If your kids are smart enough to monitor what is running on their computer, shouldn't they also be smart enough to realize if someone is trying to sexually manipulate them?
I've been on the internet since I was 11, got an ICQ account first thing.
Staying safe on the internet is pretty simple. Don't hand out real name, age, or location. Gender either if it can be avoided.
Teach your kids that, make sure they realize WHY it is important ("Do you want to end up raped and dead in some ditch? No? DON'T GIVE OUT PERSONAL INFORMTATION THEN.") and trust in them not to take a plane trip somewhere to meet some weirdo halfway across the country.
Bleck, they teach in school "add an E on the end, makes the vowel long" (they don't specify WHICH vowel...) so I figured, "tune" has an e on the end, so that U sound must be the long one.
I do not do phonics. Semantics is cool, but phonics are irritating!
Still too expensive. Think of how much a 2GB flash costs compared to a DVD and what kind of profit margins the company would be looking at.
Think of what flash readers cost, and think of how much they would be saving... Sony is dishing out $250 for that bluray drive, ouch. Flash readers cost what, a few bucks?
Assuming flash costs an extra $20 per game (and I imagine it is not that high, I don't know what the production cost for bluray discs is, especially if you take into consideration the cost of ramping up an entire factory just to produce the things, versus using existing factories for flash), not until after someone has bought 13 games to you begin to go "hey, I could have made more money on a disc based system".
Reasoning: Put bluray in drive, you are down $250. With each disc you sell, you make an extra $20, so after 13 discs have been sold, you have made back the $250 it cost to use bluray.
Flash: You start off having saved $250 per console, but each game you sell represents $20 in lost profit. 13 games later, you go "wow I should have used a bluray drive".
Of course when using open standards that are constantly improving, you can count on the storage limit increasing after awhile. Bluray discs are bluray discs, and will never be increasing in size. A good flexible flash reader can be made in an era of 64MB cards and still work with 1GB cards.
Of course right now flash technology is not up to what is needed for large games, 1GB chips are affordable (and Nintendo could probebly source them for less than $15 each), but really something bigger is needed. Discs are nice because they represent a fixed cost of no more than a few cents per disc, a price that is going to, worst case stay the same, and most likely decrease.
The price point Nintendo is targetting is also lower than what Sony is going after, a $30 game that is $15 for the cartridge, $5 for the box and shipping, well, that is only $10 profit. Compare that to about $1 for the entire disc + box combo for optical media, and all of a sudden you have over twice the profit. Nice.
Not that it is really profit, have to calculate in programmer and artist salaries first!:)
Yah I was all for black awhile back, but it got boring.
For one thing, dark themes have a hard time with contrast. There are a million shades of beige, so it is possible to make things stand out without breaking theme. Black has a disadvantage that UI elements tend to "sink" into the overall theme.
I would have preferred an ice crystal theme or some sort, I really liked some of the earlier Vista themes as well, before they settled on the Aero appearance.
I think it is horribly stupid and ugly, I much perfer zooming out on loaded applications then zooming back in.
Overall I feel that the Vista UI is way to dark. Either black stained glass on higher end systems, or black borders as a default for users who cannot fully run Aero. The entire black motif might have been cool if this was 1999.
Yes I know that the glass color can be changed, but no matter what it is still dark and depressing.
The sheer number of icons that surround the UI also makes everything feel very crowded, which is rather sad considering the work that MS has put in to try and unclutter the UI. Moving everything out of the menus and onto icons that then surround explorer windows is not really decluttering though.
Disclaimer: I haven't played with anything after beta2, if anybody wants to report that the newer releases have cleaned up the UI (and gotten rid of that horrible black theme... which I doubt!) then please feel free to correct me!
That's about what you'd need to be sure. If you think you're being spyed on then bare in mind that the various security services (MI5/6, NSA etc) have been able to tell what you're typing by listening to your key strokes (with a microphone) for years (make that decades, pretty much since keyboards came into common use for messaging).
There are systems that get around this as well.
If you can be assued of the visual security of your monitor (closed room bare walls everything TEMPEST compliant) then use a system that randomly rearranges how keys are interpetted by the computer, display a template at the bottom of the screen. Typing would be all hunt and peck, but it would be secure from audio intervention.
Or you could just use a membrane keyboard!:) Or juse use one of these
...thousands of Slashdot readers with severe cases of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) go into shock as the president does something they can't somehow link with the end of the world and everyone's freedoms.
After having witnessed two politicians being publicly humiliated for attempting to stonewall the bill.
See I never realized about that entire "follow left hand wall" thing until I read a description of it in an intro CS book.
