Nope. Each group was only allowed only a few poems to pick from. Due to the need to avoid duplication, groups picking super short poems, and groups wanting to fill up the time by having the nerd read for 8 minutes and letting the slackers just hold up a little posterboard.
His group was basically the last one, so he didn't have a choice of what to read.
But if you've got audio running to a receiver, the receiver has to do it (and likely doesn't).
At best, you've got dynamic range compression modes, which kill off the sound quality for normal programming.
Even if we have a magical loudness law that everyone magically decides to abide by, the latest tactic I've seen is far more annoying.
Commercials now exploit surround sound to the extreme. The soundstage is either panning back and forth and around, or the ad is done in such a way that billy is on my left and molly is on my right and mom is shaking and baking that chicken directly inside my fucking subwoofer.
He picked one he was allowed to present. You were limited in choice because you couldn't present a poem some other group already did, and you couldn't present a super short / super long one.
Not even Nintendo has escaped the financial plague either, with sales of the Wii dropping by 67 percent in the US, 60 percent in Japan and 47 percent in the rest of the world. In addition to reduced profitability, casual games and the rise of the iPhone further suggest the current model is not invulnerable."
The Wii drop is due mainly to demand finally being supplied. For all of 2008 it was still hard to get. This year marked the first year that the Wii was able to fulfill it's backlog of demand since the thing was launched.
And here comes the iPhone mention, right on queue. The iPhone is a drop in the bucket compared to the DS.
Nintendo is still massively profitable. They make TONS of money on hardware alone, AND they make buttloads on software. MS and Sony LOSE money on hardware, and don't develop, let alone publish, nearly as many successful games themselves as Nintendo does.
Nintendo's missed earnings projections have far more to do with the falling dollar (as much of their holdings are in US currency) than they have to do with falling sales.
Articles like this are usually filled to the brim with ignorance, so it shouldn't surprise me that they got it wrong yet again, but I still feel the need to point out the obvious. Nintendo OWNS the "casual" market, Nintendo OWNS the portable market, and Nintendo fucking won this round BECAUSE they realized that the current model was broken before anyone else did.
I simply don't see how it can take people more than three fucking years to see it.
"Console gaming dying"? That's fucking absurd. It's PC gaming that's on its death knoll (unfortunately), and the only ones complaining about console gaming sales are hardware loss-eaters and mega publishers like EA who haven't been able to transition away from the "uber development cost, hope to break even model".
This console generation is a fucking travesty. MS launched a defective product at a loss, had such a shitty supply situation that they had a SECOND launch a couple months later, and STILL can't produce a 360 that won't fry itself to death.
Sony launched the PS3 at a mind-numbing $599, with a shitty controller and an extreme lack of games.
Nintendo launched the Wii at an affordable price, but took 2 fucking years to meet demand because they underestimated themselves and refused to up capacity, fearing demand would drop off quickly.
MS and Sony have a shitton of different SKUs out there. Nintendo has people with motion + and without motion +, people with the balance board and people without it. With the microphone and without it.
MS charges you to play online. Every console whores out paid downloadable content.
I could go on, but it doesn't matter. Despite all the shit we've seen in the past 4 years, people keep paying for it. I fear hardware manufacturers will be much more service-oriented next generation in an attempt to recoup money lost on hardware sales. I fear games, and my overall experience as a gamer, will suffer greatly as a result.
Console gaming isn't going anywhere, and all players involved are fully capable of ponying up the dough to play in the next round. If Sony or MS fuck up as badly as they did this go around, THEN they may be out of the running.
But as of now, it's full steam ahead - the question is who's going to jump the gun and talk about new hardware first? Sony and MS seem to want this year to be about their motion controllers. Nintendo has a few key titles this year and is typically the last one to the party in terms of hardware.
'When the constitution of India provides equality before law, this equality has to be all pervasive and cannot be allowed to be diluted because of money power or lobbying power.'
But it's OK if it's diluted by centuries of discrimination by caste.
Was using the term "rapped" in the summary of the article necessary? It gets rather old watching the word used so flippantly.
A friend of mine made the same mistake many years ago. It was an English Literature class, and we had a group project where we had to stand up and present about various poetry.
When it was his group's turn, they stood in front of the class and began talking about and reading the same poetry that we had all been required to read and discuss - making the entire exercise completely pointless.
My friend was simply reading the poem allowed, from a printed copy when he committed the error.
