> Of course, parents have a right and, I think we can agree in this case a responsibility,
Too right they have a responsibility. My copies of both GTA3 and GTA:Vice City both have a clear 18 rating right on the box. In the jurisdiction in which I live, that makes it a criminal offence to sell or rent either item to anyone under the age of 18. I'm not, in all honesty, sure what the legal position is if you're over 18 and buy the game with the intent of allowing an under-18 to view it, but there's clearly a moral responsiblity on the part of the parent to monitor what a child sees. Of course, too many parents these days use the XBOX/PS2/Internet as an "electronic babysitter" and don't care what the children sees - buy of course, if it's something that they don't like they'll sue the hell out of anybody they can so they can:
My copies of both GTA3 and GTA:Vice City both have a clear 18 rating right there on the box. Oddly enough, while I was reading this article, a TV commercial for the double pack came on. And there, once again, was the 18 rating.
The A/C raises a valid point. There are a few people who will abuse free healthcare and go see the doctor because they've broken a nail or something. I, personally, would not be opposed to a small token charge - for those that can afford it - being levied for a visit to the doctor, with the proviso that if the visit is due to a condition which itself requires further visits, those further visits should continue to be free. I, for one, have always avoided going to the doctor unless it felt absolutely necessary (apart from my ongoing chronic condition, which is serious enough that I have no option BUT to seek professional help), I haven't set foot in a doctor's surgery for about 8 years
I wasn't taking a "cheap shot" at the US. I didn't even mention the US in my post - It's not the only country where health care is only available to those that can afford to pay for it, but hey if the cap fits...
Of course, I have the option - If I'm not happy with that the government "rations out", I can (and have, on occasion) choose to pay for private treatment. But I also have access to excellent free healthcare too, and as it happens if I chose to pay for treatment for my skin condition, I'd still be seeing the same dermatologist in the same consulting rooms and receiving the same treatment, because she happens to be one of the best in the country. As for having to "weight" (sic) for a day to have broken bones treated, I've broken bones on more than one occasion, and have always been treated promptly - I think the longest wait was about 15 minutes (and that was on a Friday night - always a busy time for emergency departments in cities)
The free medical advice I get from my doctors (both my GP and my consultant dermatologist) is worth considerably more than it costs me. But then again, I live in a country which is civilised enough that healthcare is available to all, rather than being a privilege reserved for the wealthy. We don't have much going for us, but we do have that.
The "gradual reduction" method might well work for caffeine, but never worked for me when I was trying to quit smoking. I tried "cutting down" so many times, tried the patches (hey, maybe caffeine patches might work here;)), etc. etc. None of it worked.
In the end, the only way for me to kick the smoking monkey was to go cold turkey - finished a pack, and didn't buy another one. Suffered like hell (headaches, even more irritable than usual - even the shakes a couple of time) for about a week, but have never been tempted to smoke one since - even on a REALLY high stress day.
I found the SyQuest drives to be terribly unreliable - every cartridge I have is now totally unreadable, despite my being careful about storage conditions (not as bad as the Iomega Ditto tape drive, though, whose tapes seem to unspool themselves with frigtening regularity). I'm pretty content with my Zip 250 though (and the media for the zip drive was a fraction of the cost of the SyQuest). My current backup device of choice, though, is a 300GB Maxtor external FireWire/USB drive. Luvverly.
No, it'll be whichever one I buy that will lose (Happened with Beta, SyQuest 270, you name it). And since I've got a dual format DVD+/-R/RW you should all be worried...
> The number of three does have very special meaning in many forms of occulticism
Three shall be the number of thy counting, and the number of thy counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count; neither shalt thou count two, unless thou proceedest directly to three. Five is right out.
Or in English - "night night" or "bye bye". A more prosaic example: "That that is, is. That that is not, is not" And of course, "isn't" is a common enough contraction of "is not", so you get "that that is, is. that that isn't isn't". Makes perfect sense to me...