I always just got lost in mazes. o_o
My typical solution to mazes (pen and paper) was to take an ink eraser and draw myself a path to the exit. Likewise in games, I am constantly annoyed that I cannot just blow up walls.
I never saw the appeal of those flower mazes, just take the scrapes and walk through the damn bushes.
I am typically American here, my solution to most problems is to blow something up or cut something down.
I thought doom3 had rather straight forward levels compared to the original doom, which I could easily spend 4 or 5 hours on a level AFTER I had killed everything, trying to find a way out.
Meh, then again I was a lot younger, I didn't develop a sense of direction until just a few years ago.
I saw a station at 1.99 today, another one 1.97 about half a mile from there. I guess you are wrong. I have no clue where you are, and that may be a very accurate statement where you are at. I am in Virginia, and I have been seeing prices below two dollars a gallon for about 4 days now. Granted, most are still 2.1x right now, but they are still dropping.
How pissy, it is still around 2.99 where I live...
Wanna test it in a riot scenario, pay yourself a bunch of Army recruits to stage a riot under controlled circumstances.
Hell with that.
You know those carnival/fair events where you get to dunk "Insert Person Here"?
I say we make the congress critters + president and cabinet sign up for non-lethal weapon tests performed by citizens who buy tickets to fire off said weapons. The more painful weapons have higher ticket prices.
Make all of them rotate through the program until the national debt is paid off.
I bet you that as a side effect, the budget would get balanced REALLY quick.
It should scroll continuously instead of clicking by lines, it should control the thing under the mouse instead of having its own weird focus rules (again Windows stands alone here),
In Windows, push down the middle mouse button (most often the scroll wheel), and it does exactly that.
pushing the wheel button should give scrolling control directly to the mouse Y-axis instead of that weirdo autoscroll thing.
You just asked for autoscrolling....
Line by line makes sense. Continous scrolling sucks.
I have used joystick devices before that you push down to scroll, they SUCK. Many laptops come with them now days. They are obnoxious and hard to use. Typically they either go too slow or too fast. Joy.
I used to have a mouse that had two scroll wheels on it. I could use one to scroll down a few lines, the other to scroll down a medium number of lines, or spin both of them to scroll down really fast!:) I loved that mouse, A4Tech mouse that only cost me $20, only lasted a few years, but I didn't really expect that much out of a $20 optical mouse back then. (this was when the cheapest optical mouse aside from A4tech cost around $40 or $50)
Slashdot Mirror
Depends.
30 seconds per page, cut that down to 2.5 hours.
If your kids are smart enough to monitor what is running on their computer, shouldn't they also be smart enough to realize if someone is trying to sexually manipulate them?
I've been on the internet since I was 11, got an ICQ account first thing.
Staying safe on the internet is pretty simple. Don't hand out real name, age, or location. Gender either if it can be avoided.
Teach your kids that, make sure they realize WHY it is important ("Do you want to end up raped and dead in some ditch? No? DON'T GIVE OUT PERSONAL INFORMTATION THEN.") and trust in them not to take a plane trip somewhere to meet some weirdo halfway across the country.
Bleck, they teach in school "add an E on the end, makes the vowel long" (they don't specify WHICH vowel...) so I figured, "tune" has an e on the end, so that U sound must be the long one.
I do not do phonics. Semantics is cool, but phonics are irritating!
That is how I say it, rhymes with tune. Zune.
I said "zuuun", ("zuen"? Not much idea how to phonically spell words...) You know, long U, just like how English dictates it be pronounced.
Mrs. Clinton is hardly a liberal... her stance on /some/ social programs is liberal, but....
ick.
On the flip side, I wouldn't want a shock rocker in office either. LOL, could be amusing at times though.
... One reason I don't approve of her. Democrats around the country are not all the same.
We need more fiscal and personal responsibility democrats!
Help people efficiently!
You fail to understand that in the United States, guns are a last line defense for freedom of speech.
Um actually the stereotyped kneejerk liberal reaction is to blame the game company, as demonstrates by Mrs. Clinton.
Think of what flash readers cost, and think of how much they would be saving... Sony is dishing out $250 for that bluray drive, ouch. Flash readers cost what, a few bucks?
Assuming flash costs an extra $20 per game (and I imagine it is not that high, I don't know what the production cost for bluray discs is, especially if you take into consideration the cost of ramping up an entire factory just to produce the things, versus using existing factories for flash), not until after someone has bought 13 games to you begin to go "hey, I could have made more money on a disc based system".
Reasoning: Put bluray in drive, you are down $250. With each disc you sell, you make an extra $20, so after 13 discs have been sold, you have made back the $250 it cost to use bluray.
Flash: You start off having saved $250 per console, but each game you sell represents $20 in lost profit. 13 games later, you go "wow I should have used a bluray drive".
