I'm sorry, but there seems to be some thing missing from this. Sure the kid was there for four years, but how hard would it have been for him to pick up a phone call 911 and say that I've been kidnapped. In the article, they said neighbors said the kid wasn't physically contained. He was often see playing with other kids and playing video games with the door open. The more that I read; the more I wondered what was missing. O.k. the kid didn't go to school, but other than that he seems to have been o.k. This is more surreal or freaking wierd than anything else that I can think of. When you think kidnapping, you think hey we have about a week or less to recover them if you are lucky the kid is still alive. If you aren't the kid was raped and left for dead some where. Most kidnappings are family custody things that I can't really swing one side or the other without alot more info than a tag line. I almost thought that was what this was. It wasn't a family custody thing though. This kid just appears to have been picked up when he was 11 and seems to have been happily living with the other guy for 4 years. WTF? I hope my kids would have enough sense to let me know not to worry about them or call 911 if they are given a chance: hopefully I'll never find that one out.
With the advent of the newest generation of consoles, Totilo explains, we now have the luxury of corpses as far as the eye can see.
Any one remember playing the original doom and getting to that one map where it was you and a massive room full of demons? I cheated to get through it. Now we can have hills of demon corpses. O.K. They most likely mean human corpses, but that's the least interesting to me. Unless they are thinking about decomposing corpses and how long it takes which could be very interesting game play in where a massive battle field that isn't cleaned up spreads disease and what ever troops are around that battle field end up dead.
Another thought would be revisiting the same areas/maps where previous battles were fought and the dead piling up over the generations the map has been used. Think of the dead becoming just part of the background or that they you have to bury them or burn them to prevent disease and end up making a new map if played several times.
What we argue (not deny) is how much influence mankind has had, and we call bullshit on people who think the climate would, right now, be different if only Bush had signed the Kyoto Accords.
So here's a question: if we stopped emitting burning fossil fuels entirely, right now, would the earth start cooling?
Nope. You need to define your "we" better though. Is we the US or the entire human population? If it is the entire human population, there is no telling what effects stopping or removing massive human influence would have on our environment. If it was just the US population? Pretty much the same thing. The only way to "fix" this issue is for someone to build some nuclear plant and use the energy from that to mine carbon out of the atmosphere and make oil out of it. The more that I think about it the more that the whole hydrogen fuel economy that Wired and others have been feeding us lately misses the point. Oil works fine. All we need though is to figure out how to remove the massive quantities of carbon in the air and use that to make oil, diamonds, or any thing made out of carbon. We need to research into that sort of thing rather than thinking just reducing or stopping our carbon emmisions. Why stop them? We need someone our there that will mine that carbon and sell it to complete the cycle.
* global warming is real, and its consequences are mounting, but
* climate models are teh suck
Seriously. Every year there's a new twist that the models missed by a mile. Most recently, it was the 2006 quiet hurricane season. Anyone who claims to predict planetary weather by studying past correllations and making guesses at future causations, is doing the academic equivalent of hunting for venture capital.
Last Friday, I finally watched Al Gore's so called Inconvenient Truth. Half of it was poor Al didn't get elected Prez and an undertone of Al was our Prez he'd have focused on this issue. The other half were of glaciers and ice melting giving birth to alot more land area. Um, sorry Al, I don't want to preserve glaciers. I want more land area.
The only part of the film that concerned me was the estimated sea level change and the usable land changing. That's the only issue that I need to care about or worry about. I don't care about more often natural storms. (That was just adding to the scare mongering of the eco religion.) I also don't care about wildlife. I only care about species that humanity can make use of. Everything else is waste or window dressing. Land area changes do have effects.
I got out of HS in 96 and the global warming was all we still need to look at it by all the repected scientists. All the end of the world people were the fringe. Friday, I tried looking through google for some sources of non human global warming. I couldn't find any thing. Every search result was global warming end of the world caused by humans. Grr. I was trying to find actual science numbers and find out what the latest numbers were. Apparently, now it's popular for global warming in the science press and most of the public press as well. It is hard to find or narrow down your information to non human stuff though if you are actually just looking for the other side of the coin. I don't really care about global warming. Why? It'll screw up the planet and cause a global government to fix it. Massive econonimc and social changes will take place as well as a couple of wars. As long as we don't nuke ourselves, the end result should be a more socially evovled eco aware humanity that keeps and eye on its natural resources. Individually our lives could be a living hell through it, but hey it'll get better.
In the USA children are children until they commit a crime, then they have proven them self to be adult and will be treated as such.
