Is that a crack on the tsunami? Seriously though, sony, nintendo, nissan, honda, toyota, etc have much more to worry about than a hacker cracking their firmware. As much as I don't like sony right now, I hope the best for everyone in japan right now since they are going through a hard time, and I suggest that anyone who has an extra dime kicking around their changepurse to donate to the red cross right now.
But I wish they had the same app in a generic browser or at least a pc/linux/android aswell. Possible uses could include not having to miss a ball game because the wife wants to watch dancing with the stars (not everyone has 2 hdtv's). Or many times I want to watch tv in bed so I do the hulu thing. But it would be nice to see live local news in bed. It seems that al jazeera is the only streaming news source these days. PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, I would love to find a free streaming local station service.
Before 2005(?) or so I would easily spend 3000 dollars a year on games... probably would buy 100 movies a year and go to the theater. I would "temperarily pirate" games to see if they would work on my pc to see if the game in question would work on my sub-par pc. Basically, I would download it off TPB and see if it ran at a playable framerate and uninstall it, then go to the store and buy it. Most games didn't have demos at that time. Also, since I was single and the economy wasn't really that terrible (I was single?) I didn't mind to spend 50 dollars for an xbox game, especially since I could get demo discs at the game store, or try the game in the gamestop. Well since then I quit console gaming since computer games aren't lagging behind, and I have much more options. But the one thing that is true now is I am not buying anymore dvds. I am not going to the theater anymore. I think the last movie I saw in the theater was the last lord of the rings. Why? I pay 20-30 dollars to go to the movie to only see once, and I am getting scolded about piracy before the movie starts ("You wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't download a hamburger" nonsense), leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Why the hell are you telling me about piracy when I BOUGHT THE DAMN MOVIE TICKET. You don't need to be telling me about piracy, I obviously paid for my ticket and popcorn, so shut your damn pie hole, stop wasting my time and show me my entertainment I paid for, not some damn public service announcement about how little money you make. I bought 100 dvd's a year, until these unskipable ads started showing up, and the same exact ads I saw in the theater about not downloading hamburgers, and I said, "fuck it, no more dvd's I guess". I don't download movies, I don't even pirate games temperarily anymore. I just buy on steam after playing the demo off steam. I watch movies on hulu, or my back catalog of dvds. I haven't even bought any music or downloaded any other than jamendo (creative commons) stuff in a few years. Other than that, I might listen to pandora radio or the local radio station. Like the middle eastern countries are learning right now, if you oppress your people/customers and think you have them by the jewels, don't cry when they strike back with their fists or wallets. We are not sheep, we are your paycheck. And if you like to continue to recieve your paycheck, start working for us, instead of against us. Now there are some pirates out there that will pirate because they will pirate. They will be there forever. Just like thieves will and CEO's that walk off with a bunch of the companies money. But STOP PUNISHING THE INNOCENT for the mistakes of others. Mass punishment was stupid in school, and is still today as adults. Punishing the paying users with DRM when you KNOW that the pirates are not affected by this bullshit. Punishing the movie goers and dvd buyers with nazi ads is moronic. Grow the fuck up and take a breath of fresh air. Like the indies are figuring out, give us a little bit of respect, and we will fill your pocket book with hard green.
Nuff said. I swear, someone needs to filter out these moronix stories. It feels like they get their stories from a nine year old telling rumors to the geek table at the lunch room. "Hey man, it's official, microsoft is porting halo to linux!!! ZOMG!!! I heard from a bobby who told johnny who told jamal! It must be true!"
That sounds about right because kids know alot about life with all that real world experiance of living on their own, paying their own bills, taking care of their kids. They know adults don't desserve a little bit of "me" time when the kids are in bed after a long day of running around. They know that the world belongs to the kids for the fun stuff, and the adults just get to have the right to earn all the money they blow on the childs 60 dollar games, a car, and college, or whatever else they need. Adults are just there to buy their games and drive them all over town, after that they can go shine their shoes and relax in bed with the wall street journal, dreaming they were as cool as their smart children. So what if it was mom and dad's generation that gave them video games or computers from mom and dad's investment in them through out the years. That we watched the evolution from Pong to Crysis, that we might have even coded our own games on a computer that was as powerful as their calculators (or even on calculators). We are creepy if we keep the same hobby for thirty years. Hell, I still play some of my old atari carts from time to time in the very few limited times I get a break from kids or work, and if my kid told me I was too old to play my atari, I would tell him he's too young to understand the feeling of nostalgia. When I was a kid, I thought it was cool to see someone that had refurbed a pinball machine, and would play it in his garage almost every other night. If it makes him happy, leave him the hell alone.
