To avoid bias against people who don't speak English as their mother tongue.
Agreed, we should make sure the verbal is in some kind of approved standard language like C or Perl!
In all seriousness yes, I agree (even as a native English speaker). English may be a de facto language, but they should include at least two or three others to cover different regions of the world where it may not be so popular.
I dunno, I made every Apple fanboy in my building jealous by just letting them touch the screen on my G1. I'd never say the G1 and iPhone should be considered head-to-head since they appeal to two different crowds but that's reality.
Maybe other people have had other experiences, but apparently the G1's selling at a fantastic rate already, so I think you'd already got your "iPhone Killer" if you want to call it that. Seriously, given the amount of market (especially in business) dominance BlackBerry commands I think people need to come up with a BlackBerry killer long before we even start to think about needing an iPhone killer.
Here's my question. Let's suppose for just a moment that buying carbon offsets really was giving money to a reputable green power company, just for the sake of argument. Given that...
A) If the company buying the offsets isn't actually USING that power, they're still not being any more earth-friendly than they were in the first place.
B) How come they can't pay this renewable energy company to start supplying the company instead, which would actually support it.
C) Say you're the green power company. Who's actually using your services? If you can't actually get these companies to buy your power, your business is a bit of a failure, isn't it? Doesn't that just make you a carbon sinkhole since you can't sell your power to anyone?
If I'm wrong on any of those please let me know since I wouldn't want to be walking around with a wrong idea about this. Still, if you're not actually selling the power then all you're doing is making power that nobody's using...how in the fuck is that green?
From the download links on the page it puts the Linux builds under the section called, "Unix."
I might be confused, but last time I checked Linux != Unix. I imagine there's probably a good amount of BSD and Solaris fans that probably aren't too happy about having Linux lumped in with them (and vice versa). GNU's Not Unix?
Not only that, but if no one *sufficiently expert* =happens= to review the source, how do you know what's really in that obfuscated code? Remember, it's not like all the source code is queued up for a panel of experts to ensure that no unreviewed code ever reaches the public!
Hence I suspect there is a LOT of opensource code that no one (other than the original author) has ever inspected, or that has only been inspected by people not sufficiently expert to find backdoors and such. Does someone vet every trivial plugin offered for $CommonApp ??
And backdoors need neither large nor obvious... I'm reminded of a trojan SMTP server of some years back that was a mere 3000 BYTES.
Depends on the project. For something large and important like, say, the Linux kernel, that's being reviewed all the time. For something small and less important like, say, SpeedCrunch, it's probably not reviewed very often.
But that's the thing, BECAUSE it's open source it CAN be reviewed. And not just by one or two people who might miss it but by anyone who wants to.
With closed-source this isn't even possible. We just have to take the vendor's word for it which I trust vastly less given that they have a vested interest in telling me it's perfect. A hobbyist with an itch and access to open source code, on the other hand, I can trust to be pretty honest or at worst alarmist (which, due to the nature of open source, means their findings can be reviewed by anyone).
The big benefit in this case of open source isn't in saying this project or that one has or has not been extensively reviewed, it's in the capability for review. I don't know about you, but I'll take the one that, if I really care, I can look through over the one that I can't.
You know, it's a bit of a shame this ever happened. Normally I'm a fan of Amazon but this kinda tactic has made me consider other places to buy from first ever since it happened.
I can't imagine I'm the only one who reconsidered Amazon purchases because of things like this.
When the government says jump and you own a gun, what are you going to do - shoot your way out of the situation when they bring in armed police or even army? I don't think so.
Jolie, president --> I can find pictures. There is not a single piece of evidence for a god.
Very well, how about you find me some evidence of Bin Laden. Lot of people seem to be under the impression he exists despite tenuous (at best) proof lately.
If it's not very important for you to
millions of deaths are being made in the name of religion, I think i am entitled to a proof.
Wait...you are "entitled" to proof of a god because people, you know just bog standard homo sapiens, want to kill each other and blame it on someone else?
I hope you can appreciate the irony in your blaming god just like the people you claim do.
PLEASE tell me this was an attempt at humor. GE uses old overhead imagery, not real-time ground-level video. We do use GE in the intelligence community though, quite extensively actually.
No, actually he was talking about using Whoosh Earth, much more powerful.
