It took an hour for me to get to start downloading it from the FilePlanet link, but now that it's started I'm getting speeds of 180 KB/s. I think the limit on my cable modem connection is 200 KB/s or so, so it's basically giving me full bandwidth.
Warning: it told me the wait time was 7 minutes when I first clicked on it, and it actually took over an hour. I got to watch Friends and the president (co-opting Will and Grace) on my ReplayTV in the meantime.
For those of you pissed that the president can co-op your viewing pleasure, instead of being broadcast on CNN only (or other fucking inconsequential channel), you can get the torrents from this page.
The fortune is particularly apt for this page: "Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are different lies."
I should probably mention a pet peeve that I have with online advertising. Just because you can change which advert is delivered with each page doesn't mean that you should. Varying the content from user to user is fine, but having seen the page with a specific layout once, the advertising should be left the same the next time that I view that page. Swapping out ads messes up my information flow; I have to backtrack to see if I missed something that I really wanted to read, and I may have lost a link to an ad that I really wanted to follow later in my browsing.
In other words... Their modifications are forcing you to re-read the page, carefully. It sounds like they're getting what they want!
Possible solution: when you see an ad you like, middle-click on it. You should be using Mozilla, and have it configured to open links as tabs in the background. This won't clutter up the task bar, and you can visit the tabs whenever you want. I generally have a couple Mozilla windows open with 10-20 tabs in each. I never get around to reading everything but it's good because if I need to, I can refer back to something I saw before. (Until Windows 2000 crashes or blue screen, which isn't that often lately.)
I suspect large bribes*cough*grants will be paid and the whole issue will be quietly dropped.
You're probably very close to the truth. The problem, though, is that administrations change and Microsoft will have to keep buying them out (in the literal sense, not the "Buy 'em out, boys!" Compuglobalhypermeganet sense).
This will become a major expense for Microsoft, and I can see that $40B dwindling. It may look like a lot right now but if it's not being replaced faster than it's leaving, then it'll all be gone. Not soon, but eventually.
And as it starts disappearing, the conversion to open source solutions will accelerate -- Microsoft will offer smaller and smaller discounts for their solutions, because it's tough to compete with free and they still need to prop up their stock price to keep their developers from leaving.
They may have bought out the US Government (all signs point to yes, they were convicted and then got (another) slap on the wrist), but they are a dinosaur in a tar pit. They'll thrash around and possibly damage passers-by, but they're sinking.
As they state in the article, C. elegans have a life cycle of 7-10 days. As they also state in the article, the shuttle, at the end of its mission, crashed on Feb. 1. That was 89 days ago. But somehow they've only managed to go through 4-5 generations? It's a pretty simple calculation.
Also remember that life span is not equal to reproductive span. I.e., your average human can get to 75 or so, but can reproduce around 15. So a human could produce 5 generations before dying.
In addition, the page that's getting referenced here a lot says the life cycle takes 3 days, so I'm not sure where the article's author got his information.
With a life cycle of 3 days, 89 days later is almost 30 generations. But of course as other have pointed out the worms enter a dormant stage when they run out of food, which they may have done, leading us all the way back to: perhaps the article was correct. In number of generations, anyway; the lifecycle data appears to be off.
When I was younger.... smaller and lighter I could easly jump out of a second story window onto the ground without causing myself any injury.
Wow, that takes me back. I used to jump off so many things and not get hurt, and like you I'd break stuff if I tried it now.
Never a second-story window, but we used to jump off the back of 18-wheeler trucks (about the same height I'd imagine), bleachers, tree limbs, lots of fun memories. Thanks!;-)
In my opinion, the genre died because we're getting too lazy to use our own imagination and the market saw this trend and let the games pass away.
I think one very significant point, for me at least, in losing interest in adventure gaming is the follow:
Cut scenes.
Especially when replaying, or visiting an area you were already in, I hate watching the "5 or 10 second movie" which you've already seen a billion times. Myst had these, like when you went from one location to another on the train tracks. Cute the first time, but game developers should work in "Hit Esc to skip cut scene" options.
That's why I love Quake3 and Starcraft -- the only "cut scenes" are when going to a new level (Q3) or starting a new game (SC), and although I think that with 1.5 GB of RAM Q3 should be able to load the new level while there's (say) 30 seconds left on the old level, it still gives me time for a bathroom break, or to get another beer.;-)
PS What happened to the "Post Anonymously" checkbox? I used to hit Tab 4 times to get to "Preview" and now it's only 3. Weird. I also was getting "550" errors trying to load the front page last night.
Has anyone tried one of the "Resume Blaster/Zapper/etc." services which purport to send your resume to 1,000s of recruiters and companies who are hiring?
It tends to be between $50 and $90 (depending on the level of service you purchase). This is a small price to pay to get some exposure, but has anyone used it and can say anything good or bad about it?
