Might as well compare the number of virtual Nazi's killed in games vs. actual Nazi's killed in WWII. I'm guessing there's probably a few gamers who have exceeded that on their own. And, like virtual tractor sales vs. actual tractor sales it's a very potent comparison that proves....I mean, shows that.....I mean, suggests....I mean, that vaguely resembles...ummmmmmm...absolutely nothing.
Might as well compare these: Cartoon cranial anvil assaults vs actual cranial anvil assaults "CSI" crime solving rate vs. actual crime solving rate Virtual car theft vs. actual car theft Porno movie pizza delivery guy sex rate vs actual pizza delivery guy sex rate
BTW, his claim is BS: "Andrew Trader, co-founder of Zynga, said the company makes about a third of its revenue from advertising and another third from virtual goods transactions. The last third comes from companies that provide commercial offers, trading Netflix memberships and marketing surveys for in-game cash."
Can someone tell me what the advantage of swapped nibble encoding are? Other than just being annoying as fuck when you're trying to decode it? For those too lazy to read the link , swapped nibble encoding is "BCD code where nibbles within octet is swapped. E.g.: 0x31 Represents value of 13"
So for the format YY MM DD HH MM SS TZ (Time zone in 15 minute increments from GMT) instead of 10 01 03 10 11 43 24 for 2010 Jan 3 10:11:43 time zone 24 (GMT +6) you get the identical data but in the less readable form of 01 10 30 10 11 34 42 (and now it can be confused for 2001 Oct 30 10:11:34 AM. Bonus!)
It's just complete idiocy to me. Is there some reason you'd want the date/time stamp slightly harder to read?
"According to the 2009 U.S. Budget [02], 66% of all Federal IT dollars are invested in projects that are "at risk". I assume this number is representative of the rest of the world."
"A large number of these will eventually fail. I assume the failure rate of an "at risk" project is between 50% and 80%. For this analysis, I'll use the average: 65%."
"You can see that indirect costs add up quickly. I will assume that the ratio of indirect to direct costs is between 5:1 and 10:1. For this analysis, I'll take the average: 7.5:1."
In summary, if you assume Federal IT expenditures have the same rate of being "at risk" (whatever that means) as every business in the world, and multiply it by the average or two numbers I just made up, then further multiply it by the average of two other numbers I also made up and wouldn't even make sense to use if they were real, then multiply that by a semi-legitimate percentage and the GDP, you get A Large SCARY Number!
You did notice that he's claiming that IT failures cost over 3 times as much as the total spent on IT, right?
"2.75 % of GDP is spent on hardware, software, and services." OK, so that's $1.92 trillion for the world total spent on IT.
"To predict the cost of IT failure on any country, multiply its GDP by.089" Wait, 8.9%? $6.21 trillion in costs on $1.92 trillion spent? Is this the accounting from "the Producers"?
I expected someone would have checked the math before posting this kind of story on Slashdot
Actually, what the ad states is $12,894 plus free tuition working half-time for 9 months. That's not actually too bad, since in-state tuition is $5,258 for residents and $12,536 for non-residents, plus you don't pay tax on the tuition part of your pay. Not great, but not horrible for a part-time/part-year job.
Of course, I don't know what their definition of half-time is.
OK, I have no problem with anyone saying Windows 7 is faster than XP. I've never actually seen Windows 7. But I have noticed this gem.
My laptop was disabled due to the cooling fans being completely blocked and my inability to find the 3 hidden screws to finally open the case. So I hooked up my old desktop, a Celeron 300MHz running Windows 95. When I finally got the laptop running, I could not believe how much slower a Pentum 4M 3.2 GHz with 4 times as much memory was at basic file manipulation. I'm not talking about running any programs, but just open folder move/copy/delete files. I have all visual effect turned off in XP, no thumbnail views, all explorer toolbars and options off, and all power options to Never turn off. Windows 95, double click on a folder and you see the contents before you can get your finger off the button. Same with moving, copying and deleting files, click and done. Everything responds instantly. Windows XP, click and wait. Tried shutting off everything, no wireless, no antivirus or anti spyware, nothing at all running at startup on a clean install, and still nothing responds as quickly.
Can anyone tell me why a computer that is 10 times faster with 4 times the memory is so much slower at responding to simple inputs? There's a perceptible lag when just single clicking a desktop icon to highlight it.
I liked computers so much better when the most important thing was reacting to what I was telling it to do.
There needs to be a Stop button, as in "stop doing everything that you're doing so you can respond to what I'm telling you to do right now."
Not unless there's a statistic that shows that 20% of people who are dying are not able to get to any of the remaining hospitals, or that they are being denied treatment at the remaining hospitals because of reduced staff.
