The reason we're "cushioned" from the financial nonsense is because there isn't much room to go lower. Wages are crap, yet the nation is inextricably dependent on IT services. They can't pay us any less, and they can't fire us - they've already outsourced all the jobs they could.
The title may as well be "Wage slaves cushioned from US economy downturn". The only reason an IT guy gets a raise is because his supervisor's been getting too many phone calls checking references.
Hypocrisy is how the most obnoxious nation in the world has demonized the oldest forms of entertainment, and is now whining because those demons are out of control.
Killing is fine if it's in the name of "god", fraud is fine if you call it "banking", but nudity will not be tolerated in any form, unless you cover your nipples.
What the fuck kind of warped mind came up with that ? The mindset is most definitely not in line with the majority of Americans I've known.
It's not so much about privacy as it is about freedom.
What you do in your private time is your business, not that of the admissions staff, your employer or anyone you don't explicitly include in that private life. My boss/coworkers know full well I'm a (part-time) party hound, but when I'm on the clock I'm delivering 100%. If either one of them were to criticize me over my facebook-documented weekend boozecapades, I'd give them an earful! Conversely, I'd drag my boss out to the peelers and drink him under the table, were he that kind of fellow.
Put it this way: replace drinking with any other hobby or pastime, like canoeing. Some people really enjoy canoeing, others think it's a mindless unproductive waste of time and money. People that enjoy it, often do it all the time, and post photos of their exploits on facebook. Should a bright kid be denied entry to college because the dean of admissions doesn't like canoes ?
Yep I agree... at least where I'm from, people start partying at age 15-16, so that by the time they're doing their masters degree, they have not only passed the binge phase but they also have developed their social skills. By the time they're legal and hit the bars, they're hopefully experienced enough to stay out of trouble. It's far better to make your first mistakes in the safety of a friend's living room or cottage, than to puke all over some guy's dick in the back of a bar then spend the night in a holding cell for trying to score dope off a narc.
I'm not saying everyone needs to be a drugged-up drunken whore, but there should be more tolerance and understanding of the process. Prohibition only makes the problem worse, and uptight admissions officers / employers / parents are sending out the wrong message.
Is it alright to party ? Hell yes, just be reasonable about it and don't show up to school/work intoxicated. How can teens learn to be reasonable if they don't party at all ?
If you're already partying and binge drinking in high school, I can't imagine yourself making a dramatic voluntary change in college.
If you're not partying by the time you hit college, I'd say there's something wrong. Binge drinking ain't for everyone, but everyone should at least have a bit of fun in life.
If holding a beer in a photo is an excuse to consider someone "irresponsible", well then I got two middle fingers with Dan Saracino's name on them.
The teenage years are about making connections, learning one's limits and getting ready for the rest of your long repetitive bullshit life. I'd much rather have someone who partied in their teens, got their fill and settled down in the later years, than a goody-two-shoes that's going to be consumed with jealousy and go apeshit in their early thirties.
The whole US college system makes less and less sense with each passing year. That's where they're breeding all this passive-aggressive nonsense that transpires in every business transaction, every press release, every visit to the doctor. I don't care if a kid is a freaking genius, if he/she doesn't have a good life balance they won't get much accomplished in the end.
my dream would be for an automated travel system that addresses 90-99% of everybody's needs
My dream is for every single office job on the planet to convert to telecommuting. Bye bye rush hour, bye bye pretentious volvo-driving she-devils and their daily fender-benders.
I like the idea of an idiot test to keep the uninformed out of the ballot booths, but I can't think of any ways to do it that wouldn't cause more problems than it solves.
Idiot test: What do you get if you multiply six by nine ?
How many reps do you know who are H2G2 fans ? Problem solved.
A big ol' yes/no for each candidate ? Tally them up, and whoever gets the most "Yes" answers wins ?
That would be slightly more equitable than the current system, but it'd be hell to tally up, especially considering half the country can't count, and the other half is tallied by Diebold machines:P
Careful what you wish for... if things keep getting uglier down there, people just might move. There are plenty of other countries that treat their citizens like criminals, deny them basic rights, detain them indefinitely without a trial (nor formal arrest).