We will solve this crap by lowering the minor age down to 13. Anyone young than 13 it'll be illegal to smoke, drink can't vote, can't drive, and can't legally have sex. Once you hit 13 and become a full citizen, you are allowed to smoke, drink, drive, and have sex. The only one of those activities that should be licensed by the government is driving.
The way some of these stories and comments are written, it sounds like someone examining the computer found dozens of pictures of kiddie porn on there, and the explanation is "the virus did it!"...but I don't see the motive in writing a virus to do that...a popup or two, yes, but not dozens of images.
One ad pop up could be dozens of different images. What if they have n number of free new pics each day and stream that to their ad pop ups? How often do most people even think of dumping their cache?
Children under 18 are not considered old enough to make the decision to appear in porn. So sure, at 16, it's perfectly reasonable to be attracted to girls his age. But supporting those girls as they start a pornography career (under the influence of others) is what's wrong!
This might seem like an especially radical thing to say, but being raped is NOT the end of the world. It is completely possible to recover from being raped or molested and go on to live a happy life. However being murdered IS, by defintion, the end of (your) world.
Call me crazy, but can't this last issue be fixed by locking your door?
Of course! But Windows only comes with a screen door, and very few people realize they need a better door, let alone know how to install one. And even if they did manage to get a better door installed, they wouldn't be able to figure out how to operate the lock!
Considering how physical locks can generally be picked in under a minute by those with the knowledge, I'd think that Windows has exactly the same security as your front door. It's just that it's alot easier for third parties to make use of your internet connected computer than your home.
Think about it-- star wars, star trek, and LoTR all have extensive backstory. It is basically posible to know what happens to every character, and every legendary sword/ship from birth to death. Tolkien, for example, had notebooks and notebooks of unpublished stories to flesh out his universe and even invented languages.
I never really got the whole LoTR bit. I've read and like the four books, but I hate the poems/songs. I view all of the author's unpublished info as not really part of the known universe. LoTR may have a huge backstory that only Tolkien and his family knew about, but he didn't publish it so it's not part of my LoTR experience. Star Wars and Star Trek are very different. They have entire series of books and backstory so you can find out everything if you want to buy all the books. My main dislike about Diamond Age is that it stands as an extremely well intro into the universe and then stops. I wanted to read more stories about a different set of characters set there or I wanted to see them struggle to make a new social unit. I could easily see every one of those Chinese girls not wanting a tradional Chinese male and then all those girls will be going after the men that they find desirable. I'm happy that everything wasn't tied up, but unhappy that's it. I wanted to find out so much more about the world. I wanted to see how different social blocks would react to the book raised girls and their Queen. I wanted to see the next generation and want the books would show.
. But the abrupt end here was utterly perfect and perfectly excecuted, and left me euphorically dazed for hours after reading it. I haven't been brought so close to tears by literature since Of Mice And Men, or maybe Charlotte's Web. This ending, in my opinion, truly solidified Neal Stephenson as a great Author of Literature, and not just brilliant, witty Geek.
I was brought to tears after finding out that it was a one off single book by the author. Sorry, I'm used to reading David Weber, I actually liked most of the Wheel of Time, or my most liked universe that I read the disc world. I'd love to read an entire series of books set in the Diamond Age universe. It saddened me to find that was it.
It really felt like an intro/prehistory for the next big set. I was all ready to read another 4-5 books and well nothing.
I suggest you try living from paycheck to paycheck sometime. Its terrifying to know that any small unexpected expense can make you lose everything. That's what living from paycheck to paycheck means.
I do. Well, maybe we have a two or three paycheck buffer at any given time, but that's not much. If I can live that life, why can't you?
5.) People pay ridiculous amounts of their income to car bills. 6.) People use credit to look wealthier than they really are.
The reasons for this are social ("use debt as a tool!"), cultural ("I need more stuff to impress people!"), patently unfair (the less educated are far more likely to be paid less, and so get into trouble more easily; medical problems), and selfish ("I 'need' this! I 'need' that!")
I laugh at your "patently unfair" when almost every reason that you listed was due to personal decisions made by the stupid/uneducated. I've found this thread really funny. Everyone is complaining about either rich CEOs or family money folks making many millions or many billions and then saying that increasing the average crime rate. Um, I don't know about you, but I haven't heard of a rash of burglaries from homes/people worth more than $20 million of millions. All the crime that I read about is from those that don't want to work a min. wage job against those making any where from 1 - 5 times min. wage. It looks to me like the middle class and lower upper class doesn't need to worry about the rich or super rich. We need to worry about the poor and desperate.