If it were just this year, you could argue the increased panic from tons of people who assume every cold is swine flu is leading to some problems in diagnosis. But it's a 20 year trend that doesn't make any sense if the vaccines are as effective as claimed.
If there was such a statistic, that still wouldn't make up for the reduced deaths from a 50% increase in vaccination rates.
Thousands of apps, all irrelevant to you? What did you do, look at the 5 the person installed and give up? Even if they were all irrelevant to you, that doesn't make them irrelevant to everyone. People want their device to do do useful things, even if those useful things are simply entertainment. The apps are not all entertainment, and some are very helpful.
In 1968 and 1997, the vaccine produced was the wrong one, it didn't match the prevalent strains for the following winter. People who got vaccinated were effectively receiving a placebo for the strain that they were most likely to come in contact with. There was not a corresponding spike in the number of deaths. It could be argued that those strains were less deadly than usual, but it would be an amazing coincidence if it just happened to correspond to the two years no one got an effective vaccine.
If the flu vaccine reduces the number of deaths by 50% as is claimed, there should have been a 33% rise in deaths when no one was immunized. There wasn't.
More of the people most at risk are getting vaccinated, 15% of people over 65 vaccinated in 1989, 65% today. That should have caused a significant reduction in mortality. But the number of deaths is rising. Again, an amazing correspondence is claimed, that the strains are more deadly every year.
These are the two reasons that further study is needed, regardless of how strong your faith in vaccination is.
As someone who has not only purchased guns from a dealer, but has sold guns and was the manager of a store with an Federal Firearms License, this is complete bullshit. I did get fingerprinted when I became the manager, but as assistant manager I was never fingerprinted and still had full authority to sell guns. As for DNA, nope, never happened, never was suggested, and is a ridiculous suggestion in the first place.
The only things that are reported to the NCIS when purchasing the gun are personal information (name, DOB, ID # and state, etc.) and if it's a handgun or long gun. No model numbers, serial numbers or anything else that describes the gun are reported. It's all put on the form and in the gun log, but the forms and gun logs stay at the store, unless you close the store, surrender your FFL, or have a serious incident. Occasionally they audit, but I don't recall them doing anything but comparing the forms and the guns in inventory to the logs. Fingerprints are not taken for purchases, DNA would be silly to require dealers to take anyway, and most (if not all) people have an FBI file anyway. Approval is usually immediate, but if the NCIS delays and it takes more than three days to call back, the gun can be legally (from the dealers standpoint) be sold. Every once in a while they'd delay, the call back in a few hours with a denial and ask for the current address.
BTW, answering any of the questions wrong on the form is an instant denial, no call to the NCIS even happens.
Purchasing multiple handguns did require more info, but you can buy rifles all day long without the government knowing exactly what you bought.
That's federal law, some states are more restrictive. We had a book of all the states laws, California's ran 70+ pages, Wyoming's was less than half a page.
"Minidisc, for example, was until recently very popular outside of the US as a consumer technology, and popular as a pro-audio recording system within the US"
It was popular in Japan, that's about it. It never caught on anywhere else. While Japan is outside the US, "very popular outside the US" isn't the phrase to use. Not popular everywhere but Japan is more accurate.
Popular as a pro-audio recording system?
It was popular as an amateur live recording device, but no where near good enough for pro use. Pro's are not concerned with small form factors, definitely not interested in recording a compressed signal, and certainly not recording a bunch of very expensive single purpose equipment on a consumer device that is cheaper ($750 at launch) than one good microphone. ATRAC-1 was not very good, and by the time they updated it (not that pro's wanted it anyway), CDR's were already on the scene, much cheaper, non-compressed, and playable by nearly everyone because they already had a CD player.
Betamax got crushed by VHS, it was literally killed by VHS. It was not relatively successful in any measure at the consumer level.
Their professional Beta equipment was extremely successful, Beta SP and DigiBeta were industry standards for a long time (and maybe still are.)
"anything that reduces the weight, price, and complexity"
It's more expensive than the PSP, and tethering it to an external site for updates and downloads makes it more complex to the consumer. "Buy game. Insert disc/cartridge. Play" is way simpler than "connect to router, then website. Try to download game. Update required, attempt update. Battery charge required. Charge battery (Wait). Download update (Wait). Download game (Wait). Lose interest in game, will to live etc. Play game" You'd have to live pretty far from civilization to make that faster than just driving to the store and buying the game.
Does your friend want to borrow the game now that your done with it? Too bad. Did you want a game on launch day? Guess how long it will take to download it when everyone else it trying to download it as well. Want the game that's been out for 3 years for less than the launch price? Too bad.
