratio. :) But I'm very happy with my purchase. Going to a better IPS monitor would have meant spending at least another two hundred dollars... And going cheaper would have probably meant a TN panel or a loss of vertical resolution, or both. (There is a 22" model, the ZR22w - which is basically the same except smaller and only 1080 pixels high instead of 1200...) Viewing angle was a big issue for me, as was vertical resolution...
Something to consider though, is that has there ever really been a time when free speech was not met with ostracism?
Perhaps not... Still, I don't think that's something to be proud of.
a) More young people die on motorcycles than in Afghanistan.
b) Are we really helping these people by listening to their whining and telling them they're so special, that everybody should bend over backwards to make them feel better?
Yeah, screw those guys and their "check twice, save a life" signs!
What liberties are being thrown away? EA is a private company that has chosen, with no government influence, to alter the content of their own game in an effort to avoid offending people.
You are quite right.
Still, it's sickening. Sickening that we've created a social environment in which free speech is met with ostracism, sickening that EA hasn't the backbone to stand up to it. (Though at the same time, why should it be on their shoulders, right?)
I will start the fire up to start the book burning. NOT!!!
Good one, Garth!
My brother died in a marketing accident, you insensitive clod!
Oh, sure... they called it an "accident"...
And when you have a loved one in the field, coming under fire almost every day, you will have earned the right to make this comment.
That must be tough and all but tell me again why this means we can't have a game where you play as the Taliban?
Classy jokes usually aren't the funny ones.
Aren't they doing this a bit early considering it is still almost 53 years until first contact will occur?
What are you talking about? An alien starship crash-landed on an island in the south pacific eleven years ago. It's been reconstructed and relaunched as our most powerful warship; we had a brief war with an overwhelmingly powerful alien army, and life on the surface of the Earth was almost completely obliterated back in March.
Clearly the person with the most experience and knowledge of aliens is: Sigourney Weaver
Yeah, she was in "Avatar", after all... ...Though, she died, didn't she?