I'm not really convinced living pay check to pay check is actually a negative. The more that I think about it, the more it seems that's the normal state of affairs for folks. We don't look to the future and properly plan for the future.
Okay, I know I'll get roasted for this, but... All I've seen Ford do for, oh, at least the last decade is play the straight man, the righteous normal guy who has to become an avenging action when he is SHOCKED to find that people do evil... but he never has a spark of the bad-boy sass that used to animate Han Solo and Indiana Jones.
There is a part of me that's really curious at how well Harrison Ford would do in a run for US President. He could run on the platform of having a large US flag behind him and looking Presidental. He'd just need the right team of advisors behind him and he'd be very marketable as President.
You know, of course, that installing a Linux is way easier than installing Windows, right?
My girlfriend had a problem of a rotten Windows install and I remade her machine in front of her. It took far too many hours to even arrive at a clean install of Windows plus Office from the original (non-restore) disks. More if I count the time to slipstream SP2 into the original disk and running Windows Update for all the stuff.
You are kinda of missing my point. You and I are slashdotters. We could just as easily wipe and reload any OS on a computer if we have the proper install media at hand. (We usually have our own restore copy of the current windows and linux just for geek cred.) We are not the target audience this is aimmed at. What would your girlfriend had done had she not had you to do it all for her? Here are the likely steps: call tech support and have them stick the restore media or reimage the drive from a hidden partition. She waits for it to reload. Linux would be faster unless its a straight disc image and then who knows. Well, what's the result? Factory default OS, apps, and BLOAT. As an OEM, I can preload damn near any adware/spyware/support programs and your average user won't uninstall it if has my company's name on it. You or I as slashdotters could remove the bloat or wipe and have clean media to reload from. Your girl friend unless she lucked out wouldn't have a seperate OS install or a restore that let her pick just the apps that she wants. It seems to be slashdots refrain is Linux is holy and we can't have adware or spyware because we are Linux and not evil MS Windows, which is dead wrong. If Dell, HP, or Gateway started selling desktop linux boxes by the million, they'd all have Linux adware, crapware, and spy ware pre-installed on OEM restore discs. Being Linux doesn't make us imune from this.
We've started the New Year off with DDR, and we take turns playing after I get off from work until about 7:00 when we switch to RPGs. Do your kids eat, or are they LiIon models that plug into the wall overnight?
LiIon would only slow my kids down. My kid off something stronger than fusion: pasta, hamburger helper, or corndogs. DDR is also dinner time entertainment and keeping the kids out of mom's hair while food is being fixed. We only have one pad so only one person isn't eating at any given time. I grew up with the family watching TV. This watching DDR is much more entertaining and somewhat healthy.
I'm pretty certain the money the OEMs makes from this crippleware *MORE* than pays for the cost of Windows (especially the discounted OEM windows) - and is the #1 reason HP, Dell, etc like Windows over Linux.
Get rid of the paid-for-crippleware, and OEMs will jump to Linux very quickly.
Only because the OEM and crippleware folks can write stuff and preinstall it on Linux just as easily as windows. Wiping and reloading from basics only works for the slashdot crowd. OEM reload software is typically a discimage of the OS and apps that they preinstall. It's not a solution for average users to speed up their machines.
If you can install a user level application and ruin the entire OS then you need to look at other more fundimental problems.
Um, no. I could sell Linux with enough userland spyware and adware to completely ruin it for your average desktop user as well. Of course, Linux doesn't have to put up with preinstalled antivirsus software that is harder to remove than some adware/spyware. Any OS experience can be ruined by an OEM vendor loading their companies' adware/spyware "support" programs. I actually somewhat support MS in this. I'm sick and tired of having to spending 30 minutes removing crap from Dell desktops that we don't use. Actually, I've found Dell Laptops much better at not really being preinstalled with much. The only things that I want preinstalled from my Dell are the OS, Office, a decent image viewing/editing app that isn't crippled that is selling a premium version, and decent CD/DVD burning software. I'll be thrilled if Vista has good enough CD/DVD burning features that OEMs don't need to include Sonic or Roxio. I hate both programs with a passion. Of 70 dell desktops preinstalled with that software only a handfull of my users seem capable to using it to burn a CD. Grr. (I can't tell you how many time some one has come into my office so that I could burn a CD of a 1-2 MB powerpoint file. My users and boss amaze me. The other day my non-tech boss called me into his office to ask me how to copy and paste something from excel to an email. I got into his office and he asked what should he do. I asked him what he was trying to copy. He pulled up the excel doc and highlighted everything that he wanted. I told him to copy it. He did. I asked him if he was going to send it in an e-mail or copy it into another document. He brought up Outlook started a new e-mail and I told him to paste. He pasted it fine into the e-mail message. I asked if he needed anything else. Nope. It is for/because of users like him that MS is wanting/needing to remove OEM crap software from Vista.)
