"A careful, thorough site study would have taken considerably longer, obtained much more data, caused far less disruption, need not have "robbed" anything (all you need is information, not objects - the objects are merely that which carries the information you're wanting), drawn far fewer conclusions yet - once fully analyzed - been vastly superior."
Thank you for this essential distinction. It gives me greater respect for archeology, being to gather information about the past, rather than shiny objects to put on display. I guess in these materialistic times people focus only on the things found.
"In advertising, "unlimited" is still used within the context of reasonable behavior."
People went through the same thing with dialup lines on internet service providers a while back. They wanted to keep their dialup connection active continuously, which would technically be within "unlimited" usage, but not reasonable usage (especially when the ISP had a separate plan for a dedicated connection).
I know! I read about a car that came with an air conditioner. Imagine that! I have one of those in my house. And then I read it has a stereo. I have one of those in my bedroom. But there's more. It has a cigarette lighter outlet. OK, so now we have the living room ashtray. And it says you can plug a TV into that. Now the living room?!? It's so confusing to try to figure out what it is.
If you've got limited time to pick music from a large pool that likely contains a lot of crap, you're going to get more decent songs by making use of previous people's attempts to do the same. It's a pyramid scheme where you benefit from all the people who came before you.
I have the odd suspicion that this is really about virtual LGBT issues, i.e. the orientation of the virtual character in the game, not the actual human player sitting at his computer. Just like virtual violence, there is nothing real to it; it's just imaginary.
"In my experience, many tech people are profoundly positive and hopeful. However, they achieve this degree of self confidence via a process of identifying and subsequently solving problems. Along the way, this appears to an outsider as being negative, but it's a very optimstic process."
Just to spell it out, the optimism is "I want to find problems because I think they can be solved and the situation can be improved", and the pessimism is "I'm sure there are more problems just waiting to bring the show down. I'll have to always be critical so I can keep them from getting the best of me."
I've embodied the former attitude while being accused of having the latter, ironically by self-described optimists. I'd better characterize these people as pessimists, since it's not that they are optimistic about their one approach to things, but pessimistic about any other approach working or finding problems so they can be solved. Their constant message is "give it time, it'll work out", all the while passing up genuine opportunities to solve real problems and actually make things work out.
"[...] All principles of mercantile trade and also that of capitalism which is built on that trade are constructed upon the premise that the only things valid for trade are either physical (private property) or labour. [...] That is also a wholly independent and separate issue of that of how to reward artists and inventors for their creative works."
You already covered the answer: reward artists and inventors for their labor. Example: I'll pay you to write program X. Once written, the code goes into the public domain. Why would I pay you if the code will become free? Because there isn't yet a program X that meets my needs.
"The problem with this is that while you can throw money at pretty graphics, you can't throw money at creative, engaging gameplay. [...] It doesn't matter how much money you throw at bad game designers, though- they're not going to create something amazing."
So throw the money out there to attract [i]good[/i] game designers in the first place. I'm sure they're out there, it's just that good game design is not valued.
"The problem with buying used games is it is akin to stealing from the game publisher. They don't get a dime of that revenue from the second or third sale of a game, only the first, so by you buying a $20 copy of a game, you're essentially stealing an $80 sale from them."
What about those people who will try to find it used before they settle for buying it new? They form a link that causes used sales to increase new sales.
Hmmm, so they're now programming the devices so you have to specifically tell it to turn the volume really high, as opposed to older ones where... hmmm, well, you always had to do that via the volume control.
And I thought America was home of stupidity. Hmmm, maybe those Europeans are actually smart: by making the volume limiter a law, there won't be any frivilous lawsuits over being given the awesome responsibility of being able to turn the volume as high as you want; companies can say "See, we comply with the law. No case for you."
All the pairs of headphones and personal stereos I've gotten over the years have had warnings about hearing damage when listening at high volume for long periods of time. I hope this doesn't lead to devices which have a volume control that only goes to 2 (except cellphones... those damn things are loud as hell, and I mean other people's phones that broadcast the conversation everywhere).
"They are *not* allowed to, for example search your backpack, destroy film from your camera, or indeed prevent you from taking pictures. (they can however indirectly prevent the latter by asking you to leave the premises)"
I'm betting that they can verbally tell you to show the contents of your backpack or destroy your film (but not threaten you), and if you do, well, you shouldn't have since you didn't have to.
"Greenhouse gases it says, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable."
If the rate of global warming is unsustainable, that means that it will slow down, not speed up. You can't just write whatever you want and have your reader magically know that you really meant the opposite. I'm thinking that this was really meant as "... is causing global warming at a rate that makes our current way of life unsustainable."
Slashdot Mirror
"A careful, thorough site study would have taken considerably longer, obtained much more data, caused far less disruption, need not have "robbed" anything (all you need is information, not objects - the objects are merely that which carries the information you're wanting), drawn far fewer conclusions yet - once fully analyzed - been vastly superior."
Thank you for this essential distinction. It gives me greater respect for archeology, being to gather information about the past, rather than shiny objects to put on display. I guess in these materialistic times people focus only on the things found.
"In advertising, "unlimited" is still used within the context of reasonable behavior."
People went through the same thing with dialup lines on internet service providers a while back. They wanted to keep their dialup connection active continuously, which would technically be within "unlimited" usage, but not reasonable usage (especially when the ISP had a separate plan for a dedicated connection).
