But that's just the problem: there AREN'T smaller phones available, at least on the high end. If you want a smaller cutting-edge phone you're pretty much out of luck.
I've tried Cleverbot a bunch of times and I was really unimpressed. Just being able to spit back a human sounding response is really insufficient for this. The path of the conversation remains a random jumble. I've never even come close to thinking that it could be a human on the other end. It seems like the real test is the ability of the bot to hold a conversation about an arbitrary subject, not just random (and I really mean random) banter.
Sorry but it's not just a word. It has power that can't be willed away. If you use it like that you're asking for trouble, regardless of your intention. I find it offensive (as would most other residents of the United States, I'd guess), particularly when used the way you just used it. You can't make that reality go away by saying "get over it, people".
Except, perhaps, that this is in Canada. Do you know the rules for probable cause in Canada? I suppose it may be complicated even more by the fact that it's across an international border.
It looks like the 3.0 release is available at all the usual mirrors. The only thing I'm unsure of is that the 3.0 install file is dated June 11th. Has this thing really been done for a week? Or maybe that's just the Win32-US-English version and they had to work on the other versions to have a simultaneous release?
I may be misinterpreting things here, but wouldn't this effectively socialize the Canadian recording industry? If filesharing is legal and people pay a tax to support the recording companies / artists, then that's effectively socialized music.
Now it's not unheard of for Canada to socialize media -- see the National Film Board, for instance -- but this seems rather extreme.
I used to work as a game programmer and one of the issues that came up is that in order to use any recognizable building design (for instance, if you based your game in Seattle and wanted to use the Space Needle as part of the landscape) you have to pay a licensing fee. The design is still copyrighted, and to use it in a commercial product amounts to infringement.
It seems like that's the issue here -- it's a calendar they were going to sell, right? At the very least, Cafe Press was going to make money from the sale. Seems like the legality is pretty clear there.
Now, whether Ford should exercise its rights in this instance is another issue, involving public relations and stuff like that. Seems like a bad move to me, but it's their choice.
It's pointless to say "that's communism" or "that's capitalism". The truth is that there's no such thing as pure communism or capitalism. Neither one works as an economic system unto itself. You have to mix and match. You could easily say that socialized health care is a communist idea, but the fact remains that most developed countries have it regardless of their ostensible economic system. Copyright is the same way. It's a system that fosters the sharing of ideas. It may not be "pure capitalism" but the monopolies that emerged in the 19th century demonstrated that pure laissez faire ends up hurting a lot more people than it helps.
Personally, I'm with Mr. Lessig. I'm planning on releasing my next short film under a CC license because I want us to go back to a system of copyright that fosters growth in the arts, not stagnation.
I'm with you. I realized in college that Monopoly is a terrible game. In my experience the winner is already decided by about a third of the way through the game. I think Monopoly still exists only because of cultural momentum and some smart marketing moves (i.e. tie-ins) by Milton Bradley. Like it or not, it's an icon of American culture. That's not enough to make me want to buy it, though. Not even close.
Firefox was, for a while, slated to have the ability to arbitrarily scale a whole web page but for some reason they pushed that feature back to version 3. By that time the issue may have been rendered moot by Vista (on Windows computers, that is). In theory the new Direct3d-based UI mill make it possible to scale the whole program -- a feature I've been yearning for for years, since I like to run my display at a really high resolution.
<rant>As I see it there's no avoiding the eventual crossover to vector-based user interfaces. Resolutions will keep rising but people don't want to keep looking at those tiny little fonts and icons. High resolution displays are wonderful but the UI people need to realize that not everyone runs at the same DPI. I applaud Microsoft for breaking this new ground with their next version of Windows.</rant>
Perhaps not what you're thinking of, but Kingdom of Loathing is a hilarious (and free) web-based game. If you haven't tried it before you really should.
Another one with funny bits is Nethack, of course.
I agree, though, that there should be more funny games. I miss the heyday of the Lucasarts comedic point-and-clicks. Day of the Tentacle was always my favorite.
My favorite metronome software happens to be theone that I wrote -- Weird Metronome. It's probably the most versatile software metronome that's available, at least among the free and open source options. It's actually more versatile than even more commercial programs. It lets you create a measure of practically any length, use a tempo anywhere from 4bpm to 1000bmp, and define your own beat emphasis using nine different percussion instruments that you can choose from the MIDI standard library of about 50 instruments. I wrote it because there wasn't any software available that could handle the weird rhythms in Balkan music (for instance I play one song in 22/16 with note groupings of 2223222322).
