I've got several family members machines that I've got the firewall on, spybot installed (and immunized) and AVG and they still get spyware out the wazoo because they click "yes" to "ya wanna install this nifty search toolbar?"
I've got a cousin that calls me up about twice a year because she ran a game she downloaded off the internet and it trashed her system. She's got the same, firewall, spybot and AVG and I've instructed her on safe computing habits...
I run all that AND firefox and I still got infected with a trojan because of a javascript hack while viewing a picture...a... PICTURE via Digg! I run noscript now, obviously...
What can you do? If anything all this "protection" makes people think they're "safe" and can do stupid things...
The game was easy, no doubt about it... but no moreso than playing Halo on "normal" level. Oh sure you've got your "Vita-Chanbers" but they weren't that much different from the frequent auto-saves in Halo either.
The game suffers from two fatal problems however: 1> The ending stinks (spoilers ahead) - There is so much care and effort to the building of the world and the philsophical interplays in the first 3/4 of the story that the early climax of killing Ryan and discovering that you are no more than a puppet and the REAL bad guy is some two-bit chump who spends the rest of the game going "nyah nyah, gonna drop your health now" just destroys the fiction. There's no conclusion to the philosophical debate or to Ryan's vision other than to rescue the lil' Sisters and abandon Rapture or not rescue the girls and abandon Rapture. To wit, Rapture is a MAJOR character of this game and it's pretty much abandoned after Ryan's death.
2> There's no replay value. Sure you can go back and get that honeybee plasmid you always wanted but couldn't afford but most everything in the game is discoverable the first time through. Even the option of playing the game again to kill or not kill the little sisters isn't intriguing because it only REALLY changes the last 5 minutes of the game. The lame ending hurts here too. Who wants to play through a game again to get to the disappointing ending? Multiplayer options would've helped but it wasn't the point of the game, which was one of discovery and exploration.
To sum up, it's not a backlash (unless you want to consider all the technological goofups the PC owners had to go through with the DRM/activation)... but merely... disappointing.
What part of: "The City Council has not yet approved the funding." = "schools in the Alabama city will be the first US students to make use of the XO laptop."
So Boston was kinda, sort of, right to be... worried...
On the flip side, the guy comes out after his "interrogation" and was so traumatized and in shock by it, that he does an improv on "hairstyles". I wonder how Orson Welles would've faired...
(and ditto the above posters... what's up with the MIT chick? That was far more dangerous)
Ahh yes the "What if they're big bad biker aliens that came to kick our a***s just because some geeks wanted to say 'hi, will you be my friend?'" theory?
How much would you pay?!
on
Is SETI Worth It?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Let's say we not only find intelligent life but that we can communicate with them and they have the answers to all our problems...
Would it be worth it then for the relatively small amount of resources we're putting into this now...
But don't answer just yet!
What if they they give us the ability to travel in space, thus increasing our resources greatly so we can solve even MORE problems we didn't know we had!?!
How much would you pay for that? Would that be worth all the effort and dreaming we do now?
If they successfully cut out the publisher they'd probably be getting about 30% of the sales at $15 pop or ~15 million or about 5 million back to Radiohead. So at even the lower estimate, they came out the same as if they had sold them through the normal channels or BETTER if sales were higher.
If not and downloads were about the same number as regular sales...they didn't do so hot...
But it's really hard to judge that from this article.
No, you still don't understand. Swapping software is still swapping product A for product B. That constitutes an accounting loss. Yes there's no physical resources being swapped. But there's still a loss of value on the books that has to be reported back as revenue and tax loss.
MS doesn't "lose nothing". There's a definite loss of value. At the very least having to produce "extra discs" and shipping or supplying the bandwidth for the downloads. (which isn't what the article said anyway. The union wants a downgrade optionOn the other side you have loss of sales of Vista while having to supply copies of XP which, business-wise, are DISTINCT PRODUCTS with DIFFERENT levels of accountable value at different points of depreciation.
Sure, it's an intangible asset. But that doesn't mean that swapping data file a with data file b is a zero-sum game with no loss to Microsoft. If you believe that, I'll happily trade you 50,000 gold from Ultima Online for 50,000 gold for WoW. I mean, gosh... it's just DATA...
The Dutch Consumers Union ordered Toyota to give '07 model owners the old '06 models due to rising dissatisfaction with the lower horsepower of the '07 models.
If the hype dies off then it'll be less of a target towards vandalism and the "die hards" that continue to add to it will do so in a more responsible manner.
a> corded controllers because we like the "rumble" (although if you can find a wireless gamecube controller with rumble I'm all ears)
b> Pull the Wii out of the base because otherwise somebody yanks too hard in the middle of a Smash Bros game and the Wii goes flying. It was just easier to leave it docked and nestled in between the Tivo and the entertainment center wall and put the Gamecube in the center of the living room.
I was upset at first as well. But after calming down and thinking about it:
Sony continues to sell PS-ONE systems (for pretty cheap too) so it's unlikely they're going to stop selling PS-2 systems any time soon.
