When I was tight on money and trying my darndest to save gas I remember trying to squeeze as much gas out of my car as possible. As stressful as that was, I've tried to drive reasonably since then. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather not be pissing other people off, I think extreme hypermilers must be fueled by an overwhelming sense of self righteousness. There's just no other way they can do that BS without asploding. They are definitely not oblivious to their surroundings, despire trying their hardest not to meet the stares of pissed of drivers passing them by.
That would still be a cool thing to integrate into the Home thing. On the Xbox 360 you have the menus you can go through to go on the marketplace, get game demos, change settings, etc. You can also select to play the game you have in your DVD drive, you could incorporate that kind of menu navigation in a 3D world pretty easily.
but it's sorta like the prisoner's dilemma. i mean, if you drive a small light vehicle and you get hit by a big heavy SUV, you'll get a lot more messed up than the SUV driver.
That makes sense to me, but in my case (getting read ended by an SUV) it was the opposite. I got hit by an SUV going around 45mph, I had slowed down because I was making a turn. My Saturn crumpled and was considered totaled (I repaired and kept it, though), the SUV had a messed up front bumper and that's it.
Still, I was OK after the accident, the other guy had fractured both wrists and managed to tear something in his right knee. I know this because he tried to run but police found him a few blocks away, he had to pull over because he was too hurt to drive.
I agree, just don't play too long or else police or security usually show up and make you leave. Around here (Colorado) they seem to let it slide as long as you are in an empty parking lot and don't overstay your welcome.
Considering how close most people like to drive behind me, I am always worried about having to brake hard and getting read ended. In your case, if you stop that quickly in the spyder, a person behind you wouldn't even have a chance unless they left a generous space.
That's what ABS is really good for, panic braking. Or you may have not been able to stop in time, but still have been able to avoid the dog by being able to steer.
However, you could have stopped even faster by threshold braking, where you hit the brakes enough to stop quickly but not enough to lock up the tires and cause skidding. This is really where you are using your braking power 100%, ABS increases your braking distance slightly but is much safer for normal (non racing) drivers. The adrenaline burst when you panic makes this precision braking pretty much impossible.
I think the problem with this is that they really are low end laptops. They really are full blown, albeit weak, computers. On top of this, they look like little laptops so people assume that they will be getting a little laptop.
The problem is that the distros on these machines are tweaked to provide easy access to the applications and all the stuff that comes preloaded on the laptop. They are not designed to make customizing settings and installing software easy, they are made to have basic, iPod like useability. This is fine and dandy until a user wants to install software or even change the wallpaper. This is a pain on the Acer netbook, most users will have no clue how to do this.
The problem is that all of this stuff and much more is easily possible on a netbook, but the OS has been locked down and dumbed down to make it simple to use, and not simple mess with and customize.
Being a consumer is a good thing, but the reason we are in the hole is because people are trying to live way beyond their means. The reason they are doing that is, I think, for the exact reasons you were talking about. If the point of someones life is to just get more stuff, they will definitely go above their means.
A healthy consumer, on the other hand, would find plenty else in life to satisfy them without a need for the purely material.
Seconded. I switched from music performance to computer engineering, although I definitely like computers too. At the moment, if I want to feel like I'm Mr. Big Money I go hang out with my musician friends:)
Sure it might be considered paranoid, but then again you don't put locks on your door because you're constantly expecting strangers to get in, you put them in just in case. This security flaw makes it a piece of cake to get someone's login info if you want it. Then again; most website logins and all kinds of other things are probably the same way, so this is just the status quo.
Of course, my needs aren't very high- the #1 game I'm looking forward to is Starcraft 2- but I'd still like to be able to play at the native res of my 24" monitor.
That's a problem I've been running into since I got a widescreen monitor (20.1"). I can no turn up all the eye-candy and keep the resolution low because it will look like crap on the LCD. Running most games at 1680x1050 is no problem, but if it runs slow I have to either turn down everything but the resolution, or adjust the resolution and deal with giant pixels. It almost makes me wish I had a CRT again, that was one thing they did well.
I wouldn't say they develop games for the tiny fraction of hard core gamers, they develop games to look good and to continue to push technology forward. PC games are probably one of the biggest forces advancing consumer computer tech, IMO. They develop the games to look their best on newer hardware, but they are scalable to run on older, modest hardware. HL2 did this well, Call of Duty 2 looked awesome on my old budget box even though I was running it in DX8 mode, and even Battlefield 2 looked and played very well.
The people who will spend $400 on a graphics card aren't hardcore gamers, they are hardware-philes. Most gamers run decent, cheap hardware and just don't bother trying to run new games at 1920x1080 with all the eye-candy maxed out, in my experience at least.
