The economy of motion of the mouse is going to be hard to beat. You can go anywhere on the screen by moving it less than an inch. It quickly becomes not just an extension of your body, but an extension of your mind. That's going to be incredibly hard to beat.
What will be interesting in UI development is to see what kinds of technologies can improve efficiency as additions to the mouse. Just as mouse+keyboard is more effective than mouse alone, are there interface methods that could add to mouse+keyboard to make the combination even more efficient? I have a hard time seeing how touchscreens or motion control would do that, but it's conceivable they could for certain uses. A touchscreen could be just the thing for photo editing, or video editing, if implemented properly.
This misunderstands how bookmakers set odds, at least in any sport that uses a pointspread. The point spread is set at a point the bookmaker thinks will attract equal numbers of bets for the favorite and the underdog. The line moves in order to make this equalization a reality.
The bookmaker then makes money on the commission that losing bettors pay.
This is why a sports bettor has to have a.550 winning percentage in order to turn an actual profit, and why sports betting (at least with a sports book) is most often a sucker's game.
Books are different. With a receipt, virtually all booksellers will give cash refunds for books still in new condition.
The difference is that a book isn't easily or economically copyable. Basically NOBODY takes back CDs or casettes for refund, because they are easy to copy.
In my view, I think it's a fairly reasonable policy for a store to apply to videogames and other software.
However, it is interesting to note that EBGames, or whatever they call themselves now, appears to be the most successful game-focused store chain, and they have VERY forgiving return policies, or at least they used to. Babbage's, its competitor, which had a stringent return policy, has never been particularly financially healthy.
The key with Google is to type in exactly what you are looking for, not something vague. Also, if you're looking for information on apples the fruit, type in "apples" rather than "apple." Voila!
It is news to me that each element has to be random, at least in Nevada. It's a shame you weren't modded way up, because this is the most informative thing in the thread.
I don't know how it is in Britain, but it's well-known that U.S. slot machines pay a fixed percentage that is set by the house. The symbols that come up on the reels aren't random, and aren't advertised as such. So I'm not entirely clear why this is news.
Maybe these kinds of machines are different in Britain, or maybe they're advertised differently...
How exactly was replacing big, hairy creatures with small, hairy creatures a surrender of artistic integrity? Get a grip, man! The fact is that Episode IV was a fairly well-made movie that was revolutionary in form, Episode V was a masterpiece (and directed by someone who actually knew how to direct)and the rest of the films have been gilding (or sullying) the lily.
You are taking some pretty good space opera and conflating it into an excuse to be angry at the whole world. I am a huge "Star Wars" fan, but even I can see that even among sci-fi/comicdom, there are dozens of worlds both richer and more interesting than Lucas' creation. The sum total of it is one good movie, one great movie, one mediocre movie and two unholy messes. No offense, but it can't possibly come as news that this is pretty small potatoes as far as cultural legacies go.
And after 26 years of being his "bitch," I imagine you are tired of it. But you kept coming back for more...
To those of us who grew up on the comic-book and TV cartoon Hulk, Lou Ferrigno just wasn't the same character. The comic book wasn't a giant in height, but he was supernaturally huge, with inhuman proportions. He also talked, and some of the book's most poignant moments were the Hulk's dialogue as he calmed down. He was a creature of rage, but the dialogue revealed that his rage was often fueled by things he couldn't understand that were beyond his control. It was very much of its time -- a creature created by the atom and persecuted by the military. All he ever wanted was to be left alone.
The Ferrigno/Bixby vehicle was fairly well-done, but it wasn't really about the same character. Hulk didn't talk, and the whole scientific/nuclear paranoia and rage angle was glossed over.
I haven't paid much attention, but I hope the new movie has more to do with the comic book. The Hulk shouldn't look like a bodybuilder.
This is becoming increasingly common, from what I understand. Insurance companies are also using credit scores to help determine rates for auto coverage. Miss a credit-card payment, and your car insurance costs more!
And the shadowy credit-scoring companies, largely unregulated, are the ones wielding all this power.
