How about government need to start nationwide cybersafety campaigns to be taught in schools, offices and governments? This would go a long long way in stopping cybercrime, malware and tons of shenanigans and would be cost-efficient in the long run.
"ONCIX does not provide printed copies of our posters. These materials are NOT copyrighted, and you are welcome to download, print, and disseminate our posters freely to promote greater counterintelligence awareness."
Kevin Peter Hall, the original actor in the Predator suit in Predator 1 and Predator 2 died that way, AIDS via incompetent blood transfusion after a car crash. He was in Misfits of Science too. Such a loss:(
check out Voyager Dragon's Ultima: The Reconstruction website. It's a little old but lists all the Ultima 2D & 3D (1,2,4,5,6,7,8,9) remake projects that were active a few years back as well as official & fan patches, Ultima Underworld engine recreations, etc.
Crap. Don't have my Dungeon Siege disks anymore:-/
On a related note, Ultima VII (which you can play on modern PCs w/ shinies using the Exult engine) is still the best Ultima of all time - its NPC AI was revolutionary for having rotating schedules and jobs, which Oblivion & Fallout 3 copied.
For your perusal, Finnish sniper Simo Hayha, the aka White Death. Feared by the Russians, more awesome than Vasily Zaytsev. Most number of confirmed kills by a sniper in history (505 confirmed Soviet kills). So badass that he preferred iron sights to telescopic ones while sniping.
Even lived to kick ass after getting half of his face shot off.
If you've actually gotten your hands on an OLPC XO unit, when it's rotated into e-reader tablet mode with the keyboard hidden, it ***NEEDS*** a touchscreen since the corner keypad & navigation buttons (mapped to cursor keys, pgup, pgdn, home, end) become useless when you need to do some mouse moving & clicking.
It's just very natural given its design.
Next, in terms of apps that can be developed, a whole new world opens once you shift to multi-touch as opposed to single-touch screens (piano & drawing apps for the kids, etc).
Moreover, in terms of schoolwork, scribbling diagrams is one of the thing that students do with paper notebooks.
The concept of the OLPC XO is that in the long run, because content is digital, it will be cheaper than the combined cost of books & school materials (pencils, notebooks, etc) over the years.
They can't normally be bought except in large government-level quantities, but if you want to get your hands on one for testing, you can apply for the contributors' program. Basically you submit a project proposal on how you're going to use the units, and it's kinda like a grant except they send you laptop units.
You can volunteer as a developer and if you submit a good project proposal, there's a good chance of being sent some units.
Ebert explains never played video games, refuses to play them, and bashed them based only based on his own theories. He then slightly apologizes for being an ass and confesses he does not know what art is.
I once wrote several bots in Javascript for a MUD to get around horrible time-wasting grinding. The funny thing was that bots were illegal in that MUD and I got around it by having my bots notify me with audio cues on the different events happening in the MUD so I could take over manually when the admins started to suspect I was botting. Got away with it... hybrid cyborg chatbots can pass turing tests:) The cool thing about it was that my little pets were running around the dungeons, fighting, eating when hungry, heading to the well when thirsty and resting when tired, etc while I was free to code away and work and do other more practical tasks.
Oh, btw: how to get away with botting more: roleplay that your character is a bot!;) Had fun playing with my pet GIR from the Invader Zim cartoon series:)
Also, question: Who is more robot-like? The person who does meaningless repetitive motions for hours or days at a time (grinding) or the person who sets a bot to grind, thus freeing himself to do other things and enjoy more of life?
From Wikipedia, origin of the word robot: The word robota means literally "work", "labor" or "serf labor", and figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech and many Slavic languages.
So who is the real robot here? It's the people who waste their time meaninglessly grinding especially when it's no longer enjoyable.
I refuse to give my DNA. It is my sourcecode (4-bit sequence) and is copyright my parents (& myself via inheritance). No state should have the right to forcibly take my sourcecode and have the means to create clones or test-tube children of mine without my consent.
