Not who, but what. Answer: usability studies. With extensive usability studies Microsoft has been able to make user interfaces, mice, keybords, joystics etc. that most people think are great, and the rest find adequate to say at least. Maybe some day MS makes a usabilty study called "is stability a good thing" and decides to kill all those damn bugs in windows *g*.
The problem with a lot of open source software is that they have been made by programmers, for programmers. Software like that ends up being overly complicated with too many features and options (EMACS anyone?). I know the OSS community can't perform wide usability studies like Microsoft or Apple, but we really should try put some effort into improving what we have, instead of wasting energy on code forks and new programs that are just as bad as the old ones.
More can't hurt.
I disagree. More can hurt, and it is already hurting Linux. The amount of WM overwhealms me, there is just no way I'm going to try them all. I might try maybe three or four, but after that I'd just give up and boot back to Windows if I couldn't find the right one with those four tries. This actually happened to me, that is why writing this message with the Windows version of Netscape. The Linux GUI is just too clumsy. I do like the powerfull command line though.
One thing I genuinely hate about Linux is the amount of "pretty good but not quite there"-software. There is a lot talent in the community, but way too much of it wasted on projects like "Yet Another OSS Replacement For ICQ", or "One More WM That Only Twelve People Use". Instead of having half a dozen pretty decent window managers, I'd much rather have one that is really good (like I have with MS Windows).
Quantity will never replace quality, no matter how free it is.
Do you think it's wise having Linux ported for pretty much every architecture ever made? It may be fun and a source of pride to have an OS that can run everything, but is it really sensible to spend time and resources porting Linux to lets say S/390, when we pretty much know for sure that OS/390 will run that hardware better?
"Notice how the media's not making a big deal out of this".
Notice also how the media completely disregars all successfull airplane landings and focuses on those that end up in fireball killing 200 people. Some nerve they have..
It's very easy to critize the BBC and forget that there is reason why some stories get less atention. The reason is us, we don't care. Counter what you might think, newspapers (and by newspapers I mean newspapers, not tabloids etc) actually do try to serve the public. The thing is that the public is not served by running stories nobody cares about. Stories like "NASA succesfuly launches a satellite for the 748th time" intrest very few people so they are left for publications the specialize on astronomy.
Success is not news if it happens often or is in some other way obvious (neither is failure for that matter). That is why you'd expect to see headlines like "Kid not hit by a car while crossing road", "Actor James Coburn still alive", or "cold fusion experiments prove unsuccesfull" in The Onion, not The Times.
"I think, however, that the mass media likes to manufacture issues by hyping up failures like the Mars mission and then making another story out of the public stir they create".
The Mars missions were largely hyped even before they turned out to be failures. Remember the Pathfinder mission and how it created a lot of media attention even though it was a complete success? A lot of people were expecting something similar, and when that didn't happend, it became a big news. Very logical, IMHO.
www.hotmail.com doesn't answer to pings, but I can get in using IE. Netscape gives me a "the ducument contains no data" error message. Mozilla M12 doesn't work either. Bug or not...?
All mail in and out of hotmail seems to going through (thank god).
This interviewis good one.. I kinda got lost after Mills started talking about fractional quantum numbers and hydrino atoms, but maybe someone will understand it;-D.
There is also another site that is worth a visit. "Since there are plans to take this company public, those of you who missed the chance to invest in cold fusion will be given another chance to become a millionaire". I missed both Linux IPOs, but this is one where I will surely take part...
Seems like everyone is *against* higher clockrates. Am I really the only one here who thinks faster is better? I want a system that can run Q3A with full details at 60fps. I want a system that can run the latest bloatware fast. I don't want to have to wait all day to encode MP3s, or spend five minutes waiting for that damn Java applet to load. I want a fast PC, preferably sooner than later.
I would never do something as stupid as buing the latest and most expensive CPU. I can't afford an Athlon 800, but when faster models come out, the price of slower models comes down - JUST HOW IS THAT A BAD THING?
1280x1024 sounds like odd choice because of its unusual aspect ratio (unusual for cinema that is). Most movies won't fit in to this, meaning that they will end up using those damn black blocks above and below the picture that we all know from waching widescreen movies on a TV. 1280x1024 is bad, but the real resolutions will be even less than that. Sounds like bad deal to me.