Usually people are trying to get out of those countries, which is why the US and Canada presently enjoy a very diverse cultural landscape. People over here are used to the easy life. If that goes sour, they will tolerate much less abuse than our Asian and middle-eastern friends, and will head straight for Western Europe.
20 years from now, you might hear the French and Germans complain "these American immigrants are stealing our jobs!"
I'm going to stick my neck out again, it's my duty as resident/. asshole.
I say let AIG fail. Let the dominoes fall. It's the slap in the face the world needs to get back on the wagon. Treat the banking industry like a drug addict - let it bottom out and come back crawling for mercy.
We will suffer in the short term, but we will prosper in the long term.
Banking is a game. There are a few rules (laws), people keep score with money.
The problem is the players are like 3-year olds, making up new rules as they go to favor their playing style. Those new rules resulted in a very volatile banking environment, and now we're seeing that game collapse because everyone's been cheating.
What responsible people should have done is stop playing. Withdraw your funds/investments and put them somewhere you can trust. Banks are no longer worth your trust, and they haven't been for a long time, simply because they loan out more than they actually have.
If you and I were to start loaning more money than we have, then fail to pay up, we'd either wind up behind bars, or big ol' Jimbob would come break our legs. Why should banks be exempt from the basic laws of mathematics ?
The whole financial "industry" needs a reboot. None of this funny money, we need to go back to a cooperative model where the rich lend to the poor, and risk factors are properly considered... none of this subprime bullshit. Back to sanity.
If that means we'll have to stop quoting imaginary trillion-dollar quarterly figures, tough tits.
I downloaded it on my work laptop (XP) and the thing I didn't like is that it 1) changed my resolution 2) started up full screen immediately.
Well... it's a media center, not a media player. It's designed to be used as your shell, just as you would on the Xbox itself. Compare with MythTV and others like it.
Part of the problem is there's little or no motivation to release a free SDK (e.g. cleanroom reimplementation), because a modded Xbox is an "illegitimate" platform - you're already breaking some backwards law by modding it, you might as well break another backwards law by releasing unlicensed binaries.
I'm not fond of legally-encumbered distribution, because frankly it's none of Microsoft's business what Joe Random sticks on the internet. The SDK should be open in the first place. It's not like M$ is going to stick XBMC on a disc, draw up a pretty box and stock it at Best Buy...
3. They're lying when they say it's being cancelled. They will bring out new "surprise" ads and everyone will feign approval.
Seriously... the nonsense of canceling the ad kind of fits the attitude of this marketing campaign: "Windows Vista - It will turn you into a babbling imbecile"
Suing to quash hostile opinions is very much a Scientology trademark. Well... that and starting fist fights while wearing Guy Fawkes masks:P Sneaky bastards!
While everyone else is lying about their health, I'm going to be brutally honest:
1. I'm 300lbs 2. I imbibe a gallon or two of beer/liquor each week 3. Cocaine's a hell of a drug 4. Nethack, baby!
All that to say: there is absolutely no unique correlation between gaming habits and fitness. You could have any hobby/pastime in the world, if you overdo it, it can be bad for your health. If you knit 23 hours a day, you're (hopefully) gonne die. If you run marathons 23 hours a day, you're definitely gonna die.
Hell, if you jerk off 23 hours a day, you're gonna die (and be featured on CSI:Miami).
Someone needs to lay the fuck off of gamers. Just because a bunch of nutso kids in Columbine liked to play Doom, doesn't mean gamers should be treated as odd little lab rats.
There wasn't much in terms of technical specs in TFA. 6 cores, 16MB cache, anything else? Clock speed? 16MB of L2? L3? FSB? DDR(n)? (Though this is probably more up to the MB manufacturer) Why are they moving the memory controller off silicon? That in itself seems like a step backwards.
Pentiums have never had an on-die MMU in the first place, they're actually doing that for the upcoming Nehalem. AMD has used an on-die MMU since the Athlon 64, and while it certainly helps squeeze more efficiency out of the system, the faster clocked bus on Intel rigs often made up for the theoretical performance gap.