It is comparable to rape (rapist forcibly impregnates woman and creates child without woman's consent) and child kidnapping (means to create children without parent's care).
Star Control 2 was amazing - it could to speech & digitized music on the PC speaker without soundcards!
For those who haven't played it, it's been open-sourced and you can download it here complete with new remixed soundtracks.
uhhh... Meego is a 9,000-year-old shape-shifting alien from the planet "Marmazon 4.0". Well, I guess that falls under illegal alien. Should be quarantined too...
AFAIK, Cherrypal delivers different kinds of laptops at different times.
What's advertised on their website is the *minimum* specs that they guarantee you'll get. This means, when the unit actually ships to you, you can get a machine with specs actually higher than what was advertised on their site.
From what I've heard, Cherrypal basically shops around for different parts/configs that they can get at a particular time, then they build machines out of those assorted parts -- that's why customers will get different kinds of machines with varying specs.
You can use completely free and open source tools to create high-quality Flash content. For example, you can use the combo of Sun's JDK, the Free & Open source FlashDevelop IDE (Microsoft.NET 2.0 required) and Adobe's Open Source Flex SDK.
Yup! HTML5 = full of win and very nifty! I look forward to the day all browsers support HTML5 and we no longer have this constant headache making sites compatible with IE6.
Still won't kill Flash though as there's too much stuff Flash can do that HTML5 can't.
I don't really see why people are shoehorning HTML5 as versus Flash when they coexist side by side nicely in your browser. (example, use Flash for the animated parts in your e-learning website or use "less easy for my sourcecode to be seen" SWFs for Flash games).
Honestly, I think all this HTML5 vs Flash crock is just a marketing campaign being done by Apple & iFanboys to sell those gimped iPads.
Apple is the only company I know that promotes lack of features as selling points. (omg! multi-tasking in iPhone OS4! whoop de doo. Nokia 3650s could do that back in 2002)
I guess it's just a bit of a wait and see what happens when the newer Android smartphones & tablets arrive in mid to late 2010. I hope more developers emerge for Android. The sheer content in the iPhone App Store that is a big factor in making iPhones popular right now.
True dat, bro: BUSINESS will dictate! Good catch. However, there's the problem of the shortage of hybrid interaction designer/coders right now (and in the forseeable future) so don't expect most Flash sites to translate to HTML5 too soon.
I shudder imagining the future where HTML5 replaces most of Flash's current niche though:
Imagine more of the obnoxious CSS floating banner ads on webpages and Flash ads redone in HTML5.
At least you have Flashblock with Flash. It's easy for browsers to block popup window ads, but how're you going to block obnoxious CPU-hogging javascript/css content?
I really hate the way most webpages now average >100kb (too bad for users with data plans measured by the kb for their smartphones) and the way tons of sites have gone AJAX and you can no longer surf them on low-spec devices like the OLPC XO-1 (first-hand experience) and Cherrypal Africa with JavaScript turned on.
DHTML is just as or more CPU-hungry than Flash if done wrong. Flash is not bloated - it's SWF content creators that don't know how to optimize that's the problem, not the platform itself.
I wish more sites would just go back to plain HTML and make mobile versions that degrade gracefully if Javascript is turned off/unavailable and stop using AJAX where it's really needed.
Slashdot Mirror
How about government need to start nationwide cybersafety campaigns to be taught in schools, offices and governments? This would go a long long way in stopping cybercrime, malware and tons of shenanigans and would be cost-efficient in the long run.
First things first. I propose that the U.S. government tap the creative forces of the 4chan, worth1000 and Fark Photoshop communities for a cost-effective and highly creative solution to replace the godawful uninspiring motivational posters being distributed by the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive :
Check 'em out here: http://www.ncix.gov/publications/posters/index.html
"ONCIX does not provide printed copies of our posters. These materials are NOT copyrighted, and you are welcome to download, print, and disseminate our posters freely to promote greater counterintelligence awareness."
Support bacteria! It's the only culture some people have!