It was definitely 'shopped, but I did manage to find a real instance of this happening. It was in Central Park, NY, weird... Here's a screenshot: http://05lan.dyndns.org/public/centralpark.JPG
I watched both commercials online so I could see the full thing and I liked them. But the second commercial was over four minutes long, and it made me wonder how they would cut it down for a 30 second or even 1 minute ad. When I did see it on T.V. later I just thought wtf is this?
I thought it was? I bought it on Steam, it's called Half-life: Source or something like that. I played through the first few levels but haven't touched it since.
'What a wates of money to find out something which didn't happen, when you can buy a Bible for under a fiver and read the truth of how the world was created.
I'm glad they are going to support the sub notebooks more, I've been holding off on installing Ubuntu on my Aspire One for a couple reasons. A lot of tweaking needs to be done to get decent functionality, but a few things still aren't working quite right. Also, the boot time and battery life while using Ubuntu compared to the lighter distros is pretty bad.
The Linpus Lite distro that comes on the Acer Aspire One is up and ready to go in about 15-20 seconds, including connecting to a Wireless Network. I just wish I had a full powered OS so I could run all the software I want, Linpus is gimped, even after lots of tweaking.
On a separate note:
I've installed Hardy Heron on my main computer (dual boot with XP) as well as my dad's computer. I'm even thinking about putting it on my friend's computer ever since she has started complaining about slowness. It seems like it would be perfect for her minus the one drawback, she can't have her iTunes for her iPod.
Are there any programs to synch up an iPod with Ubuntu?
I don't know if you're talking about the small form factor GX270 or the desktop ones, but in my experience the small form factor ones have pretty bad cooling problems. The biggest problem I've had is early hard drives failures because they are running between 54-60C all the time. It seems like the first batch or two had defective motherboards which would short and melt the intel chipset, but I think they got that taken care of.
I actually got one of them for a home server because they were pretty tiny for the time, but I run it with the case open and a USB powered fan blowing to keep it cool
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When I was tight on money and trying my darndest to save gas I remember trying to squeeze as much gas out of my car as possible.
As stressful as that was, I've tried to drive reasonably since then. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather not be pissing other people off, I think extreme hypermilers must be fueled by an overwhelming sense of self righteousness. There's just no other way they can do that BS without asploding. They are definitely not oblivious to their surroundings, despire trying their hardest not to meet the stares of pissed of drivers passing them by.
That would still be a cool thing to integrate into the Home thing. On the Xbox 360 you have the menus you can go through to go on the marketplace, get game demos, change settings, etc. You can also select to play the game you have in your DVD drive, you could incorporate that kind of menu navigation in a 3D world pretty easily.
but it's sorta like the prisoner's dilemma. i mean, if you drive a small light vehicle and you get hit by a big heavy SUV, you'll get a lot more messed up than the SUV driver.
That makes sense to me, but in my case (getting read ended by an SUV) it was the opposite. I got hit by an SUV going around 45mph, I had slowed down because I was making a turn. My Saturn crumpled and was considered totaled (I repaired and kept it, though), the SUV had a messed up front bumper and that's it.
Still, I was OK after the accident, the other guy had fractured both wrists and managed to tear something in his right knee. I know this because he tried to run but police found him a few blocks away, he had to pull over because he was too hurt to drive.
I agree, just don't play too long or else police or security usually show up and make you leave. Around here (Colorado) they seem to let it slide as long as you are in an empty parking lot and don't overstay your welcome.
Considering how close most people like to drive behind me, I am always worried about having to brake hard and getting read ended. In your case, if you stop that quickly in the spyder, a person behind you wouldn't even have a chance unless they left a generous space.
That's what ABS is really good for, panic braking. Or you may have not been able to stop in time, but still have been able to avoid the dog by being able to steer.
However, you could have stopped even faster by threshold braking, where you hit the brakes enough to stop quickly but not enough to lock up the tires and cause skidding. This is really where you are using your braking power 100%, ABS increases your braking distance slightly but is much safer for normal (non racing) drivers. The adrenaline burst when you panic makes this precision braking pretty much impossible.
I think the problem with this is that they really are low end laptops. They really are full blown, albeit weak, computers. On top of this, they look like little laptops so people assume that they will be getting a little laptop.
The problem is that the distros on these machines are tweaked to provide easy access to the applications and all the stuff that comes preloaded on the laptop. They are not designed to make customizing settings and installing software easy, they are made to have basic, iPod like useability. This is fine and dandy until a user wants to install software or even change the wallpaper. This is a pain on the Acer netbook, most users will have no clue how to do this.
The problem is that all of this stuff and much more is easily possible on a netbook, but the OS has been locked down and dumbed down to make it simple to use, and not simple mess with and customize.
Just turn the difficulty on the bots from CS:S up (You can turn it up even higher than the preset options with a console command).