True, but you aren't japanese. Anyone from anywhere int he world other than here (usa) can tell you that the gaming culture can be quite different in other countries (for the record, I've never been to japan...just making an uninformed guess here)
I grew up with video games and would have been classed as a hard core gamer growing up though I considered myself and my family more as causal gamers more than anything. We only rented one game every other weekend. We only bought 2-3 games on Christmas and maybe 1 game at Birthdays. As an adult with a family of my own, we play RPGs together. We all take turns play and hunting for things. If anything objectionable pops up, my wife and I immediately tell our kids what isn't repeatable. This family gaming is a huge change in how I grew up. I played games against my brothers, but only rarely against my mom. Mom mainly played Mario, PacMan, Tetris, and Dr. Mario. We've started the New Year off with DDR, and we take turns playing after I get off from work until about 7:00 when we switch to RPGs. I can't imagine the gaming culture or habits of other families in the US much less other countries. I'd tend to assume everyone games like we do though that's not true.
1. Nintendo has (for the most part) enjoyed good success in japan 5. Microsoft is an american company, and it's no secret that american culture is both loved and hated in japan. 6. Nintendo is japanese in it's origins...kinda like buying a book from a local mom-and-pop rather than amazon.
This feels so odd to me actually thinking about that. I don't even think of Nintendo or Sony as "foreign" companies. They are as part of my US culture as McDonalds, Dr. Pepper, Walmart and made in China. I just don't even think about that aspect. If I sterotype the video game companies, I'd say that MS and Sony are more adult or sports/shooters oriented while Nintendo is family/casual gamer focused. I'd make my purchasing decision based more on that than any thing else.
At some point we're going to see these on ebay, and we'll think, gee, I hope this wasn't one of the ones Pakistan bought to give some kid a future. And you just know there will be a Terrorist captured with one at some point, and it'll be a big story.
I'd think that a terrorist could afford a $500-700 laptop from Walmart. If this 1 laptop for $100 ever pans out though, that could be 5-7 laptops for $500-$700. 30x100=$3,000. It would be much cheaper to provide "many" of these things. I would like to not hear about this again until after atleast one customer has paid their $100 million for their 1 million laptops. That'd I'd find news worthy, everything else about this has been like watching paint dry. After we can see the effects of rolling out one these, then we can complain or critize about it, but it seems everything has just been rehashed over and over on this one. You know what's really going to bite us on the butt? When any one of those countries improve their average educational level over the next 10-15 years by investing only $100-200 million for the hardware. Once you have your population trained/educated on these things, they'd all be in the mindset to maximize their use.
That said... I love Apple and the way they innovate. Some products are hits (iPhone) and some are misses (AppleTV). Time will tell either way, but Microsoft is definitely gearing up to be the dominant force in the living room.
Back when the PS2 was just gearing up, I was thinking this was where Sony was planning on ending up somewhere around PS4-5. I kinda think Sony messed up with their PS3, but I'll take a wait and see view to it over the long term. I'm waiting for now. I'll see how HD goes and who wins the next video game console war in 4-5 years.
Are you joking? Do you not think it would be meaningful just to receive the message "hello"? this would be one of the most important moments in the history of humankind (not to mention alienkind). A long conversation isn't needed for this to be meaningful. Heck, no conversation is required -we just want to find someone else out there.
"Hello" or recieving a set of introduction instructins isn't a conversation. We might have a species reaction to finding out that there are other intelligent species out there, but that isn't a conversation. Don't confuse the two. Here's an idea. What if most of the elder species don't broadcast or actively block communications with immature species just because some times we might over react, panic or immediately try to wage war against our new neighbors? Keeping silent may be a security measure.
I yearn for impartial & unbiased educational programming that I enjoyed in my youth. Now-a-days it seems that if they don't "wow" you in the first 10 seconds they think they have failed.