Mod the parent up, this is the fundamental issue with just about any discussion involving a "god" of some variety. You need to very explictly define the boundaries of what you're considering "god" to be first. Because this usually isn't done people all assume something different and everyone knows what happens when you make an assumption.
You reference to a singular, male god so I'm going to make a fairly safe assumption you're thinking about a Christian one. I don't worship the Christian god so I'll be able to only do so much but consider this, how come it's insulting not to have this god show itself to you? Angelina Jolie hasn't shown herself to you either I'm willing to bet, is that insulting, too? I'm very curious about this, "it's insulting if something/someone doesn't show itself to me," thing. If it doesn't follow for anything but this god, why this god? If it's not very important for you to personally see the president of the US, only be told he exists by your television then how come it's particularly important for you to meet this god in person?
On another note, a step closer to my own, how do you know this god HASN'T already shown itself to you? When you walk outside, when you wake up in the morning, when you sip on your coffee and browse your websites with that wonderful brain of yours, how can you assert fully that god is not a part of all of it, just like you're a part of it?
Most religious people don't "know for a fact" much of anything about whatever they worship, that's why it's called "faith" and "belief" instead of "science" and "facts." That doesn't make it less or more real (it's not science, after all) but if the person doesn't understand the difference it's a safe bet they have no idea what they're worshiping and hardly represent "religious people," just yet more ignorant masses.
Why does god "not interfere?" How do you know god doesn't? What, because there's a hurricane and it kills some people god didn't interfere? Had you considered the the hurricane was the chosen influence of this god? Just because we can explain how the hurricane came to be doesn't mean there is no power of god within it and through it, the "why" of it if you will. Why couldn't god work through a hurricane?
A lot of people seem to run under the philosopher's god (omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and "all good," which is fundamentally broken) instead of their religion's god (depends on the religion). Don't mistake the religious for the ignorant, on either side of the fence.
Look, I'm not trying to "convert" you or tell you what to believe or not believe, I couldn't do that even if I saw some kind of point in it. However, I see something really odd in the logic you've presented and would suggest you more closely examine it. There's plenty of good reasons and lines of reasoning for believing or not believing in something beyond yourself but that particular line just doesn't look like one of them.
Well that depends, are you using a website to meet up with other people who happen to be walking the same way? If so I'd say it's already prohibited, just nobody's informed us here at Slashdot yet.
Taking the local traffic cop a step further:
How would you react if you knew a cop received money to direct you to an dealer, although that dealer is wanted by the same police department?
I'd start to wonder why a police officer was directing me to a drug dealer. Actually, my first reaction would be, "What the hell is a cop doing talking to me?" I don't think the analogy is working as intended.
I have yet to turn on my 360, put in a game, and have it tell me I've only got two activations left before I need to call the developer and beg to have one more.
Try this little experiment:
1. Buy something from the XBLA
2. When finished downloading, turn off your 360 and unplug the network cable.
3. Turn it back on and try to play your newly paid for game
4. Swear about DRM becase you cannot play the new game.
Tried your experiment, couldn't perform #4 on either 360. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? I just keep getting stuck at the, "game just work," phase, like most other people.
If anyone had been paying attention in the past year or so they would've noted that MS provides, for free, a tool to use to pull all your Live games onto a newly authorized console an unlimited number of times, but only once per year. While far from ideal (I'm no fan of DRM but let's also be realistic, it ONLY applies to LIVE content, hardly required to play the library of games available to the console) it's far from the nightmare the PC doomsayers get all nice and indignant about as they have to illegally download Spore.
Not to mention the fact is that the majority of games people play on the 360 alone, not even counting the PS3 and Wii, are disk-based. Which, shockingly, means that to this day you pop it in and play, regardless of console, regardless of source, regardless of anything else and it "works." When I cannot play the majority of my games on a console due to a similar system then I'll forsake that, too.
Not every game has this issue
You're right, try "no disk-based game" has this issue. That's an astoundingly large and popular library of games, far from the,
large portion does.
I initially noticed this when I moved and had no Internet connection for a week. I wasn't too happy that I couldn't play the games on my hard drive that I paid for.