I disagree with Ebert: The future of cinema is digital. It this system won't cut it, someone will make one with 10k by 5k resolution, 60 fps, 12 sound chanels and so forth. Digital "film" offers some undisputed benefits over real film, and because of the allmost infinate flexibility of digital technology all the benefits of celluluid can be copied in to the new systems.
See how he uses that one particular game, which uses an actual gun (albeit one that doesn't fire bullets) with a scope as its weapon as proof that first-person shooters are "murder simulators"? Remember the original question? See how he not only glossed over it, but used the arcade game, which nobody has in their house and which has an actual gun, to prove to the reader that first-person shooters, which use mice and keyboards on home computers, can teach kids to become expert marksmen?
He just used an extreme example of how games genarally can help you train shooting skills. I think Quake and Doom do teach some of the qualities described: for example, you really don't need a "gun" to train follow, observation and target identifying skills now do you? I wouldn't be very suprised if somewhere snipers and SWAT-people used a game like Rainbow Six to keep up some these skills. Like the sniper magazine said, video games don't have a huge impact (especially on pros), but if it helps even a little, it helps.
I soon learned a very important lesson when I started playing Q3A: don't rush in to fights, take time to aim. Running into a room guns blasing without really knowing where and who to shoot can get you killed fast. Take it easy, think what you are doing, and after some time you don't need to think as strategic thinking becomes a reflex. If I went for a little killing spree tomorrow, I think I might be very good at it because I instictively know who and when to shoot.
I do agree with Grossman that games give people skills needed when trying to kill as many people as possible, but I disagree about the psychological affect games have. Quake doesn't make killing real people easier or more acceptable. I play Q3A six days a week, and I don't feel like killing my friends.
Q3A is the only game I have on my machine (after I finally tired of Q2 earlier in the year), and if you look at it with an open mind it really is a simulator of death, gore, bloodsmears, injury, damage and aggression.
To me Q3A is about one thing and one thing alone: Winning. I want to win the game, and the only way to do it is to frag the opponent before he rails my ass. It has nothing to do with blood and gore. Flying bodyparts and bloodstains are actully a bad thing, because they eat the framerate. I, like any serious Quaker, go for FPS rather than graphis, so I naturally turn blood etc. off with "cg_gibs 0".
Stomped did a great interview of Col. Grossman a while back. What makes this interview good, is that it wasn't done by some sensationalist TV-show trying to exploit Columbine, but by gamer orientated site. They gave Grossman space to ellaborate on his views, rather than just have him say "murder simulators" a couple of times. Seeing Grossman on "60 minutes", I thought he was just another tight-ass wanting to ban all games, but it turns out he is not. I don't agree with all his views, but he does have some good points.
There was also a follow up to the interview, plus a lot more to read at the comments page.
this seems to imply that in order for users to use 128bit, they have to be talking with a netscape suitespot server, which means that general 128bitencryption has not really been legalized, but only 128bit encryption between two software programs created by the same software house. What do you think ?
I think it probably means nothing, that it is just a direct quote of some Netscape PR-material that like mention Netscape products a lot. But of course, it could mean exactly what it says, and that there is a backdoor in SuiteSpot for the three letter agencies. Putting a backdoor in the server side software would make perfect sence, because as we all know, Communicator 5.0 will be open source, meaning that any backdoors in Communicator would eventually be discovered.
Probably nothing, but OTOH, one should never trust the NSA/CIA/XXX.
In a Communist Nation, is there any greater crime that stealing from the state? As everything is owned "by the people," his robbery was a crime against the people of China. That, arguably, is a capital crime.
How about tax evasion? You clearly are stealing from the state if you don't pay all your taxes, but how many have gotten the death penalty for that? In China or anywhere else.
I agree with malroth here, it must have been the hacking part that caused the punishment to be so tough. The Chinese government is sending a very clear message to all: "Don't fuck with our computers". And I bet after this, no one living in China will attempt to hack goverment computers.