Mr. Wizard and Mcguyver were the best engineering and general science shows ever.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but there seems to be some thing missing from this. Sure the kid was there for four years, but how hard would it have been for him to pick up a phone call 911 and say that I've been kidnapped. In the article, they said neighbors said the kid wasn't physically contained. He was often see playing with other kids and playing video games with the door open. The more that I read; the more I wondered what was missing. O.k. the kid didn't go to school, but other than that he seems to have been o.k. This is more surreal or freaking wierd than anything else that I can think of. When you think kidnapping, you think hey we have about a week or less to recover them if you are lucky the kid is still alive. If you aren't the kid was raped and left for dead some where. Most kidnappings are family custody things that I can't really swing one side or the other without alot more info than a tag line. I almost thought that was what this was. It wasn't a family custody thing though. This kid just appears to have been picked up when he was 11 and seems to have been happily living with the other guy for 4 years. WTF? I hope my kids would have enough sense to let me know not to worry about them or call 911 if they are given a chance: hopefully I'll never find that one out.
With the advent of the newest generation of consoles, Totilo explains, we now have the luxury of corpses as far as the eye can see.
Any one remember playing the original doom and getting to that one map where it was you and a massive room full of demons? I cheated to get through it. Now we can have hills of demon corpses. O.K. They most likely mean human corpses, but that's the least interesting to me. Unless they are thinking about decomposing corpses and how long it takes which could be very interesting game play in where a massive battle field that isn't cleaned up spreads disease and what ever troops are around that battle field end up dead.
Another thought would be revisiting the same areas/maps where previous battles were fought and the dead piling up over the generations the map has been used. Think of the dead becoming just part of the background or that they you have to bury them or burn them to prevent disease and end up making a new map if played several times.
What we argue (not deny) is how much influence mankind has had, and we call bullshit on people who think the climate would, right now, be different if only Bush had signed the Kyoto Accords.
So here's a question: if we stopped emitting burning fossil fuels entirely, right now, would the earth start cooling?
Nope. You need to define your "we" better though. Is we the US or the entire human population? If it is the entire human population, there is no telling what effects stopping or removing massive human influence would have on our environment. If it was just the US population? Pretty much the same thing. The only way to "fix" this issue is for someone to build some nuclear plant and use the energy from that to mine carbon out of the atmosphere and make oil out of it. The more that I think about it the more that the whole hydrogen fuel economy that Wired and others have been feeding us lately misses the point. Oil works fine. All we need though is to figure out how to remove the massive quantities of carbon in the air and use that to make oil, diamonds, or any thing made out of carbon. We need to research into that sort of thing rather than thinking just reducing or stopping our carbon emmisions. Why stop them? We need someone our there that will mine that carbon and sell it to complete the cycle.
* global warming is real, and its consequences are mounting, but
* climate models are teh suck
Seriously. Every year there's a new twist that the models missed by a mile. Most recently, it was the 2006 quiet hurricane season. Anyone who claims to predict planetary weather by studying past correllations and making guesses at future causations, is doing the academic equivalent of hunting for venture capital.
Last Friday, I finally watched Al Gore's so called Inconvenient Truth. Half of it was poor Al didn't get elected Prez and an undertone of Al was our Prez he'd have focused on this issue. The other half were of glaciers and ice melting giving birth to alot more land area. Um, sorry Al, I don't want to preserve glaciers. I want more land area.
The only part of the film that concerned me was the estimated sea level change and the usable land changing. That's the only issue that I need to care about or worry about. I don't care about more often natural storms. (That was just adding to the scare mongering of the eco religion.) I also don't care about wildlife. I only care about species that humanity can make use of. Everything else is waste or window dressing. Land area changes do have effects.
I got out of HS in 96 and the global warming was all we still need to look at it by all the repected scientists. All the end of the world people were the fringe. Friday, I tried looking through google for some sources of non human global warming. I couldn't find any thing. Every search result was global warming end of the world caused by humans. Grr. I was trying to find actual science numbers and find out what the latest numbers were. Apparently, now it's popular for global warming in the science press and most of the public press as well. It is hard to find or narrow down your information to non human stuff though if you are actually just looking for the other side of the coin. I don't really care about global warming. Why? It'll screw up the planet and cause a global government to fix it. Massive econonimc and social changes will take place as well as a couple of wars. As long as we don't nuke ourselves, the end result should be a more socially evovled eco aware humanity that keeps and eye on its natural resources. Individually our lives could be a living hell through it, but hey it'll get better.
In the USA children are children until they commit a crime, then they have proven them self to be adult and will be treated as such.