And here's the kicker, Gran Turismo was nearly 1 Gig, the PSP has 14GB usable memory. Do you want more than 14 games? Which one do you delete when you buy number 15?
He said flat head screws, not flat head screwdrivers. As in, if you look at the screw in profile, the surface of the head is flat, not rounded like a dome.
Am I the only one who realizes that all they did was replace the menus and toolbars with a menu of toolbars? Why does anyone act like this is an advancement at all? I mean it looks like an improvement in their product, but that's just because of what a complete mess they had made of their old menu system.
This guy nicely defines the mentality behind bloat: "Office had a problem--people weren't finding and using the new features."
He thinks the reason most people weren't using new features was because they couldn't find them. Never enters his mind that 99% of people don't want or have the slightest need for the new features. The 1% that want them probably could find them.
"If you want to look through Word 2003 to find an unfamiliar command, you need to look through 3 levels of hierarchical menus, open up 31 toolbars and peruse about 20 Task Panes. It's hard to formulate a "hunting" strategy to find the thing you're looking for because there's no logical path through all of the UI."
So the justification for the ribbon is "Look at how bad we screwed up the menus before the ribbon! What a bunch of morons we were!"
FTA:"We never know the name of the kid -- it's bobby37 on the house computer"
How many Bobby's live in the house? And what info do they ask for when you register the software? Name, address, phone, etc. Crap, there's a good chance that the computer's named "Johnson Family Laptop" They know the names, and they save the registration info. I would further guess that they provide data by location to these companies as well. So they know that Bobby37 is on the computer at 1400 Main St whose parents are Don and Judy Johnson, but they don't know the name of the kid? Even with complicated relationships (step-parents, divorces, etc.), Bobby Johnson is a pretty good bet.
They will be sued, and they will lose this one, if they don't get criminally prosecuted first. They're not doing well financially, discovery alone should probably cost enough to bankrupt them.
Seriously, you guys are talking like this took months of planning, instead of one visit to the store to map it out and a trip to an auto parts store to get an emergency hammer. The planning stages at absolute most took a day, and even counting the crime as taking a whole day, it's $4K for 2 days work. If they could pull off 10 heists like this, it's the equivalent of $40K take home pay working for less than 3 weeks a year.
They left power adapters, discs, cords, and manuals etc behind, so the products are unboxed and incomplete.
This keeps coming up, and it's just idiotic. You propose they should've spent more time in the store trying to find this stuff? WTF? It's smash and grab, not smash, grab, and look for accessories and boxes.
And my apologies vux984, there's a dozen posts with the same points, I just happened to reply to this one.
A physical description of some guy selling a laptop out of the trunk of a car off Route 22 isn't going to help much, and if they're pros there's no way they're selling these themselves.
What you're describing is how the really stupid thieves get caught. The ones who have any kind of brains would fence them.
People who buy brand new laptops out of car trunks generally know that calling the manufacturer is the same as admitting you bought stolen goods and asking if they could please send an officer around to take away the new laptop they just bought.
"Guitar Hero is like playing Burnout with a toy-sized steering wheel that has no force feedback"
Pressing buttons and flipping levers on a real guitar does not produce any sound, if it happens to have any buttons or levers. Nothing that you do on a Guitar Hero controller helps any part of playing guitar, none of the skills is transferable to a real guitar, and nothing you do relates to actually producing sounds on a guitar. It's like playing Burnout with a toy sized steering wheel which does not turn, but you push the horn to go left, and pull on the turn signal stalk to go right, and bashing your head on the top of the wheel is how you accelerate. None of which teaches you even how to steer a real car, let alone anything else about driving.
Teaching incorrect rhythm is way worse then just teaching rhythm incorrectly. Even when played perfectly, G.H.'s controller demands that you hit the button when there is a rest on the actual guitar part you hear, and for you to hit nothing when the guitar is actually playing a note. (e.g. "Barracuda" does not start with perfectly spaced eighth notes, but that's what you've got to press.)
But I don't care either. Too busy playing in rock bands with real drums.
"reminds me a bit of the Guitar Hero debate, should it be made into a teaching tool?"
That is not a debate, that is just idiocy. Guitar Hero controllers teach you as much about playing guitar as a steering wheel bolted to a subway seat teaches you about driving. The difficult part about playing guitar is not learning how to hold the instrument, which is all the guitar hero controller can teach you. And don't say it teaches rhythm, what the game requires you to do is not the same timing as the actual guitar notes you hear while you play it.
"reminds me a bit of the Guitar Hero debate, should it be made into a teaching tool?"
