Yessir, back in my day we had these incredible keyboards. I have a VIC-20 keyboard and and Commodore 64 keyboard. Some people claimed they were kind of big, but for keyboards, they were sure packed with features! Like computers!:)
You can legally lend a commercial CD to a friend, give him a blank CD-R, let him use your computer, and help him burn the CD-R which he can keep for his own private use.
You cannot legally make the copy yourself and give your friend the copy.
If that isn't a fine line, I don't know what is:) "Help him burn the CD-R" can be stretched to apply to pretty much anything. ("Sure I operated the burning software, but I was only helping the overall process. My friend here tore the shrink wrap off the CDR, after all")
This guy Urie should be shot. Not only does he openly admit to not caring about consumer concerns, check out this gem:
'Urie argues that lowered prices won't make a dent in downloading, saying, "The fact that consumers can steal music sort of trumps anything else we can do."'
But people have always been able to steal music, since the invention of the tape recorder. So now they're using piracy as an excuse to not improve their product offering. They simply refuse to even acknowledge the possibility that piracy is encouraged by low quality and overblown pricing. What a load of bullshit.
The Memento Limited Edition DVD has the most monstrous menu system I ever hope to see in my life. The play disc is bad enough... a grid of maybe 50 words, and you have to hunt for the 5 that actually do something.
But the special features disc really takes the cake. To get to a SINGLE feature, you have to: a) pick a particular picture from a large group. b) answer a bunch of irrelevant quiz slides, c) when you get to a specific one, you have to pick a certain choice to start making the slides move SIDEWAYS. d) keep picking this same choice to slide sideways until you get to another specific slide e) pick a certain choice from the final fake quiz slide.
Once you have done this, you get to a menu for a SINGLE FEATURE. Want to watch a different one? Repeat the above steps with a different picture for step a). Takes like 3 minutes to get to each feature. Absolutely ridiculous.
On a positive note, the packaging is quite cool... I especially like the genuine post-it note stuck to the inside of the case which reads "Watch". Hehehe:)
Look, there are some HUGELY bad episodes, and a certain amount of cheese. And the guy who plays Xander is a horrible actor, he always sounds like he's reciting lines, instead of talking naturally. I make no apologies for him.
But when the show is good, is is fucking GOLD.
"the show has little depth, the characters are one-dimensional, the situations often too... silly to be believable. the plots are predictable and simplistic, and thoroughly unstimulating"
Yeah, they give all the shallow, one dimensional, silly, predictable, simplistic, unstimulating shows seven seasons and multiple spin-off series. Just maybe there's some substance here, ya?
I think the biggest problem with Buffy is the name itself. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"? What a stupid, trite name. Must be a stupid, trite show. Buffy is a wonderful book with a horrible cover, and it often gets judged by it.
The thing is, the stupid title is part of one of the main themes of the series, illusion and false pretense; counterpoint. Joss Whedon once stated the original concept for BtVS was a beautiful, helpless looking blonde girl walking down an alley late at night. She is set upon by vampires, and instead of screaming, running, and succumbing, she not only stays her ground, but all-out kicks their asses.
Playing against the audience's expectations like this is EVERYWHERE in the series. Example: In season 5, Buffy's mother, a regular character in all 5 seasons, falls ill. Everyone worries, she goes to the hospital, finds out she has a brain tumor. Everyone worries some more. She gets surgery. Everyone REALLY worries. She comes out, the tumor is gone! She's going to be just fine! Everyone is all smiles. Hurray! (These events are scattered out over half a season)
Textbook predictable, standard dramatic crisis and resolution. The audience nods and smiles, and says "Yes, I knew she'd get better." Jokes about bed-head and hospital night gowns. Collective, self-assured sigh of relief.
Then they kill her.
WHAM! Out of left field. Buffy comes home and her mother is simply lying dead on the couch, eyes and mouth open, like she was about to cry out but didn't get a chance. Then they deal with it. Sarah Michelle Gellar's acting in this episode is tremendous. I don't think I've ever seen a show deal with death with such maturity and sensitivity.