In your situation, you can try your argument, but then it will come down to submit to the check or don't take the job. The company is perfectly within its rights to ask for this information, especially for a managerial position.
An automotive site had a fiendishly addictive little Flash puzzle game on their site tied in with a sweepstakes a couple of years back. Unfortunately, when the sweepstakes ended, the game disappeared. I e-mailed the company to inquire whether it could be found anywhere, and was basically told to buzz off. I got the impression that they thought I was joking and/or crazy to care about the silly little game.
And I decided that I would never patronize the site again. I realize that serving games isn't their business, but the attitude I received when I inquired about it put me off entirely.
Although... I still occasionally Google the name of the game, just to see if it exists elsewhere.
That's the problem. EBay shouldn't be the one to hold the liability for the customer's libel (if it is such). This is an area where libel law falls down in the Internet age. Historically, the owner of the printing press could be held liable for libel. However, (as Slashdot's little reminders constantly tell us), in an era when every post is its own little printing press, the Web site owner should not be held liable for the words of the customers.
I have no problem with the feedback-leaver being sued for libel. However, holding EBay liable for its users' libel isn't the way things should work. The law must adjust to the new medium.
I wonder if music will evolve along the lines of professional sports. Professional sports started with this model: We will play games, and people will pay to watch. When radio and television started broadcasting games, the fear was that the people would no longer pay to see games live. So a new model evolved: We will broadcast the games on television, and advertisers will pay for the eyeballs that watch the games. This (along with an opening of the sports labor market through free agency) is what paved the way for the explosion of salaries and franchise values over the past 30 years.
Perhaps the music companies, given that they're already part of this media complex, will in essence become programming arms for their TimeWarnerAOLDisneySony masters. They'll provide content, which be programming that can be sold on the big networks, in whatever form they take. Sports went from selling the event to selling people's desire to watch the event; maybe music will go from selling CDs to selling access to the fans who want to hear or see the artists perform. This would obviously require a sea change in how the labels relate to radio stations, but the monolithic nature of radio these days has put it in a dangerous place; as alternate channels of music promotion grow in power and scope, radio will be in a tight place. It will be interesting, regardless.
Truth be told, RealOne or RealPlayer or RealAudio or whatever the hell they call it these days is annoying in much more in-your-face ways than this. I get lots of spam; getting a bit more through Real isn't much of a headache. But the damned blinking tray icons, little reminder messages, hidden processes and everything else make it the single most annoying piece of software I've ever used.
In principle, the invasion of privacy is worse. But in practice and in real life, the constant attention demanded by a program of dubious usefulness far more obnoxious.
... the rise of blogging is much more tied to the introduction of tools such as Blogger and Movable Type that make the process completely painless and coding-free. Almost none of the major bloggers are unemployed tech-types. I have no doubt that some bloggers are, but none of the bloggers who get the most traffic and other attention are.
Off the top of my head, the bloggers I can think of are (and you can probably figure out who some of them are): law professor, free-lance journalist (lots of these for obvious reasons), retired software engineer, university professor, graduate student, medical resident, military technician, political cartoonist...
Bloggers come from all walks of life; some have certainly come from the tech field, but the explosion of blogging has come from people who are talented writers and have something interesting to say, but who haven't been part of the mainstream media.
Actually, earnings and profits are the same thing. Revenue is the total amount of money taken in; earnings and profit both mean revenue minus expenses.
It would be interesting to see exactly what Stan Lee's contract with Marvel says. This makes it pretty clear that Marvel was attributing X amount of earnings to the Spider-Man movie license. It would seem that Lee would be entitled to his 10 percent of X.
I note that Marvel recorded the lion's share of earnings for this license when it originally sold the rights in 1999. Is it possible that Mr. Lee (no relation) got his cut of that then and is now seeking his cut of further royalties that Marvel is collecting?