The teacher heard it, I heard it, and a (different) friend heard it. My friend and I shot each other a glance - a terrible mistake, because I believe we now both got ulcers from containing our laughter.
My friend at the front of the class continued, blissfully unaware of his mistake. The teacher made no attempt to correct him. She either felt it was a lost cause, or was putting all of her effort into squelching her laughter.
The blank stares from the rest of his group, who were standing at his side waiting for their turn to be over, and from the rest of the class confirmed that they either didn't notice, or that they thought it was correct.
After the group was finished, the teacher quietly explained to my friend (who had committed the error) why we had been smirking, squirming in our seats, and frantically biting our tongues.
He was reading "The Raven", by Edgar Alan Poe.
For those unfamiliar...
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently raping, raping at my chamber door. `'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door - Only this, and nothing more.'
In other words they discourage the use of CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps). Interesting. IMHO that's a good thing, because Edison resistance bulbs eliminate mercury poisoning, dim turnons, premature heat-death, and high cost.
Don't forget that shitty blue color. Fucking blue.
Saying Japan and Korea having REAL broadband is like saying your LAN has REAL broadband.
I agree that it's bullshit that we pay so much and get so little, but the simple fact that the US is fucking huge is the main barrier. Even if the corporations were pure and good we wouldn't have comparable broadband options.
I did in fact state that it was a loose upper limit. And then I stated that the true could be calculated from the average edge growth factor, which is somewhere between 1 and 2.
No, I'm not going to try and figure it out. No, I'm not going to try and throw out all duplicates.
And you would do well to check in on people's drinking habits, past and present.
How you use the information is up to you, the employer.
Just as you may LIKE the idea that the person made fools of the university network admins.
The point is that there are times where it is relevant and times where it is not. There are things that cross the line, and there are things that are perfectly sound.
What the poster is worrying about isn't some ethical violation, some invasion, it's a perfectly reasonable checkup. He can try to hide it, downplay it, or spin it to his advantage. But faux outrage over the fact that employers consider it is ridiculously retarded.
That's only if each piece is a gradient piece, and the gradient is directed across one of the cardinal rotations.
And only if each piece is also unique.
And it's still wrong.
You can place them in multiple layouts. I did the math above, but in summary:
Assuming it's a standard 4-sided, 1 connection per side puzzle piece, and discounting gradient pieces (rotations), and assuming each piece is unique (since I don't know the number per colors)...
We're looking at 9 * 300! sane builds.
We're looking at 300! * 300! * X^299 / 4 for free-layout builds, where X is the average edge-growth factor (and is between 1 and 2).
Assuming it's a standard 4-sided, 1 connection per side puzzle piece, and discounting gradient pieces (rotations), and assuming each piece is unique (since I don't know the number per colors)...
Piece 1 can go in 1 place. Piece 2 can go in 4 places. Piece 3 can go in 6 places. Piece 4 can go in 8 places. Piece 5 can go in 10 or 9 places.
Etc.
Maximum ridiculousness results in 600 place choices for the last piece. This gives a loose upper bound of 600*598*596...*4*1 / 4 (cardinal rotations) total layouts. ( = 300! * 2^297 layouts.) This is a loose upper bound because of the fact that when placing a piece you will often connect to more than 1 existing piece. Simply substitute 2^297 with x^299 / 4, where x is your average edge growth factor.
There are only 9 rectangular layouts. 300x1 150x2 100x3 75x4 60x5 50x6 30x10 25x12 20x15
We're looking at 9 * 300! sane builds.
We're looking at 300! * 300! * X^299 / 4 for free-layout builds, where X is the average edge-growth factor (and is between 1 and 2).
My real name is fairly common, but the last I checked, the top results were all about someone who went around injecting people with hiv-infected blood.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope.
Each group was only allowed only a few poems to pick from. Due to the need to avoid duplication, groups picking super short poems, and groups wanting to fill up the time by having the nerd read for 8 minutes and letting the slackers just hold up a little posterboard.
His group was basically the last one, so he didn't have a choice of what to read.
Many TVs have the ability to auto-level stuff.
But if you've got audio running to a receiver, the receiver has to do it (and likely doesn't).
At best, you've got dynamic range compression modes, which kill off the sound quality for normal programming.
Even if we have a magical loudness law that everyone magically decides to abide by, the latest tactic I've seen is far more annoying.