Which is a shame, because kids might have been able to figure out how to actually cast a vote (something that ISTR the Florida population seemed to have trouble with...)
> I live in a country where number of cell phones is much higher than number of land lines.
I live in a *house* where the number of cellphones is much higher than the number of landlines - since there's only one landline and each of us has our own cellphone. When a pollster calls a landline, they're only going to get one opinion per household - regardless of the number of people living there - which may well in itself sway the results. For example, my partner and I have very different views on politics, and (AFAIR) have voted differently in every election we've voted in, despite the fact that (gender aside) we probably both fit into the same demographic (more-or-less same age, very similar jobs & incomes etc.) And since pollsters get to talk to whichever of us is closer to the phone when it rings, surely that skews the results anyway?
> the average speed of our trains is about 5-10% of that!
You've obviouslt had better experience of the UK rail network than I have.
> Unless you're in London, of course, where the tube is pretty good...
Unless, of course, you're a Londoner:) It never fails to amaze me how much Londoners moan about the tube - maybe they ought to try public transport in other areas of the UK sometime. Of course, the thing with the tube is that 9 days out of 10, it works fine - and nobody notices. But on the 10th day, something goes wrong - and when that happens, the whole network seems to grind to a halt, and that's the day that people remember. When you get something right, nobody remembers. When you get something wrong, nobody forgets...
The 6502 was a great processor, don't get me wrong. I learnt an awful lot writing code for one of those in the days when we had 256 bytes of RAM to play with...(no fancy Apple//es in those days lol).
But it's kind of irrelevant for todays processors, mostly because of the myriad adressing modes - most modern CPUs have far fewer. Probably the Z80 or the 8080 might be a better place to start. (The Z80 is another bit of silicon that has a special place in my memories...I still have both the Zaks and Leventhal "bibles" for both the Z80 and the 6502:)
But yes, we'd be far better off if more programmers actually knew how a microprocessor does what it does. I always find it hilarious how much difficulty some people have with coming to terms with (say) pointers in C - because they don't really have a grasp of what an "address register" is.
Now everbody assumes bugs found after ship are par for the course and builds in software/firmware upgradability over the 'net, it's probably more cost effective to ship with bugs and fix them later
Depends on your context. The project I am currently working on doesn't have any possibility of firmware upgradability, short of replacing the main circuit board (since the firmware is in a mask-programmed surface-mount microcontroller). So not only will a re-mask be required (expensive in itself), but also my client will have to replace a large number of populated boards (even more expense).
That's why our QA process isn't limited to "suck it and see" testing.
Would you buy a car from the same company again if your current car had a lot of recalls?
My current car has had two recalls in the three years I've owned it, yet that wouldn't stop me buying another car from the same manufacturer. What WILL stop me by buying another car from the same manufacturer is the difficulty I have had getting them to fix relativly minor problems under warranty.
Recall problems generally affect a large number of vehicles of the same type - so think of those as "design" problems. They're potentially very expensive for the manufacture to fix (even in a low volume car such as mine). But fixing them gives me a good feeling about the manufacturer - "we screwed up, but we'll put it right".
Warranty problems, on the other hand, are generally unique to an invidiual vehicle (or a very small number) - so think of them as "implementation" problems (i.e. the build of a single car) - and so should be comparatively cheap to fix. But NOT fixing them (as has been the case) is going to cost this particular manufacturer sales in the future. That's going to be expensive for the manufacturer. If they'd spent a couple of hundred dollars to fix some trivial problems, they would almost certainly have sold me another fifty thousand dollar car next year. They didn't, so they won't.
Slashdot Mirror
> Am I the only one that read that as "Grand Theft Autobahn"??
No, you're not. For a moment, I was concerned that Kraftwerk had been stolen...
