Well I've certainly become obssessed with specific games to the point where it affected my work. This usually happens in the winter when my productivity is at its lowest anyway, but it's still kinda bad when I spend two weeks straight on game message boards and not doing any real work! The type of game definitely makes a difference, too; racing and FPS games are no problem for me, but RPGs (and to a lesser extent strategy games) are always dangerous...
Can you imagine walking down the street while nodding and gesturing to control your MP3 player? As if geeks aren't considered weird enough already; with this we'd all look like we have Tourette's syndrome as well...
13: The movie is protected from editing (including censorship, for countries like China). Imagine if the only versions of Star Wars (original trilogy) you could access were the "special editions", because that is the only thing Lucas wants you to see.
Uhh, bad example, dude. This is already the case with the StarWards DVDs. If anything the download mechanism gives you more opportunity to get the unauthorized versions (albeit illegally). Now for movies that you already own before the re-edits, your point would be valid...
I think the answer is more about actually contacting the person when opening new accounts.
Well that might limit fraud to the old-fashioned con artists (the ones who can actually talk a good game), but that's about it. Barring some absolute, unfalsifiable form of unique identification, identity fraud will continue. And no, biometrics as they currently exist don't count (especially if you're trying to send the prints, etc., as data over the internet).
Exactly. If you require all that information to validate your identification, then by definition the organization that needs to validate you has to have all that information stored somewhere, in such a way that it can all be retrieved at the same time. And as long as third parties are allowed to compile databases of this information, they will be vulnerable to exploitation as well.
Probably 95% of your code doesn't even need optimization. I program for embedded devices with real-time functionality, but even so I've rarely had to optimize anything other than Interrupt Service Routines and similar Critical Section code. Most normal code in a modern application will have plenty of time to run no matter how sloppy it is. It takes a lot of inefficiency before things bog down.
The compiler will always produce asm better than a human[...]
Umm, no. Hand-coding in assembler is still called for in cases with extremely limited resources and complex or unusual tasks to be completed. It's just that these cases are increasingly rare as memory and processing power become cheaper and smaller.
Still, your overall point is valid. In 99.9% of cases, readability is more important.
Even the voting part is sort of unfair, in that retirees have nothing better to do on a Tuesday morning than go vote. Whereas those of use with full-time jobs have to make a special effort to make our voices heard. So the elderly have a disproportionate voting influence due to the effect on voter turnout. (Yes, I know everyone should vote regardless, but in reality there's a cost/benefit relation to everything, including leaving work to vote...)
Wow, what a terrible name. I'd rather not ride a Eunich-cycle, thank you very much! The worst part is that it's probably an accurate description of what happens when there's a firmware glitch! Ouch!:)
xBox also has the KotoR series, which is a big deal right now. I've found that if you're a western (D&D style) RPG fan, the xBox is the way to go. In general, the xBox excels in the genres traditionally dominated by the PC, which fits in with its chosen market segment (older gamers).
The new M$ console will fail in Japan, of course, but in the US it should do at least as well as the xBox. If it really is MCE in a cheaper package, it may even do better.
The only thing keeping Nintendo alive is Mario and a couple of other never-ending nostalgia franchises, plus their kid-friendly image. Unless the Revolution really changes things, look for Nintendo to lose even more ground.
Sony inhabits the middle ground, which happens to be the standard console market of yore. They'll be fine whatever they do. Even tying themselves to yet another proprietary format (BluRay) won't topple Sony's gaming empire.
Noooo...Need a standard to store the label data on the disk itself, somewhere.../me smells patent.
I can see the patent application now: "Method to facilitate music piracy by including cover and/or liner notes in digital form..." Yeah, I can see the music industry jumping at that business opportunity!;-)
Re:X-Play: the only thing worth watching on G4.
on
G4 Drops TechTV Name
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· Score: 1
Yep, it's kinda sad when your entire network is about gaming, and the best gaming show you have is the one that came from another channel!
I had the same thing when I was playing Vice City. There was a nice vintage 'vette parked on a lot on my way to/from my favorite lunch spot; I kept thinking "I've gotta remember that for when I need to grab a car later!" Very sad...