The Clock speed was omitted from the article, but the Xeon 7400 is clocked at 2.6ghz. That's actually pretty decent for a Xeon, they don't go as high as the mainstream processors because they're made to be installed in a puny rack chassis with piss-poor airflow.
Every other graphics blog talks about Larrabee like it's going to take your baby away. It won't. It will suck, just like every other Intel graphics chip. The problem isn't that Intel can't make fast chips, it's that they don't have the graphics experience to come close to ATI and NVidia.
Intel is good at cheap, "good enough" graphics for office machines - the freebie that does the bare minimum, which satisfies 95% of all users out there. That's where they should stay. It's a good market for them, an excellent candidate for chipset/CPU integration, and an area the other players don't put too much focus on. Yeah, you can get NVidia/ATI graphics onboard, and they're decent, but it's not their bread and butter.
If anything, I fully expect the GPU to become more important over time, but it would be nice to have 100% complete software fallback, allowing any game or app to run on any hardware. You might get a slideshow with onboard video, but it should still be allowed to run. None of this DirectX hardware versioning - it defeats the point of having a middleware API in the first place! It would also let developers code whatever effects they want, allowing hardware to accelerate them if present, while still being every bit as stunning on software emulation - just slower!
It would mean an end to "DirectX 10 effects", which I think is a damned good thing! If anything, DX10 has shown us its tricks are nothing special, all of them feasible with DX9 primitives, just a little more of them. That sort of artificial feature bloat would be a thing of the past with the adoption of a general-purpose graphics programming language.
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The reason we're "cushioned" from the financial nonsense is because there isn't much room to go lower. Wages are crap, yet the nation is inextricably dependent on IT services. They can't pay us any less, and they can't fire us - they've already outsourced all the jobs they could.
The title may as well be "Wage slaves cushioned from US economy downturn". The only reason an IT guy gets a raise is because his supervisor's been getting too many phone calls checking references.
Nah, he's far below /b/tard level. /b/tards at least know to post Anon.
This kid is your typical attention-whoring suburban fuckup. He's probably going to grow up to be a nice little volvo-driving banker.
Hypocrisy is how the most obnoxious nation in the world has demonized the oldest forms of entertainment, and is now whining because those demons are out of control.
Killing is fine if it's in the name of "god", fraud is fine if you call it "banking", but nudity will not be tolerated in any form, unless you cover your nipples.
What the fuck kind of warped mind came up with that ? The mindset is most definitely not in line with the majority of Americans I've known.
It's not so much about privacy as it is about freedom.
What you do in your private time is your business, not that of the admissions staff, your employer or anyone you don't explicitly include in that private life. My boss/coworkers know full well I'm a (part-time) party hound, but when I'm on the clock I'm delivering 100%. If either one of them were to criticize me over my facebook-documented weekend boozecapades, I'd give them an earful! Conversely, I'd drag my boss out to the peelers and drink him under the table, were he that kind of fellow.
Put it this way: replace drinking with any other hobby or pastime, like canoeing. Some people really enjoy canoeing, others think it's a mindless unproductive waste of time and money. People that enjoy it, often do it all the time, and post photos of their exploits on facebook. Should a bright kid be denied entry to college because the dean of admissions doesn't like canoes ?
Yep I agree... at least where I'm from, people start partying at age 15-16, so that by the time they're doing their masters degree, they have not only passed the binge phase but they also have developed their social skills. By the time they're legal and hit the bars, they're hopefully experienced enough to stay out of trouble. It's far better to make your first mistakes in the safety of a friend's living room or cottage, than to puke all over some guy's dick in the back of a bar then spend the night in a holding cell for trying to score dope off a narc.
I'm not saying everyone needs to be a drugged-up drunken whore, but there should be more tolerance and understanding of the process. Prohibition only makes the problem worse, and uptight admissions officers / employers / parents are sending out the wrong message.
Is it alright to party ? Hell yes, just be reasonable about it and don't show up to school/work intoxicated. How can teens learn to be reasonable if they don't party at all ?
If you're already partying and binge drinking in high school, I can't imagine yourself making a dramatic voluntary change in college.