Now season 1 for the most part sucked, with a couple gem episodes (the two-part premiere and the finale are pretty decent)
Now seasons 2, 3, and 4 are just about the best "arc" television I have ever seen. Characters grow, change and die. Silly? Open up your mind to the creative possibilities. Simplistic??? If you've ever heard a Buffy fan trying to fill in a newbie to the backstory, you'd know this isn't the case. Predictable? Bullshit. Buffy doesn't pull any punches. I never know what to expect, because Whedon has no qualms whatsoever about killing or twisting main characters.
If you want to see Buffy shine, I suggest you borrow Season 2 DVDs from someone, and watch the following episodes (especially the asteriked ones)
School Hard Lie to Me *Surprise *Innocence Passion *Becoming, Part 1 *Becoming, Part 2
If you still hate Buffy after watching these episodes, well, I guess our tastes differ, and that's really all there is to be said.
X-Box more costly cuz of Windows (RETCH)
on
Microsoft Freon
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
"The Xbox console isn't profitable for the Redmond, Wash., company and its costs are believed to be higher than Sony's, partly because of the hard drive and a version of its powerful Windows operating system included with each machine."
Oh cry me a river. Like Microsoft is losing money because of all the billions they're pouring into the miraculous X-Box Bastardized Windows Operating System. Sure, maybe the hard disk is a lotta coin, but the cost of putting Windows on a console? Catastrophic.
I have seen plenty of good Tom bashing jokes, but this isn't one of them. Tom's Hardware doesn't judge games. They judge hardware, notably speeds of processors and graphics cards.
"I think the unchanged nature of the logos can be chalked up to simple product placement"
Oh, I'm positive that's the "real world" reason too. I'm just saying I think it's plausible they actually WILL be extremely similar in 50 years.:)
Try the Mersenne Twister
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Check out the Mersenne Twister, it's beautiful. Here's a couple points from that page:
Far longer period and far higher order of equidistribution than any other implemented generators. (It is proved that the period is 2^19937-1, and 623-dimensional equidistribution property is assured.)
Fast generation. (Although it depends on the system, it is reported that MT is sometimes faster than the standard ANSI-C library in a system with pipeline and cache memory.)
Efficient use of the memory. (The implemented C-code mt19937.c consumes only 624 words of working area.)
There are implementations in C, Java, PHP, Fortran, Excel (I assume VBA) and probably others.
I only have experience with the Java impl, and it is very good. There are two classes, MersenneTwister, which is a true descendant of java.util.Random, and there is also a MersenneTwisterFast class, which does NOT inherit from Random (same public methods, and identical algorithm though), but clocks in at about twice the speed, due to tricks like avoidance of synchronization, and method inlining and finalizing.
Re:READ THIS -Very Off Topic-
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 1
Well, seems you're right... the Pledge of Allegiance made the front page after all:)
Re:Leftist Propaganda **SPOILERS**
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 2
"no trial or investigation."
Um, we've never been able to accurately see the future before. Trials and investigations are a patchwork effort to try and piece together what really happened. Precognition renders this unneccessary.
"immersing the precogs in a vat of goo for all their lives. Starting the movie with this premise, something which would never be legitimate"
I thought this too at first, but the pre-cogs are presented as incapable of caring for themselves. They are said to not even be aware of other people, and everyone is shocked when Agatha actually speaks to Cruise. Also, remember near the end when Agatha pleads to be taken home? So it doesn't sound like they're prisoners, just willing, dependant guinea pigs.
"They wouldn't go to jail as if they committed a crime, simply because they didn't."
See attempted murder. The point is that truly murderous intentions make someone a danger to society.
Re:My one big issue with the film (SPOILER?)
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
*** DEFINITE END-OF-MOVIE SPOILER WARNING ***
You have been warned... stop reading now if you haven't seen the movie.
-
-
-
I was wondering that myself. At most, book em for attempted murder, not future murder. The other thing I was wondering, is how many would prevent themselves from committing murder, if they were informed of their future, just as Cruise's character was. As Cruise says, knowledge of the future gives you the choice of changing it.
Re:setting is excellent!