Too right they have a responsibility. My copies of both GTA3 and GTA:Vice City both have a clear 18 rating right on the box. In the jurisdiction in which I live, that makes it a criminal offence to sell or rent either item to anyone under the age of 18. I'm not, in all honesty, sure what the legal position is if you're over 18 and buy the game with the intent of allowing an under-18 to view it, but there's clearly a moral responsiblity on the part of the parent to monitor what a child sees. Of course, too many parents these days use the XBOX/PS2/Internet as an "electronic babysitter" and don't care what the children sees - buy of course, if it's something that they don't like they'll sue the hell out of anybody they can so they can:
My copies of both GTA3 and GTA:Vice City both have a clear 18 rating right there on the box. Oddly enough, while I was reading this article, a TV commercial for the double pack came on. And there, once again, was the 18 rating.
The A/C raises a valid point. There are a few people who will abuse free healthcare and go see the doctor because they've broken a nail or something. I, personally, would not be opposed to a small token charge - for those that can afford it - being levied for a visit to the doctor, with the proviso that if the visit is due to a condition which itself requires further visits, those further visits should continue to be free. I, for one, have always avoided going to the doctor unless it felt absolutely necessary (apart from my ongoing chronic condition, which is serious enough that I have no option BUT to seek professional help), I haven't set foot in a doctor's surgery for about 8 years
I wasn't taking a "cheap shot" at the US. I didn't even mention the US in my post - It's not the only country where health care is only available to those that can afford to pay for it, but hey if the cap fits...
Of course, I have the option - If I'm not happy with that the government "rations out", I can (and have, on occasion) choose to pay for private treatment. But I also have access to excellent free healthcare too, and as it happens if I chose to pay for treatment for my skin condition, I'd still be seeing the same dermatologist in the same consulting rooms and receiving the same treatment, because she happens to be one of the best in the country. As for having to "weight" (sic) for a day to have broken bones treated, I've broken bones on more than one occasion, and have always been treated promptly - I think the longest wait was about 15 minutes (and that was on a Friday night - always a busy time for emergency departments in cities)
The free medical advice I get from my doctors (both my GP and my consultant dermatologist) is worth considerably more than it costs me. But then again, I live in a country which is civilised enough that healthcare is available to all, rather than being a privilege reserved for the wealthy. We don't have much going for us, but we do have that.
The "gradual reduction" method might well work for caffeine, but never worked for me when I was trying to quit smoking. I tried "cutting down" so many times, tried the patches (hey, maybe caffeine patches might work here ;)), etc. etc. None of it worked.
In the end, the only way for me to kick the smoking monkey was to go cold turkey - finished a pack, and didn't buy another one. Suffered like hell (headaches, even more irritable than usual - even the shakes a couple of time) for about a week, but have never been tempted to smoke one since - even on a REALLY high stress day.
Or how blasted everyone got last night...
I rest my case... :(
I found the SyQuest drives to be terribly unreliable - every cartridge I have is now totally unreadable, despite my being careful about storage conditions (not as bad as the Iomega Ditto tape drive, though, whose tapes seem to unspool themselves with frigtening regularity). I'm pretty content with my Zip 250 though (and the media for the zip drive was a fraction of the cost of the SyQuest). My current backup device of choice, though, is a 300GB Maxtor external FireWire/USB drive. Luvverly.
Now you know why I had an external modem :)
No, it'll be whichever one I buy that will lose (Happened with Beta, SyQuest 270, you name it). And since I've got a dual format DVD+/-R/RW you should all be worried...
> Remember 56k modems. There was US Rebotic's X2, and Rockwells K56Flex. Which one was the winner? V90.
:)
And when V90 won, I flashed my USR Courier to support it, and so I was a winner too
> The number of three does have very special meaning in many forms of occulticism
Three shall be the number of thy counting, and the number of thy counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count; neither shalt thou count two,
unless thou proceedest directly to three. Five is right out.
Or in English - "night night" or "bye bye".
A more prosaic example: "That that is, is. That that is not, is not"
And of course, "isn't" is a common enough contraction of "is not", so you get "that that is, is. that that isn't isn't".
Makes perfect sense to me...
> Boy, I'd like to read a biography of that guy.