Marvel's take from the Spider-Man movie is made pretty clear in its 10-Q. Stan Lee's agreement is with Marvel, not Sony, so the movie business' notorious accounting isn't really the issue in his dispute; actually, if Hollywood's accounting practices are the issue, then both Marvel and Stan are getting screwed, because if Marvel gets a percentage of the net, it won't see the money it really should. Stan would be getting screwed as an extension of Marvel is getting screwed.
It's an interesting case, regardless. But it's hard to form an opinion without know the exact wording of Stan's contract. He obviously should get paid, but that's not how a judge is going to look at the issue.
This one required quite a bit of work, but you have it forever once you've done it...
Make a bed of nails. Probably 50x150, with nails every half-inch or so on a backing of double-thick plywood. You set the stage by taking off your shirt, so it's guaranteed to get attention. Then you simply lay down. This demonstrates how mass can be distributed in a way that no one nail is supporting enough weight to break skin.
My physics teacher in high school did this one, and it has stuck with me lo these many years later.
When he was showing us formulas and equations and such, he always couched them in terms of a person in peril -- standing at the top of a cliff, being whirled around by angular momentum or whatever. The solution to the equation was always accompanied by "And then... you die..."
All of these lessons have stuck with me far better than my junior-year chemistry lessons, for which the teacher left the class to make soup (don't ask) and drink liquor in the lab and told us to learn it from the book.
Re:I would have to say...
on
The Aging Gamer
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I don't think the percentage of gamers over 35 is probably rising all that much, because damn near every 10-year-old is a gamer, girls and boys. But the total number of over-35 gamers is certainly rising.
I'm not 35, but I am 30, and I don't consider myself among the vanguard of gaming in the 1970s, though I did have an Atari before they started calling it the 2600... Heck, my mother used to play Atari with me back then, and she plays Shanghai and Bejeweled now like a crack fiend, and she's 66... is she one of these over-35 "gamers"?
Slashdot Mirror
The economy of motion of the mouse is going to be hard to beat. You can go anywhere on the screen by moving it less than an inch. It quickly becomes not just an extension of your body, but an extension of your mind. That's going to be incredibly hard to beat.
What will be interesting in UI development is to see what kinds of technologies can improve efficiency as additions to the mouse. Just as mouse+keyboard is more effective than mouse alone, are there interface methods that could add to mouse+keyboard to make the combination even more efficient? I have a hard time seeing how touchscreens or motion control would do that, but it's conceivable they could for certain uses. A touchscreen could be just the thing for photo editing, or video editing, if implemented properly.
Wonder what J. Lo thinks?
This misunderstands how bookmakers set odds, at least in any sport that uses a pointspread. The point spread is set at a point the bookmaker thinks will attract equal numbers of bets for the favorite and the underdog. The line moves in order to make this equalization a reality.
.550 winning percentage in order to turn an actual profit, and why sports betting (at least with a sports book) is most often a sucker's game.
The bookmaker then makes money on the commission that losing bettors pay.
This is why a sports bettor has to have a
The difference is that a book isn't easily or economically copyable. Basically NOBODY takes back CDs or casettes for refund, because they are easy to copy.
In my view, I think it's a fairly reasonable policy for a store to apply to videogames and other software.
However, it is interesting to note that EBGames, or whatever they call themselves now, appears to be the most successful game-focused store chain, and they have VERY forgiving return policies, or at least they used to. Babbage's, its competitor, which had a stringent return policy, has never been particularly financially healthy.
How about apple fruit? Or apple recipes?
The key with Google is to type in exactly what you are looking for, not something vague. Also, if you're looking for information on apples the fruit, type in "apples" rather than "apple." Voila!
A dictionary might also help with spelling the word.
Maybe it has a new, improved, hi-res BOMB!
Seriously, I've used Quark for years and years, and I've never met a program that crashed so much, at least in version 3.3, which was around FOREVER.
And in fairness, I use 4.1 every day now (though on a PC), and it never crashes.
It is news to me that each element has to be random, at least in Nevada. It's a shame you weren't modded way up, because this is the most informative thing in the thread.