Kevin Peter Hall, the original actor in the Predator suit in Predator 1 and Predator 2 died that way, AIDS via incompetent blood transfusion after a car crash. He was in Misfits of Science too. Such a loss :(
check out Voyager Dragon's Ultima: The Reconstruction website. It's a little old but lists all the Ultima 2D & 3D (1,2,4,5,6,7,8,9) remake projects that were active a few years back as well as official & fan patches, Ultima Underworld engine recreations, etc.
Yup. It's a Dungeon Siege 1 mod, just like the Ultima V - Lazarus remake project.
:-/
Crap. Don't have my Dungeon Siege disks anymore
On a related note, Ultima VII (which you can play on modern PCs w/ shinies using the Exult engine) is still the best Ultima of all time - its NPC AI was revolutionary for having rotating schedules and jobs, which Oblivion & Fallout 3 copied.
For your perusal, Finnish sniper Simo Hayha, the aka White Death. Feared by the Russians, more awesome than Vasily Zaytsev. Most number of confirmed kills by a sniper in history (505 confirmed Soviet kills). So badass that he preferred iron sights to telescopic ones while sniping.
Even lived to kick ass after getting half of his face shot off.
If you've actually gotten your hands on an OLPC XO unit, when it's rotated into e-reader tablet mode with the keyboard hidden, it ***NEEDS*** a touchscreen since the corner keypad & navigation buttons (mapped to cursor keys, pgup, pgdn, home, end) become useless when you need to do some mouse moving & clicking.
It's just very natural given its design.
Next, in terms of apps that can be developed, a whole new world opens once you shift to multi-touch as opposed to single-touch screens (piano & drawing apps for the kids, etc).
Moreover, in terms of schoolwork, scribbling diagrams is one of the thing that students do with paper notebooks.
The concept of the OLPC XO is that in the long run, because content is digital, it will be cheaper than the combined cost of books & school materials (pencils, notebooks, etc) over the years.
They can't normally be bought except in large government-level quantities, but if you want to get your hands on one for testing, you can apply for the contributors' program. Basically you submit a project proposal on how you're going to use the units, and it's kinda like a grant except they send you laptop units.
You can volunteer as a developer and if you submit a good project proposal, there's a good chance of being sent some units.
You can check it out and apply here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program
Summary:
Ebert explains never played video games, refuses to play them, and bashed them based only based on his own theories. He then slightly apologizes for being an ass and confesses he does not know what art is.
Google should make this mandatory to finally kill that $!#$&#$ IE6.
Many people gave their lives just to bring you the iPhones and iPads! Treasure these devices!
Hmm. I believe this calls for the very appropriate use of http://nooooooooooooooo.com.
Grinding is a waste of time.
:) The cool thing about it was that my little pets were running around the dungeons, fighting, eating when hungry, heading to the well when thirsty and resting when tired, etc while I was free to code away and work and do other more practical tasks.
;) Had fun playing with my pet GIR from the Invader Zim cartoon series :)
I once wrote several bots in Javascript for a MUD to get around horrible time-wasting grinding. The funny thing was that bots were illegal in that MUD and I got around it by having my bots notify me with audio cues on the different events happening in the MUD so I could take over manually when the admins started to suspect I was botting. Got away with it... hybrid cyborg chatbots can pass turing tests
Oh, btw: how to get away with botting more: roleplay that your character is a bot!
Also, question: Who is more robot-like? The person who does meaningless repetitive motions for hours or days at a time (grinding) or the person who sets a bot to grind, thus freeing himself to do other things and enjoy more of life?
From Wikipedia, origin of the word robot: The word robota means literally "work", "labor" or "serf labor", and figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech and many Slavic languages.
So who is the real robot here? It's the people who waste their time meaninglessly grinding especially when it's no longer enjoyable.
I wonder what Harold would have to say about Prof. Kumar's theory.
Speaking of horrible acting, PLEASE NO HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN!!!
The guy absolutely ruined Darth Vader (and Star Wars)
I refuse to give my DNA. It is my sourcecode (4-bit sequence) and is copyright my parents (& myself via inheritance). No state should have the right to forcibly take my sourcecode and have the means to create clones or test-tube children of mine without my consent.