Of course when using open standards that are constantly improving, you can count on the storage limit increasing after awhile. Bluray discs are bluray discs, and will never be increasing in size. A good flexible flash reader can be made in an era of 64MB cards and still work with 1GB cards.
Of course right now flash technology is not up to what is needed for large games, 1GB chips are affordable (and Nintendo could probebly source them for less than $15 each), but really something bigger is needed. Discs are nice because they represent a fixed cost of no more than a few cents per disc, a price that is going to, worst case stay the same, and most likely decrease.
The price point Nintendo is targetting is also lower than what Sony is going after, a $30 game that is $15 for the cartridge, $5 for the box and shipping, well, that is only $10 profit. Compare that to about $1 for the entire disc + box combo for optical media, and all of a sudden you have over twice the profit. Nice.
Not that it is really profit, have to calculate in programmer and artist salaries first!
Yah I was all for black awhile back, but it got boring.
For one thing, dark themes have a hard time with contrast. There are a million shades of beige, so it is possible to make things stand out without breaking theme. Black has a disadvantage that UI elements tend to "sink" into the overall theme.
I would have preferred an ice crystal theme or some sort, I really liked some of the earlier Vista themes as well, before they settled on the Aero appearance.
I think it is horribly stupid and ugly, I much perfer zooming out on loaded applications then zooming back in.
Overall I feel that the Vista UI is way to dark. Either black stained glass on higher end systems, or black borders as a default for users who cannot fully run Aero. The entire black motif might have been cool if this was 1999.
Yes I know that the glass color can be changed, but no matter what it is still dark and depressing.
The sheer number of icons that surround the UI also makes everything feel very crowded, which is rather sad considering the work that MS has put in to try and unclutter the UI. Moving everything out of the menus and onto icons that then surround explorer windows is not really decluttering though.
Disclaimer: I haven't played with anything after beta2, if anybody wants to report that the newer releases have cleaned up the UI (and gotten rid of that horrible black theme... which I doubt!) then please feel free to correct me!
Well, in its defense, I have had good experiances with the areas surrounding Santa Rosa... :)
It's in north cali so it doesn't suck so much?
Only thing I can think of...
There are systems that get around this as well.
If you can be assued of the visual security of your monitor (closed room bare walls everything TEMPEST compliant) then use a system that randomly rearranges how keys are interpetted by the computer, display a template at the bottom of the screen. Typing would be all hunt and peck, but it would be secure from audio intervention.
Or you could just use a membrane keyboard!
Not the same thing. I want to see every an invoice for last damn pen the government purchases.
After having witnessed two politicians being publicly humiliated for attempting to stonewall the bill.
See I never realized about that entire "follow left hand wall" thing until I read a description of it in an intro CS book.
I always just got lost in mazes. o_o
My typical solution to mazes (pen and paper) was to take an ink eraser and draw myself a path to the exit. Likewise in games, I am constantly annoyed that I cannot just blow up walls.
I never saw the appeal of those flower mazes, just take the scrapes and walk through the damn bushes.
I am typically American here, my solution to most problems is to blow something up or cut something down.
I do strafe in RL though...
LOL.
I thought doom3 had rather straight forward levels compared to the original doom, which I could easily spend 4 or 5 hours on a level AFTER I had killed everything, trying to find a way out.
Meh, then again I was a lot younger, I didn't develop a sense of direction until just a few years ago.
How pissy, it is still around 2.99 where I live...
You could superglue a phone on there and barely notice the added weight.
I read fast. I show all comments. When I enabled the new discussion system I had to tweak my preferences some to enable it to do what I had before.
Holy crap.
People would take out (another!) mortgage on their house for that.
My state (Washington) has an initiative process, I wonder if this is a valid initiative to have passed.
Yo, anybody down in Cali, you all have initiatives as well, get on this!
Hell with that.
You know those carnival/fair events where you get to dunk "Insert Person Here"?
I say we make the congress critters + president and cabinet sign up for non-lethal weapon tests performed by citizens who buy tickets to fire off said weapons. The more painful weapons have higher ticket prices.
Make all of them rotate through the program until the national debt is paid off.
I bet you that as a side effect, the budget would get balanced REALLY quick.
In Windows, push down the middle mouse button (most often the scroll wheel), and it does exactly that.
You just asked for autoscrolling....
Line by line makes sense. Continous scrolling sucks.
I have used joystick devices before that you push down to scroll, they SUCK. Many laptops come with them now days. They are obnoxious and hard to use. Typically they either go too slow or too fast. Joy.
I used to have a mouse that had two scroll wheels on it. I could use one to scroll down a few lines, the other to scroll down a medium number of lines, or spin both of them to scroll down really fast!