I don't know your situation, so I can't tell you what you did or did not do, but I CAN tell you that Live content is "authorized" for the system/storage combo it was initially purchased for. If you change either part it's no problem to A)redownload it and B)Use their free tool to reauthorize the content for the new combo. It works nicely, give it a shot.
So yea, no activation limit on the DRM, but if you're not signed into Live, odds are you can't play your purchased arcade games either.
Key part there being the "Arcade games." Hardly a part of my "pop it in and play" argument. However
Wow, trolling much? I've got a launch 360 and an elite 360, neither of which has red ringed in the entire time I've used them (and used them pretty hard on a regular basis). Add to that bringing them on several trips across the Atlantic, a number of trips across the US, and several other smaller trips without massive safety precautions.
So yeah, I WAS saying something about how it WORKS. Please feel free to try again but in the meantime crawl back under your bridge.
But then that erases console gaming's big advantage over PC gaming: low cost per player. If you're going to splurge for a separate system for each player, you might as well play a PC shooter instead of Gears 2 and benefit from mouse aiming.
You're assuming that mouse aiming or indeed the whole PC setup is a, "benefit." In over fifteen years of gaming on nearly every console and quite a few PCs (Windows and Linux) I've yet to actually hear even ONE person tell me that they went console because "it costs less." We go console because it WORKS. I have yet to turn on my 360, put in a game, and have it tell me I've only got two activations left before I need to call the developer and beg to have one more. I have yet to be told my graphics chip isn't new enough or that I'm missing 'insert-online-frontend-of-the-month' and need to install yet more crapware.
No, console people get a console, turn it on, and get back to doing what we wanted to in the first place: playing the game. If you like PC gaming that's great, I play WAR personally, but within reason hardly anyone gives a shit how much the console costs in comparison to a PC.
Thank you, I'm glad me and my wife aren't the only people that found lovable things in Army of Two. The AI in it really was very impressive from the perspective of a player, it really did feel very organic and real how they would pin you, flank you, and seem to know exactly how to hit you when you were trying to save your teammate. Good times.
While at USENIX 2008 I got to listen to Jim Waldo from Sun Microsystems and among other topics he covered programmers. He had the following to say about getting a programmer.
Have you ever seen these programmers? Most of the time they've got more metal in their faces than in my car. It's like I always tell people, you want to attract a good programmer? Use an electromagnet.
Rubbish. How many 10year old devices are you using?
How about my car? 15 years old, doesn't look too bad, and gets about 28~32mpg in the city (bumper-to-bumper traffic reduces it to about 25mpg). Must love Saturn.
Heck, on the smaller 'device' scale what about a general solar-charged UPS for the systems in my house? All the computers I've had over the past ten years all use the same, standard three-prong American plug for their power, there's no reason why I can't use a solar-powered UPS with them. All my laptops, PDAs, phones, and other such things over the years have needed similar devices for charging and there's NO reason why a portable charge kit powered by solar couldn't be used.
Your problem is that you're thinking, "portable solar panels must be tied to a device." THAT my friend is "rubbish."
Even if the real lifespan of the device is actually accurate, the real world lifespan is much shorter.
I call BS on this. For some devices yes (such as the computer you'd charge with the panels) but we're talking about solar panels for charging in general in a semi-portable fashion, as in the same kind of thing as say, oh I dunno, generators. Guess how old the generators we're using in Baghdad are. I'll give you a hint, many/most of them are from the war a lot of people compare the Iraq one to. For a more urban example I used to live in Florida and I guarantee you most of the generators people had were a lot older than ten years. Having a portable solar-powered generator for any number of devices is enormously useful. It can even be small for things like cell phones, just carry your charger with you to plug into it and keep one of these in the back of your car.
Technology moves on, different devices with different requirements come into vogue etc.
You mean like a different requirement than voltage and amperage? If you're meaning a different type of connector I'll go with you but charging laptops has remained a pretty constant requirement over the years and promises to continue.
Slashdot Mirror
To avoid bias against people who don't speak English as their mother tongue.
Agreed, we should make sure the verbal is in some kind of approved standard language like C or Perl!
In all seriousness yes, I agree (even as a native English speaker). English may be a de facto language, but they should include at least two or three others to cover different regions of the world where it may not be so popular.