I am making 40% of pay that I made at the job I lost in 2001. I am buried in debt, and don't know how I get by.
I know what you're going through. I too was making beaucoup bucks in the late 90s, only to find myself filing bankruptcy today. (Lesson: manage your debt!)
And it is hard to swallow, going from 70+ a year to 8 an hour.
Only 8 an hour? Have you considered delivering pizzas? Domino's or Papa John's or Pizza Hut drivers make $10-$15 an hour, much of it tax-free. It's not so good for the car and if you tell your insurance company you end up paying more, but it's not very difficult work and pays the bills.
Of course, I wish I had more time for the job search, but it's been fruitless so far. I wish you the best.
There were a few cases I didn't list, like the case against a company making "Yoda Inside" stickers. That's a clear spoof, but a better case than a bunch of artists with a little art gallery.
I'm typing this from a computer with an Antec case ($179, 400W power supply, 3 fans in addition to PS fan, drive bay fans, etc.), which has a large "Antec Outside" sticker/button on the front.
What we really need though, is a system to be able to vote on issues that are important to us. If we combined a system that took the parliamentary vote, along with combined citizen votes (net-votes, etc) - at least we'd have more say in things.
Yes, but... we're a representative democracy. "The People" don't get to vote on the laws or changes in government; we can merely vote for the people who will make these changes.
I think we should have more of a say; for instance, any new laws created should have a 75% "approval rating", rather than a simple majority vote. Why? Most new laws are designed to support existing business plans, to avoid/delay change.
This is ridiculous. Laws should only be to protect us from each other. We already have "fraud" laws, so no lying to each other; we don't need more silly laws like the DMCA and others which restrict the freedoms we already have. Laws affect the public; why not allow the public to vote directly on whether to implement a new law or not?
I agree with a previous poster who said that citizens shouldn't be able to create their own laws, because that would overwork the supreme court. I believe that allowing people to create their own laws would ensue havoc: "gays should be killed" et al. But allowing us to vote on whether or not to enact a law (which today, a new law is generally 95% purchased by a company/conglomerate), would be a good thing. And even allowing citizens to enact their own laws might not be bad, if we ensure that the punishment fits the crime (so a killer could be killed, but noone else[1]; someone who deprives the RIAA/MPAA of $100 by copying 4 movies or CDs would have to pay $100, not $98 billion; etc.).
[1] I disagree with capital punishment. No court is perfect; wrongly put a man in jail for 10 years, and you can set him free. You can't give him back his lost 10 years, but he's still got his life. Kill a man wrongly, and he remains dead.
Solution - introduce a voting qualification. You can't vote until you have satisfied some kind of requirement, i.e. exhibited an understanding of politics, issues or whatever. Such as the rules od democracy, basic economics etc etc.
We already have the inverse of this: people convicted of a felony are no longer granted the "privilege" of voting.
So what do we do? Enact "drug laws" which are considered felonies, and then prosecute far more blacks than whites. The result? A return to the days of slavery.
It's disgusting, really. If you pay taxes, you should be able to vote.
Honoring robots.txt seems to me to be like honoring "all spam should have 'ADV:' at the beginning of the subject."
What punishment is there for not honoring it?
Instead there should be a technological solution, rather than a legal or social solution (the current solution, I believe, is social).
The answer? Look to Slashdot. Create artificial "delays" in access times. Slashdot has 2 minutes between posts and 20 seconds between clicking "Reply" and "Submit".
The web sites could have an artificial 2- or 3-second delay between accesses, so for instance if a "robot" was scanning the site it would experience slow-downs. And it could increase the delay upon multiple accesses, by (say) 1 second each access within the limit, so that the spider would end up taking a very long time to get each page.
This would require no change in laws, or in "social" behavior to punish the spiders. People generally don't click on a new link that quickly anyway (they tend to read some of the page before clicking on a link on that page), so this would be very non-intrusive for regular users but would slow down a spider.
Of course, then the spiders would be written such that they scan multiple sites, so a slowdown on one (or every) site wouldn't slow the spider down much. But that's the price we pay for putting information on the internet.
I seriously think the practice of using "robots.txt" is silly.
Re:Improve upon our faults. OCing the Human Brain?
on
The Rights of GM Humans
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Somehow I think our understanding of genetics and the way humans develope is too small for any of this to be fruitful in the near future.
Agreed.
So the question is, what can we do to advance our understanding?
Experiments. Lots of them. Some will fail, others will not. ("Many will play, few will win?" Hear that (yet again) on the radio yesterday.)
Do I really think that this will cause MicroSoft to release some of thier tools under a Free license, or that they will include Free Software in their products?
They already do: SFU, Services for Unix (I read the acronym as "STFU with a silent T").
