*And* it wasn't exactly the string "Chuck Norris". From TFA:
> I'm not going to give you the exact password, but with upper and lower case, symbols, numbers, all of the above, it spelled out 'Chuck Norris,' more or less.
Server Firsts are Feats of Strength. From the MMO-Chamption article (linked from TFA):
"The achievement count obviously doesn't take Feats of Strength into account because it's technically impossible to get all of them. (Well I guess you could race change to compete for the first level 80 undead/tauren/troll/orc/blood elf on the same character but I don't think you'll get all of them)"
Last year my wife was messaged on Facebook by her friend claiming to be stuck at the airport in London, and needing cash wired to get an airplane ticket. (All of us live in the United States.) Initially she believed the story, but eventually asked for proof of verification by asking something that wasn't on the person's Facebook page: the name of her roommate. The friend immediately logged off, and logged on later, claiming "network problems." By then we had figured out the scam and posted on the friend's wall (getting the posts deleted and de-friended in the process) and posted on our walls and contacted our mutual friends. After we were able to contact the real friend, the account was locked down before anyone had actually lost any money. We later found out that the scammer had been messaging a number of people on the friends list to try to get a wire transfer.
Ok, so getting asking for help from being stuck in a storm drain is not quite the same thing as asking for money from being stuck in an overseas airport. But don't believe everything you read on Facebook.
Education is a very broad term. Teaching language is very different from teaching arithmetic or science or music. Rock Band is decent for teaching beginning drum skills. An adventure game or even a specialized MMO could be useful for language immersion.
The hardcore PvE types have raiding and hard modes. The casuals have alts and achievements. And I suppose some kinky types have multibox fun with Recruit-A-Friend leveling.
FWIW, the number of available Free Realms servers has not increased in the past few months. (At 10 when I checked last week.) When Free Realms first launched in April, the number of servers grew quickly, at a rate of about 2 per week. It's been at 10 since around the end of May.
Unless they're upgrading the capacity of each server, this indicates that the number of active players is remaining constant, so new people are entering at the same rate that people are quitting. But in a free-to-play game, the number of registered users = the number of active accounts, and that number increases monotonically.
I've played Free Realms to a number of max-level job classes. Paying a $5/month subscription fee increases the number of classes available, from 10 to 15.
Note that Free Realms has no end-game. There are some questlines that open up at max-level (20), but no raiding or group PvP. So that $5 uber-weapon only helps you quest and level faster.
A third option: find a trusted PC repairman. At the very least, find a tech-savvy friend to recommend one to you. Not everyone has the time or aptitude to learn basic PC servicing.
> but when you are a good WoW player, you actually have to play *less* to do more.
In my experience, time in-game is correlated with skill. Sure, there are some low-skill people who are always online, but the best players are in raiding guilds with attendance requirements. In addition, to get good and stay good at arena requires a much higher time investment than the minimum 10 games/week for points. I don't know of any really good players who are online less than, say 20 hours/week.
It's not any different than if I took a public-domain work and tried to sell a Kindle version on Amazon. Once it was discovered, Amazon should refund the end customers (which it has done in this case) and then take up action against me.
The tricky thing is that the OP is asking two separate questions:
1) How do I group images of similar content (e.g. Natalie Portman eating hot grits) which may be of different dimensions/resolutions?
2) How do I choose the best archetype in each group?
For 1, the above poster is correct: 95% of the time, the better image will have a larger file size.
For 2, you'll need specialized software that can measure image similarity. If the software doesn't do automatic resize/rescale, you'll need to script that too.
Except that there are atheist organizations and outspoken atheists who write books like "The God Delusion." Anyone seen "The Stamp Collecting Delusion"?
Atheists may not have secret handshakes, just as mainstream Christians don't. But both believe in unprovable axioms about the world and how it operates.
"Meanwhile, the average weight for men aged 20-74 years rose dramatically from 166.3 pounds in 1960 to 191 pounds in 2002, while the average weight for women the same age increased from 140.2 pounds in 1960 to 164.3 pounds in 2002."
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/healthcare/a/tallbutfat.htm
Well, electronics help (or at least alter) regular games by adding effects and game mechanics, and automating scoring. I would imagine they'd do the same for location-based games.
In a video game, I like to input keyboard and mouse commands and get an output of explosions and big numbers. Location-based games can give me another means of input.