I dunno, I made every Apple fanboy in my building jealous by just letting them touch the screen on my G1. I'd never say the G1 and iPhone should be considered head-to-head since they appeal to two different crowds but that's reality.
Maybe other people have had other experiences, but apparently the G1's selling at a fantastic rate already, so I think you'd already got your "iPhone Killer" if you want to call it that. Seriously, given the amount of market (especially in business) dominance BlackBerry commands I think people need to come up with a BlackBerry killer long before we even start to think about needing an iPhone killer.
Here's my question. Let's suppose for just a moment that buying carbon offsets really was giving money to a reputable green power company, just for the sake of argument. Given that...
A) If the company buying the offsets isn't actually USING that power, they're still not being any more earth-friendly than they were in the first place.
B) How come they can't pay this renewable energy company to start supplying the company instead, which would actually support it.
C) Say you're the green power company. Who's actually using your services? If you can't actually get these companies to buy your power, your business is a bit of a failure, isn't it? Doesn't that just make you a carbon sinkhole since you can't sell your power to anyone?
If I'm wrong on any of those please let me know since I wouldn't want to be walking around with a wrong idea about this. Still, if you're not actually selling the power then all you're doing is making power that nobody's using...how in the fuck is that green?
Very nice. Take note, mods, THAT is the definition of funny.
Linux is only free if your time is worthless.
-Don
Windows is only worth something if banging your head on a desk is worthwhile.
OS X is only great if you think slavery is great.
Wow, you know, we could do this all day to OSes we don't like!
Is this algorithm in Haskell or somethin'?
I'll wait until I can program in VB. Will it take long?
It may or may not.
Yes, and Linux is not GNU.
Really? Lessee what the ol' uname -a gives us on a fresh installation...
frozenfoxx@mymachine:~$ uname -a
Linux mymachine 2.6.27-9-generic #1 SMP Thu Nov 20 21:57:00 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
frozenfoxx@mymachine:~$
Thank you for playing.
From the download links on the page it puts the Linux builds under the section called, "Unix."
I might be confused, but last time I checked Linux != Unix. I imagine there's probably a good amount of BSD and Solaris fans that probably aren't too happy about having Linux lumped in with them (and vice versa). GNU's Not Unix?
Not only that, but if no one *sufficiently expert* =happens= to review the source, how do you know what's really in that obfuscated code? Remember, it's not like all the source code is queued up for a panel of experts to ensure that no unreviewed code ever reaches the public!
Hence I suspect there is a LOT of opensource code that no one (other than the original author) has ever inspected, or that has only been inspected by people not sufficiently expert to find backdoors and such. Does someone vet every trivial plugin offered for $CommonApp ??
And backdoors need neither large nor obvious... I'm reminded of a trojan SMTP server of some years back that was a mere 3000 BYTES.
Depends on the project. For something large and important like, say, the Linux kernel, that's being reviewed all the time. For something small and less important like, say, SpeedCrunch, it's probably not reviewed very often.
But that's the thing, BECAUSE it's open source it CAN be reviewed. And not just by one or two people who might miss it but by anyone who wants to.
With closed-source this isn't even possible. We just have to take the vendor's word for it which I trust vastly less given that they have a vested interest in telling me it's perfect. A hobbyist with an itch and access to open source code, on the other hand, I can trust to be pretty honest or at worst alarmist (which, due to the nature of open source, means their findings can be reviewed by anyone).
The big benefit in this case of open source isn't in saying this project or that one has or has not been extensively reviewed, it's in the capability for review. I don't know about you, but I'll take the one that, if I really care, I can look through over the one that I can't.
You know, it's a bit of a shame this ever happened. Normally I'm a fan of Amazon but this kinda tactic has made me consider other places to buy from first ever since it happened.
I can't imagine I'm the only one who reconsidered Amazon purchases because of things like this.
When the government says jump and you own a gun, what are you going to do - shoot your way out of the situation when they bring in armed police or even army? I don't think so.
Really? How's Iraq and Afghanistan working out?
Sounds like the setting of Hell for Doom 3 has now been fully realized.
Jolie, president --> I can find pictures. There is not a single piece of evidence for a god.
Very well, how about you find me some evidence of Bin Laden. Lot of people seem to be under the impression he exists despite tenuous (at best) proof lately.
If it's not very important for you to
millions of deaths are being made in the name of religion, I think i am entitled to a proof.