I can also see them doing what they do to cigarettes and tobacco... putting a sin tax on video games. I wonder what else they will put on the warning labels. Warning playing violent video games will teach you that if you ever decide to play a hero with an armed gunman, you will probably be shot. Or, WARNING: You will aquire excellent hand-eye coordination from playing this game! Warning: Crazy people might do crazy things after they play a video game and/or buy a gun. Keep blaming the video games folks, don't stop to think that maybe, crazy people do crazy things no matter if they watch V for Vendetta, play Call of Duty, or Hello Kitty's Island Adventure. Violence has been in this world long before video games, and will be around long after.
I think that has to do with the fact that your charactor actually reacts to stuff that happens in the game like critical hits/kills.. "Critical bitch!" or "So big... so angry... so dead". It's that stuff that gets you into the charactor you are playing. You can also look at all thing things the npc's say to you to get your goat, and the funny stuff you say. Like halo had that part down pretty good, but then the master chief is a mute when you are actually playing. Call of duty always has you playing a mute aswell.
We know why the tax exists, just look at the open letter to the altair hobbyists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists where microsoft was saying that pretty much all hobbyists were all pirates. To keep this from springing up again, they worked up deals with ibm compatible computer makers to force MS down the customers throat. The difference now being that when they started this, they might have been the only OS for the hardware. Today though is a totally different enviroment thanks to new x86 operating systems popping up everyday. So it is no longer the fact that if they bought the hardware without the software, that they are naturally pirating microsoft product. Dell had a good start going, selling ubuntu and freedos machines of course. Something though I noticed from the places that sell pure linux systems is the price of the systems are not worth it to say, "no microsoft tax was paid", or like with dell, the selection was pretty small. Especially people who want high end performance/gaming laptops. For instance, I bought an asus g60 off newegg for 700usd which had 4 gigs of ram, a 320 gig hard drive, another slot for a hard drive, a 16" screen, a nvidia gtx 260m 1gb dedicated, etc etc etc. If I want the performance hardware I'm forced into the MS tax unless I'm into desktops. I am happy that we aren't forced into paying the tax when buying our own hardware and building, but until laptop parts are more standardized, we will be under their thumb. By the way, if you know a supplier of new, affordable linux/noOS/freedos/unix laptops, let me know, so I can check them out.
That's true. You can use linux and not know how it works, or know how to do some basic things. I have been what I would call a linux end user since 1999. I never used sed, I didn't know what pipes were, I couldn't figure out emacs (I still use nano/pico) and I have never made a perl script. I could do basic things like setup and compile the kernel and some apps, chroot, setup symlinks, shell scripting, setup lamp, run a game server, etc. I could see my failing a redhat certification right now if it was thrown in front of me since it has been so long since I used a redhat system with rpm's and such. And I would probably fail a linux sysadmin test since the most I have ever setup was a basic mail server, a web server and a ftp server. I don't deal with permissions for users on a daily basis, and I would make a terrible sysadmin. Real UNIX, I would fail because I have never used it. The closest I have ever used to that was SunOS on a sparc station. So I wouldn't be overconfidant jumping into that course, and would probably be asking many questions. And it also explains why I am a security guard and not working in IT. I'll keep it my fun hobby though after work.
I used to work for bellsouth/cingular now known as at&t wireless for the 411 service, and most people these days use cell phones only. Cell phones are not listed in the phone book or 411 directory. Personally though, I think that if you haven't quit facebook yet, you probably don't care who gets your personal info to begin with, this isn't the first we heard about our private information being sold. I deleted my profile when the new york times reported on this bullshit last year.
This game was plagued by bugs when I decided to buy it a year or so ago on steam. It was basically unplayable from glitches with the graphics and slowdowns on modern hardware. Hopefully now we can kill 2 birds with one stone, update the graphics bugs and port to other os'es so others won't have to play in wine. It was a good game, and it's pretty cheap on steam (under 10 dollars last I checked) so it could use all the help it can get. Knowing the state it is in now, it will probably be much work, but it will add nicely to the games that went gpl lately, especially since they weren't willing to do any updates. I wish more companies would do the same for games they have no want to update to the latest os'es and just let rott in their IP library.