It is comparable to rape (rapist forcibly impregnates woman and creates child without woman's consent) and child kidnapping (means to create children without parent's care).
Star Control 2 was amazing - it could to speech & digitized music on the PC speaker without soundcards! For those who haven't played it, it's been open-sourced and you can download it here complete with new remixed soundtracks.
uhhh... Meego is a 9,000-year-old shape-shifting alien from the planet "Marmazon 4.0". Well, I guess that falls under illegal alien. Should be quarantined too...
Just for those who don't know, MeeGo is the bastard child of Maemo Linux used on the Nokia N900 and Intel's MobLin.
It is named after an alien named Meego played by Bronson Pinchot who used to be Balki Bartokomous on the TV show Perfect Strangers.
AFAIK, Cherrypal delivers different kinds of laptops at different times.
What's advertised on their website is the *minimum* specs that they guarantee you'll get. This means, when the unit actually ships to you, you can get a machine with specs actually higher than what was advertised on their site.
From what I've heard, Cherrypal basically shops around for different parts/configs that they can get at a particular time, then they build machines out of those assorted parts -- that's why customers will get different kinds of machines with varying specs.
You can use completely free and open source tools to create high-quality Flash content. For example, you can use the combo of Sun's JDK, the Free & Open source FlashDevelop IDE (Microsoft .NET 2.0 required) and Adobe's Open Source Flex SDK.
You can apply for and grab a free copy of Flash Builder if unemployed here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/free/index.html. It's free of university use too (students & faculty).
Yup! HTML5 = full of win and very nifty! I look forward to the day all browsers support HTML5 and we no longer have this constant headache making sites compatible with IE6.
Still won't kill Flash though as there's too much stuff Flash can do that HTML5 can't.
Imagine: it took 6 years for W3C to get HTML5 into the semblance of functionality it has now (can recreate stuff that was being done in Flash back in 2000 when Flash 5 + Actionscript 1 came upon the scene). By the time HTML5 is finalized in 2022, Flash will be light years ahead.
I don't really see why people are shoehorning HTML5 as versus Flash when they coexist side by side nicely in your browser. (example, use Flash for the animated parts in your e-learning website or use "less easy for my sourcecode to be seen" SWFs for Flash games).
Honestly, I think all this HTML5 vs Flash crock is just a marketing campaign being done by Apple & iFanboys to sell those gimped iPads.
Apple is the only company I know that promotes lack of features as selling points. (omg! multi-tasking in iPhone OS4! whoop de doo. Nokia 3650s could do that back in 2002)
I guess it's just a bit of a wait and see what happens when the newer Android smartphones & tablets arrive in mid to late 2010. I hope more developers emerge for Android. The sheer content in the iPhone App Store that is a big factor in making iPhones popular right now.
True dat, bro: BUSINESS will dictate! Good catch. However, there's the problem of the shortage of hybrid interaction designer/coders right now (and in the forseeable future) so don't expect most Flash sites to translate to HTML5 too soon.
I shudder imagining the future where HTML5 replaces most of Flash's current niche though:
Imagine more of the obnoxious CSS floating banner ads on webpages and Flash ads redone in HTML5.
At least you have Flashblock with Flash. It's easy for browsers to block popup window ads, but how're you going to block obnoxious CPU-hogging javascript/css content?
I really hate the way most webpages now average >100kb (too bad for users with data plans measured by the kb for their smartphones) and the way tons of sites have gone AJAX and you can no longer surf them on low-spec devices like the OLPC XO-1 (first-hand experience) and Cherrypal Africa with JavaScript turned on.
DHTML is just as or more CPU-hungry than Flash if done wrong. Flash is not bloated - it's SWF content creators that don't know how to optimize that's the problem, not the platform itself.
I wish more sites would just go back to plain HTML and make mobile versions that degrade gracefully if Javascript is turned off/unavailable and stop using AJAX where it's really needed.