That is not a debate, that is just idiocy. Guitar Hero controllers teach you as much about playing guitar as a steering wheel bolted to a subway seat teaches you about driving. The difficult part about playing guitar is not learning how to hold the instrument.
Bush's ignorant policies brought the Dow from 10587 to 7949, with a run up to 13930 in the middle. Do you think that the recent boom-bust cycle based mainly on "creative" accounting was good for our economy?
You can't pick one single number from the middle and say it represents his presidency. The economy tanked, and it was on his watch, not Obama's.
How fast do you expect a change in economic policies to make measurable effects in the economy?
If you press button marked "Vote" then it should cast the vote, as most reasonable people would expect. If it does anything other than cast the vote, then it should be labeled something else. If they pressed a button marked "Review ballot" and walked away, then I would chalk it up to random idiots, but having a button marked "Vote" that doesn't actually do that is a HUGE design flaw.
No matter how many analogies you use, it doesn't change the reality that this is a UI flaw that was used to breach the security of the vote. It's kind of silly to argue anything else now.
"automatically assume a) that the poster has no experience with the field"
His entire post makes it abundantly clear that he would never have anything to do with any of the subjects I listed. There was no "automatic assumption" about it. If there was the slightest hint of any understanding of science on his/her part, I wouldn't have stated it.
"Where are we to believe that anything could be derived from anything"
Well, the last I checked we were in the year 2009 CE, not 2009 BCE. And if we actually believed that nothing could be derived from anything, we would probably have never discovered how to make a fire, let alone have any kind of technology.
"science itself specifically states that matter may neither be created nor destroyed."
Science makes no such statements. As a matter of fact, it explicitly states that matter can absolutely be destroyed and converted into energy. Perhaps you've heard of Einstein, and the equation E=mc^2. He's quite famous in non-creationist circles, as is his work.
"there are so many assumptions made with evolution."
As opposed to the incredible massive amount of assumptions and refutation of logic made with creationism.
"Evolution from a biological perspective does not include any design whatsoever so a scientist designing chemicals to self-replicate is not evolution; it does not evolve"
Try reading the article first. Self replication is not even mentioned or referred to. The scientist in the article is quoted as saying "It's evolving" without elaborating on it. So how the hell can you claim it's not evolution when you don't even know what exactly the experiment is doing?
Like most creationists, you don't even bother with any kind of research, you just make a knee jerk reaction to anything that has the word evolution in it. First you make an equivalence between a living organism and a bunch of chemicals to "prove" that this is Intelligent Design. (Ummm, no) Then you screw up and make wild assumptions like the above. After that, based on looking at a picture of a footprint, you call it absurd even though a) you've no experience with this (forensic scientist? anthropologist? geologist? No? didn't think so) and b)it has nothing to do with this experiment, article, or branch of science. Then there's this gem: "is it even correct to ask how the chemicals enabled evolution" Only if you are a rational human who has the slightest interest in science. If not, well then, absolutely not, you should never ask this kind of question.
"and assume that evolution had to create the chemicals first" - You really don't even understand the word "evolution" do you?
"As soon as a higher power (man, God) is involved evolution no longer is applicable." - So, as soon as man evolved to observe evolution, evolution is no longer applicable because man is involved. You seem to have confused quantum mechanics with evolution here.
By the way, good job of not coming off as rational.
"So because no Spanish person complained about RE4, no black person can complain about RE5?"
Ummm, that's not what I said at all. What I'm saying is that in RE4 you go into Spain, all the Spaniards become zombies (or close enough), and you kill them all. In RE5 you go into Africa, all the Africans become zombies, and you kill them all. Just because you kill all the Africans doesn't make RE5 racist, anymore than RE4 was. It's how zombie games are, you kill everyone who becomes a zombie, and everyone becomes zombies. The author is arguing that this basic premise of most zombie games is racist because this one takes place in Africa and the zombies are black. That's BS.
People are free to complain about anything they like. If the article was well thought out and had legitimate concerns, that would be great. But when their complaints are moronic I am also free to rip those complaints to shreds.
"It's a little absurd that you're claiming now the article is racist because of that one overstatement."
The absurdity is all yours, as I never complained the article was racist, I pointed out the one statement in the article that actually was racist and gave precise reasons why it was. It's really (not-Allanis-Morrisette-type) ironic.
BTW, you might want to look up paranoia before accusing someone of it again. Thinking an author is a moron and pointing out his fallacies is not paranoia.