And of course most commercial video is tweaked to produce proper output on CRTs, with gamma assumed to be in that ~2.2 range. This gives CRT a further advantage which is totally due to it being the dominant format for all these years...
Which is fine until he wants to run that program that his friend at the golf course told him about, and you have to tell him he can't run it because he's on a "superior" operating system...
Well I guess this validates my paranoid behavior when visiting banking sites. I only open one browser window (and no tabs) when I go to a finance site, and I close that one instance and relaunch the browser before going to the next site.
Looks like this practice would pretty much isolate me from this issue. OTOH, I'm usually a bit more lax when visiting shopping sites (but not anymore!).
The reason Blu-Ray needs that special TDK coating is because the plastic layer on the data side is much thinner than current CDs, DVDs, or the HD-DVD spec. The thickness is roughly equivalent to the lacquer coating on the label side of CDs, and all know how easily those can fail. As an added bonus, since the thin layer will be on the data side, you won't be able to effectively buff out even minor scratches!
IMHO, even if the new coating works as advertised, Blu-Ray's durability will be at best a wash compared to other formats.
I'm pretty sure they already tax the gas in CA. Some of the gas stations out there actually post a breakdown that shows how much of the gas price (per gallon) goes to various taxes & fees. The numbers are shockingly high, as are the overall gas prices (compared to other states).
Of course it's been a few years since I was out there long enough to buy gas, etc. So YMMV (no pun)...
When you're close, half or three-quarters of all the light falling on your eyes is strobing at 60 or 80 cycles per second, so further back is safer.
Err, and the rest of the light isn't? Pretty much all indoor lights flicker at 60Hz to some degree (50Hz in Europe). Flourescents are the worst, but even the light output from an incandescent light fluctuates. The only valid argument here might be that the interaction of the 60Hz lamp vs. the ~85Hz screen is better than either one alone...
Slashdot Mirror
Well I've certainly become obssessed with specific games to the point where it affected my work. This usually happens in the winter when my productivity is at its lowest anyway, but it's still kinda bad when I spend two weeks straight on game message boards and not doing any real work! The type of game definitely makes a difference, too; racing and FPS games are no problem for me, but RPGs (and to a lesser extent strategy games) are always dangerous...
Hmm, it can remotely take over other computers and add them to its own processing power... sounds like the Rise of the Machines to me!
What are they doing letting spaceballs drive that thing?!
Can you imagine walking down the street while nodding and gesturing to control your MP3 player? As if geeks aren't considered weird enough already; with this we'd all look like we have Tourette's syndrome as well...
13: The movie is protected from editing (including censorship, for countries like China). Imagine if the only versions of Star Wars (original trilogy) you could access were the "special editions", because that is the only thing Lucas wants you to see.
Uhh, bad example, dude. This is already the case with the StarWards DVDs. If anything the download mechanism gives you more opportunity to get the unauthorized versions (albeit illegally). Now for movies that you already own before the re-edits, your point would be valid...
I think the answer is more about actually contacting the person when opening new accounts.
Well that might limit fraud to the old-fashioned con artists (the ones who can actually talk a good game), but that's about it. Barring some absolute, unfalsifiable form of unique identification, identity fraud will continue. And no, biometrics as they currently exist don't count (especially if you're trying to send the prints, etc., as data over the internet).
Exactly. If you require all that information to validate your identification, then by definition the organization that needs to validate you has to have all that information stored somewhere, in such a way that it can all be retrieved at the same time. And as long as third parties are allowed to compile databases of this information, they will be vulnerable to exploitation as well.
Probably 95% of your code doesn't even need optimization. I program for embedded devices with real-time functionality, but even so I've rarely had to optimize anything other than Interrupt Service Routines and similar Critical Section code. Most normal code in a modern application will have plenty of time to run no matter how sloppy it is. It takes a lot of inefficiency before things bog down.
The compiler will always produce asm better than a human[...]
Umm, no. Hand-coding in assembler is still called for in cases with extremely limited resources and complex or unusual tasks to be completed. It's just that these cases are increasingly rare as memory and processing power become cheaper and smaller.
Still, your overall point is valid. In 99.9% of cases, readability is more important.
It's about time! Dictionary.com was so slow that it literally took 20 minutes to get an answer. The new site is much faster.