If you're not partying by the time you hit college, I'd say there's something wrong. Binge drinking ain't for everyone, but everyone should at least have a bit of fun in life.
If holding a beer in a photo is an excuse to consider someone "irresponsible", well then I got two middle fingers with Dan Saracino's name on them.
The teenage years are about making connections, learning one's limits and getting ready for the rest of your long repetitive bullshit life. I'd much rather have someone who partied in their teens, got their fill and settled down in the later years, than a goody-two-shoes that's going to be consumed with jealousy and go apeshit in their early thirties.
The whole US college system makes less and less sense with each passing year. That's where they're breeding all this passive-aggressive nonsense that transpires in every business transaction, every press release, every visit to the doctor. I don't care if a kid is a freaking genius, if he/she doesn't have a good life balance they won't get much accomplished in the end.
It's pretty obvious: you have decent hardware, cheap plentiful bandwidth, and a bunch of college geeks.
Welcome to the wonderful world of adult web hosting.
That's why you should do a static build :)
Screw the initrd, just dd the emacs executable to the boot sector!
my dream would be for an automated travel system that addresses 90-99% of everybody's needs
My dream is for every single office job on the planet to convert to telecommuting. Bye bye rush hour, bye bye pretentious volvo-driving she-devils and their daily fender-benders.
I like the idea of an idiot test to keep the uninformed out of the ballot booths, but I can't think of any ways to do it that wouldn't cause more problems than it solves.
Idiot test: What do you get if you multiply six by nine ?
How many reps do you know who are H2G2 fans ? Problem solved.
What would you suggest as a replacement ?
A big ol' yes/no for each candidate ? Tally them up, and whoever gets the most "Yes" answers wins ?
That would be slightly more equitable than the current system, but it'd be hell to tally up, especially considering half the country can't count, and the other half is tallied by Diebold machines :P
Careful what you wish for... if things keep getting uglier down there, people just might move. There are plenty of other countries that treat their citizens like criminals, deny them basic rights, detain them indefinitely without a trial (nor formal arrest).
Usually people are trying to get out of those countries, which is why the US and Canada presently enjoy a very diverse cultural landscape. People over here are used to the easy life. If that goes sour, they will tolerate much less abuse than our Asian and middle-eastern friends, and will head straight for Western Europe.
20 years from now, you might hear the French and Germans complain "these American immigrants are stealing our jobs!"
The US Taxpayer now owns 80 percent of AIG.
When they start paying everyone dividends, let me know.
The US Taxpayer doesn't even own government anymore. The real owners get tax exemptions.
I'm going to stick my neck out again, it's my duty as resident /. asshole.
I say let AIG fail. Let the dominoes fall. It's the slap in the face the world needs to get back on the wagon. Treat the banking industry like a drug addict - let it bottom out and come back crawling for mercy.
We will suffer in the short term, but we will prosper in the long term.
Banking is a game. There are a few rules (laws), people keep score with money.
The problem is the players are like 3-year olds, making up new rules as they go to favor their playing style. Those new rules resulted in a very volatile banking environment, and now we're seeing that game collapse because everyone's been cheating.
What responsible people should have done is stop playing. Withdraw your funds/investments and put them somewhere you can trust. Banks are no longer worth your trust, and they haven't been for a long time, simply because they loan out more than they actually have.
If you and I were to start loaning more money than we have, then fail to pay up, we'd either wind up behind bars, or big ol' Jimbob would come break our legs. Why should banks be exempt from the basic laws of mathematics ?
The whole financial "industry" needs a reboot. None of this funny money, we need to go back to a cooperative model where the rich lend to the poor, and risk factors are properly considered... none of this subprime bullshit. Back to sanity.
If that means we'll have to stop quoting imaginary trillion-dollar quarterly figures, tough tits.
Nah that's easily exposed... better to viciously manipulate the child into thinking it was his idea in the first place.
Seriously though, I bet any number of us would have killed to get a CNC machine at that age - we all had wacky computer ideas!
Where are my mod points when I need them ?
+2 funny!