Slashdot Mirror
Might as well compare the number of virtual Nazi's killed in games vs. actual Nazi's killed in WWII. I'm guessing there's probably a few gamers who have exceeded that on their own. And, like virtual tractor sales vs. actual tractor sales it's a very potent comparison that proves....I mean, shows that.....I mean, suggests....I mean, that vaguely resembles...ummmmmmm...absolutely nothing.
Might as well compare these:
Cartoon cranial anvil assaults vs actual cranial anvil assaults
"CSI" crime solving rate vs. actual crime solving rate
Virtual car theft vs. actual car theft
Porno movie pizza delivery guy sex rate vs actual pizza delivery guy sex rate
BTW, his claim is BS:
"Andrew Trader, co-founder of Zynga, said the company makes about a third of its revenue from advertising and another third from virtual goods transactions. The last third comes from companies that provide commercial offers, trading Netflix memberships and marketing surveys for in-game cash."
1/3 is not almost all.
Can someone tell me what the advantage of swapped nibble encoding are? Other than just being annoying as fuck when you're trying to decode it?
For those too lazy to read the link , swapped nibble encoding is
"BCD code where nibbles within octet is swapped. E.g.: 0x31 Represents value of 13"
So for the format YY MM DD HH MM SS TZ (Time zone in 15 minute increments from GMT) instead of 10 01 03 10 11 43 24 for 2010 Jan 3 10:11:43 time zone 24 (GMT +6) you get the identical data but in the less readable form of 01 10 30 10 11 34 42 (and now it can be confused for 2001 Oct 30 10:11:34 AM. Bonus!)
It's just complete idiocy to me. Is there some reason you'd want the date/time stamp slightly harder to read?
"According to the 2009 U.S. Budget [02], 66% of all Federal IT dollars are invested in projects that are "at risk". I assume this number is representative of the rest of the world."
"A large number of these will eventually fail. I assume the failure rate of an "at risk" project is between 50% and 80%. For this analysis, I'll use the average: 65%."
"You can see that indirect costs add up quickly. I will assume that the ratio of indirect to direct costs is between 5:1 and 10:1. For this analysis, I'll take the average: 7.5:1."
In summary, if you assume Federal IT expenditures have the same rate of being "at risk" (whatever that means) as every business in the world, and multiply it by the average or two numbers I just made up, then further multiply it by the average of two other numbers I also made up and wouldn't even make sense to use if they were real, then multiply that by a semi-legitimate percentage and the GDP, you get A Large SCARY Number!
You did notice that he's claiming that IT failures cost over 3 times as much as the total spent on IT, right?
"2.75 % of GDP is spent on hardware, software, and services." OK, so that's $1.92 trillion for the world total spent on IT.
"To predict the cost of IT failure on any country, multiply its GDP by .089" Wait, 8.9%? $6.21 trillion in costs on $1.92 trillion spent? Is this the accounting from "the Producers"?
I expected someone would have checked the math before posting this kind of story on Slashdot
Actually, what the ad states is $12,894 plus free tuition working half-time for 9 months. That's not actually too bad, since in-state tuition is $5,258 for residents and $12,536 for non-residents, plus you don't pay tax on the tuition part of your pay. Not great, but not horrible for a part-time/part-year job.
Of course, I don't know what their definition of half-time is.
OK, I have no problem with anyone saying Windows 7 is faster than XP. I've never actually seen Windows 7. But I have noticed this gem.
My laptop was disabled due to the cooling fans being completely blocked and my inability to find the 3 hidden screws to finally open the case. So I hooked up my old desktop, a Celeron 300MHz running Windows 95. When I finally got the laptop running, I could not believe how much slower a Pentum 4M 3.2 GHz with 4 times as much memory was at basic file manipulation. I'm not talking about running any programs, but just open folder move/copy/delete files. I have all visual effect turned off in XP, no thumbnail views, all explorer toolbars and options off, and all power options to Never turn off. Windows 95, double click on a folder and you see the contents before you can get your finger off the button. Same with moving, copying and deleting files, click and done. Everything responds instantly. Windows XP, click and wait. Tried shutting off everything, no wireless, no antivirus or anti spyware, nothing at all running at startup on a clean install, and still nothing responds as quickly.
Can anyone tell me why a computer that is 10 times faster with 4 times the memory is so much slower at responding to simple inputs? There's a perceptible lag when just single clicking a desktop icon to highlight it.
I liked computers so much better when the most important thing was reacting to what I was telling it to do.
There needs to be a Stop button, as in "stop doing everything that you're doing so you can respond to what I'm telling you to do right now."
Not unless there's a statistic that shows that 20% of people who are dying are not able to get to any of the remaining hospitals, or that they are being denied treatment at the remaining hospitals because of reduced staff.