Incorporating a PS-2 inside of the PS-3 does increase the cost by about $100 (even with software emulation)
The major barrier to PS-3 acceptance (aside from games) is the cost.
Most PS-3 purchasers are already going to have PS-2s.
Sure, I'd like an all-in-one box (actually I already have one) to save more space in my entertainment center. But I already have a gamecube/wii and an XBox/XBox360 pair on my stand so a PS3 with one of the new tiny PS2's isn't that big a deal for space.
Logically, its a sound business trade-off to get the price down to increase sales. Prestige-wise it certainly hurts, but maybe that's all fluff anyway (The XBox360 certainly doesn't emulate all XBox titles and the Gamecube never emulated the Nintendo-64)
(I know the Wii plays all gamecube games, but I keep the gamecube around because it's easier to use the corded gamecube controllers during a party rather than pulling the Wii out of its base)
Our model #s will now reflect our new analysis methodology which we feel better reflects the speed of our processors. Thusly, the AMD 25000K is equal to (using our illudium pu 32 ESK rating) a P5-686/22/44SX processor. Whereas the AMD 37000Q is equal to a P5-686/22/33DX processor.
There... see this eliminates all customer confusion as well as puts our processors in a more comparable light!
But Visio probably updates through the Office 2007 manager rather than stand alone and that's the reason Office 2007 won't update in general.
Which leads to some proper questions:
If Visio requires separate activation than shouldn't it require a separate update path?
If not, then shouldn't the updater be smart enough to update only the activated components?
And overall, what does this say about the concept of SEPARATE products requiring SEPARATE activation but morphing into a SINGULAR app. Does this not, in fact, affect my future upgradeability? (Oh sorry, you integrated Visio in 2007, for Office 2010 your only upgrade path is Office 2010 Ultimate)
Will you see support of websites like thepiratesbay.org and disdain for the RIAA and MPAA and complaints that the government is trying to monitor internet traffic and watch what we're doing and then turn around and complain that the FBI isn't taking cybercrime seriously...
Slashdot Mirror
I've got several family members machines that I've got the firewall on, spybot installed (and immunized) and AVG and they still get spyware out the wazoo because they click "yes" to "ya wanna install this nifty search toolbar?"
I've got a cousin that calls me up about twice a year because she ran a game she downloaded off the internet and it trashed her system. She's got the same, firewall, spybot and AVG and I've instructed her on safe computing habits...
I run all that AND firefox and I still got infected with a trojan because of a javascript hack while viewing a picture...a... PICTURE via Digg! I run noscript now, obviously...
What can you do? If anything all this "protection" makes people think they're "safe" and can do stupid things...
It just wasn't as GREAT as it could've been.
The game was easy, no doubt about it... but no moreso than playing Halo on "normal" level. Oh sure you've got your "Vita-Chanbers" but they weren't that much different from the frequent auto-saves in Halo either.
The game suffers from two fatal problems however:
1> The ending stinks (spoilers ahead) - There is so much care and effort to the building of the world and the philsophical interplays in the first 3/4 of the story that the early climax of killing Ryan and discovering that you are no more than a puppet and the REAL bad guy is some two-bit chump who spends the rest of the game going "nyah nyah, gonna drop your health now" just destroys the fiction. There's no conclusion to the philosophical debate or to Ryan's vision other than to rescue the lil' Sisters and abandon Rapture or not rescue the girls and abandon Rapture. To wit, Rapture is a MAJOR character of this game and it's pretty much abandoned after Ryan's death.
2> There's no replay value. Sure you can go back and get that honeybee plasmid you always wanted but couldn't afford but most everything in the game is discoverable the first time through. Even the option of playing the game again to kill or not kill the little sisters isn't intriguing because it only REALLY changes the last 5 minutes of the game. The lame ending hurts here too. Who wants to play through a game again to get to the disappointing ending? Multiplayer options would've helped but it wasn't the point of the game, which was one of discovery and exploration.
To sum up, it's not a backlash (unless you want to consider all the technological goofups the PC owners had to go through with the DRM/activation)... but merely... disappointing.
A flawed masterpiece.
What part of: "The City Council has not yet approved the funding." = "schools in the Alabama city will be the first US students to make use of the XO laptop."
So Boston was kinda, sort of, right to be... worried...
On the flip side, the guy comes out after his "interrogation" and was so traumatized and in shock by it, that he does an improv on "hairstyles". I wonder how Orson Welles would've faired...
(and ditto the above posters... what's up with the MIT chick? That was far more dangerous)
They've been averaging $2+change for the past month.
Ahh yes the "What if they're big bad biker aliens that came to kick our a***s just because some geeks wanted to say 'hi, will you be my friend?'" theory?
Let's say we not only find intelligent life but that we can communicate with them and they have the answers to all our problems...
Would it be worth it then for the relatively small amount of resources we're putting into this now...
But don't answer just yet!
