I see paddle wheels fell into disfavor with ships around 1850 or so, having been replaced by the vastly superior propellor; why are there aeronautics engineers contemplating using them on airplanes in the 21st century?
For the next year, or so, go to Best Buy, tell someone you're considering buying something, and then relate what happened to you, and say you'll only buy on the condition that they'll allow you to open the packaging to verify that the contents are complete and accurate.
Then, once the box is open, and they can no longer sell it to someone else as new, tell them you've "changed your mind" or "have to think about it". Then go to Circuit City, Fry's, or whatever, and buy it there instead if you really want it.
Do that at least once a week, or as often as you buy stuff.
I can only hope, that somewhere on their intranet, they've got a subdomain called ct. Please please please make it so if anyone reading this has the power.
If he wins, then it does not matter what illegal actions he has taken to win. The last two elections have established this sufficiently in legal precedence.
Weird, politeness and reasoned discourse on slashdot. A first post, of a sort;)
Well, I do think I would agree with you that it would be dystopia if the only way to have fun were to go out and pay for the privilege to ride a roller coaster, and bicycling wasn't available to anyone because it was being suppressed by the roller coaster tycoons. That would suck.
But I do fear that there won't be a sustainable economy for bicycles if they're so easy to steal that no one buys them, and after a while no one bothers to make them anymore. Valve's solution to that problem, Steam, seems to be working pretty well for them... but I don't like the phoning home and the product activation, and I think it borders on dystopia.
And as of relatively recently we have "console exclusive" games which by all rights ought to be "bicycle" business model games, but are distributed digitally using the subscriber service model -- take Pac Man Championship Edition for example, a FANTASTIC game that I would LOVE to have, but I refuse to buy an XBox 360 due to its quality control issues and the fact that it's manufactured and sold by Microsoft. Pac Man is a part of video game culture's heritage, and by all rights PMCE ought to be ported to every platform that it can run on, just as the original Pac Man was, and I'd gladly pay money for a copy that I can *own* and play on the platform of my choice, but no, it's an XBox Live exclusive, meaning not only do I have to buy an XBox to play it, I'd have to subscribe to the download service as well! All to play a game that ought to be playable on a decent smartphone. It's sad.
It could always be that violent crime is down because all the criminals are in jail. I kindof doubt that, though. I think it's because the criminals are in the White House, and have been extremely effective in outsourcing violent crime to the Middle East.
Totally. When playing Pong against a garden gnome back in '76, it was not very challenging. It only returned a very small number of my serves, and played an insultingly stupid strategy of "playing dead", as though it would lull me into complacency and then surprise me at some point. Well, I kept playing and playing, but it never did come to life. It's almost as though the AI was missing a procedure call to move the paddle, or something.
Perhaps, but I think this "dystopian" model has a strong business case, as well -- people love riding roller coasters, but no one goes out and buys a roller coaster. They just use roller coasting services provided by a company when they want to enjoy a roller coaster ride. So we'll have some games that are like roller coasters, and some games that are like, say, bicycles, which people can own. Games that have an important network element to them and rely on a stable, managed network community, or that have tall hardware requirements (like a VR machine or something wearable, too expensive for the average consumer to consider owning) will gravitate toward the roller coaster model, and simpler games that don't have these requirements will gravitate toward the bicycle model.
So don't crack the encryption; just copy the encrypted text, and let the authorized decryption device do its job with your perfectly legitimate encrypted backup copy.
That's OK; in another generation or so, physical media will be a thing of the past, and instead of shipping a "thing" that you use to install/load the game, everything will be digitally distributed over broadband, "software as a service" will be the business model, and you'll either rent playing time or have a monthly subscription fee. Backups will be limited to your account data, and will be automatic as the information will be housed on their datacenter, but you won't truly own the data beyond the right to access it and modify it through in-game actions; the service vendor will reserve the rights to alter the binaries at their discretion for any reason, and once they push updates the game-that-was will no longer be available for anyone to play. There will be no replay option once they determine that a game is no longer profitable enough to continue serving, and there will be no right of resale, because there will be nothing to sell -- there'll be a black market for selling achievements such as special items a la the Everquest economy, but that's about it.