Even the voting part is sort of unfair, in that retirees have nothing better to do on a Tuesday morning than go vote. Whereas those of use with full-time jobs have to make a special effort to make our voices heard. So the elderly have a disproportionate voting influence due to the effect on voter turnout. (Yes, I know everyone should vote regardless, but in reality there's a cost/benefit relation to everything, including leaving work to vote...)
Wow, what a terrible name. I'd rather not ride a Eunich-cycle, thank you very much! The worst part is that it's probably an accurate description of what happens when there's a firmware glitch! Ouch! :)
xBox also has the KotoR series, which is a big deal right now. I've found that if you're a western (D&D style) RPG fan, the xBox is the way to go. In general, the xBox excels in the genres traditionally dominated by the PC, which fits in with its chosen market segment (older gamers).
The new M$ console will fail in Japan, of course, but in the US it should do at least as well as the xBox. If it really is MCE in a cheaper package, it may even do better.
The only thing keeping Nintendo alive is Mario and a couple of other never-ending nostalgia franchises, plus their kid-friendly image. Unless the Revolution really changes things, look for Nintendo to lose even more ground.
Sony inhabits the middle ground, which happens to be the standard console market of yore. They'll be fine whatever they do. Even tying themselves to yet another proprietary format (BluRay) won't topple Sony's gaming empire.
Noooo...Need a standard to store the label data on the disk itself, somewhere... /me smells patent.
;-)
I can see the patent application now: "Method to facilitate music piracy by including cover and/or liner notes in digital form..." Yeah, I can see the music industry jumping at that business opportunity!
Yep, it's kinda sad when your entire network is about gaming, and the best gaming show you have is the one that came from another channel!
I had the same thing when I was playing Vice City. There was a nice vintage 'vette parked on a lot on my way to/from my favorite lunch spot; I kept thinking "I've gotta remember that for when I need to grab a car later!" Very sad...
And of course most commercial video is tweaked to produce proper output on CRTs, with gamma assumed to be in that ~2.2 range. This gives CRT a further advantage which is totally due to it being the dominant format for all these years...
A correction and a more realistic estimate:
/yr
120-30 = 90W, not 70.
A more modest assumption of 8 hours a day gives us:
90W * 8hr/day * 365.25.. day/yr = 262,980W-hr/yr = 262.98 KW-hr
At 10c/KW-hr (standard assumption), it will save you $26.30 (US) per year.
Which is fine until he wants to run that program that his friend at the golf course told him about, and you have to tell him he can't run it because he's on a "superior" operating system...
Well I guess this validates my paranoid behavior when visiting banking sites. I only open one browser window (and no tabs) when I go to a finance site, and I close that one instance and relaunch the browser before going to the next site.
Looks like this practice would pretty much isolate me from this issue. OTOH, I'm usually a bit more lax when visiting shopping sites (but not anymore!).
The reason Blu-Ray needs that special TDK coating is because the plastic layer on the data side is much thinner than current CDs, DVDs, or the HD-DVD spec. The thickness is roughly equivalent to the lacquer coating on the label side of CDs, and all know how easily those can fail. As an added bonus, since the thin layer will be on the data side, you won't be able to effectively buff out even minor scratches!
IMHO, even if the new coating works as advertised, Blu-Ray's durability will be at best a wash compared to other formats.
"A simple loud noise, even an explosive noise, won't set them off," Berger said.
So remember, if you're in LA and trying to kill someone, skip the guns and use explosives!
I'm pretty sure they already tax the gas in CA. Some of the gas stations out there actually post a breakdown that shows how much of the gas price (per gallon) goes to various taxes & fees. The numbers are shockingly high, as are the overall gas prices (compared to other states).
Of course it's been a few years since I was out there long enough to buy gas, etc. So YMMV (no pun)...
Hmm, what are all these strange five-sided fossils...? ;-)
When you're close, half or three-quarters of all the light falling on your eyes is strobing at 60 or 80 cycles per second, so further back is safer.
Err, and the rest of the light isn't? Pretty much all indoor lights flicker at 60Hz to some degree (50Hz in Europe). Flourescents are the worst, but even the light output from an incandescent light fluctuates. The only valid argument here might be that the interaction of the 60Hz lamp vs. the ~85Hz screen is better than either one alone...