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I agree. The presentation of the future is masterful. Like that residential suburb scene with the couple going by on a pair of horses. Does the reviewer think they decided to use HORSES because of budgetary concerns? Nonsense. Everything is deliberate. Spielberg consulted with a large group of world-renowned futurists to come up with a carefully thought out view of what the future might be like. They ended up with a mixture of high tech and old fashioned. A case can be made that Star Wars employs a similar motif.
As for the advertising... how much has the Coke logo changed in the last 50 years? Brand recognition is powerful, long lasting stuff.
Re:READ THIS -Very Off Topic-
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
I think that IS important, but I also think Bush's initiative to create a Palestinian state is important. The point is, neither of these things really belong on Slashdot. It has nothing to do with technology, the internet, the future, or geek interests. It has to do with religion and tradition.
Boy is your post confused. First of all, nobody said anything about 'changing for the sake of change'. I said change because it will aid in differentiating them, and that is a very useful property for pieces of paper with radically different valuations, don't you think?
Second, what does your Chinese/English example have to do with 'changing for the sake of change'? Here you're talking about changing to conform with the majority, which is something else entirely.
What is with all the posts saying "The number is good enough"? Just sounds like stubborn anti-change sentiment to me. Should all traffic signs and signals be the same colour, because the wording and/or shapes should be good enough? Colour association is an important visual cue, it WILL make the bills easier to differentiate. Period.
Yeah, that part never made any semblance of sense to me. How can a species with no technology whatsoever hurl a rock across the galaxy and hit a tiny planet? And wouldn't it take centuries at least? Probably more like hundreds of thousands of years, and that would be from a close star.
I'm not very familiar with the Google toolbar, but IMHO, Google access from Mozilla 1.0 couldn't be much easier... just type your query in the address bar, then press up-arrow to select the 'Search Google for "fubar"' from the bottom of the drop-down menu, and hit Enter... presto! Google search in 2 keystrokes. Add Ctrl to that and you even get it in a new tab. Mozilla rocks! I just wish it had smooth auto-scroll, more customizable toolbars (such as small icons, optional text, Home on the nav bar instead the personal bar), and native support for Back/Forward buttons on mice, like IE and Opera 6 do.
Slashdot Mirror
Yessir, back in my day we had these incredible keyboards. I have a VIC-20 keyboard and and Commodore 64 keyboard. Some people claimed they were kind of big, but for keyboards, they were sure packed with features! Like computers! :)
- You can legally lend a commercial CD to a friend, give him a blank CD-R, let him use your computer, and help him burn the CD-R which he can keep for his own private use.
- You cannot legally make the copy yourself and give your friend the copy.
If that isn't a fine line, I don't know what isThis guy Urie should be shot. Not only does he openly admit to not caring about consumer concerns, check out this gem:
'Urie argues that lowered prices won't make a dent in downloading, saying, "The fact that consumers can steal music sort of trumps anything else we can do."'
But people have always been able to steal music, since the invention of the tape recorder. So now they're using piracy as an excuse to not improve their product offering. They simply refuse to even acknowledge the possibility that piracy is encouraged by low quality and overblown pricing. What a load of bullshit.
The Memento Limited Edition DVD has the most monstrous menu system I ever hope to see in my life. The play disc is bad enough... a grid of maybe 50 words, and you have to hunt for the 5 that actually do something.
:)
But the special features disc really takes the cake. To get to a SINGLE feature, you have to: a) pick a particular picture from a large group. b) answer a bunch of irrelevant quiz slides, c) when you get to a specific one, you have to pick a certain choice to start making the slides move SIDEWAYS. d) keep picking this same choice to slide sideways until you get to another specific slide e) pick a certain choice from the final fake quiz slide.
Once you have done this, you get to a menu for a SINGLE FEATURE. Want to watch a different one? Repeat the above steps with a different picture for step a). Takes like 3 minutes to get to each feature. Absolutely ridiculous.
On a positive note, the packaging is quite cool... I especially like the genuine post-it note stuck to the inside of the case which reads "Watch". Hehehe
Look, there are some HUGELY bad episodes, and a certain amount of cheese. And the guy who plays Xander is a horrible actor, he always sounds like he's reciting lines, instead of talking naturally. I make no apologies for him.