What if they they give us the ability to travel in space, thus increasing our resources greatly so we can solve even MORE problems we didn't know we had!?!
How much would you pay for that? Would that be worth all the effort and dreaming we do now?
Or will you take what's in the magic box?
What's the usual amount for Radiohead's sales?
If they successfully cut out the publisher they'd probably be getting about 30% of the sales at $15 pop or ~15 million or about 5 million back to Radiohead. So at even the lower estimate, they came out the same as if they had sold them through the normal channels or BETTER if sales were higher.
If not and downloads were about the same number as regular sales...they didn't do so hot...
But it's really hard to judge that from this article.
Actually that's not that all much different from having church sponsored paintball outings...
Does it restore functionality or just prevent further damage?
No, you still don't understand. Swapping software is still swapping product A for product B. That constitutes an accounting loss. Yes there's no physical resources being swapped. But there's still a loss of value on the books that has to be reported back as revenue and tax loss.
Well gosh... Microsoft should just give everything away then. Because Windows OS doesn't really *cost* anything.
Okay... 40 million copies at 10 cents each is...
No, it's the right analogy.
MS doesn't "lose nothing". There's a definite loss of value. At the very least having to produce "extra discs" and shipping or supplying the bandwidth for the downloads. (which isn't what the article said anyway. The union wants a downgrade optionOn the other side you have loss of sales of Vista while having to supply copies of XP which, business-wise, are DISTINCT PRODUCTS with DIFFERENT levels of accountable value at different points of depreciation.
Sure, it's an intangible asset. But that doesn't mean that swapping data file a with data file b is a zero-sum game with no loss to Microsoft. If you believe that, I'll happily trade you 50,000 gold from Ultima Online for 50,000 gold for WoW. I mean, gosh... it's just DATA...
The Dutch Consumers Union ordered Toyota to give '07 model owners the old '06 models due to rising dissatisfaction with the lower horsepower of the '07 models.
Not surprisingly, Toyota refused.
Still have your Resistance is Futile shirt? :D
If the hype dies off then it'll be less of a target towards vandalism and the "die hards" that continue to add to it will do so in a more responsible manner.
I highly doubt it'll become a wasteland...
My kingdom for some mod points right now!
a> corded controllers because we like the "rumble" (although if you can find a wireless gamecube controller with rumble I'm all ears)
b> Pull the Wii out of the base because otherwise somebody yanks too hard in the middle of a Smash Bros game and the Wii goes flying. It was just easier to leave it docked and nestled in between the Tivo and the entertainment center wall and put the Gamecube in the center of the living room.
I was upset at first as well. But after calming down and thinking about it:
Sony continues to sell PS-ONE systems (for pretty cheap too) so it's unlikely they're going to stop selling PS-2 systems any time soon.
Incorporating a PS-2 inside of the PS-3 does increase the cost by about $100 (even with software emulation)
The major barrier to PS-3 acceptance (aside from games) is the cost.
Most PS-3 purchasers are already going to have PS-2s.
Sure, I'd like an all-in-one box (actually I already have one) to save more space in my entertainment center. But I already have a gamecube/wii and an XBox/XBox360 pair on my stand so a PS3 with one of the new tiny PS2's isn't that big a deal for space.
Logically, its a sound business trade-off to get the price down to increase sales. Prestige-wise it certainly hurts, but maybe that's all fluff anyway (The XBox360 certainly doesn't emulate all XBox titles and the Gamecube never emulated the Nintendo-64)
(I know the Wii plays all gamecube games, but I keep the gamecube around because it's easier to use the corded gamecube controllers during a party rather than pulling the Wii out of its base)
Didn't they do this last year?
Oh no it won't... Look what AMD did...
Our model #s will now reflect our new analysis methodology which we feel better reflects the speed of our processors. Thusly, the AMD 25000K is equal to (using our illudium pu 32 ESK rating) a P5-686/22/44SX processor. Whereas the AMD 37000Q is equal to a P5-686/22/33DX processor.
There... see this eliminates all customer confusion as well as puts our processors in a more comparable light!
http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/visio/default.aspx
I'm not defending activation here, far from it-
But Visio probably updates through the Office 2007 manager rather than stand alone and that's the reason Office 2007 won't update in general.
Which leads to some proper questions:
If Visio requires separate activation than shouldn't it require a separate update path?
If not, then shouldn't the updater be smart enough to update only the activated components?
And overall, what does this say about the concept of SEPARATE products requiring SEPARATE activation but morphing into a SINGULAR app. Does this not, in fact, affect my future upgradeability? (Oh sorry, you integrated Visio in 2007, for Office 2010 your only upgrade path is Office 2010 Ultimate)
Will you see support of websites like thepiratesbay.org and disdain for the RIAA and MPAA and complaints that the government is trying to monitor internet traffic and watch what we're doing and then turn around and complain that the FBI isn't taking cybercrime seriously...
To refuse giving out contraception? Day after pills? Based on their morality?
Because, y'know
"One of the best things about having morals is that they don't get suspended for a buck."