Well, it's partly a subjective matter, I thought Jaguar was better than Windows. But it's indisputable that since XP was released, Apple's released 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 while Microsoft sputtered along with Vista development, shedding features and extending delivery dates by years and years. This notion that 10.5 isn't out soon enough to capitalize on Microsoft inadequacy is pretty silly in that light. Apple's been doing a lot of things since Microsoft released XP, and mostly rightly.
First, Apple doesn't need to release Leopard to stay ahead of Microsoft or one-up them. OS X 10.2 was already better than Vista, and was better than Windows XP for that matter.
Second, until Apple starts selling OS X for generic x86 hardware, they're not competing directly with microsoft; they're selling a competing platform. That OS X now runs on Intel isn't relevant; it's still locked down to run only on approved, official Apple-branded Intel hardware. They're not competing with Microsoft for a share of the desktop/notebook *OS* market; they're competing with Dell, HP, Asus, eMachines, etc. for the desktop/notebook *platform* market.
Apple sells complete solutions, not operating systems. The day Apple decides to go toe-to-toe against Microsoft and releases an OS X that you can install on any OEM or homebuilt x86 box, then we'll see how they compete against Microsoft. My guess is, provided they have the driver support, they'll beat Microsoft silly, no contest. The driver support is, however, a major issue, and a non-trivial one.
*Stellar* black holes are black holes that originate from the aftermath of a single star going supernova.
Super-massive black holes like what exist at the center of a galaxy don't have a well understood origin, but it is supposed that if a black hole is created in a region of space with a great deal of matter in the vicinity, it may gobble up a lot of it, adding to its mass until it becomes super-massive.
A stellar black hole that's so big it shouldn't be possible for it to have been created by the usual supernova, and in a region of space sufficiently vacant to rule out the gobbling theory, is what is being puzzled over.
Slashdot Mirror
I see paddle wheels fell into disfavor with ships around 1850 or so, having been replaced by the vastly superior propellor; why are there aeronautics engineers contemplating using them on airplanes in the 21st century?
Plus, you can store more of your crap on there.
For the next year, or so, go to Best Buy, tell someone you're considering buying something, and then relate what happened to you, and say you'll only buy on the condition that they'll allow you to open the packaging to verify that the contents are complete and accurate.
Then, once the box is open, and they can no longer sell it to someone else as new, tell them you've "changed your mind" or "have to think about it". Then go to Circuit City, Fry's, or whatever, and buy it there instead if you really want it.
Do that at least once a week, or as often as you buy stuff.
I can only hope, that somewhere on their intranet, they've got a subdomain called ct. Please please please make it so if anyone reading this has the power.
It really IS catching up with Vista!
If he wins, then it does not matter what illegal actions he has taken to win. The last two elections have established this sufficiently in legal precedence.
That's the remains of a space station.
Are they out of "beta" now?
Weird, politeness and reasoned discourse on slashdot. A first post, of a sort;)
Well, I do think I would agree with you that it would be dystopia if the only way to have fun were to go out and pay for the privilege to ride a roller coaster, and bicycling wasn't available to anyone because it was being suppressed by the roller coaster tycoons. That would suck.
But I do fear that there won't be a sustainable economy for bicycles if they're so easy to steal that no one buys them, and after a while no one bothers to make them anymore. Valve's solution to that problem, Steam, seems to be working pretty well for them... but I don't like the phoning home and the product activation, and I think it borders on dystopia.
And as of relatively recently we have "console exclusive" games which by all rights ought to be "bicycle" business model games, but are distributed digitally using the subscriber service model -- take Pac Man Championship Edition for example, a FANTASTIC game that I would LOVE to have, but I refuse to buy an XBox 360 due to its quality control issues and the fact that it's manufactured and sold by Microsoft. Pac Man is a part of video game culture's heritage, and by all rights PMCE ought to be ported to every platform that it can run on, just as the original Pac Man was, and I'd gladly pay money for a copy that I can *own* and play on the platform of my choice, but no, it's an XBox Live exclusive, meaning not only do I have to buy an XBox to play it, I'd have to subscribe to the download service as well! All to play a game that ought to be playable on a decent smartphone. It's sad.
It could always be that violent crime is down because all the criminals are in jail. I kindof doubt that, though. I think it's because the criminals are in the White House, and have been extremely effective in outsourcing violent crime to the Middle East.