But when the show is good, is is fucking GOLD.
"the show has little depth, the characters are one-dimensional, the situations often too... silly to be believable. the plots are predictable and simplistic, and thoroughly unstimulating"
Yeah, they give all the shallow, one dimensional, silly, predictable, simplistic, unstimulating shows seven seasons and multiple spin-off series. Just maybe there's some substance here, ya?
I think the biggest problem with Buffy is the name itself. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"? What a stupid, trite name. Must be a stupid, trite show. Buffy is a wonderful book with a horrible cover, and it often gets judged by it.
The thing is, the stupid title is part of one of the main themes of the series, illusion and false pretense; counterpoint. Joss Whedon once stated the original concept for BtVS was a beautiful, helpless looking blonde girl walking down an alley late at night. She is set upon by vampires, and instead of screaming, running, and succumbing, she not only stays her ground, but all-out kicks their asses.
Playing against the audience's expectations like this is EVERYWHERE in the series. Example: In season 5, Buffy's mother, a regular character in all 5 seasons, falls ill. Everyone worries, she goes to the hospital, finds out she has a brain tumor. Everyone worries some more. She gets surgery. Everyone REALLY worries. She comes out, the tumor is gone! She's going to be just fine! Everyone is all smiles. Hurray! (These events are scattered out over half a season)
Textbook predictable, standard dramatic crisis and resolution. The audience nods and smiles, and says "Yes, I knew she'd get better." Jokes about bed-head and hospital night gowns. Collective, self-assured sigh of relief.
Then they kill her.
WHAM! Out of left field. Buffy comes home and her mother is simply lying dead on the couch, eyes and mouth open, like she was about to cry out but didn't get a chance. Then they deal with it. Sarah Michelle Gellar's acting in this episode is tremendous. I don't think I've ever seen a show deal with death with such maturity and sensitivity.
Now season 1 for the most part sucked, with a couple gem episodes (the two-part premiere and the finale are pretty decent)
Now seasons 2, 3, and 4 are just about the best "arc" television I have ever seen. Characters grow, change and die. Silly? Open up your mind to the creative possibilities. Simplistic??? If you've ever heard a Buffy fan trying to fill in a newbie to the backstory, you'd know this isn't the case. Predictable? Bullshit. Buffy doesn't pull any punches. I never know what to expect, because Whedon has no qualms whatsoever about killing or twisting main characters.
If you want to see Buffy shine, I suggest you borrow Season 2 DVDs from someone, and watch the following episodes (especially the asteriked ones)
School Hard
Lie to Me
*Surprise
*Innocence
Passion
*Becoming, Part 1
*Becoming, Part 2
If you still hate Buffy after watching these episodes, well, I guess our tastes differ, and that's really all there is to be said.
"The Xbox console isn't profitable for the Redmond, Wash., company and its costs are believed to be higher than Sony's, partly because of the hard drive and a version of its powerful Windows operating system included with each machine."
Oh cry me a river. Like Microsoft is losing money because of all the billions they're pouring into the miraculous X-Box Bastardized Windows Operating System. Sure, maybe the hard disk is a lotta coin, but the cost of putting Windows on a console? Catastrophic.
It does, with an optional adapter... cool! :)
Can it read Sony Memory Sticks?
See, now THAT was a good Tom bashing joke ;)
ET sucked.
:)
:)
Now "Raiders of the Lost Ark"... THAT was a great adventure game.
Other fav. Atari games... "Yar's Revenge", "Berzerk", "Asteroids", "Solaris", "Defender", "Ghostbusters", "Gyruss", "Joust"
Yum.. time to go fool around with an emulator..
"judging a 3d game by the framerate it produces.
Hey wait, I just described Tom's Hardware"
I have seen plenty of good Tom bashing jokes, but this isn't one of them. Tom's Hardware doesn't judge games. They judge hardware, notably speeds of processors and graphics cards.
"I think the unchanged nature of the logos can be chalked up to simple product placement"
:)
Oh, I'm positive that's the "real world" reason too. I'm just saying I think it's plausible they actually WILL be extremely similar in 50 years.