Most things in life have a Total Cost of Ownership that greatly exceed the initial price:
Printers - Ink
TV - Cable
Car - Gas / Repairs / Insurance
Babies - Food / Diapers / College Fund
I debated for a long time whether it was worth it -- to me -- to upgrade my 5-year-old PalmOS phone to an iPhone and pay for a data plan. I finally decided that it was worth the $1/day more than my old cell phone plan.
I recently replaced my 5-year-old Palm-based Samsung i500 with an iPhone. Overall, it's quite an upgrade, especially in the display screen, sound, memory (16MB -> 8GB), GPS, and downloadable apps. But here is a comparison of what it takes to enter a new appointment with an 5-minute warning alarm:
Palm:
1) open (clamshell) phone
2) press "Calendar" button
3) use fingernail to click on the timeslot
4) use Graffiti to enter text
5) close phone
Apple:
1) turn phone on
2) slide to unlock, passcode if beyond time limit
3) slide to first page of apps
4) tap calendar
5) tap "+" button
6) tap Title/Location
7) use on-screen keyboard to enter text
8) tap "Save"
9) tap Starts/Ends
10) slide/scroll to correct hour
11) tap "Save"
12) tap "Alert"
13) tap "5 minutes before"
14) tap "Save"
15) tap "Done"
Honestly, it's such a hassle that I'll often grab a pen and Post-It pad, and attach the sticky yellow note to the screen. Too bad there's no 5-minute alarm.
Slashdot Mirror
My AT&T iPhone4 plan: $40 voice + $15 data + $5 text + $5 tax = $65 monthly.
Me neither, but people get fired for false claims on their resumes. Depending on how close-knit your industry is, you don't want to be that guy.
"Bill Gates' last day at Microsoft" video, shown at CES 2008: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lE21kpE3M0
HP Labs is still around: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Labs
Among them are the West-coast DEC labs that were acquired by Compaq in 1998, then subsequently acquired by HP in 2002.
*And* it wasn't exactly the string "Chuck Norris". From TFA:
> I'm not going to give you the exact password, but with upper and lower case, symbols, numbers, all of the above, it spelled out 'Chuck Norris,' more or less.
Contributions you cannot deduct: ... The value of your time or services, ...
IRS Pub. 526
Server Firsts are Feats of Strength. From the MMO-Chamption article (linked from TFA):
"The achievement count obviously doesn't take Feats of Strength into account because it's technically impossible to get all of them. (Well I guess you could race change to compete for the first level 80 undead/tauren/troll/orc/blood elf on the same character but I don't think you'll get all of them)"
http://www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/player-gets-all-achievements-shadowed-unit-frames/
It now requires uber gear to do ANYTHING fun in the game
A guild recently cleared Ulduar in blues, just to disprove that way of thinking: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2009/08/ungeared.html
Last year my wife was messaged on Facebook by her friend claiming to be stuck at the airport in London, and needing cash wired to get an airplane ticket. (All of us live in the United States.) Initially she believed the story, but eventually asked for proof of verification by asking something that wasn't on the person's Facebook page: the name of her roommate. The friend immediately logged off, and logged on later, claiming "network problems." By then we had figured out the scam and posted on the friend's wall (getting the posts deleted and de-friended in the process) and posted on our walls and contacted our mutual friends. After we were able to contact the real friend, the account was locked down before anyone had actually lost any money. We later found out that the scammer had been messaging a number of people on the friends list to try to get a wire transfer.
Ok, so getting asking for help from being stuck in a storm drain is not quite the same thing as asking for money from being stuck in an overseas airport. But don't believe everything you read on Facebook.
Using the Warcraftrealms census on level 10-80 characters on US and EU realms:
PVE server population = 3.16 million
PVP server population = 2.21 million
PVE-RP server population = 709k
PVP-RP server population = 256k
http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php
Education is a very broad term. Teaching language is very different from teaching arithmetic or science or music. Rock Band is decent for teaching beginning drum skills. An adventure game or even a specialized MMO could be useful for language immersion.
The hardcore PvE types have raiding and hard modes. The casuals have alts and achievements. And I suppose some kinky types have multibox fun with Recruit-A-Friend leveling.
FWIW, the number of available Free Realms servers has not increased in the past few months. (At 10 when I checked last week.) When Free Realms first launched in April, the number of servers grew quickly, at a rate of about 2 per week. It's been at 10 since around the end of May.