It even won the Open Source Product Excellence Award at LinuxWorld this past year. And yes, it includes the GPL, so it was a "legitimate" win.
Prepaid is a total rip-off for all concerned. I should know, a cousin of mine participated in it.
What was your cousin's experience? I've had nothing but good experiences with them (they say they'll return my call in 6-8 business hours, and returned it today in less than 5 minutes, for one example).
How long ago did your cousin participate? I've only been a member for a few months now, and I did hear that they had some rough times a few years ago. Was his experience recent? Did he follow it up with the corporate offices?
And I agree that an attorney looking for business and goodwill will answer questions for free, but generally not in detail -- they'll answer a few, then will want to schedule a consultation. At a minimum of $150 an hour, the initial consultation could have paid for 6 months of Pre-Paid service.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't help you with that, but there is a different Disney character in a short called "Bambi vs. Godzilla" which is available for download.
It's only 541 KB, and a little grainy, but I remember seeing it years ago and your post led to a quick search. Cheers! ;-)
Warning: it told me the wait time was 7 minutes when I first clicked on it, and it actually took over an hour. I got to watch Friends and the president (co-opting Will and Grace) on my ReplayTV in the meantime.
For those of you pissed that the president can co-op your viewing pleasure, instead of being broadcast on CNN only (or other fucking inconsequential channel), you can get the torrents from this page.
The fortune is particularly apt for this page: "Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are different lies."
Me too. Not all numbers; some were anrogynous. "1" and "7" are female, "8" and "4" are male. Didn't really give much thought to the others.
Cool quote, but not true.
In other words... Their modifications are forcing you to re-read the page, carefully. It sounds like they're getting what they want!
Possible solution: when you see an ad you like, middle-click on it. You should be using Mozilla, and have it configured to open links as tabs in the background. This won't clutter up the task bar, and you can visit the tabs whenever you want. I generally have a couple Mozilla windows open with 10-20 tabs in each. I never get around to reading everything but it's good because if I need to, I can refer back to something I saw before. (Until Windows 2000 crashes or blue screen, which isn't that often lately.)
You're probably very close to the truth. The problem, though, is that administrations change and Microsoft will have to keep buying them out (in the literal sense, not the "Buy 'em out, boys!" Compuglobalhypermeganet sense).
This will become a major expense for Microsoft, and I can see that $40B dwindling. It may look like a lot right now but if it's not being replaced faster than it's leaving, then it'll all be gone. Not soon, but eventually.
And as it starts disappearing, the conversion to open source solutions will accelerate -- Microsoft will offer smaller and smaller discounts for their solutions, because it's tough to compete with free and they still need to prop up their stock price to keep their developers from leaving.
They may have bought out the US Government (all signs point to yes, they were convicted and then got (another) slap on the wrist), but they are a dinosaur in a tar pit. They'll thrash around and possibly damage passers-by, but they're sinking.
I think the zombie's wearing his ass backwards.
Also remember that life span is not equal to reproductive span. I.e., your average human can get to 75 or so, but can reproduce around 15. So a human could produce 5 generations before dying.
In addition, the page that's getting referenced here a lot says the life cycle takes 3 days, so I'm not sure where the article's author got his information.
With a life cycle of 3 days, 89 days later is almost 30 generations. But of course as other have pointed out the worms enter a dormant stage when they run out of food, which they may have done, leading us all the way back to: perhaps the article was correct. In number of generations, anyway; the lifecycle data appears to be off.
Wow, that takes me back. I used to jump off so many things and not get hurt, and like you I'd break stuff if I tried it now.
Never a second-story window, but we used to jump off the back of 18-wheeler trucks (about the same height I'd imagine), bleachers, tree limbs, lots of fun memories. Thanks! ;-)
I think one very significant point, for me at least, in losing interest in adventure gaming is the follow:
Cut scenes.
Especially when replaying, or visiting an area you were already in, I hate watching the "5 or 10 second movie" which you've already seen a billion times. Myst had these, like when you went from one location to another on the train tracks. Cute the first time, but game developers should work in "Hit Esc to skip cut scene" options.
That's why I love Quake3 and Starcraft -- the only "cut scenes" are when going to a new level (Q3) or starting a new game (SC), and although I think that with 1.5 GB of RAM Q3 should be able to load the new level while there's (say) 30 seconds left on the old level, it still gives me time for a bathroom break, or to get another beer. ;-)
PS What happened to the "Post Anonymously" checkbox? I used to hit Tab 4 times to get to "Preview" and now it's only 3. Weird. I also was getting "550" errors trying to load the front page last night.
Great choice of acronym there. Was "The S.S." character you're referring to Strawberry Shortcake ... or Hitler?
Enjoy!