There are implementations in C, Java, PHP, Fortran, Excel (I assume VBA) and probably others.
I only have experience with the Java impl, and it is very good. There are two classes, MersenneTwister, which is a true descendant of java.util.Random, and there is also a MersenneTwisterFast class, which does NOT inherit from Random (same public methods, and identical algorithm though), but clocks in at about twice the speed, due to tricks like avoidance of synchronization, and method inlining and finalizing.
Well, seems you're right... the Pledge of Allegiance made the front page after all :)
"no trial or investigation."
Um, we've never been able to accurately see the future before. Trials and investigations are a patchwork effort to try and piece together what really happened. Precognition renders this unneccessary.
"immersing the precogs in a vat of goo for all their lives. Starting the movie with this premise, something which would never be legitimate"
I thought this too at first, but the pre-cogs are presented as incapable of caring for themselves. They are said to not even be aware of other people, and everyone is shocked when Agatha actually speaks to Cruise. Also, remember near the end when Agatha pleads to be taken home? So it doesn't sound like they're prisoners, just willing, dependant guinea pigs.
"They wouldn't go to jail as if they committed a crime, simply because they didn't."
See attempted murder. The point is that truly murderous intentions make someone a danger to society.
*** DEFINITE END-OF-MOVIE SPOILER WARNING ***
You have been warned... stop reading now if you haven't seen the movie.
-
-
-
I was wondering that myself. At most, book em for attempted murder, not future murder. The other thing I was wondering, is how many would prevent themselves from committing murder, if they were informed of their future, just as Cruise's character was. As Cruise says, knowledge of the future gives you the choice of changing it.
I agree. The presentation of the future is masterful. Like that residential suburb scene with the couple going by on a pair of horses. Does the reviewer think they decided to use HORSES because of budgetary concerns? Nonsense. Everything is deliberate. Spielberg consulted with a large group of world-renowned futurists to come up with a carefully thought out view of what the future might be like. They ended up with a mixture of high tech and old fashioned. A case can be made that Star Wars employs a similar motif.
As for the advertising... how much has the Coke logo changed in the last 50 years? Brand recognition is powerful, long lasting stuff.
I think that IS important, but I also think Bush's initiative to create a Palestinian state is important. The point is, neither of these things really belong on Slashdot. It has nothing to do with technology, the internet, the future, or geek interests. It has to do with religion and tradition.
Interesting. I wonder what will happen when people eventually have electronic memory augmentations installed?
I never breathed a word about tourists. Colour coding would be helpful to everyone.
I agree. I don't think the "all other countries do it" in itself is a compelling reason whatsoever.
I just think multi colour money is helpful. Which is why all the other countries have adopted it. They're a proof-of-concept indicator, not a reason.
Boy is your post confused. First of all, nobody said anything about 'changing for the sake of change'. I said change because it will aid in differentiating them, and that is a very useful property for pieces of paper with radically different valuations, don't you think?
Second, what does your Chinese/English example have to do with 'changing for the sake of change'? Here you're talking about changing to conform with the majority, which is something else entirely.
What is with all the posts saying "The number is good enough"? Just sounds like stubborn anti-change sentiment to me. Should all traffic signs and signals be the same colour, because the wording and/or shapes should be good enough? Colour association is an important visual cue, it WILL make the bills easier to differentiate. Period.
Yeah, that part never made any semblance of sense to me. How can a species with no technology whatsoever hurl a rock across the galaxy and hit a tiny planet? And wouldn't it take centuries at least? Probably more like hundreds of thousands of years, and that would be from a close star.
Is this discussed in better detail in the novel?
I'm not very familiar with the Google toolbar, but IMHO, Google access from Mozilla 1.0 couldn't be much easier... just type your query in the address bar, then press up-arrow to select the 'Search Google for "fubar"' from the bottom of the drop-down menu, and hit Enter... presto! Google search in 2 keystrokes. Add Ctrl to that and you even get it in a new tab. Mozilla rocks! I just wish it had smooth auto-scroll, more customizable toolbars (such as small icons, optional text, Home on the nav bar instead the personal bar), and native support for Back/Forward buttons on mice, like IE and Opera 6 do.