I remember when I first heard the name Pentium, I though fuck, why not just call it 586. To me, Pentium seemed really silly at the, but I don't think anyone can seriously claim that Intel went wrong with that choice.. I had similar feeling with the name Athlon, but it too has grown on me. Itanium? I still don't like it very much, but I expect that it will start to sound better as more people use it, and everyone will totally forget the name Merced in a year.
Yes - it is a really stupid scheme. Still, ISPs have the right to decide how much and by what criteria they charge their customers. If the customers are unhappy, they are free to move to another ISP. I've had some bad experiences with crappy ISPs, but when getting a new account and ending the current one takes about 30 minutes, I don't have to spend much time whining about it. Say what you want about the WTO, but sometimes that free markets thing comes in pretty handy;-)
I've actually used an ISP that had a $0.20/MB charge in addition to their per minute rate. It really was an effective way to limit the time I spent online.. That was back in 1994, so all ISPs were charging a lot more than they are today. Now it's $5 a month for 128kb/s ISDN..
Where do you get this stuff..? I have absolutely no idea who designed my mouse, I guess in your mind that makes Logitech "The Big Brother"? I agree with Rob that this is kinda sad, but that is all. This doesn't mean that we are slipping into an Orwellian society..
I guess I am a 70's Sci-Fi Cild after all, but c'mon - does anyone else feel the sentiment that NASA should be cleaning up after itself?
Absolutely. I propose that from now on, NASA incorporates a small (in the area of 1 megatonne) nuclear bombs in all probes that are to land somewhere. The explosion vaporises the probe, effectively tidying up the landing site. Or did you have a better plan?
Abandoned probes can actually some day provide us more information than they ever did when they were active. For example, studying a probe that has been sitting there untouched by man for 50 years can really give us insight to the sand storms that occur on Mars. Knowing how the storms consume human-made materials can help determine how to make long-lasting buildings on Mars.
I might be stating the obvious, but this really depends on how much bandwidth is needed, call it some kind of "IO/MIPS-ratio". Three kilobytes worth of keyblocks from distributed.net will keep my computer uccupied for two or three days. SETI@home, I've understood, needs a lot more bandwidth, something like 100KB/day depending on the CPU (I've never tried SETI, correct me if I'm way off).
I have no idea as to how much IO these DNA-strand caluculations need, but I would be more than happy to ditch d.net and donate my spare CPU time to this project if it is feasible.
Anyways, the distance from UK to France is a lot shorter than from China to US. The US would learn about the invasion early enough to build a good defence at the west coast and Mexican+Canadian borders (it is highly unlikely that China would attempt a direct invasion). Besides, there is absolutely no way to prepare a large invasion in secret these days. AFAIK, Germany didn't have any spy satellites at WW2;-)
China can easily invade and overpower the US entirely with ground troops
Not. China has manpower, but you are overlooking the fact that China is on a whole other continent than the US.. There is litle pond called the Pacific Ocean between the two continents, and crossing that would be damn hard. Try to fly and you will get shot down. Most ships would be sank by mines, submarines and planes. Preparing a large scale invasion will take several months, so it is not like they can suprise you. And even if the Chinese army was somehow able to get foothold in the US, they could never hold it because even a 10 million man army is no match to 70 million angry, armed civilians who are protecting their homes. But of cource, this question is totally academic as China would never even consider attacking, as long as the US still has nuclear weapons.
I don't think Americans are stupid, but if there is one thing I don't understand about you people, it is the paranoia that everyone is out to get you. "We are the best and most influential nation, so everyone wants us dead", "Every person who is not a US citisen is a potential enemy", "The Amerincan way of life/American dream/American whatever is at dander", and so forth... I guess it's the legacy of cold war or something..
Slashdot Mirror
You can find the specs here.
"And what kind of output?"
Dude, that is just so sick!
"Why are there no photos demonstrating the usage of these devices?"
You can find pictures of the "devices" being used http://www.hardcoremodels.com/
Goodbye karma(TM), I'm going to miss you...
Not who, but what. Answer: usability studies. With extensive usability studies Microsoft has been able to make user interfaces, mice, keybords, joystics etc. that most people think are great, and the rest find adequate to say at least. Maybe some day MS makes a usabilty study called "is stability a good thing" and decides to kill all those damn bugs in windows *g*.