We will solve this crap by lowering the minor age down to 13. Anyone young than 13 it'll be illegal to smoke, drink can't vote, can't drive, and can't legally have sex. Once you hit 13 and become a full citizen, you are allowed to smoke, drink, drive, and have sex. The only one of those activities that should be licensed by the government is driving.
The way some of these stories and comments are written, it sounds like someone examining the computer found dozens of pictures of kiddie porn on there, and the explanation is "the virus did it!"...but I don't see the motive in writing a virus to do that...a popup or two, yes, but not dozens of images.
One ad pop up could be dozens of different images. What if they have n number of free new pics each day and stream that to their ad pop ups? How often do most people even think of dumping their cache?
Children under 18 are not considered old enough to make the decision to appear in porn. So sure, at 16, it's perfectly reasonable to be attracted to girls his age. But supporting those girls as they start a pornography career (under the influence of others) is what's wrong!
Yet Britney Spears is o.k.?
can understand cigarettes or alcohol, but it's illegal to be curious now?
And to think or reproduce with those that your parents/government don't approve of.
This might seem like an especially radical thing to say, but being raped is NOT the end of the world. It is completely possible to recover from being raped or molested and go on to live a happy life. However being murdered IS, by defintion, the end of (your) world.
The dead don't complain as much as the living do.
Call me crazy, but can't this last issue be fixed by locking your door?
Of course! But Windows only comes with a screen door, and very few people realize they need a better door, let alone know how to install one. And even if they did manage to get a better door installed, they wouldn't be able to figure out how to operate the lock!
Considering how physical locks can generally be picked in under a minute by those with the knowledge, I'd think that Windows has exactly the same security as your front door. It's just that it's alot easier for third parties to make use of your internet connected computer than your home.
Think about it-- star wars, star trek, and LoTR all have extensive backstory. It is basically posible to know what happens to every character, and every legendary sword/ship from birth to death. Tolkien, for example, had notebooks and notebooks of unpublished stories to flesh out his universe and even invented languages.
I never really got the whole LoTR bit. I've read and like the four books, but I hate the poems/songs. I view all of the author's unpublished info as not really part of the known universe. LoTR may have a huge backstory that only Tolkien and his family knew about, but he didn't publish it so it's not part of my LoTR experience. Star Wars and Star Trek are very different. They have entire series of books and backstory so you can find out everything if you want to buy all the books. My main dislike about Diamond Age is that it stands as an extremely well intro into the universe and then stops. I wanted to read more stories about a different set of characters set there or I wanted to see them struggle to make a new social unit. I could easily see every one of those Chinese girls not wanting a tradional Chinese male and then all those girls will be going after the men that they find desirable. I'm happy that everything wasn't tied up, but unhappy that's it. I wanted to find out so much more about the world. I wanted to see how different social blocks would react to the book raised girls and their Queen. I wanted to see the next generation and want the books would show.
. But the abrupt end here was utterly perfect and perfectly excecuted, and left me euphorically dazed for hours after reading it. I haven't been brought so close to tears by literature since Of Mice And Men, or maybe Charlotte's Web. This ending, in my opinion, truly solidified Neal Stephenson as a great Author of Literature, and not just brilliant, witty Geek.
I was brought to tears after finding out that it was a one off single book by the author. Sorry, I'm used to reading David Weber, I actually liked most of the Wheel of Time, or my most liked universe that I read the disc world. I'd love to read an entire series of books set in the Diamond Age universe. It saddened me to find that was it.
It really felt like an intro/prehistory for the next big set. I was all ready to read another 4-5 books and well nothing.
I suggest you try living from paycheck to paycheck sometime. Its terrifying to know that any small unexpected expense can make you lose everything. That's what living from paycheck to paycheck means.
I do. Well, maybe we have a two or three paycheck buffer at any given time, but that's not much. If I can live that life, why can't you?
5.) People pay ridiculous amounts of their income to car bills.
6.) People use credit to look wealthier than they really are.
The reasons for this are social ("use debt as a tool!"), cultural ("I need more stuff to impress people!"), patently unfair (the less educated are far more likely to be paid less, and so get into trouble more easily; medical problems), and selfish ("I 'need' this! I 'need' that!")
I laugh at your "patently unfair" when almost every reason that you listed was due to personal decisions made by the stupid/uneducated. I've found this thread really funny. Everyone is complaining about either rich CEOs or family money folks making many millions or many billions and then saying that increasing the average crime rate. Um, I don't know about you, but I haven't heard of a rash of burglaries from homes/people worth more than $20 million of millions. All the crime that I read about is from those that don't want to work a min. wage job against those making any where from 1 - 5 times min. wage. It looks to me like the middle class and lower upper class doesn't need to worry about the rich or super rich. We need to worry about the poor and desperate.