I don't know how it is in Britain, but it's well-known that U.S. slot machines pay a fixed percentage that is set by the house. The symbols that come up on the reels aren't random, and aren't advertised as such. So I'm not entirely clear why this is news.
...
Maybe these kinds of machines are different in Britain, or maybe they're advertised differently
Give me a break.
...
How exactly was replacing big, hairy creatures with small, hairy creatures a surrender of artistic integrity? Get a grip, man! The fact is that Episode IV was a fairly well-made movie that was revolutionary in form, Episode V was a masterpiece (and directed by someone who actually knew how to direct)and the rest of the films have been gilding (or sullying) the lily.
You are taking some pretty good space opera and conflating it into an excuse to be angry at the whole world. I am a huge "Star Wars" fan, but even I can see that even among sci-fi/comicdom, there are dozens of worlds both richer and more interesting than Lucas' creation. The sum total of it is one good movie, one great movie, one mediocre movie and two unholy messes. No offense, but it can't possibly come as news that this is pretty small potatoes as far as cultural legacies go.
And after 26 years of being his "bitch," I imagine you are tired of it. But you kept coming back for more
To those of us who grew up on the comic-book and TV cartoon Hulk, Lou Ferrigno just wasn't the same character. The comic book wasn't a giant in height, but he was supernaturally huge, with inhuman proportions. He also talked, and some of the book's most poignant moments were the Hulk's dialogue as he calmed down. He was a creature of rage, but the dialogue revealed that his rage was often fueled by things he couldn't understand that were beyond his control. It was very much of its time -- a creature created by the atom and persecuted by the military. All he ever wanted was to be left alone.
The Ferrigno/Bixby vehicle was fairly well-done, but it wasn't really about the same character. Hulk didn't talk, and the whole scientific/nuclear paranoia and rage angle was glossed over.
I haven't paid much attention, but I hope the new movie has more to do with the comic book. The Hulk shouldn't look like a bodybuilder.
"Hollywood" is owned by the same companies that distribute most of the video games ...
This is becoming increasingly common, from what I understand. Insurance companies are also using credit scores to help determine rates for auto coverage. Miss a credit-card payment, and your car insurance costs more!
And the shadowy credit-scoring companies, largely unregulated, are the ones wielding all this power.
In your situation, you can try your argument, but then it will come down to submit to the check or don't take the job. The company is perfectly within its rights to ask for this information, especially for a managerial position.
that after 20 minutes, the OSX kernel would have popped!
An automotive site had a fiendishly addictive little Flash puzzle game on their site tied in with a sweepstakes a couple of years back. Unfortunately, when the sweepstakes ended, the game disappeared. I e-mailed the company to inquire whether it could be found anywhere, and was basically told to buzz off. I got the impression that they thought I was joking and/or crazy to care about the silly little game.
... I still occasionally Google the name of the game, just to see if it exists elsewhere.
And I decided that I would never patronize the site again. I realize that serving games isn't their business, but the attitude I received when I inquired about it put me off entirely.
Although
That's the problem. EBay shouldn't be the one to hold the liability for the customer's libel (if it is such). This is an area where libel law falls down in the Internet age. Historically, the owner of the printing press could be held liable for libel. However, (as Slashdot's little reminders constantly tell us), in an era when every post is its own little printing press, the Web site owner should not be held liable for the words of the customers.
I have no problem with the feedback-leaver being sued for libel. However, holding EBay liable for its users' libel isn't the way things should work. The law must adjust to the new medium.
I wonder if music will evolve along the lines of professional sports. Professional sports started with this model: We will play games, and people will pay to watch. When radio and television started broadcasting games, the fear was that the people would no longer pay to see games live. So a new model evolved: We will broadcast the games on television, and advertisers will pay for the eyeballs that watch the games. This (along with an opening of the sports labor market through free agency) is what paved the way for the explosion of salaries and franchise values over the past 30 years.