I have been using broadband to go for quite a little while now, and even scripted up a way to use it in linux in python/pygtk (http://code.google.com/p/vmdialer) and this has been a rollercoaster with them as they keep changing their plans around. First they had an assortment of plans, the 10 dollar plan for when you just need it on a weekend trip, the 20 dollar for 250 megs (the one I used for just sitting in irc at work), the 40 dollar for 1 gig, and the 60 for "unlimited" 5gb. Then they changed it, and it was better for me, where the 20 dollar plan gave you 300 megs. All the plans received slightly raised caps. Then they took away my 20 dollar plan, and made it 40 for "real" unlimited and it was finally a deal really. But since they capped it back down, and I would want to switch back to my 20 dollar plan, it's now gone. I don't think it would be so bad, but they have had so many plan changes recently, and the last plan was actually what one would call a deal, it's upsetting. It kind of feels like when you were a kid, and some person would give you a gift, then take it back saying, "Nevermind, I can't afford to give this to you".
I agree with you Anrego. Soon though people will see with chrome os that you don't need 100 pointless apps to do the same things. 1 small linux kernel and chrome browser, and you can do all the same things without bogging down your memory storage with a bunch of junk, and still getting everything done (at least that's the goal). The way chrome is doing their web apps seems pretty smart to me (it feels more or less like a bookmark, but it does have offline capabilities). So don't give up all hope on computing yet:)
This would almost be an acceptable justification, if not for one detail: They previously promised more then they are now able to deliver. This is bordering on false advertising, made legal only by a line of small print that allows them to change the contract any time they wish. If they don't have the ability to deliver larger amounts of data, they shouldn't have promised customers they would
I agree one hundred percent here. The phone companies show their phones watching streaming videos/sports/etc and such on commercials, then wonder why their customers use it for that?
I'm not in the army anymore, but I still want one of these... Though on a civilian it would probably make me look more like a moron than those guys with bluetooth's in their ears or an ipod nano clipped to my shirt sleeve. This will probably end up on the list of things that would be fun but I won't get (out of embarrasment) along with a night vision system, robotic security cameras, or one of those cool new parrot uavs.
Bitcoin is great and all, but what can you do with it? From what I saw, some people pay cash for your bitcoins if you can even generate any. I personally, after some previous talks here about bitcoin, decided to give it a go, and found the client didn't even do cuda or opencl processing out of the box, that you needed to trust and figure out how to use some 3rd party apps to do such things that were poorly documented. I wish it was as easy to setup as folding@home gpu clients for sure. For wikileaks defense though, I would say they didn't put bitcoin as a donation method because bitcoin is still rather obscure compared to the traditional paypal/google checkout/amazon/bank transfer methods. Maybe not to hardcore geeks, but to the general public.
Man, I must be crazy. I actually liked the Mario movie... the resident evil movies... the street fighter movie... parasite eve... silent hill...
I know the fiction is always way off, but I don't really care. I'd rather watch a movie in the resident evil universe (maybe not akin to the game story at all) than a couple of vampires sucking face, or a couple of wizards discovering puberty.
I used to be into gaming much more than I am now, but I think it was depression. I started figuring, if these online achievments give me a small self worth boost, imagine getting a real life achievement completed. You know... goals. So I set a goal to learn python, downloaded some ebooks, read the online python manuals, coded an applet for my usb modem with pygtk, stuck it on google code and a couple hunded other people downloaded it aswell. IMMD. Right now though my goals are stuff like, "Give my sons a really good christmas", "Keep control of my temper", "get a raise", stuff like that. Maybe other people will be enlightend aswell. I doubt it, but maybe. I mean, I could see video games teaching far less usefull things in people's lives than watering plants or running a cafe, like say, getting headshots and killing zombies. But video games aren't really meant to be teaching tools unless specifically made for that genre. Though I do know, a zombie apocalypse would not last for long with all our experts now. And I kinda feel sorry for any alien bastards that come to a visit.
I wouldn't call it managing, since all I did was install linux (ubuntu and pclinuxos) on a couple of their machines, teach them basic use (installing software, updating, general use) and they then flew with it. I haven't had to give them support now minus a couple questions within the first month for about 2 years. They feel confident enough to do their own maintenance like updates or trying out new software. Far from managing their computers. Every so often I might use their desktop or laptop at their place while we are visiting to show them a new website or funny video on youtube, and the machines are always up to date and working flawlessly. They tell me of a problem they had with an update once that they googled and found the answer on the ubuntu forums, they opened their terminal and did a couple commands and it worked. People need to stop thinking that older people are all morons with computers.