If it were just this year, you could argue the increased panic from tons of people who assume every cold is swine flu is leading to some problems in diagnosis. But it's a 20 year trend that doesn't make any sense if the vaccines are as effective as claimed.
If there was such a statistic, that still wouldn't make up for the reduced deaths from a 50% increase in vaccination rates.
Thousands of apps, all irrelevant to you? What did you do, look at the 5 the person installed and give up?
Even if they were all irrelevant to you, that doesn't make them irrelevant to everyone. People want their device to do do useful things, even if those useful things are simply entertainment. The apps are not all entertainment, and some are very helpful.
And, no, I don't have an iPhone.
In 1968 and 1997, the vaccine produced was the wrong one, it didn't match the prevalent strains for the following winter. People who got vaccinated were effectively receiving a placebo for the strain that they were most likely to come in contact with. There was not a corresponding spike in the number of deaths. It could be argued that those strains were less deadly than usual, but it would be an amazing coincidence if it just happened to correspond to the two years no one got an effective vaccine.
If the flu vaccine reduces the number of deaths by 50% as is claimed, there should have been a 33% rise in deaths when no one was immunized. There wasn't.
More of the people most at risk are getting vaccinated, 15% of people over 65 vaccinated in 1989, 65% today. That should have caused a significant reduction in mortality. But the number of deaths is rising. Again, an amazing correspondence is claimed, that the strains are more deadly every year.
These are the two reasons that further study is needed, regardless of how strong your faith in vaccination is.
As someone who has not only purchased guns from a dealer, but has sold guns and was the manager of a store with an Federal Firearms License, this is complete bullshit. I did get fingerprinted when I became the manager, but as assistant manager I was never fingerprinted and still had full authority to sell guns. As for DNA, nope, never happened, never was suggested, and is a ridiculous suggestion in the first place.
The only things that are reported to the NCIS when purchasing the gun are personal information (name, DOB, ID # and state, etc.) and if it's a handgun or long gun. No model numbers, serial numbers or anything else that describes the gun are reported. It's all put on the form and in the gun log, but the forms and gun logs stay at the store, unless you close the store, surrender your FFL, or have a serious incident. Occasionally they audit, but I don't recall them doing anything but comparing the forms and the guns in inventory to the logs. Fingerprints are not taken for purchases, DNA would be silly to require dealers to take anyway, and most (if not all) people have an FBI file anyway. Approval is usually immediate, but if the NCIS delays and it takes more than three days to call back, the gun can be legally (from the dealers standpoint) be sold. Every once in a while they'd delay, the call back in a few hours with a denial and ask for the current address.
BTW, answering any of the questions wrong on the form is an instant denial, no call to the NCIS even happens.
Purchasing multiple handguns did require more info, but you can buy rifles all day long without the government knowing exactly what you bought.
That's federal law, some states are more restrictive. We had a book of all the states laws, California's ran 70+ pages, Wyoming's was less than half a page.
I always wanted an IBM PCjr. keyboard with a touchscreen and a way to hook it up to your TV.
I mean, I know the 80's retro look is in, but do they have to bring back all the crappy stuff from the 80's too?
"Minidisc, for example, was until recently very popular outside of the US as a consumer technology, and popular as a pro-audio recording system within the US"
It was popular in Japan, that's about it. It never caught on anywhere else. While Japan is outside the US, "very popular outside the US" isn't the phrase to use. Not popular everywhere but Japan is more accurate.
Popular as a pro-audio recording system?
It was popular as an amateur live recording device, but no where near good enough for pro use. Pro's are not concerned with small form factors, definitely not interested in recording a compressed signal, and certainly not recording a bunch of very expensive single purpose equipment on a consumer device that is cheaper ($750 at launch) than one good microphone. ATRAC-1 was not very good, and by the time they updated it (not that pro's wanted it anyway), CDR's were already on the scene, much cheaper, non-compressed, and playable by nearly everyone because they already had a CD player.
Betamax got crushed by VHS, it was literally killed by VHS. It was not relatively successful in any measure at the consumer level.
Their professional Beta equipment was extremely successful, Beta SP and DigiBeta were industry standards for a long time (and maybe still are.)
"anything that reduces the weight, price, and complexity"
It's more expensive than the PSP, and tethering it to an external site for updates and downloads makes it more complex to the consumer. "Buy game. Insert disc/cartridge. Play" is way simpler than "connect to router, then website. Try to download game. Update required, attempt update. Battery charge required. Charge battery (Wait). Download update (Wait). Download game (Wait). Lose interest in game, will to live etc. Play game" You'd have to live pretty far from civilization to make that faster than just driving to the store and buying the game.