Commercials now exploit surround sound to the extreme. The soundstage is either panning back and forth and around, or the ad is done in such a way that billy is on my left and molly is on my right and mom is shaking and baking that chicken directly inside my fucking subwoofer.
There was a list of poems to choose from.
He picked one he was allowed to present.
You were limited in choice because you couldn't present a poem some other group already did, and you couldn't present a super short / super long one.
Yes, "aloud" would work there too.
Not even Nintendo has escaped the financial plague either, with sales of the Wii dropping by 67 percent in the US, 60 percent in Japan and 47 percent in the rest of the world. In addition to reduced profitability, casual games and the rise of the iPhone further suggest the current model is not invulnerable."
The Wii drop is due mainly to demand finally being supplied. For all of 2008 it was still hard to get. This year marked the first year that the Wii was able to fulfill it's backlog of demand since the thing was launched.
And here comes the iPhone mention, right on queue.
The iPhone is a drop in the bucket compared to the DS.
Nintendo is still massively profitable.
They make TONS of money on hardware alone, AND they make buttloads on software. MS and Sony LOSE money on hardware, and don't develop, let alone publish, nearly as many successful games themselves as Nintendo does.
Nintendo's missed earnings projections have far more to do with the falling dollar (as much of their holdings are in US currency) than they have to do with falling sales.
Articles like this are usually filled to the brim with ignorance, so it shouldn't surprise me that they got it wrong yet again, but I still feel the need to point out the obvious. Nintendo OWNS the "casual" market, Nintendo OWNS the portable market, and Nintendo fucking won this round BECAUSE they realized that the current model was broken before anyone else did.
I simply don't see how it can take people more than three fucking years to see it.
"Console gaming dying"? That's fucking absurd. It's PC gaming that's on its death knoll (unfortunately), and the only ones complaining about console gaming sales are hardware loss-eaters and mega publishers like EA who haven't been able to transition away from the "uber development cost, hope to break even model".
This console generation is a fucking travesty.
MS launched a defective product at a loss, had such a shitty supply situation that they had a SECOND launch a couple months later, and STILL can't produce a 360 that won't fry itself to death.
Sony launched the PS3 at a mind-numbing $599, with a shitty controller and an extreme lack of games.
Nintendo launched the Wii at an affordable price, but took 2 fucking years to meet demand because they underestimated themselves and refused to up capacity, fearing demand would drop off quickly.
MS and Sony have a shitton of different SKUs out there. Nintendo has people with motion + and without motion +, people with the balance board and people without it. With the microphone and without it.
MS charges you to play online. Every console whores out paid downloadable content.
I could go on, but it doesn't matter. Despite all the shit we've seen in the past 4 years, people keep paying for it. I fear hardware manufacturers will be much more service-oriented next generation in an attempt to recoup money lost on hardware sales. I fear games, and my overall experience as a gamer, will suffer greatly as a result.
Console gaming isn't going anywhere, and all players involved are fully capable of ponying up the dough to play in the next round. If Sony or MS fuck up as badly as they did this go around, THEN they may be out of the running.
But as of now, it's full steam ahead - the question is who's going to jump the gun and talk about new hardware first? Sony and MS seem to want this year to be about their motion controllers. Nintendo has a few key titles this year and is typically the last one to the party in terms of hardware.
'When the constitution of India provides equality before law, this equality has to be all pervasive and cannot be allowed to be diluted because of money power or lobbying power.'
But it's OK if it's diluted by centuries of discrimination by caste.
"Shut up and get me my chai, chai walla!"?
Was using the term "rapped" in the summary of the article necessary? It gets rather old watching the word used so flippantly.
A friend of mine made the same mistake many years ago. It was an English Literature class, and we had a group project where we had to stand up and present about various poetry.
When it was his group's turn, they stood in front of the class and began talking about and reading the same poetry that we had all been required to read and discuss - making the entire exercise completely pointless.
My friend was simply reading the poem allowed, from a printed copy when he committed the error.
The teacher heard it, I heard it, and a (different) friend heard it. My friend and I shot each other a glance - a terrible mistake, because I believe we now both got ulcers from containing our laughter.
My friend at the front of the class continued, blissfully unaware of his mistake. The teacher made no attempt to correct him. She either felt it was a lost cause, or was putting all of her effort into squelching her laughter.
The blank stares from the rest of his group, who were standing at his side waiting for their turn to be over, and from the rest of the class confirmed that they either didn't notice, or that they thought it was correct.