I'm not really convinced living pay check to pay check is actually a negative. The more that I think about it, the more it seems that's the normal state of affairs for folks. We don't look to the future and properly plan for the future.
Okay, I know I'll get roasted for this, but... All I've seen Ford do for, oh, at least the last decade is play the straight man, the righteous normal guy who has to become an avenging action when he is SHOCKED to find that people do evil... but he never has a spark of the bad-boy sass that used to animate Han Solo and Indiana Jones.
There is a part of me that's really curious at how well Harrison Ford would do in a run for US President. He could run on the platform of having a large US flag behind him and looking Presidental. He'd just need the right team of advisors behind him and he'd be very marketable as President.
You know, of course, that installing a Linux is way easier than installing Windows, right?
My girlfriend had a problem of a rotten Windows install and I remade her machine in front of her. It took far too many hours to even arrive at a clean install of Windows plus Office from the original (non-restore) disks. More if I count the time to slipstream SP2 into the original disk and running Windows Update for all the stuff.
You are kinda of missing my point. You and I are slashdotters. We could just as easily wipe and reload any OS on a computer if we have the proper install media at hand. (We usually have our own restore copy of the current windows and linux just for geek cred.) We are not the target audience this is aimmed at. What would your girlfriend had done had she not had you to do it all for her? Here are the likely steps: call tech support and have them stick the restore media or reimage the drive from a hidden partition. She waits for it to reload. Linux would be faster unless its a straight disc image and then who knows. Well, what's the result? Factory default OS, apps, and BLOAT. As an OEM, I can preload damn near any adware/spyware/support programs and your average user won't uninstall it if has my company's name on it. You or I as slashdotters could remove the bloat or wipe and have clean media to reload from. Your girl friend unless she lucked out wouldn't have a seperate OS install or a restore that let her pick just the apps that she wants. It seems to be slashdots refrain is Linux is holy and we can't have adware or spyware because we are Linux and not evil MS Windows, which is dead wrong. If Dell, HP, or Gateway started selling desktop linux boxes by the million, they'd all have Linux adware, crapware, and spy ware pre-installed on OEM restore discs. Being Linux doesn't make us imune from this.
We've started the New Year off with DDR, and we take turns playing after I get off from work until about 7:00 when we switch to RPGs.
Do your kids eat, or are they LiIon models that plug into the wall overnight?
LiIon would only slow my kids down. My kid off something stronger than fusion: pasta, hamburger helper, or corndogs. DDR is also dinner time entertainment and keeping the kids out of mom's hair while food is being fixed. We only have one pad so only one person isn't eating at any given time. I grew up with the family watching TV. This watching DDR is much more entertaining and somewhat healthy.
I'm pretty certain the money the OEMs makes from this crippleware *MORE* than pays for the cost of Windows (especially the discounted OEM windows) - and is the #1 reason HP, Dell, etc like Windows over Linux.
Get rid of the paid-for-crippleware, and OEMs will jump to Linux very quickly.
Only because the OEM and crippleware folks can write stuff and preinstall it on Linux just as easily as windows. Wiping and reloading from basics only works for the slashdot crowd. OEM reload software is typically a discimage of the OS and apps that they preinstall. It's not a solution for average users to speed up their machines.
If you can install a user level application and ruin the entire OS then you need to look at other more fundimental problems.
Um, no. I could sell Linux with enough userland spyware and adware to completely ruin it for your average desktop user as well. Of course, Linux doesn't have to put up with preinstalled antivirsus software that is harder to remove than some adware/spyware. Any OS experience can be ruined by an OEM vendor loading their companies' adware/spyware "support" programs. I actually somewhat support MS in this. I'm sick and tired of having to spending 30 minutes removing crap from Dell desktops that we don't use. Actually, I've found Dell Laptops much better at not really being preinstalled with much. The only things that I want preinstalled from my Dell are the OS, Office, a decent image viewing/editing app that isn't crippled that is selling a premium version, and decent CD/DVD burning software. I'll be thrilled if Vista has good enough CD/DVD burning features that OEMs don't need to include Sonic or Roxio. I hate both programs with a passion. Of 70 dell desktops preinstalled with that software only a handfull of my users seem capable to using it to burn a CD. Grr. (I can't tell you how many time some one has come into my office so that I could burn a CD of a 1-2 MB powerpoint file. My users and boss amaze me. The other day my non-tech boss called me into his office to ask me how to copy and paste something from excel to an email. I got into his office and he asked what should he do. I asked him what he was trying to copy. He pulled up the excel doc and highlighted everything that he wanted. I told him to copy it. He did. I asked him if he was going to send it in an e-mail or copy it into another document. He brought up Outlook started a new e-mail and I told him to paste. He pasted it fine into the e-mail message. I asked if he needed anything else. Nope. It is for/because of users like him that MS is wanting/needing to remove OEM crap software from Vista.)