Wait...you are "entitled" to proof of a god because people, you know just bog standard homo sapiens, want to kill each other and blame it on someone else?
I hope you can appreciate the irony in your blaming god just like the people you claim do.
PLEASE tell me this was an attempt at humor. GE uses old overhead imagery, not real-time ground-level video. We do use GE in the intelligence community though, quite extensively actually.
No, actually he was talking about using Whoosh Earth, much more powerful.
Mod the parent up, this is the fundamental issue with just about any discussion involving a "god" of some variety. You need to very explictly define the boundaries of what you're considering "god" to be first. Because this usually isn't done people all assume something different and everyone knows what happens when you make an assumption.
Alright, I'll bite, but just for one comment.
You reference to a singular, male god so I'm going to make a fairly safe assumption you're thinking about a Christian one. I don't worship the Christian god so I'll be able to only do so much but consider this, how come it's insulting not to have this god show itself to you? Angelina Jolie hasn't shown herself to you either I'm willing to bet, is that insulting, too? I'm very curious about this, "it's insulting if something/someone doesn't show itself to me," thing. If it doesn't follow for anything but this god, why this god? If it's not very important for you to personally see the president of the US, only be told he exists by your television then how come it's particularly important for you to meet this god in person?
On another note, a step closer to my own, how do you know this god HASN'T already shown itself to you? When you walk outside, when you wake up in the morning, when you sip on your coffee and browse your websites with that wonderful brain of yours, how can you assert fully that god is not a part of all of it, just like you're a part of it?
Most religious people don't "know for a fact" much of anything about whatever they worship, that's why it's called "faith" and "belief" instead of "science" and "facts." That doesn't make it less or more real (it's not science, after all) but if the person doesn't understand the difference it's a safe bet they have no idea what they're worshiping and hardly represent "religious people," just yet more ignorant masses.
Why does god "not interfere?" How do you know god doesn't? What, because there's a hurricane and it kills some people god didn't interfere? Had you considered the the hurricane was the chosen influence of this god? Just because we can explain how the hurricane came to be doesn't mean there is no power of god within it and through it, the "why" of it if you will. Why couldn't god work through a hurricane?
A lot of people seem to run under the philosopher's god (omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and "all good," which is fundamentally broken) instead of their religion's god (depends on the religion). Don't mistake the religious for the ignorant, on either side of the fence.
Look, I'm not trying to "convert" you or tell you what to believe or not believe, I couldn't do that even if I saw some kind of point in it. However, I see something really odd in the logic you've presented and would suggest you more closely examine it. There's plenty of good reasons and lines of reasoning for believing or not believing in something beyond yourself but that particular line just doesn't look like one of them.
Really, really wish I had mod points. That's a perfect example of "insightful" right there.
Well that depends, are you using a website to meet up with other people who happen to be walking the same way? If so I'd say it's already prohibited, just nobody's informed us here at Slashdot yet.
Taking the local traffic cop a step further: How would you react if you knew a cop received money to direct you to an dealer, although that dealer is wanted by the same police department?
I'd start to wonder why a police officer was directing me to a drug dealer. Actually, my first reaction would be, "What the hell is a cop doing talking to me?" I don't think the analogy is working as intended.
I have yet to turn on my 360, put in a game, and have it tell me I've only got two activations left before I need to call the developer and beg to have one more.
Try this little experiment: 1. Buy something from the XBLA 2. When finished downloading, turn off your 360 and unplug the network cable. 3. Turn it back on and try to play your newly paid for game 4. Swear about DRM becase you cannot play the new game.
Tried your experiment, couldn't perform #4 on either 360. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? I just keep getting stuck at the, "game just work," phase, like most other people.
If anyone had been paying attention in the past year or so they would've noted that MS provides, for free, a tool to use to pull all your Live games onto a newly authorized console an unlimited number of times, but only once per year. While far from ideal (I'm no fan of DRM but let's also be realistic, it ONLY applies to LIVE content, hardly required to play the library of games available to the console) it's far from the nightmare the PC doomsayers get all nice and indignant about as they have to illegally download Spore.