The problem with a lot of open source software is that they have been made by programmers, for programmers. Software like that ends up being overly complicated with too many features and options (EMACS anyone?). I know the OSS community can't perform wide usability studies like Microsoft or Apple, but we really should try put some effort into improving what we have, instead of wasting energy on code forks and new programs that are just as bad as the old ones.
More can't hurt.
I disagree. More can hurt, and it is already hurting Linux. The amount of WM overwhealms me, there is just no way I'm going to try them all. I might try maybe three or four, but after that I'd just give up and boot back to Windows if I couldn't find the right one with those four tries. This actually happened to me, that is why writing this message with the Windows version of Netscape. The Linux GUI is just too clumsy. I do like the powerfull command line though.
Quantity will never replace quality, no matter how free it is.
Do you think it's wise having Linux ported for pretty much every architecture ever made? It may be fun and a source of pride to have an OS that can run everything, but is it really sensible to spend time and resources porting Linux to lets say S/390, when we pretty much know for sure that OS/390 will run that hardware better?
So how exactly does the server tell if a client is using an aimbot?
Thats right, it doesn't.
Notice also how the media completely disregars all successfull airplane landings and focuses on those that end up in fireball killing 200 people. Some nerve they have..
It's very easy to critize the BBC and forget that there is reason why some stories get less atention. The reason is us, we don't care. Counter what you might think, newspapers (and by newspapers I mean newspapers, not tabloids etc) actually do try to serve the public. The thing is that the public is not served by running stories nobody cares about. Stories like "NASA succesfuly launches a satellite for the 748th time" intrest very few people so they are left for publications the specialize on astronomy.
Success is not news if it happens often or is in some other way obvious (neither is failure for that matter). That is why you'd expect to see headlines like "Kid not hit by a car while crossing road", "Actor James Coburn still alive", or "cold fusion experiments prove unsuccesfull" in The Onion, not The Times.
"I think, however, that the mass media likes to manufacture issues by hyping up failures like the Mars mission and then making another story out of the public stir they create".
The Mars missions were largely hyped even before they turned out to be failures. Remember the Pathfinder mission and how it created a lot of media attention even though it was a complete success? A lot of people were expecting something similar, and when that didn't happend, it became a big news. Very logical, IMHO.
..I just want to know if that damn cat is dead or alive.
All mail in and out of hotmail seems to going through (thank god).
There is also another site that is worth a visit. "Since there are plans to take this company public, those of you who missed the chance to invest in cold fusion will be given another chance to become a millionaire". I missed both Linux IPOs, but this is one where I will surely take part...
I would never do something as stupid as buing the latest and most expensive CPU. I can't afford an Athlon 800, but when faster models come out, the price of slower models comes down - JUST HOW IS THAT A BAD THING?
I disagree with Ebert: The future of cinema is digital. It this system won't cut it, someone will make one with 10k by 5k resolution, 60 fps, 12 sound chanels and so forth. Digital "film" offers some undisputed benefits over real film, and because of the allmost infinate flexibility of digital technology all the benefits of celluluid can be copied in to the new systems.
He just used an extreme example of how games genarally can help you train shooting skills. I think Quake and Doom do teach some of the qualities described: for example, you really don't need a "gun" to train follow, observation and target identifying skills now do you? I wouldn't be very suprised if somewhere snipers and SWAT-people used a game like Rainbow Six to keep up some these skills. Like the sniper magazine said, video games don't have a huge impact (especially on pros), but if it helps even a little, it helps.
I soon learned a very important lesson when I started playing Q3A: don't rush in to fights, take time to aim. Running into a room guns blasing without really knowing where and who to shoot can get you killed fast. Take it easy, think what you are doing, and after some time you don't need to think as strategic thinking becomes a reflex. If I went for a little killing spree tomorrow, I think I might be very good at it because I instictively know who and when to shoot.
I do agree with Grossman that games give people skills needed when trying to kill as many people as possible, but I disagree about the psychological affect games have. Quake doesn't make killing real people easier or more acceptable. I play Q3A six days a week, and I don't feel like killing my friends.