Does your friend want to borrow the game now that your done with it? Too bad. Did you want a game on launch day? Guess how long it will take to download it when everyone else it trying to download it as well. Want the game that's been out for 3 years for less than the launch price? Too bad.
And here's the kicker, Gran Turismo was nearly 1 Gig, the PSP has 14GB usable memory. Do you want more than 14 games? Which one do you delete when you buy number 15?
He said flat head screws, not flat head screwdrivers. As in, if you look at the screw in profile, the surface of the head is flat, not rounded like a dome.
Am I the only one who realizes that all they did was replace the menus and toolbars with a menu of toolbars? Why does anyone act like this is an advancement at all? I mean it looks like an improvement in their product, but that's just because of what a complete mess they had made of their old menu system.
This guy nicely defines the mentality behind bloat:
"Office had a problem--people weren't finding and using the new features."
He thinks the reason most people weren't using new features was because they couldn't find them. Never enters his mind that 99% of people don't want or have the slightest need for the new features. The 1% that want them probably could find them.
"If you want to look through Word 2003 to find an unfamiliar command, you need to look through 3 levels of hierarchical menus, open up 31 toolbars and peruse about 20 Task Panes. It's hard to formulate a "hunting" strategy to find the thing you're looking for because there's no logical path through all of the UI."
So the justification for the ribbon is "Look at how bad we screwed up the menus before the ribbon! What a bunch of morons we were!"
FTA:"We never know the name of the kid -- it's bobby37 on the house computer"
How many Bobby's live in the house? And what info do they ask for when you register the software? Name, address, phone, etc. Crap, there's a good chance that the computer's named "Johnson Family Laptop"
They know the names, and they save the registration info. I would further guess that they provide data by location to these companies as well. So they know that Bobby37 is on the computer at 1400 Main St whose parents are Don and Judy Johnson, but they don't know the name of the kid? Even with complicated relationships (step-parents, divorces, etc.), Bobby Johnson is a pretty good bet.
They will be sued, and they will lose this one, if they don't get criminally prosecuted first. They're not doing well financially, discovery alone should probably cost enough to bankrupt them.
Seriously, you guys are talking like this took months of planning, instead of one visit to the store to map it out and a trip to an auto parts store to get an emergency hammer. The planning stages at absolute most took a day, and even counting the crime as taking a whole day, it's $4K for 2 days work. If they could pull off 10 heists like this, it's the equivalent of $40K take home pay working for less than 3 weeks a year.
They left power adapters, discs, cords, and manuals etc behind, so the products are unboxed and incomplete.
This keeps coming up, and it's just idiotic. You propose they should've spent more time in the store trying to find this stuff? WTF? It's smash and grab, not smash, grab, and look for accessories and boxes.
And my apologies vux984, there's a dozen posts with the same points, I just happened to reply to this one.
A physical description of some guy selling a laptop out of the trunk of a car off Route 22 isn't going to help much, and if they're pros there's no way they're selling these themselves.
What you're describing is how the really stupid thieves get caught. The ones who have any kind of brains would fence them.
People who buy brand new laptops out of car trunks generally know that calling the manufacturer is the same as admitting you bought stolen goods and asking if they could please send an officer around to take away the new laptop they just bought.
"Guitar Hero is like playing Burnout with a toy-sized steering wheel that has no force feedback"
Pressing buttons and flipping levers on a real guitar does not produce any sound, if it happens to have any buttons or levers. Nothing that you do on a Guitar Hero controller helps any part of playing guitar, none of the skills is transferable to a real guitar, and nothing you do relates to actually producing sounds on a guitar. It's like playing Burnout with a toy sized steering wheel which does not turn, but you push the horn to go left, and pull on the turn signal stalk to go right, and bashing your head on the top of the wheel is how you accelerate. None of which teaches you even how to steer a real car, let alone anything else about driving.
Teaching incorrect rhythm is way worse then just teaching rhythm incorrectly. Even when played perfectly, G.H.'s controller demands that you hit the button when there is a rest on the actual guitar part you hear, and for you to hit nothing when the guitar is actually playing a note. (e.g. "Barracuda" does not start with perfectly spaced eighth notes, but that's what you've got to press.)
But I don't care either. Too busy playing in rock bands with real drums.
"reminds me a bit of the Guitar Hero debate, should it be made into a teaching tool?"
That is not a debate, that is just idiocy. Guitar Hero controllers teach you as much about playing guitar as a steering wheel bolted to a subway seat teaches you about driving. The difficult part about playing guitar is not learning how to hold the instrument, which is all the guitar hero controller can teach you. And don't say it teaches rhythm, what the game requires you to do is not the same timing as the actual guitar notes you hear while you play it.