Perhaps the music companies, given that they're already part of this media complex, will in essence become programming arms for their TimeWarnerAOLDisneySony masters. They'll provide content, which be programming that can be sold on the big networks, in whatever form they take. Sports went from selling the event to selling people's desire to watch the event; maybe music will go from selling CDs to selling access to the fans who want to hear or see the artists perform.
This would obviously require a sea change in how the labels relate to radio stations, but the monolithic nature of radio these days has put it in a dangerous place; as alternate channels of music promotion grow in power and scope, radio will be in a tight place. It will be interesting, regardless.
Wasn't Intellivision made by Sony?
Truth be told, RealOne or RealPlayer or RealAudio or whatever the hell they call it these days is annoying in much more in-your-face ways than this. I get lots of spam; getting a bit more through Real isn't much of a headache. But the damned blinking tray icons, little reminder messages, hidden processes and everything else make it the single most annoying piece of software I've ever used.
In principle, the invasion of privacy is worse. But in practice and in real life, the constant attention demanded by a program of dubious usefulness far more obnoxious.
Identical twins are formed from a single egg-sperm combination. How could they not be genetically identical?
... the rise of blogging is much more tied to the introduction of tools such as Blogger and Movable Type that make the process completely painless and coding-free. Almost none of the major bloggers are unemployed tech-types. I have no doubt that some bloggers are, but none of the bloggers who get the most traffic and other attention are.
...
Off the top of my head, the bloggers I can think of are (and you can probably figure out who some of them are): law professor, free-lance journalist (lots of these for obvious reasons), retired software engineer, university professor, graduate student, medical resident, military technician, political cartoonist
Bloggers come from all walks of life; some have certainly come from the tech field, but the explosion of blogging has come from people who are talented writers and have something interesting to say, but who haven't been part of the mainstream media.
It would be interesting to see exactly what Stan Lee's contract with Marvel says. This makes it pretty clear that Marvel was attributing X amount of earnings to the Spider-Man movie license. It would seem that Lee would be entitled to his 10 percent of X.
I note that Marvel recorded the lion's share of earnings for this license when it originally sold the rights in 1999. Is it possible that Mr. Lee (no relation) got his cut of that then and is now seeking his cut of further royalties that Marvel is collecting?
Marvel's take from the Spider-Man movie is made pretty clear in its 10-Q. Stan Lee's agreement is with Marvel, not Sony, so the movie business' notorious accounting isn't really the issue in his dispute; actually, if Hollywood's accounting practices are the issue, then both Marvel and Stan are getting screwed, because if Marvel gets a percentage of the net, it won't see the money it really should. Stan would be getting screwed as an extension of Marvel is getting screwed.
It's an interesting case, regardless. But it's hard to form an opinion without know the exact wording of Stan's contract. He obviously should get paid, but that's not how a judge is going to look at the issue.
Nope. Southeast Michigan.
This one required quite a bit of work, but you have it forever once you've done it ...
... you die ..."
Make a bed of nails. Probably 50x150, with nails every half-inch or so on a backing of double-thick plywood. You set the stage by taking off your shirt, so it's guaranteed to get attention. Then you simply lay down. This demonstrates how mass can be distributed in a way that no one nail is supporting enough weight to break skin.
My physics teacher in high school did this one, and it has stuck with me lo these many years later.
When he was showing us formulas and equations and such, he always couched them in terms of a person in peril -- standing at the top of a cliff, being whirled around by angular momentum or whatever. The solution to the equation was always accompanied by "And then
All of these lessons have stuck with me far better than my junior-year chemistry lessons, for which the teacher left the class to make soup (don't ask) and drink liquor in the lab and told us to learn it from the book.
I don't think the percentage of gamers over 35 is probably rising all that much, because damn near every 10-year-old is a gamer, girls and boys. But the total number of over-35 gamers is certainly rising.
... Heck, my mother used to play Atari with me back then, and she plays Shanghai and Bejeweled now like a crack fiend, and she's 66 ... is she one of these over-35 "gamers"?
I'm not 35, but I am 30, and I don't consider myself among the vanguard of gaming in the 1970s, though I did have an Atari before they started calling it the 2600