Unless they're upgrading the capacity of each server, this indicates that the number of active players is remaining constant, so new people are entering at the same rate that people are quitting. But in a free-to-play game, the number of registered users = the number of active accounts, and that number increases monotonically.
I've played Free Realms to a number of max-level job classes. Paying a $5/month subscription fee increases the number of classes available, from 10 to 15.
Another $5 buys you the best possible weapon in Free Realms, and it is usable at level 1. Tobold has a good writeup here: http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/05/limits-of-microtransactions.html
Note that Free Realms has no end-game. There are some questlines that open up at max-level (20), but no raiding or group PvP. So that $5 uber-weapon only helps you quest and level faster.
A third option: find a trusted PC repairman. At the very least, find a tech-savvy friend to recommend one to you. Not everyone has the time or aptitude to learn basic PC servicing.
> but when you are a good WoW player, you actually have to play *less* to do more.
In my experience, time in-game is correlated with skill. Sure, there are some low-skill people who are always online, but the best players are in raiding guilds with attendance requirements. In addition, to get good and stay good at arena requires a much higher time investment than the minimum 10 games/week for points. I don't know of any really good players who are online less than, say 20 hours/week.
Amazon deleted it because the seller didn't have rights to the book. It's not censorship or thought suppression.
Here is a *legal* copy: http://www.amazon.com/Nineteen-Eighty-Four/dp/B002A9JO9W/ref=sr_oe_2_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247861828&sr=1-2
It's not any different than if I took a public-domain work and tried to sell a Kindle version on Amazon. Once it was discovered, Amazon should refund the end customers (which it has done in this case) and then take up action against me.
The tricky thing is that the OP is asking two separate questions:
1) How do I group images of similar content (e.g. Natalie Portman eating hot grits) which may be of different dimensions/resolutions?
2) How do I choose the best archetype in each group?
For 1, the above poster is correct: 95% of the time, the better image will have a larger file size.
For 2, you'll need specialized software that can measure image similarity. If the software doesn't do automatic resize/rescale, you'll need to script that too.
Except that there are atheist organizations and outspoken atheists who write books like "The God Delusion." Anyone seen "The Stamp Collecting Delusion"?
Atheists may not have secret handshakes, just as mainstream Christians don't. But both believe in unprovable axioms about the world and how it operates.
"Meanwhile, the average weight for men aged 20-74 years rose dramatically from 166.3 pounds in 1960 to 191 pounds in 2002, while the average weight for women the same age increased from 140.2 pounds in 1960 to 164.3 pounds in 2002."
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/healthcare/a/tallbutfat.htm
Well, electronics help (or at least alter) regular games by adding effects and game mechanics, and automating scoring. I would imagine they'd do the same for location-based games.
In a video game, I like to input keyboard and mouse commands and get an output of explosions and big numbers. Location-based games can give me another means of input.
No wonder the Canadian geese are migrating to U.S. airports!
Most things in life have a Total Cost of Ownership that greatly exceed the initial price:
Printers - Ink
TV - Cable
Car - Gas / Repairs / Insurance
Babies - Food / Diapers / College Fund
I debated for a long time whether it was worth it -- to me -- to upgrade my 5-year-old PalmOS phone to an iPhone and pay for a data plan. I finally decided that it was worth the $1/day more than my old cell phone plan.
I recently replaced my 5-year-old Palm-based Samsung i500 with an iPhone. Overall, it's quite an upgrade, especially in the display screen, sound, memory (16MB -> 8GB), GPS, and downloadable apps. But here is a comparison of what it takes to enter a new appointment with an 5-minute warning alarm:
Palm:
1) open (clamshell) phone
2) press "Calendar" button
3) use fingernail to click on the timeslot
4) use Graffiti to enter text
5) close phone
Apple:
1) turn phone on
2) slide to unlock, passcode if beyond time limit
3) slide to first page of apps
4) tap calendar
5) tap "+" button
6) tap Title/Location
7) use on-screen keyboard to enter text
8) tap "Save"
9) tap Starts/Ends
10) slide/scroll to correct hour
11) tap "Save"
12) tap "Alert"
13) tap "5 minutes before"
14) tap "Save"
15) tap "Done"
Honestly, it's such a hassle that I'll often grab a pen and Post-It pad, and attach the sticky yellow note to the screen. Too bad there's no 5-minute alarm.
Biblical Hebrew writing style uses pairs of similar statements for poetry or emphasis. (That Playstation/Xbox example is actually pretty good.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_poetry#Parallelism