And the kicker? It's also one of the smallest pieces of sofware available for this kind of thing, with the zip file coming in at just 24KB. Anyone who plays music near their Windows computer should check it out.
Apart from that, I'd recommend the various tempo/pitch adjuster plugins available for Winamp. I use them all the time when transcribing or learning a song for which I don't have the sheet music.
Google Earth is a fantastic tool for planning bike rides. Set its altitude multiplier to 3x and all the hills jump right out at you, making it obvious what the best bike routes are. All it's missing is route planning with an "avoid highways" and/or waypoint option.
The internet radio station I listen to, Radio Paradise, seems to be doing all right, and it's run entirely on user contributions and affiliate programs (iTunes, Amazon, etc). There are no commercials and it isn't even a non-profit. In fact, they recently topped ten thousand simultaneous listeners for the first time. The only minus is that they occasionally mention being listener-supported and ask for donations. Nowhere near as obnoxious as NPR pledge drives, though....
I know this is just one example, but it shows that it's possible to have an internet radio stations with free streams be a successful business.
It's a game. And more importantly, a business. They will do whatever they need to to keep maximum profitabiliy.
That's true, but consider The Sims. It was the most successful game EVER, and it had homosexuality programmed right in! By explicitly disalowing homosexuality Blizzard is going to piss off a lot more people than they make happy, and lose money because of it.
And this thing I keep hearing about how they're doing this because some people aren't mature enough to handle it? That's a BS argument. The outcome of this policy they've set is that they're creating an environment that protects the homophobic biggots and is hostile toward they people they say they're trying to protect.
Homosexuality isn't a "problem of contemporary life". In fact, it's perfectly at home in a fantasy setting. I've encountered many examples of homosexuality in fantasy literature. (The first that comes to mind is the Last Herald Mage series by Mercedes Lackey.)
Furthermore, saying that it should exist in a fantasy setting because it exists in real life is a silly argument. The whole point of speculative fiction is that the author is positing a world that is different from our own. The author can perfectly well definine it as an entirely heterosexual universe. If Blizzard had said "no, there are no homosexuals in WoW," then I would understand this decision. It's their prerogative as the creators of the world.
Finally, it's useless to put forth the argument that homosexuality is an inherrent trait. That's not even close to an accepted fact. While I personally agree with you, to use a premise that your opponent in the debate doesn't accept as true is useless. The point here is to convince, and you're not going to do that if the basis of your argument is something your opponent thinks is untrue.
The Phishing IQ Test, on which this survey is based, is not a good gauge for the ability to detect Phishing emails. It presents you an image of questionable messages and asks you to decide whether they're trying to trick you. I don't know about you, but I use a lot more than the text and visual properties of a message to decide whether it's a fake. My first line of defense (and usually a very good one) is to look at the URLs that the message's links point to. I can weed out 99% of fraudulent email in a few seconds that way, and never even have to read what they're trying to sell me. Sometimes I'm even surprised to find that a suspicious message is actually genuine. The Phishing IQ Test denies me the URL-snooping that's available in just about every email reader and web browser, so it is by no means an accurate measurement of real-world detection skills.
I took this test a while ago and didn't get 100%, even though I'm one of the most internet-savvy people I know. Despite that, I don't know anyone who's been taken in by a phishing scam. Hmmm...
There are a remarkable number of OO.o/FOSS appologists here. The answer to this surprising result seems clear to me:
Microsoft makes good software!
Okay, call me a troll, but I've tried a lot of free software over the years and I almost always find it lacking. Microsoft's stuff, on the other hand -- most particularly Office and Windows -- is remarkable when you consider how much they do and how efficiently.
One of the biggest areas in which FOSS is lacking is the boring optimization and debugging that's vital for world class software. The truth is that Microsoft is huge and has lots of money, so they can afford to spend time on that important finishing polish. There's an old saying in computer science: The first 90 percent of the work is easy, the second 90 percent wears you down, and the last 90 percent - the attention to detail - makes a good product.
Slashdot Mirror
But that's just the problem: there AREN'T smaller phones available, at least on the high end. If you want a smaller cutting-edge phone you're pretty much out of luck.