From my experiance, granny's and grandpa's like linux in general (my in-laws) since I'm not having to wipe their machines every 2 weeks from virus infections or worms or malwares. With linux they really don't have to be as careful when loading up websites or installing software (they know how to use synaptic) so now they can trust that they can really use their computer to the full potential of their needs. They can put their family photos on the hard drive, backup the family movies (rip the dvd's the camcorder makes), and not worry if it will all be lost in a couple weeks to 3 months. They can use ubuntu cloud service to backup these things aswell or dropbox since it is integrated. I mean, these people might be a little more open minded after suffering from windows viruses and such for so long and dealing with the fallout several times. But it's reasurring to know that I am not getting called every couple weeks or couple months to fix things. And they act rather content. So all is well.
Hell, with good marketing you don't even need an original idea. You just need some guy with an almost biblical aura to stand on stage and call it magic. Look at apple. Did they invent the smart phone? Did they invent the tablet pc? No, these were things that were on the market for years before they touched the idea. Marketing turned it from blah to a "OMG! I need that thing now!!!" mentality. There are 19-20 year old millionaires now that did as people are doing to this proffessor. Come up with an idea, hire some cheap programmers out of india, throw it on the itunes store. If it was all about the programmers everyone would use *nix. Look at the xbox, technically speaking, not an awesome device. Hype drives those sales (another form of marketing). Technically the games aren't (programming wise) better than say a directx 11 game, but there is much hype behind every halo or call of duty that comes out. Not saying those products are terrible, but far more technically robust (code wise) games exist like Eve online, Everquest 2, Crysis, Metro 2039, etc. I mean those have insane levels of detail, or servers that can hold a few thousand people at a time, or extremely complex scripting engines or lighting engines or whatever. If I were to start a new business I would aim for the better marketing department if I wanted to make my millions.
Slashdot Mirror
... the floodgates have failed.
Is that a crack on the tsunami? Seriously though, sony, nintendo, nissan, honda, toyota, etc have much more to worry about than a hacker cracking their firmware. As much as I don't like sony right now, I hope the best for everyone in japan right now since they are going through a hard time, and I suggest that anyone who has an extra dime kicking around their changepurse to donate to the red cross right now.
But I wish they had the same app in a generic browser or at least a pc/linux/android aswell. Possible uses could include not having to miss a ball game because the wife wants to watch dancing with the stars (not everyone has 2 hdtv's). Or many times I want to watch tv in bed so I do the hulu thing. But it would be nice to see live local news in bed. It seems that al jazeera is the only streaming news source these days. PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong, I would love to find a free streaming local station service.
Before 2005(?) or so I would easily spend 3000 dollars a year on games... probably would buy 100 movies a year and go to the theater. I would "temperarily pirate" games to see if they would work on my pc to see if the game in question would work on my sub-par pc. Basically, I would download it off TPB and see if it ran at a playable framerate and uninstall it, then go to the store and buy it. Most games didn't have demos at that time. Also, since I was single and the economy wasn't really that terrible (I was single?) I didn't mind to spend 50 dollars for an xbox game, especially since I could get demo discs at the game store, or try the game in the gamestop. Well since then I quit console gaming since computer games aren't lagging behind, and I have much more options. But the one thing that is true now is I am not buying anymore dvds. I am not going to the theater anymore. I think the last movie I saw in the theater was the last lord of the rings. Why? I pay 20-30 dollars to go to the movie to only see once, and I am getting scolded about piracy before the movie starts ("You wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't download a hamburger" nonsense), leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Why the hell are you telling me about piracy when I BOUGHT THE DAMN MOVIE TICKET. You don't need to be telling me about piracy, I obviously paid for my ticket and popcorn, so shut your damn pie hole, stop wasting my time and show me my entertainment I paid for, not some damn public service announcement about how little money you make. I bought 100 dvd's a year, until these unskipable ads started showing up, and the same exact ads I saw in the theater about not downloading hamburgers, and I said, "fuck it, no more dvd's I guess". I don't download movies, I don't even pirate games temperarily anymore. I just buy on steam after playing the demo off steam. I watch movies on hulu, or my back catalog of dvds. I haven't even bought any music or downloaded any other than jamendo (creative commons) stuff in a few years. Other than that, I might listen to pandora radio or the local radio station. Like the middle eastern countries are learning right now, if you oppress your people/customers and think you have them by the jewels, don't cry when they strike back with their fists or wallets. We are not sheep, we are your paycheck. And if you like to continue to recieve your paycheck, start working for us, instead of against us. Now there are some pirates out there that will pirate because they will pirate. They will be there forever. Just like thieves will and CEO's that walk off with a bunch of the companies money. But STOP PUNISHING THE INNOCENT for the mistakes of others. Mass punishment was stupid in school, and is still today as adults. Punishing the paying users with DRM when you KNOW that the pirates are not affected by this bullshit. Punishing the movie goers and dvd buyers with nazi ads is moronic. Grow the fuck up and take a breath of fresh air. Like the indies are figuring out, give us a little bit of respect, and we will fill your pocket book with hard green.