:)
Hell, I know people who'd want to be that guy
> Kids don't vote.
Which is a shame, because kids might have been able to figure out how to actually cast a vote (something that ISTR the Florida population seemed to have trouble with...)
> I live in a country where number of cell phones is much higher than number of land lines.
I live in a *house* where the number of cellphones is much higher than the number of landlines - since there's only one landline and each of us has our own cellphone. When a pollster calls a landline, they're only going to get one opinion per household - regardless of the number of people living there - which may well in itself sway the results. For example, my partner and I have very different views on politics, and (AFAIR) have voted differently in every election we've voted in, despite the fact that (gender aside) we probably both fit into the same demographic (more-or-less same age, very similar jobs & incomes etc.) And since pollsters get to talk to whichever of us is closer to the phone when it rings, surely that skews the results anyway?
> the average speed of our trains is about 5-10% of that!
:) It never fails to amaze me how much Londoners moan about the tube - maybe they ought to try public transport in other areas of the UK sometime. Of course, the thing with the tube is that 9 days out of 10, it works fine - and nobody notices. But on the 10th day, something goes wrong - and when that happens, the whole network seems to grind to a halt, and that's the day that people remember. When you get something right, nobody remembers. When you get something wrong, nobody forgets...
You've obviouslt had better experience of the UK rail network than I have.
> Unless you're in London, of course, where the tube is pretty good...
Unless, of course, you're a Londoner
The 6502 was a great processor, don't get me wrong. I learnt an awful lot writing code for one of those in the days when we had 256 bytes of RAM to play with...(no fancy Apple //es in those days lol).
:)
But it's kind of irrelevant for todays processors, mostly because of the myriad adressing modes - most modern CPUs have far fewer. Probably the Z80 or the 8080 might be a better place to start. (The Z80 is another bit of silicon that has a special place in my memories...I still have both the Zaks and Leventhal "bibles" for both the Z80 and the 6502
But yes, we'd be far better off if more programmers actually knew how a microprocessor does what it does. I always find it hilarious how much difficulty some people have with coming to terms with (say) pointers in C - because they don't really have a grasp of what an "address register" is.
Ah, those were the days...
And more adressing modes than you can shake a stick at ;)
the only thing I can see about this toy for the rich,
Actually, this is a toy for the poor. The rich shop here
And then there's the other kind of bug that causes airliners to drop out of the sky unexpectedly. Hellishly expensive...
Now everbody assumes bugs found after ship are par for the course and builds in software/firmware upgradability over the 'net, it's probably more cost effective to ship with bugs and fix them later
Depends on your context. The project I am currently working on doesn't have any possibility of firmware upgradability, short of replacing the main circuit board (since the firmware is in a mask-programmed surface-mount microcontroller). So not only will a re-mask be required (expensive in itself), but also my client will have to replace a large number of populated boards (even more expense).
That's why our QA process isn't limited to "suck it and see" testing.
Would you buy a car from the same company again if your current car had a lot of recalls?
My current car has had two recalls in the three years I've owned it, yet that wouldn't stop me buying another car from the same manufacturer. What WILL stop me by buying another car from the same manufacturer is the difficulty I have had getting them to fix relativly minor problems under warranty.
Recall problems generally affect a large number of vehicles of the same type - so think of those as "design" problems. They're potentially very expensive for the manufacture to fix (even in a low volume car such as mine). But fixing them gives me a good feeling about the manufacturer - "we screwed up, but we'll put it right".
Warranty problems, on the other hand, are generally unique to an invidiual vehicle (or a very small number) - so think of them as "implementation" problems (i.e. the build of a single car) - and so should be comparatively cheap to fix. But NOT fixing them (as has been the case) is going to cost this particular manufacturer sales in the future. That's going to be expensive for the manufacturer. If they'd spent a couple of hundred dollars to fix some trivial problems, they would almost certainly have sold me another fifty thousand dollar car next year. They didn't, so they won't.