True, but you aren't japanese. Anyone from anywhere int he world other than here (usa) can tell you that the gaming culture can be quite different in other countries (for the record, I've never been to japan...just making an uninformed guess here)
I grew up with video games and would have been classed as a hard core gamer growing up though I considered myself and my family more as causal gamers more than anything. We only rented one game every other weekend. We only bought 2-3 games on Christmas and maybe 1 game at Birthdays. As an adult with a family of my own, we play RPGs together. We all take turns play and hunting for things. If anything objectionable pops up, my wife and I immediately tell our kids what isn't repeatable. This family gaming is a huge change in how I grew up. I played games against my brothers, but only rarely against my mom. Mom mainly played Mario, PacMan, Tetris, and Dr. Mario. We've started the New Year off with DDR, and we take turns playing after I get off from work until about 7:00 when we switch to RPGs. I can't imagine the gaming culture or habits of other families in the US much less other countries. I'd tend to assume everyone games like we do though that's not true.
1. Nintendo has (for the most part) enjoyed good success in japan
5. Microsoft is an american company, and it's no secret that american culture is both loved and hated in japan.
6. Nintendo is japanese in it's origins...kinda like buying a book from a local mom-and-pop rather than amazon.
This feels so odd to me actually thinking about that. I don't even think of Nintendo or Sony as "foreign" companies. They are as part of my US culture as McDonalds, Dr. Pepper, Walmart and made in China. I just don't even think about that aspect. If I sterotype the video game companies, I'd say that MS and Sony are more adult or sports/shooters oriented while Nintendo is family/casual gamer focused. I'd make my purchasing decision based more on that than any thing else.
At some point we're going to see these on ebay, and we'll think, gee, I hope this wasn't one of the ones Pakistan bought to give some kid a future. And you just know there will be a Terrorist captured with one at some point, and it'll be a big story.
I'd think that a terrorist could afford a $500-700 laptop from Walmart. If this 1 laptop for $100 ever pans out though, that could be 5-7 laptops for $500-$700. 30x100=$3,000. It would be much cheaper to provide "many" of these things. I would like to not hear about this again until after atleast one customer has paid their $100 million for their 1 million laptops. That'd I'd find news worthy, everything else about this has been like watching paint dry. After we can see the effects of rolling out one these, then we can complain or critize about it, but it seems everything has just been rehashed over and over on this one. You know what's really going to bite us on the butt? When any one of those countries improve their average educational level over the next 10-15 years by investing only $100-200 million for the hardware. Once you have your population trained/educated on these things, they'd all be in the mindset to maximize their use.
That said... I love Apple and the way they innovate. Some products are hits (iPhone) and some are misses (AppleTV). Time will tell either way, but Microsoft is definitely gearing up to be the dominant force in the living room.
Back when the PS2 was just gearing up, I was thinking this was where Sony was planning on ending up somewhere around PS4-5. I kinda think Sony messed up with their PS3, but I'll take a wait and see view to it over the long term. I'm waiting for now. I'll see how HD goes and who wins the next video game console war in 4-5 years.
Are you joking? Do you not think it would be meaningful just to receive the message "hello"? this would be one of the most important moments in the history of humankind (not to mention alienkind). A long conversation isn't needed for this to be meaningful. Heck, no conversation is required -we just want to find someone else out there.
"Hello" or recieving a set of introduction instructins isn't a conversation. We might have a species reaction to finding out that there are other intelligent species out there, but that isn't a conversation. Don't confuse the two. Here's an idea. What if most of the elder species don't broadcast or actively block communications with immature species just because some times we might over react, panic or immediately try to wage war against our new neighbors? Keeping silent may be a security measure.
I yearn for impartial & unbiased educational programming that I enjoyed in my youth. Now-a-days it seems that if they don't "wow" you in the first 10 seconds they think they have failed.
Mr. Wizard and Mcguyver were the best engineering and general science shows ever.