Nuff said. I swear, someone needs to filter out these moronix stories. It feels like they get their stories from a nine year old telling rumors to the geek table at the lunch room. "Hey man, it's official, microsoft is porting halo to linux!!! ZOMG!!! I heard from a bobby who told johnny who told jamal! It must be true!"
That sounds about right because kids know alot about life with all that real world experiance of living on their own, paying their own bills, taking care of their kids. They know adults don't desserve a little bit of "me" time when the kids are in bed after a long day of running around. They know that the world belongs to the kids for the fun stuff, and the adults just get to have the right to earn all the money they blow on the childs 60 dollar games, a car, and college, or whatever else they need. Adults are just there to buy their games and drive them all over town, after that they can go shine their shoes and relax in bed with the wall street journal, dreaming they were as cool as their smart children. So what if it was mom and dad's generation that gave them video games or computers from mom and dad's investment in them through out the years. That we watched the evolution from Pong to Crysis, that we might have even coded our own games on a computer that was as powerful as their calculators (or even on calculators). We are creepy if we keep the same hobby for thirty years. Hell, I still play some of my old atari carts from time to time in the very few limited times I get a break from kids or work, and if my kid told me I was too old to play my atari, I would tell him he's too young to understand the feeling of nostalgia. When I was a kid, I thought it was cool to see someone that had refurbed a pinball machine, and would play it in his garage almost every other night. If it makes him happy, leave him the hell alone.
I can also see them doing what they do to cigarettes and tobacco... putting a sin tax on video games. I wonder what else they will put on the warning labels. Warning playing violent video games will teach you that if you ever decide to play a hero with an armed gunman, you will probably be shot. Or, WARNING: You will aquire excellent hand-eye coordination from playing this game! Warning: Crazy people might do crazy things after they play a video game and/or buy a gun. Keep blaming the video games folks, don't stop to think that maybe, crazy people do crazy things no matter if they watch V for Vendetta, play Call of Duty, or Hello Kitty's Island Adventure. Violence has been in this world long before video games, and will be around long after.
I think that has to do with the fact that your charactor actually reacts to stuff that happens in the game like critical hits/kills.. "Critical bitch!" or "So big... so angry... so dead". It's that stuff that gets you into the charactor you are playing. You can also look at all thing things the npc's say to you to get your goat, and the funny stuff you say. Like halo had that part down pretty good, but then the master chief is a mute when you are actually playing. Call of duty always has you playing a mute aswell.
We know why the tax exists, just look at the open letter to the altair hobbyists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists where microsoft was saying that pretty much all hobbyists were all pirates. To keep this from springing up again, they worked up deals with ibm compatible computer makers to force MS down the customers throat. The difference now being that when they started this, they might have been the only OS for the hardware. Today though is a totally different enviroment thanks to new x86 operating systems popping up everyday. So it is no longer the fact that if they bought the hardware without the software, that they are naturally pirating microsoft product. Dell had a good start going, selling ubuntu and freedos machines of course. Something though I noticed from the places that sell pure linux systems is the price of the systems are not worth it to say, "no microsoft tax was paid", or like with dell, the selection was pretty small. Especially people who want high end performance/gaming laptops. For instance, I bought an asus g60 off newegg for 700usd which had 4 gigs of ram, a 320 gig hard drive, another slot for a hard drive, a 16" screen, a nvidia gtx 260m 1gb dedicated, etc etc etc. If I want the performance hardware I'm forced into the MS tax unless I'm into desktops. I am happy that we aren't forced into paying the tax when buying our own hardware and building, but until laptop parts are more standardized, we will be under their thumb. By the way, if you know a supplier of new, affordable linux/noOS/freedos/unix laptops, let me know, so I can check them out.