To me Q3A is about one thing and one thing alone: Winning. I want to win the game, and the only way to do it is to frag the opponent before he rails my ass. It has nothing to do with blood and gore. Flying bodyparts and bloodstains are actully a bad thing, because they eat the framerate. I, like any serious Quaker, go for FPS rather than graphis, so I naturally turn blood etc. off with "cg_gibs 0".
There was also a follow up to the interview, plus a lot more to read at the comments page.
I think it probably means nothing, that it is just a direct quote of some Netscape PR-material that like mention Netscape products a lot. But of course, it could mean exactly what it says, and that there is a backdoor in SuiteSpot for the three letter agencies. Putting a backdoor in the server side software would make perfect sence, because as we all know, Communicator 5.0 will be open source, meaning that any backdoors in Communicator would eventually be discovered.
Probably nothing, but OTOH, one should never trust the NSA/CIA/XXX.
How about tax evasion? You clearly are stealing from the state if you don't pay all your taxes, but how many have gotten the death penalty for that? In China or anywhere else.
I agree with malroth here, it must have been the hacking part that caused the punishment to be so tough. The Chinese government is sending a very clear message to all: "Don't fuck with our computers". And I bet after this, no one living in China will attempt to hack goverment computers.
I remember when I first heard the name Pentium, I though fuck, why not just call it 586. To me, Pentium seemed really silly at the, but I don't think anyone can seriously claim that Intel went wrong with that choice.. I had similar feeling with the name Athlon, but it too has grown on me. Itanium? I still don't like it very much, but I expect that it will start to sound better as more people use it, and everyone will totally forget the name Merced in a year.
I've actually used an ISP that had a $0.20/MB charge in addition to their per minute rate. It really was an effective way to limit the time I spent online.. That was back in 1994, so all ISPs were charging a lot more than they are today. Now it's $5 a month for 128kb/s ISDN..
Where do you get this stuff..? I have absolutely no idea who designed my mouse, I guess in your mind that makes Logitech "The Big Brother"? I agree with Rob that this is kinda sad, but that is all. This doesn't mean that we are slipping into an Orwellian society..
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That is why slashdot can't mirror sites it links to, and it's also why you shouldn't do it either.
Separting plutonium from water is a no-brainer..
Absolutely. I propose that from now on, NASA incorporates a small (in the area of 1 megatonne) nuclear bombs in all probes that are to land somewhere. The explosion vaporises the probe, effectively tidying up the landing site. Or did you have a better plan?
Abandoned probes can actually some day provide us more information than they ever did when they were active. For example, studying a probe that has been sitting there untouched by man for 50 years can really give us insight to the sand storms that occur on Mars. Knowing how the storms consume human-made materials can help determine how to make long-lasting buildings on Mars.
I have no idea as to how much IO these DNA-strand caluculations need, but I would be more than happy to ditch d.net and donate my spare CPU time to this project if it is feasible.
Isn't that more like just one word? *g*
Anyways, the distance from UK to France is a lot shorter than from China to US. The US would learn about the invasion early enough to build a good defence at the west coast and Mexican+Canadian borders (it is highly unlikely that China would attempt a direct invasion). Besides, there is absolutely no way to prepare a large invasion in secret these days. AFAIK, Germany didn't have any spy satellites at WW2 ;-)
Not. China has manpower, but you are overlooking the fact that China is on a whole other continent than the US.. There is litle pond called the Pacific Ocean between the two continents, and crossing that would be damn hard. Try to fly and you will get shot down. Most ships would be sank by mines, submarines and planes. Preparing a large scale invasion will take several months, so it is not like they can suprise you. And even if the Chinese army was somehow able to get foothold in the US, they could never hold it because even a 10 million man army is no match to 70 million angry, armed civilians who are protecting their homes. But of cource, this question is totally academic as China would never even consider attacking, as long as the US still has nuclear weapons.
I don't think Americans are stupid, but if there is one thing I don't understand about you people, it is the paranoia that everyone is out to get you. "We are the best and most influential nation, so everyone wants us dead", "Every person who is not a US citisen is a potential enemy", "The Amerincan way of life/American dream/American whatever is at dander", and so forth... I guess it's the legacy of cold war or something..
Getting really offtopic here..