There's absolutely nothing new about this situation. It's a fact of modern political life that if you want face time with a politician you have to donate to their campaign. Planet Money did an interesting podcast about the concept of political fundraisers in Washington that really sheds light on the problem: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/11/01/141913370/the-tuesday-podcast-inside-washingtons-money-machine
I've tried Cleverbot a bunch of times and I was really unimpressed. Just being able to spit back a human sounding response is really insufficient for this. The path of the conversation remains a random jumble. I've never even come close to thinking that it could be a human on the other end. It seems like the real test is the ability of the bot to hold a conversation about an arbitrary subject, not just random (and I really mean random) banter.
Sorry but it's not just a word. It has power that can't be willed away. If you use it like that you're asking for trouble, regardless of your intention. I find it offensive (as would most other residents of the United States, I'd guess), particularly when used the way you just used it. You can't make that reality go away by saying "get over it, people".
Except, perhaps, that this is in Canada. Do you know the rules for probable cause in Canada? I suppose it may be complicated even more by the fact that it's across an international border.
Am I really the first to point this out? The proper word there is "cum", not "come". Come on, people! Latin!
-David
It looks like the 3.0 release is available at all the usual mirrors. The only thing I'm unsure of is that the 3.0 install file is dated June 11th. Has this thing really been done for a week? Or maybe that's just the Win32-US-English version and they had to work on the other versions to have a simultaneous release?
Anyway, here's the link for mirrors: http://www.mozilla.org/mirrors.html
This article makes me think, of course, of my experiments in domino digital logic
I may be misinterpreting things here, but wouldn't this effectively socialize the Canadian recording industry? If filesharing is legal and people pay a tax to support the recording companies / artists, then that's effectively socialized music.
Now it's not unheard of for Canada to socialize media -- see the National Film Board, for instance -- but this seems rather extreme.
I used to work as a game programmer and one of the issues that came up is that in order to use any recognizable building design (for instance, if you based your game in Seattle and wanted to use the Space Needle as part of the landscape) you have to pay a licensing fee. The design is still copyrighted, and to use it in a commercial product amounts to infringement.
It seems like that's the issue here -- it's a calendar they were going to sell, right? At the very least, Cafe Press was going to make money from the sale. Seems like the legality is pretty clear there.
Now, whether Ford should exercise its rights in this instance is another issue, involving public relations and stuff like that. Seems like a bad move to me, but it's their choice.
It's pointless to say "that's communism" or "that's capitalism". The truth is that there's no such thing as pure communism or capitalism. Neither one works as an economic system unto itself. You have to mix and match. You could easily say that socialized health care is a communist idea, but the fact remains that most developed countries have it regardless of their ostensible economic system. Copyright is the same way. It's a system that fosters the sharing of ideas. It may not be "pure capitalism" but the monopolies that emerged in the 19th century demonstrated that pure laissez faire ends up hurting a lot more people than it helps.
Personally, I'm with Mr. Lessig. I'm planning on releasing my next short film under a CC license because I want us to go back to a system of copyright that fosters growth in the arts, not stagnation.
The short answer: yes. Send out a million emails and get a .1% response and it's more than worth it.
I'm with you. I realized in college that Monopoly is a terrible game. In my experience the winner is already decided by about a third of the way through the game. I think Monopoly still exists only because of cultural momentum and some smart marketing moves (i.e. tie-ins) by Milton Bradley. Like it or not, it's an icon of American culture. That's not enough to make me want to buy it, though. Not even close.
Firefox was, for a while, slated to have the ability to arbitrarily scale a whole web page but for some reason they pushed that feature back to version 3. By that time the issue may have been rendered moot by Vista (on Windows computers, that is). In theory the new Direct3d-based UI mill make it possible to scale the whole program -- a feature I've been yearning for for years, since I like to run my display at a really high resolution.
<rant>As I see it there's no avoiding the eventual crossover to vector-based user interfaces. Resolutions will keep rising but people don't want to keep looking at those tiny little fonts and icons. High resolution displays are wonderful but the UI people need to realize that not everyone runs at the same DPI. I applaud Microsoft for breaking this new ground with their next version of Windows.</rant>
An Adventurer is You!
Perhaps not what you're thinking of, but Kingdom of Loathing is a hilarious (and free) web-based game. If you haven't tried it before you really should.