After the group was finished, the teacher quietly explained to my friend (who had committed the error) why we had been smirking, squirming in our seats, and frantically biting our tongues.
He was reading "The Raven", by Edgar Alan Poe.
For those unfamiliar...
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently raping, raping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'
Flexible Chips
This one time my Tostitos got wet.
Yeah, because an ISP has a single switch they never replace, maintain, or otherwise touch.
And they have no people to pay salaries to.
And they have no offices they pay rent on.
Run a business or shut up - you know nothing about cost.
nerve growth unsuppressed == tumors?
Tumors you can feel.
Think of the other Universe?!
Abusing those quantum effects "leaping in and out of existence" in Universe A will only cause trouble for the people in Universe 1!
In other words they discourage the use of CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps). Interesting. IMHO that's a good thing, because Edison resistance bulbs eliminate mercury poisoning, dim turnons, premature heat-death, and high cost.
Don't forget that shitty blue color.
Fucking blue.
You're an idiot.
Power on a network switch is a very real issue.
Saying Japan and Korea having REAL broadband is like saying your LAN has REAL broadband.
I agree that it's bullshit that we pay so much and get so little, but the simple fact that the US is fucking huge is the main barrier. Even if the corporations were pure and good we wouldn't have comparable broadband options.
110/120 vs 220/240 ?
I did in fact state that it was a loose upper limit.
And then I stated that the true could be calculated from the average edge growth factor, which is somewhere between 1 and 2.
No, I'm not going to try and figure it out.
No, I'm not going to try and throw out all duplicates.
I just know it's between 1 and 2.
My parents only let me play with Duplo.
Turning it over results in the same thing, as does rotating it.
You CAN'T flip the individual pieces though (they won't connect if you do).
I'm also assuming you use 300 pieces - no more, no less.
And you would do well to check in on people's drinking habits, past and present.
How you use the information is up to you, the employer.
Just as you may LIKE the idea that the person made fools of the university network admins.
The point is that there are times where it is relevant and times where it is not. There are things that cross the line, and there are things that are perfectly sound.
What the poster is worrying about isn't some ethical violation, some invasion, it's a perfectly reasonable checkup. He can try to hide it, downplay it, or spin it to his advantage. But faux outrage over the fact that employers consider it is ridiculously retarded.
Uh, no, the data is gone.
That's only if each piece is a gradient piece, and the gradient is directed across one of the cardinal rotations.
And only if each piece is also unique.
And it's still wrong.
You can place them in multiple layouts.
I did the math above, but in summary:
Assuming it's a standard 4-sided, 1 connection per side puzzle piece, and discounting gradient pieces (rotations), and assuming each piece is unique (since I don't know the number per colors)...
We're looking at 9 * 300! sane builds.
We're looking at 300! * 300! * X^299 / 4 for free-layout builds, where X is the average edge-growth factor (and is between 1 and 2).
Assuming it's a standard 4-sided, 1 connection per side puzzle piece, and discounting gradient pieces (rotations), and assuming each piece is unique (since I don't know the number per colors)...
Piece 1 can go in 1 place.
Piece 2 can go in 4 places.
Piece 3 can go in 6 places.
Piece 4 can go in 8 places.
Piece 5 can go in 10 or 9 places.
Etc.
Maximum ridiculousness results in 600 place choices for the last piece. This gives a loose upper bound of 600*598*596...*4*1 / 4 (cardinal rotations) total layouts. ( = 300! * 2^297 layouts.) This is a loose upper bound because of the fact that when placing a piece you will often connect to more than 1 existing piece. Simply substitute 2^297 with x^299 / 4, where x is your average edge growth factor.
There are only 9 rectangular layouts.
300x1
150x2
100x3
75x4
60x5
50x6
30x10
25x12
20x15
We're looking at 9 * 300! sane builds.
We're looking at 300! * 300! * X^299 / 4 for free-layout builds, where X is the average edge-growth factor (and is between 1 and 2).
! indeed.
Puzzles require thinking and solving.
This is a cardboard version of pixelblocks.
http://www.pixelblocks.com/
Is he the one who sold me that X-10 spy camera?
My real name is fairly common, but the last I checked, the top results were all about someone who went around injecting people with hiv-infected blood.
I kind of hate the future.
Me too.
There's a problem with the Earth's graviational pull, and things are so heavy.
HELLO! McFly!