Not to mention the fact is that the majority of games people play on the 360 alone, not even counting the PS3 and Wii, are disk-based. Which, shockingly, means that to this day you pop it in and play, regardless of console, regardless of source, regardless of anything else and it "works." When I cannot play the majority of my games on a console due to a similar system then I'll forsake that, too.
Not every game has this issue
You're right, try "no disk-based game" has this issue. That's an astoundingly large and popular library of games, far from the,
large portion does.
I initially noticed this when I moved and had no Internet connection for a week. I wasn't too happy that I couldn't play the games on my hard drive that I paid for.
I don't know your situation, so I can't tell you what you did or did not do, but I CAN tell you that Live content is "authorized" for the system/storage combo it was initially purchased for. If you change either part it's no problem to A)redownload it and B)Use their free tool to reauthorize the content for the new combo. It works nicely, give it a shot.
So yea, no activation limit on the DRM, but if you're not signed into Live, odds are you can't play your purchased arcade games either.
Key part there being the "Arcade games." Hardly a part of my "pop it in and play" argument. However
Wow, trolling much? I've got a launch 360 and an elite 360, neither of which has red ringed in the entire time I've used them (and used them pretty hard on a regular basis). Add to that bringing them on several trips across the Atlantic, a number of trips across the US, and several other smaller trips without massive safety precautions.
So yeah, I WAS saying something about how it WORKS. Please feel free to try again but in the meantime crawl back under your bridge.
But then that erases console gaming's big advantage over PC gaming: low cost per player. If you're going to splurge for a separate system for each player, you might as well play a PC shooter instead of Gears 2 and benefit from mouse aiming.
You're assuming that mouse aiming or indeed the whole PC setup is a, "benefit." In over fifteen years of gaming on nearly every console and quite a few PCs (Windows and Linux) I've yet to actually hear even ONE person tell me that they went console because "it costs less." We go console because it WORKS. I have yet to turn on my 360, put in a game, and have it tell me I've only got two activations left before I need to call the developer and beg to have one more. I have yet to be told my graphics chip isn't new enough or that I'm missing 'insert-online-frontend-of-the-month' and need to install yet more crapware.
No, console people get a console, turn it on, and get back to doing what we wanted to in the first place: playing the game. If you like PC gaming that's great, I play WAR personally, but within reason hardly anyone gives a shit how much the console costs in comparison to a PC.
Thank you, I'm glad me and my wife aren't the only people that found lovable things in Army of Two. The AI in it really was very impressive from the perspective of a player, it really did feel very organic and real how they would pin you, flank you, and seem to know exactly how to hit you when you were trying to save your teammate. Good times.
Have you ever seen these programmers? Most of the time they've got more metal in their faces than in my car. It's like I always tell people, you want to attract a good programmer? Use an electromagnet.
Rubbish. How many 10year old devices are you using?
How about my car? 15 years old, doesn't look too bad, and gets about 28~32mpg in the city (bumper-to-bumper traffic reduces it to about 25mpg). Must love Saturn.
Heck, on the smaller 'device' scale what about a general solar-charged UPS for the systems in my house? All the computers I've had over the past ten years all use the same, standard three-prong American plug for their power, there's no reason why I can't use a solar-powered UPS with them. All my laptops, PDAs, phones, and other such things over the years have needed similar devices for charging and there's NO reason why a portable charge kit powered by solar couldn't be used.
Your problem is that you're thinking, "portable solar panels must be tied to a device." THAT my friend is "rubbish."
Even if the real lifespan of the device is actually accurate, the real world lifespan is much shorter.
I call BS on this. For some devices yes (such as the computer you'd charge with the panels) but we're talking about solar panels for charging in general in a semi-portable fashion, as in the same kind of thing as say, oh I dunno, generators. Guess how old the generators we're using in Baghdad are. I'll give you a hint, many/most of them are from the war a lot of people compare the Iraq one to. For a more urban example I used to live in Florida and I guarantee you most of the generators people had were a lot older than ten years. Having a portable solar-powered generator for any number of devices is enormously useful. It can even be small for things like cell phones, just carry your charger with you to plug into it and keep one of these in the back of your car.
Technology moves on, different devices with different requirements come into vogue etc.
You mean like a different requirement than voltage and amperage? If you're meaning a different type of connector I'll go with you but charging laptops has remained a pretty constant requirement over the years and promises to continue.