I know! I read about a car that came with an air conditioner. Imagine that! I have one of those in my house. And then I read it has a stereo. I have one of those in my bedroom. But there's more. It has a cigarette lighter outlet. OK, so now we have the living room ashtray. And it says you can plug a TV into that. Now the living room?!? It's so confusing to try to figure out what it is.
It is a sad day in video games when health boosts are condemned.
If you've got limited time to pick music from a large pool that likely contains a lot of crap, you're going to get more decent songs by making use of previous people's attempts to do the same. It's a pyramid scheme where you benefit from all the people who came before you.
"All you need for time travel is: a Deloreon, a flux capacitor, 1.21 gigawatts of power, and enough road to get up to 88 miles per hour."
Bullet-proof vest, don't forget that.
Unfortunately, these alternate versions of the anti-virus solution were scrapped:
1) Windows uninstaller
2) GNU/Linux
3) Mac OS X
I have the odd suspicion that this is really about virtual LGBT issues, i.e. the orientation of the virtual character in the game, not the actual human player sitting at his computer. Just like virtual violence, there is nothing real to it; it's just imaginary.
"In my experience, many tech people are profoundly positive and hopeful. However, they achieve this degree of self confidence via a process of identifying and subsequently solving problems. Along the way, this appears to an outsider as being negative, but it's a very optimstic process."
Just to spell it out, the optimism is "I want to find problems because I think they can be solved and the situation can be improved", and the pessimism is "I'm sure there are more problems just waiting to bring the show down. I'll have to always be critical so I can keep them from getting the best of me."
I've embodied the former attitude while being accused of having the latter, ironically by self-described optimists. I'd better characterize these people as pessimists, since it's not that they are optimistic about their one approach to things, but pessimistic about any other approach working or finding problems so they can be solved. Their constant message is "give it time, it'll work out", all the while passing up genuine opportunities to solve real problems and actually make things work out.
Apparently they consulted with FARK.com's talented staff of professional photo retouchers while testing the software.
"[...] All principles of mercantile trade and also that of capitalism which is built on that trade are constructed upon the premise that the only things valid for trade are either physical (private property) or labour. [...] That is also a wholly independent and separate issue of that of how to reward artists and inventors for their creative works."
You already covered the answer: reward artists and inventors for their labor. Example: I'll pay you to write program X. Once written, the code goes into the public domain. Why would I pay you if the code will become free? Because there isn't yet a program X that meets my needs.
"The problem with this is that while you can throw money at pretty graphics, you can't throw money at creative, engaging gameplay. [...] It doesn't matter how much money you throw at bad game designers, though- they're not going to create something amazing."
So throw the money out there to attract [i]good[/i] game designers in the first place. I'm sure they're out there, it's just that good game design is not valued.
"The problem with buying used games is it is akin to stealing from the game publisher. They don't get a dime of that revenue from the second or third sale of a game, only the first, so by you buying a $20 copy of a game, you're essentially stealing an $80 sale from them."
What about those people who will try to find it used before they settle for buying it new? They form a link that causes used sales to increase new sales.
Hmmm, so they're now programming the devices so you have to specifically tell it to turn the volume really high, as opposed to older ones where... hmmm, well, you always had to do that via the volume control.
And I thought America was home of stupidity. Hmmm, maybe those Europeans are actually smart: by making the volume limiter a law, there won't be any frivilous lawsuits over being given the awesome responsibility of being able to turn the volume as high as you want; companies can say "See, we comply with the law. No case for you."
Even simpler: press control-alt-delete. If your computer does nothing, you're safe.
All the pairs of headphones and personal stereos I've gotten over the years have had warnings about hearing damage when listening at high volume for long periods of time. I hope this doesn't lead to devices which have a volume control that only goes to 2 (except cellphones... those damn things are loud as hell, and I mean other people's phones that broadcast the conversation everywhere).
"Yah, they hadda build one with dials that go to 11. "
Geek translation: Yeah, they had to build one with bits that go to 1.1
"There is only ONE computer that could possibly handle these calculations."
Just remember, if it asks you if you want to play a game, SAY NO!
"They are *not* allowed to, for example search your backpack, destroy film from your camera, or indeed prevent you from taking pictures. (they can however indirectly prevent the latter by asking you to leave the premises)"
I'm betting that they can verbally tell you to show the contents of your backpack or destroy your film (but not threaten you), and if you do, well, you shouldn't have since you didn't have to.
"You're going to have to explain to me what you mean by 'properly configured'."
Properly configured (adj.) - Has Linux installed.
Too bad the other Revolution controller design wasn't adopted. I'm all for more buttons!
Or this:
"Greenhouse gases it says, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable."
If the rate of global warming is unsustainable, that means that it will slow down, not speed up. You can't just write whatever you want and have your reader magically know that you really meant the opposite. I'm thinking that this was really meant as "... is causing global warming at a rate that makes our current way of life unsustainable."
If this carries out attacks just as the real thing, isn't this the real thing and not an emulator? (I haven't RTFA of course)
"The key question is whether there is a correlation between the increasing contamination of our food and the behavior of the brain."
I think you're looking for the word causation here. Correlation doesn't tell you much.
"But your Honour... I didn't copy these Britney Spears albums, I made them!"
Isn't the point to get the sentence reduced???