It tends to be between $50 and $90 (depending on the level of service you purchase). This is a small price to pay to get some exposure, but has anyone used it and can say anything good or bad about it?
I know what you're going through. I too was making beaucoup bucks in the late 90s, only to find myself filing bankruptcy today. (Lesson: manage your debt!)
Only 8 an hour? Have you considered delivering pizzas? Domino's or Papa John's or Pizza Hut drivers make $10-$15 an hour, much of it tax-free. It's not so good for the car and if you tell your insurance company you end up paying more, but it's not very difficult work and pays the bills.
Of course, I wish I had more time for the job search, but it's been fruitless so far. I wish you the best.
Or the opposite: "antifier" -- sound like something we did as kids on sunny days with magnifying glasses.
Nobody's going to watch this eclipse. We'll all be busy at the premiere of Matrix Reloaded.
"I'd rather die in my sleep, like my grandfather... Than screaming in terror, like his passengers."
I'm typing this from a computer with an Antec case ($179, 400W power supply, 3 fans in addition to PS fan, drive bay fans, etc.), which has a large "Antec Outside" sticker/button on the front.
Why isn't Intel going after Antec?
Yes, but ... we're a representative democracy. "The People" don't get to vote on the laws or changes in government; we can merely vote for the people who will make these changes.
I think we should have more of a say; for instance, any new laws created should have a 75% "approval rating", rather than a simple majority vote. Why? Most new laws are designed to support existing business plans, to avoid/delay change.
This is ridiculous. Laws should only be to protect us from each other. We already have "fraud" laws, so no lying to each other; we don't need more silly laws like the DMCA and others which restrict the freedoms we already have. Laws affect the public; why not allow the public to vote directly on whether to implement a new law or not?
I agree with a previous poster who said that citizens shouldn't be able to create their own laws, because that would overwork the supreme court. I believe that allowing people to create their own laws would ensue havoc: "gays should be killed" et al. But allowing us to vote on whether or not to enact a law (which today, a new law is generally 95% purchased by a company/conglomerate), would be a good thing. And even allowing citizens to enact their own laws might not be bad, if we ensure that the punishment fits the crime (so a killer could be killed, but noone else[1]; someone who deprives the RIAA/MPAA of $100 by copying 4 movies or CDs would have to pay $100, not $98 billion; etc.).
[1] I disagree with capital punishment. No court is perfect; wrongly put a man in jail for 10 years, and you can set him free. You can't give him back his lost 10 years, but he's still got his life. Kill a man wrongly, and he remains dead.
We already have the inverse of this: people convicted of a felony are no longer granted the "privilege" of voting.
So what do we do? Enact "drug laws" which are considered felonies, and then prosecute far more blacks than whites. The result? A return to the days of slavery.
It's disgusting, really. If you pay taxes, you should be able to vote.
What punishment is there for not honoring it?
Instead there should be a technological solution, rather than a legal or social solution (the current solution, I believe, is social).
The answer? Look to Slashdot. Create artificial "delays" in access times. Slashdot has 2 minutes between posts and 20 seconds between clicking "Reply" and "Submit".
The web sites could have an artificial 2- or 3-second delay between accesses, so for instance if a "robot" was scanning the site it would experience slow-downs. And it could increase the delay upon multiple accesses, by (say) 1 second each access within the limit, so that the spider would end up taking a very long time to get each page.
This would require no change in laws, or in "social" behavior to punish the spiders. People generally don't click on a new link that quickly anyway (they tend to read some of the page before clicking on a link on that page), so this would be very non-intrusive for regular users but would slow down a spider.
Of course, then the spiders would be written such that they scan multiple sites, so a slowdown on one (or every) site wouldn't slow the spider down much. But that's the price we pay for putting information on the internet.
I seriously think the practice of using "robots.txt" is silly.
Agreed.
So the question is, what can we do to advance our understanding?
Experiments. Lots of them. Some will fail, others will not. ("Many will play, few will win?" Hear that (yet again) on the radio yesterday.)
"Feminine protection? What's that, a pink flamethrower?"
They already do: SFU, Services for Unix (I read the acronym as "STFU with a silent T").
It even won the Open Source Product Excellence Award at LinuxWorld this past year. And yes, it includes the GPL, so it was a "legitimate" win.
What was your cousin's experience? I've had nothing but good experiences with them (they say they'll return my call in 6-8 business hours, and returned it today in less than 5 minutes, for one example).
How long ago did your cousin participate? I've only been a member for a few months now, and I did hear that they had some rough times a few years ago. Was his experience recent? Did he follow it up with the corporate offices?
And I agree that an attorney looking for business and goodwill will answer questions for free, but generally not in detail -- they'll answer a few, then will want to schedule a consultation. At a minimum of $150 an hour, the initial consultation could have paid for 6 months of Pre-Paid service.