Totally. When playing Pong against a garden gnome back in '76, it was not very challenging. It only returned a very small number of my serves, and played an insultingly stupid strategy of "playing dead", as though it would lull me into complacency and then surprise me at some point. Well, I kept playing and playing, but it never did come to life. It's almost as though the AI was missing a procedure call to move the paddle, or something.
Perhaps, but I think this "dystopian" model has a strong business case, as well -- people love riding roller coasters, but no one goes out and buys a roller coaster. They just use roller coasting services provided by a company when they want to enjoy a roller coaster ride. So we'll have some games that are like roller coasters, and some games that are like, say, bicycles, which people can own. Games that have an important network element to them and rely on a stable, managed network community, or that have tall hardware requirements (like a VR machine or something wearable, too expensive for the average consumer to consider owning) will gravitate toward the roller coaster model, and simpler games that don't have these requirements will gravitate toward the bicycle model.
So don't crack the encryption; just copy the encrypted text, and let the authorized decryption device do its job with your perfectly legitimate encrypted backup copy.
That's OK; in another generation or so, physical media will be a thing of the past, and instead of shipping a "thing" that you use to install/load the game, everything will be digitally distributed over broadband, "software as a service" will be the business model, and you'll either rent playing time or have a monthly subscription fee. Backups will be limited to your account data, and will be automatic as the information will be housed on their datacenter, but you won't truly own the data beyond the right to access it and modify it through in-game actions; the service vendor will reserve the rights to alter the binaries at their discretion for any reason, and once they push updates the game-that-was will no longer be available for anyone to play. There will be no replay option once they determine that a game is no longer profitable enough to continue serving, and there will be no right of resale, because there will be nothing to sell -- there'll be a black market for selling achievements such as special items a la the Everquest economy, but that's about it.
The original pong did not have a CPU; it was made out of discrete logic circuits soldered together on a logic board.
What metric is being used here? Fun-per-pixel? Fun-per-Hertz? I guess if you go by that standard, Pong is the best videogame ever.
Oh! Oh! I know! How about incorporating kernel-level spellchecking?
Well, it's partly a subjective matter, I thought Jaguar was better than Windows. But it's indisputable that since XP was released, Apple's released 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 while Microsoft sputtered along with Vista development, shedding features and extending delivery dates by years and years. This notion that 10.5 isn't out soon enough to capitalize on Microsoft inadequacy is pretty silly in that light. Apple's been doing a lot of things since Microsoft released XP, and mostly rightly.
Indeed.
Also, I can't wait to "overclock" one of these so it can do actual damage to a person. Then we'll finally see who's a "hardcore" gamer.
First, Apple doesn't need to release Leopard to stay ahead of Microsoft or one-up them. OS X 10.2 was already better than Vista, and was better than Windows XP for that matter.
Second, until Apple starts selling OS X for generic x86 hardware, they're not competing directly with microsoft; they're selling a competing platform. That OS X now runs on Intel isn't relevant; it's still locked down to run only on approved, official Apple-branded Intel hardware. They're not competing with Microsoft for a share of the desktop/notebook *OS* market; they're competing with Dell, HP, Asus, eMachines, etc. for the desktop/notebook *platform* market.
Apple sells complete solutions, not operating systems. The day Apple decides to go toe-to-toe against Microsoft and releases an OS X that you can install on any OEM or homebuilt x86 box, then we'll see how they compete against Microsoft. My guess is, provided they have the driver support, they'll beat Microsoft silly, no contest. The driver support is, however, a major issue, and a non-trivial one.
*Stellar* black holes are black holes that originate from the aftermath of a single star going supernova.
Super-massive black holes like what exist at the center of a galaxy don't have a well understood origin, but it is supposed that if a black hole is created in a region of space with a great deal of matter in the vicinity, it may gobble up a lot of it, adding to its mass until it becomes super-massive.
A stellar black hole that's so big it shouldn't be possible for it to have been created by the usual supernova, and in a region of space sufficiently vacant to rule out the gobbling theory, is what is being puzzled over.
Spam Probably Ain't an acronyM.
You've got to be kidding, that's going to end the energy crisis? Scale it up about 10,000x, maybe.
...fucker.