"reminds me a bit of the Guitar Hero debate, should it be made into a teaching tool?"
That is not a debate, that is just idiocy. Guitar Hero controllers teach you as much about playing guitar as a steering wheel bolted to a subway seat teaches you about driving. The difficult part about playing guitar is not learning how to hold the instrument.
Bush's ignorant policies brought the Dow from 10587 to 7949, with a run up to 13930 in the middle. Do you think that the recent boom-bust cycle based mainly on "creative" accounting was good for our economy?
You can't pick one single number from the middle and say it represents his presidency. The economy tanked, and it was on his watch, not Obama's.
How fast do you expect a change in economic policies to make measurable effects in the economy?
Actually, the equation is
This particular poorly designed UI=Security flaw.
If you press button marked "Vote" then it should cast the vote, as most reasonable people would expect. If it does anything other than cast the vote, then it should be labeled something else. If they pressed a button marked "Review ballot" and walked away, then I would chalk it up to random idiots, but having a button marked "Vote" that doesn't actually do that is a HUGE design flaw.
No matter how many analogies you use, it doesn't change the reality that this is a UI flaw that was used to breach the security of the vote. It's kind of silly to argue anything else now.
"automatically assume a) that the poster has no experience with the field"
His entire post makes it abundantly clear that he would never have anything to do with any of the subjects I listed. There was no "automatic assumption" about it. If there was the slightest hint of any understanding of science on his/her part, I wouldn't have stated it.
"Where are we to believe that anything could be derived from anything"
Well, the last I checked we were in the year 2009 CE, not 2009 BCE. And if we actually believed that nothing could be derived from anything, we would probably have never discovered how to make a fire, let alone have any kind of technology.
"science itself specifically states that matter may neither be created nor destroyed."
Science makes no such statements. As a matter of fact, it explicitly states that matter can absolutely be destroyed and converted into energy. Perhaps you've heard of Einstein, and the equation E=mc^2. He's quite famous in non-creationist circles, as is his work.
"there are so many assumptions made with evolution."
As opposed to the incredible massive amount of assumptions and refutation of logic made with creationism.
"Evolution from a biological perspective does not include any design whatsoever so a scientist designing chemicals to self-replicate is not evolution; it does not evolve"
Try reading the article first. Self replication is not even mentioned or referred to. The scientist in the article is quoted as saying "It's evolving" without elaborating on it. So how the hell can you claim it's not evolution when you don't even know what exactly the experiment is doing?
Like most creationists, you don't even bother with any kind of research, you just make a knee jerk reaction to anything that has the word evolution in it. First you make an equivalence between a living organism and a bunch of chemicals to "prove" that this is Intelligent Design. (Ummm, no) Then you screw up and make wild assumptions like the above. After that, based on looking at a picture of a footprint, you call it absurd even though a) you've no experience with this (forensic scientist? anthropologist? geologist? No? didn't think so) and b)it has nothing to do with this experiment, article, or branch of science. Then there's this gem:
"is it even correct to ask how the chemicals enabled evolution"
Only if you are a rational human who has the slightest interest in science. If not, well then, absolutely not, you should never ask this kind of question.
"and assume that evolution had to create the chemicals first" - You really don't even understand the word "evolution" do you?
"As soon as a higher power (man, God) is involved evolution no longer is applicable." - So, as soon as man evolved to observe evolution, evolution is no longer applicable because man is involved. You seem to have confused quantum mechanics with evolution here.
By the way, good job of not coming off as rational.
"So because no Spanish person complained about RE4, no black person can complain about RE5?"
Ummm, that's not what I said at all. What I'm saying is that in RE4 you go into Spain, all the Spaniards become zombies (or close enough), and you kill them all. In RE5 you go into Africa, all the Africans become zombies, and you kill them all. Just because you kill all the Africans doesn't make RE5 racist, anymore than RE4 was. It's how zombie games are, you kill everyone who becomes a zombie, and everyone becomes zombies. The author is arguing that this basic premise of most zombie games is racist because this one takes place in Africa and the zombies are black. That's BS.
People are free to complain about anything they like. If the article was well thought out and had legitimate concerns, that would be great. But when their complaints are moronic I am also free to rip those complaints to shreds.
"It's a little absurd that you're claiming now the article is racist because of that one overstatement."
The absurdity is all yours, as I never complained the article was racist, I pointed out the one statement in the article that actually was racist and gave precise reasons why it was. It's really (not-Allanis-Morrisette-type) ironic.
BTW, you might want to look up paranoia before accusing someone of it again. Thinking an author is a moron and pointing out his fallacies is not paranoia.