Being a consumer is a good thing, but the reason we are in the hole is because people are trying to live way beyond their means. The reason they are doing that is, I think, for the exact reasons you were talking about. If the point of someones life is to just get more stuff, they will definitely go above their means.
A healthy consumer, on the other hand, would find plenty else in life to satisfy them without a need for the purely material.
That said, I'm glad I'm a geek.
Seconded. I switched from music performance to computer engineering, although I definitely like computers too. At the moment, if I want to feel like I'm Mr. Big Money I go hang out with my musician friends :)
Sure it might be considered paranoid, but then again you don't put locks on your door because you're constantly expecting strangers to get in, you put them in just in case.
This security flaw makes it a piece of cake to get someone's login info if you want it. Then again; most website logins and all kinds of other things are probably the same way, so this is just the status quo.
Of course, my needs aren't very high- the #1 game I'm looking forward to is Starcraft 2- but I'd still like to be able to play at the native res of my 24" monitor.
That's a problem I've been running into since I got a widescreen monitor (20.1"). I can no turn up all the eye-candy and keep the resolution low because it will look like crap on the LCD. Running most games at 1680x1050 is no problem, but if it runs slow I have to either turn down everything but the resolution, or adjust the resolution and deal with giant pixels. It almost makes me wish I had a CRT again, that was one thing they did well.
I wouldn't say they develop games for the tiny fraction of hard core gamers, they develop games to look good and to continue to push technology forward. PC games are probably one of the biggest forces advancing consumer computer tech, IMO. They develop the games to look their best on newer hardware, but they are scalable to run on older, modest hardware. HL2 did this well, Call of Duty 2 looked awesome on my old budget box even though I was running it in DX8 mode, and even Battlefield 2 looked and played very well.
The people who will spend $400 on a graphics card aren't hardcore gamers, they are hardware-philes. Most gamers run decent, cheap hardware and just don't bother trying to run new games at 1920x1080 with all the eye-candy maxed out, in my experience at least.
Woohoo! My server lasted 1 hour and 20 minutes of slashdot.
PR PR PR!
It was definitely 'shopped, but I did manage to find a real instance of this happening. It was in Central Park, NY, weird...
Here's a screenshot:
http://05lan.dyndns.org/public/centralpark.JPG
This one is definitely not photoshopped.
I watched both commercials online so I could see the full thing and I liked them.
But the second commercial was over four minutes long, and it made me wonder how they would cut it down for a 30 second or even 1 minute ad.
When I did see it on T.V. later I just thought wtf is this?
What I especially hate while installing software is when you can't click "I agree" until you've scrolled to the bottom of the EULA.
That's a real clever trick there.
I wonder how many other people didn't know that and double clicked the top left corner of their browser to see if it was true?
Damn you, all my tabs are gone :(
Combine!
I thought it was? I bought it on Steam, it's called Half-life: Source or something like that. I played through the first few levels but haven't touched it since.
My favorite comment:
'What a wates of money to find out something which didn't happen, when you can buy a Bible for under a fiver and read the truth of how the world was created.
I'm glad they are going to support the sub notebooks more, I've been holding off on installing Ubuntu on my Aspire One for a couple reasons. A lot of tweaking needs to be done to get decent functionality, but a few things still aren't working quite right. Also, the boot time and battery life while using Ubuntu compared to the lighter distros is pretty bad.
The Linpus Lite distro that comes on the Acer Aspire One is up and ready to go in about 15-20 seconds, including connecting to a Wireless Network. I just wish I had a full powered OS so I could run all the software I want, Linpus is gimped, even after lots of tweaking.
On a separate note:
I've installed Hardy Heron on my main computer (dual boot with XP) as well as my dad's computer. I'm even thinking about putting it on my friend's computer ever since she has started complaining about slowness. It seems like it would be perfect for her minus the one drawback, she can't have her iTunes for her iPod.
Are there any programs to synch up an iPod with Ubuntu?
I highly recommend the Acer, I wonder why it hasn't gotten as much attention. The basic model with 3-cell battery is only $330 on Newegg right now.
They included a gimpy Linpus Lite OS which I grew weary of fairly quickly, but Ubuntu 8.04.1 formatted in ext2 works well.
Don't forget about the Acer Apire One. Good specs and it's $330 for the base model on Newegg.
I don't know if you're talking about the small form factor GX270 or the desktop ones, but in my experience the small form factor ones have pretty bad cooling problems. The biggest problem I've had is early hard drives failures because they are running between 54-60C all the time.
It seems like the first batch or two had defective motherboards which would short and melt the intel chipset, but I think they got that taken care of.
I actually got one of them for a home server because they were pretty tiny for the time, but I run it with the case open and a USB powered fan blowing to keep it cool