I'm waiting for a story of a husband using that site, then finding his wife as his local cheating wife he should hook up with.
That's true. You can use linux and not know how it works, or know how to do some basic things. I have been what I would call a linux end user since 1999. I never used sed, I didn't know what pipes were, I couldn't figure out emacs (I still use nano/pico) and I have never made a perl script. I could do basic things like setup and compile the kernel and some apps, chroot, setup symlinks, shell scripting, setup lamp, run a game server, etc. I could see my failing a redhat certification right now if it was thrown in front of me since it has been so long since I used a redhat system with rpm's and such. And I would probably fail a linux sysadmin test since the most I have ever setup was a basic mail server, a web server and a ftp server. I don't deal with permissions for users on a daily basis, and I would make a terrible sysadmin. Real UNIX, I would fail because I have never used it. The closest I have ever used to that was SunOS on a sparc station. So I wouldn't be overconfidant jumping into that course, and would probably be asking many questions. And it also explains why I am a security guard and not working in IT. I'll keep it my fun hobby though after work.
I used to work for bellsouth/cingular now known as at&t wireless for the 411 service, and most people these days use cell phones only. Cell phones are not listed in the phone book or 411 directory. Personally though, I think that if you haven't quit facebook yet, you probably don't care who gets your personal info to begin with, this isn't the first we heard about our private information being sold. I deleted my profile when the new york times reported on this bullshit last year.
This game was plagued by bugs when I decided to buy it a year or so ago on steam. It was basically unplayable from glitches with the graphics and slowdowns on modern hardware. Hopefully now we can kill 2 birds with one stone, update the graphics bugs and port to other os'es so others won't have to play in wine. It was a good game, and it's pretty cheap on steam (under 10 dollars last I checked) so it could use all the help it can get. Knowing the state it is in now, it will probably be much work, but it will add nicely to the games that went gpl lately, especially since they weren't willing to do any updates. I wish more companies would do the same for games they have no want to update to the latest os'es and just let rott in their IP library.
I have been using broadband to go for quite a little while now, and even scripted up a way to use it in linux in python/pygtk (http://code.google.com/p/vmdialer) and this has been a rollercoaster with them as they keep changing their plans around. First they had an assortment of plans, the 10 dollar plan for when you just need it on a weekend trip, the 20 dollar for 250 megs (the one I used for just sitting in irc at work), the 40 dollar for 1 gig, and the 60 for "unlimited" 5gb. Then they changed it, and it was better for me, where the 20 dollar plan gave you 300 megs. All the plans received slightly raised caps. Then they took away my 20 dollar plan, and made it 40 for "real" unlimited and it was finally a deal really. But since they capped it back down, and I would want to switch back to my 20 dollar plan, it's now gone. I don't think it would be so bad, but they have had so many plan changes recently, and the last plan was actually what one would call a deal, it's upsetting. It kind of feels like when you were a kid, and some person would give you a gift, then take it back saying, "Nevermind, I can't afford to give this to you".
I agree with you Anrego. Soon though people will see with chrome os that you don't need 100 pointless apps to do the same things. 1 small linux kernel and chrome browser, and you can do all the same things without bogging down your memory storage with a bunch of junk, and still getting everything done (at least that's the goal). The way chrome is doing their web apps seems pretty smart to me (it feels more or less like a bookmark, but it does have offline capabilities). So don't give up all hope on computing yet :)
This would almost be an acceptable justification, if not for one detail: They previously promised more then they are now able to deliver. This is bordering on false advertising, made legal only by a line of small print that allows them to change the contract any time they wish. If they don't have the ability to deliver larger amounts of data, they shouldn't have promised customers they would
I agree one hundred percent here. The phone companies show their phones watching streaming videos/sports/etc and such on commercials, then wonder why their customers use it for that?
I'm not in the army anymore, but I still want one of these... Though on a civilian it would probably make me look more like a moron than those guys with bluetooth's in their ears or an ipod nano clipped to my shirt sleeve. This will probably end up on the list of things that would be fun but I won't get (out of embarrasment) along with a night vision system, robotic security cameras, or one of those cool new parrot uavs.