I downloaded it on my work laptop (XP) and the thing I didn't like is that it
1) changed my resolution
2) started up full screen immediately.
Well... it's a media center, not a media player. It's designed to be used as your shell, just as you would on the Xbox itself. Compare with MythTV and others like it.
Part of the problem is there's little or no motivation to release a free SDK (e.g. cleanroom reimplementation), because a modded Xbox is an "illegitimate" platform - you're already breaking some backwards law by modding it, you might as well break another backwards law by releasing unlicensed binaries.
I'm not fond of legally-encumbered distribution, because frankly it's none of Microsoft's business what Joe Random sticks on the internet. The SDK should be open in the first place. It's not like M$ is going to stick XBMC on a disc, draw up a pretty box and stock it at Best Buy...
3. They're lying when they say it's being cancelled. They will bring out new "surprise" ads and everyone will feign approval.
Seriously... the nonsense of canceling the ad kind of fits the attitude of this marketing campaign: "Windows Vista - It will turn you into a babbling imbecile"
You read my mind!
Suing to quash hostile opinions is very much a Scientology trademark. Well... that and starting fist fights while wearing Guy Fawkes masks :P Sneaky bastards!
While everyone else is lying about their health, I'm going to be brutally honest:
1. I'm 300lbs
2. I imbibe a gallon or two of beer/liquor each week
3. Cocaine's a hell of a drug
4. Nethack, baby!
All that to say: there is absolutely no unique correlation between gaming habits and fitness. You could have any hobby/pastime in the world, if you overdo it, it can be bad for your health. If you knit 23 hours a day, you're (hopefully) gonne die. If you run marathons 23 hours a day, you're definitely gonna die.
Hell, if you jerk off 23 hours a day, you're gonna die (and be featured on CSI:Miami).
Someone needs to lay the fuck off of gamers. Just because a bunch of nutso kids in Columbine liked to play Doom, doesn't mean gamers should be treated as odd little lab rats.
Yes, because the Chinese know exactly what Americans like. That's why everyone at Yankee Stadium is chugging Wasabi Cola :P
There wasn't much in terms of technical specs in TFA. 6 cores, 16MB cache, anything else? Clock speed? 16MB of L2? L3? FSB? DDR(n)? (Though this is probably more up to the MB manufacturer) Why are they moving the memory controller off silicon? That in itself seems like a step backwards.
Pentiums have never had an on-die MMU in the first place, they're actually doing that for the upcoming Nehalem. AMD has used an on-die MMU since the Athlon 64, and while it certainly helps squeeze more efficiency out of the system, the faster clocked bus on Intel rigs often made up for the theoretical performance gap.
The Clock speed was omitted from the article, but the Xeon 7400 is clocked at 2.6ghz. That's actually pretty decent for a Xeon, they don't go as high as the mainstream processors because they're made to be installed in a puny rack chassis with piss-poor airflow.
Every other graphics blog talks about Larrabee like it's going to take your baby away. It won't. It will suck, just like every other Intel graphics chip. The problem isn't that Intel can't make fast chips, it's that they don't have the graphics experience to come close to ATI and NVidia.
Intel is good at cheap, "good enough" graphics for office machines - the freebie that does the bare minimum, which satisfies 95% of all users out there. That's where they should stay. It's a good market for them, an excellent candidate for chipset/CPU integration, and an area the other players don't put too much focus on. Yeah, you can get NVidia/ATI graphics onboard, and they're decent, but it's not their bread and butter.
If anything, I fully expect the GPU to become more important over time, but it would be nice to have 100% complete software fallback, allowing any game or app to run on any hardware. You might get a slideshow with onboard video, but it should still be allowed to run. None of this DirectX hardware versioning - it defeats the point of having a middleware API in the first place! It would also let developers code whatever effects they want, allowing hardware to accelerate them if present, while still being every bit as stunning on software emulation - just slower!
It would mean an end to "DirectX 10 effects", which I think is a damned good thing! If anything, DX10 has shown us its tricks are nothing special, all of them feasible with DX9 primitives, just a little more of them. That sort of artificial feature bloat would be a thing of the past with the adoption of a general-purpose graphics programming language.