Another one with funny bits is Nethack, of course.
I agree, though, that there should be more funny games. I miss the heyday of the Lucasarts comedic point-and-clicks. Day of the Tentacle was always my favorite.
-David
My favorite metronome software happens to be theone that I wrote -- Weird Metronome. It's probably the most versatile software metronome that's available, at least among the free and open source options. It's actually more versatile than even more commercial programs. It lets you create a measure of practically any length, use a tempo anywhere from 4bpm to 1000bmp, and define your own beat emphasis using nine different percussion instruments that you can choose from the MIDI standard library of about 50 instruments. I wrote it because there wasn't any software available that could handle the weird rhythms in Balkan music (for instance I play one song in 22/16 with note groupings of 2223222322).
And the kicker? It's also one of the smallest pieces of sofware available for this kind of thing, with the zip file coming in at just 24KB. Anyone who plays music near their Windows computer should check it out.
Apart from that, I'd recommend the various tempo/pitch adjuster plugins available for Winamp. I use them all the time when transcribing or learning a song for which I don't have the sheet music.
-David
Google Earth is a fantastic tool for planning bike rides. Set its altitude multiplier to 3x and all the hills jump right out at you, making it obvious what the best bike routes are. All it's missing is route planning with an "avoid highways" and/or waypoint option.
The internet radio station I listen to, Radio Paradise, seems to be doing all right, and it's run entirely on user contributions and affiliate programs (iTunes, Amazon, etc). There are no commercials and it isn't even a non-profit. In fact, they recently topped ten thousand simultaneous listeners for the first time. The only minus is that they occasionally mention being listener-supported and ask for donations. Nowhere near as obnoxious as NPR pledge drives, though....
I know this is just one example, but it shows that it's possible to have an internet radio stations with free streams be a successful business.
It's a game. And more importantly, a business. They will do whatever they need to to keep maximum profitabiliy.
That's true, but consider The Sims. It was the most successful game EVER, and it had homosexuality programmed right in! By explicitly disalowing homosexuality Blizzard is going to piss off a lot more people than they make happy, and lose money because of it.
And this thing I keep hearing about how they're doing this because some people aren't mature enough to handle it? That's a BS argument. The outcome of this policy they've set is that they're creating an environment that protects the homophobic biggots and is hostile toward they people they say they're trying to protect.
Homosexuality isn't a "problem of contemporary life". In fact, it's perfectly at home in a fantasy setting. I've encountered many examples of homosexuality in fantasy literature. (The first that comes to mind is the Last Herald Mage series by Mercedes Lackey.)
Furthermore, saying that it should exist in a fantasy setting because it exists in real life is a silly argument. The whole point of speculative fiction is that the author is positing a world that is different from our own. The author can perfectly well definine it as an entirely heterosexual universe. If Blizzard had said "no, there are no homosexuals in WoW," then I would understand this decision. It's their prerogative as the creators of the world.
Finally, it's useless to put forth the argument that homosexuality is an inherrent trait. That's not even close to an accepted fact. While I personally agree with you, to use a premise that your opponent in the debate doesn't accept as true is useless. The point here is to convince, and you're not going to do that if the basis of your argument is something your opponent thinks is untrue.
I, for one, welcome our new digital overlords.
I'm happy to leave the archaic medium of film behind me.
I took this test a while ago and didn't get 100%, even though I'm one of the most internet-savvy people I know. Despite that, I don't know anyone who's been taken in by a phishing scam. Hmmm...
And the award for Most Confusing Slashdot Article Subject goes to....
Another in a proud tradition of advertisements masqerading as Slashdot stories....
There are a remarkable number of OO.o/FOSS appologists here. The answer to this surprising result seems clear to me:
Microsoft makes good software!
Okay, call me a troll, but I've tried a lot of free software over the years and I almost always find it lacking. Microsoft's stuff, on the other hand -- most particularly Office and Windows -- is remarkable when you consider how much they do and how efficiently.
One of the biggest areas in which FOSS is lacking is the boring optimization and debugging that's vital for world class software. The truth is that Microsoft is huge and has lots of money, so they can afford to spend time on that important finishing polish. There's an old saying in computer science: The first 90 percent of the work is easy, the second 90 percent wears you down, and the last 90 percent - the attention to detail - makes a good product.