Bitcoin is great and all, but what can you do with it? From what I saw, some people pay cash for your bitcoins if you can even generate any. I personally, after some previous talks here about bitcoin, decided to give it a go, and found the client didn't even do cuda or opencl processing out of the box, that you needed to trust and figure out how to use some 3rd party apps to do such things that were poorly documented. I wish it was as easy to setup as folding@home gpu clients for sure. For wikileaks defense though, I would say they didn't put bitcoin as a donation method because bitcoin is still rather obscure compared to the traditional paypal/google checkout/amazon/bank transfer methods. Maybe not to hardcore geeks, but to the general public.
Man, I must be crazy. I actually liked the Mario movie... the resident evil movies... the street fighter movie... parasite eve... silent hill... I know the fiction is always way off, but I don't really care. I'd rather watch a movie in the resident evil universe (maybe not akin to the game story at all) than a couple of vampires sucking face, or a couple of wizards discovering puberty.
Chrome, god kills another red panda?
I used to be into gaming much more than I am now, but I think it was depression. I started figuring, if these online achievments give me a small self worth boost, imagine getting a real life achievement completed. You know... goals. So I set a goal to learn python, downloaded some ebooks, read the online python manuals, coded an applet for my usb modem with pygtk, stuck it on google code and a couple hunded other people downloaded it aswell. IMMD. Right now though my goals are stuff like, "Give my sons a really good christmas", "Keep control of my temper", "get a raise", stuff like that. Maybe other people will be enlightend aswell. I doubt it, but maybe. I mean, I could see video games teaching far less usefull things in people's lives than watering plants or running a cafe, like say, getting headshots and killing zombies. But video games aren't really meant to be teaching tools unless specifically made for that genre. Though I do know, a zombie apocalypse would not last for long with all our experts now. And I kinda feel sorry for any alien bastards that come to a visit.
I wouldn't call it managing, since all I did was install linux (ubuntu and pclinuxos) on a couple of their machines, teach them basic use (installing software, updating, general use) and they then flew with it. I haven't had to give them support now minus a couple questions within the first month for about 2 years. They feel confident enough to do their own maintenance like updates or trying out new software. Far from managing their computers. Every so often I might use their desktop or laptop at their place while we are visiting to show them a new website or funny video on youtube, and the machines are always up to date and working flawlessly. They tell me of a problem they had with an update once that they googled and found the answer on the ubuntu forums, they opened their terminal and did a couple commands and it worked. People need to stop thinking that older people are all morons with computers.
From my experiance, granny's and grandpa's like linux in general (my in-laws) since I'm not having to wipe their machines every 2 weeks from virus infections or worms or malwares. With linux they really don't have to be as careful when loading up websites or installing software (they know how to use synaptic) so now they can trust that they can really use their computer to the full potential of their needs. They can put their family photos on the hard drive, backup the family movies (rip the dvd's the camcorder makes), and not worry if it will all be lost in a couple weeks to 3 months. They can use ubuntu cloud service to backup these things aswell or dropbox since it is integrated. I mean, these people might be a little more open minded after suffering from windows viruses and such for so long and dealing with the fallout several times. But it's reasurring to know that I am not getting called every couple weeks or couple months to fix things. And they act rather content. So all is well.
Hell, with good marketing you don't even need an original idea. You just need some guy with an almost biblical aura to stand on stage and call it magic. Look at apple. Did they invent the smart phone? Did they invent the tablet pc? No, these were things that were on the market for years before they touched the idea. Marketing turned it from blah to a "OMG! I need that thing now!!!" mentality. There are 19-20 year old millionaires now that did as people are doing to this proffessor. Come up with an idea, hire some cheap programmers out of india, throw it on the itunes store. If it was all about the programmers everyone would use *nix. Look at the xbox, technically speaking, not an awesome device. Hype drives those sales (another form of marketing). Technically the games aren't (programming wise) better than say a directx 11 game, but there is much hype behind every halo or call of duty that comes out. Not saying those products are terrible, but far more technically robust (code wise) games exist like Eve online, Everquest 2, Crysis, Metro 2039, etc. I mean those have insane levels of detail, or servers that can hold a few thousand people at a time, or extremely complex scripting engines or lighting engines or whatever. If I were to start a new business I would aim for the better marketing department if I wanted to make my millions.
That helped much, thanks. ^_^