Actually, I see it as a choice between Cheep, Durible and Performance. You won't get all three, but I don't think it's a reach to expect you get two of them.
A $500 laptop will last a few years if it's handled carefully. You still wouldn't throw one in your backpack full of books and other assorted hard objects.
I had forgotten about that. It's a brillient idea and i's comforting to know the desingers realized your run of the mill school children would break your typical laptop the first week they received it.
But yes, that's more or less what I'm looking for; those seem to be pretty durible and designed for heavy use. Heck, I'd spend up to $400 on one if they could design it so it didn't look like a Play-School toy, included the OS, an entry level version of MS Office suite, and had a good battery.
I still don't see, however, how there can't be a market for things like that outside of education?
Forgive me for being slightly off topic, but the discussion regarding the thinkpad has got me to thinking. The thinkpad has come in iterations that are physically robust and sturdy, but still are (to me) a little too fragile. Most laptops are far worse, and it's always a little nerve racking to carry around a $1k piece of equipment which appears as if it would shatter if dropped from more then four feet.
I've never had a laptop where I didn't wear out the keyboard in less then a year. Screens go bad too easily (and I'm scared to death to let anything touch them). Batteries, while they have improved over the last decade, still have far too little life in them.
Yet, with improving technology and manufacturing, the focus seems to be on faster processors and high performance graphics chips (which in turn eat up more power). How is it that there is no market out there for a good, cheap notebook that does the essentials (runs a browser and an office suite) that's as durable as a, well, an actual traditional paper notebook?
I'd love something that I can throw in a backpack or satchel and not have to worry if it's going to get broken by other books, or scratched to heck, or have the screen go bad from being crushed. Something that can last 15-20 hours between charging, so I don't have to always be looking for a power port. I don't need it to play games or do any high end video work. A decent, durable display that'll do 1024x768 would be fine. I don't need excessive power; a 1.6ghz processor with 128m of ram and a 50gig hdd would be more then enough. Finally, put in a keyboard that is indestructible.
I guess what I'm getting at is that I'd be more then willing to sacrifice performance for durability. Am I the only one who thinks this way? Or are there laptop manufacturers out there who make decent, cheap machines that are built like tanks, but don't necessarily have a higher end hardware inside?
My guess is that they're moving opperations to Santa's compound on the North Poll. Nobody (other then those closely tracking Santa's movements) knows where he is, so it's a pretty good place to hide a military instilation.
Meanwhile, Santa is being relocated to an office building in Colorado Springs.
So, if I was a hostile nation that could sneak one suitcase bomb into the US, couldn't I just set it off near the AFB they're moving NORAD to before launching my missles?
I'd kill all the NORAD personnel, and even if they were others it'd take them a few hours to get the mountain up and running. By then the missles will have already flown.
In a nutshell, because people pay to see bad movies. Too many are coaxed into seeing a crummy flick by heavy advertising, and by the time word gets out that the work is bad, the producers have recouped a large amount of their costs in the first week of release. If it's a smidgeon above truly awful, they can keep it running for weeks.
There are a few things you can do to avoid seeing bad movies:
1. Don't rely on advertising. The most talented people working in Hollywood, it seems, are producing commercials for films. It's reached the point where it's near impossible to tell if a movie is any good (or bad) just by seeing the previews. Remember, just because you see a commercial on TV for the same movie 5 times an hour doesn't mean it's good (and usually, it's a fair indicator that it's bad)
2. Don't watch a movie the weekend it's released. Let other poor saps spend their money and ask them.
3. Place trust in critics, especially in advertisements. Glossing over the movie section of your local paper, you'll note that every film out has raving quotes from critics. Take note of which critics they're quoting. As a general rule, the more credible the news source the better. If the Washington Post or Rolling Stone (Travis is not always right, but he does a pretty good job) publishes a favorable review, there's a good chance it'll be quoted in the movie's advertisements, and there's a good chance the movie will be pretty good. On the other hand, if you read "Best Movie of the Year!", and under the quote you find some guy from AM 530 in Toledo, Ohio, chances are the movie sucks, because every credible critic found it unwatchable.
But I'd have to agree with you that with few exceptions, most movies put out these days just aren't that good. There seems to be a lack of craftsmanship in filmmaking that was common three decades ago. The good news, especially if you're under 30, is that there is a wealth of fine films out there that you probably haven't seen. These films can typically be owned on DVD for less then the cost of two tickets to the multiplex.
Pay to produce an album? A high quality recording can now be produced in a home studio for signifigantly less then it used to cost. A band can now afford to produce its own album.
Distribute the album? Traditional record stores are becomming irrevelent. A physical CD can be easily sold and shipped using a turn key e-commerce site. Distrubiting music via the Internet is a pretty painless task (as long as you don't mess with DRM crud).
Promote the album? I suppose your typical artist can't afford the legalized payola record companies pay to radio stations to get airplay, but then again who listens to terrestrial radio anymore? With satelite and internet radio, which offers a much better (read: not bought and paid for) playlist, an artist has a greater chance of being exposed if, you know, they're actually good.
The question is this: Since the role of the record company is increasily becomming obsolete, why on earth would an artist want to deal with the indentured servitude, low percentage of sales, or lose ownership of their own work?
I can easily see the giant record companies be replaced with artist management companies which help the artist with inexpensive but effective promotion, orginizing tour dates and making deals with various distribution channels. The difference being that the artist management company represents the artist and exclusivly promotes the artist's interest, and ensures that the artist receives the bulk of the profits.
I can't wait to see a small-time artist get approached by a major label, fully expecting the artist to be wowed and grateful to get signed, and hearing 'no thanks. I can do better and make more money on my own'. It's coming.
The RIAA had a flawed business model, and P2P was to the consumer a much better alternitive. When sales really started slumping, they blamed P2P and were unwilling to look at their own camp to see what they were doing wrong.
They made matters worse by calling their own customers terrorists, bringing legal action against children ect. (hint: It's generally not a good idea to piss of your target market)
Finally, they're starting to wake up to the fact that if they change the way they do business, they can be profitable again. Suddenly, *suprise* P2P is no longer a threat.
Everyone knows that all the tactics that were employed to stop file sharing were at best comical and at worst really annoying, but had zero effect in the grand scheme of things. Sad, sad state of affairs.
I really don't like my cell phone. Too many features I never use, and lacking in what I'd really want. I just want a phone that does the simple things. A phone that sounds clear and doesn't drop calls. A phone that keeps its charge for a long time. That's pretty much it.
I hate text messaging, and I make up a story that I don't know how to read them. I can figure it out, I just refuse to communicate that way. If you want to talk to me, call me. If I'm not there, leave a message. I'd much rather say my phone doesn't support text messaging.
What I would pay for is a phone that looks nice. That is, a phone that doesn't look like some cheap plastic toy.
Give me duribility and reliability, and I'd have no problem dropping a few hundred bucks on a phone. I don't want a camera, I don't want to play video games, I don't want to surf the web . . I just want a phone.
Without commenting on the right or wrong of software piracy, I'm curious to know if there are any real world examples out there if a high-priced, heavily pirated software title where the vendor decided to lower the price to a reasonable level.
Just about everyone I know has photoshop, but nobody I know plunked down the several hundred dollars for it. These are the same people who have no issues with spending $50 on a game rather then go through the hassle of pirating it, and would likely puchase the graphics editor if it was more realistically priced.
I would think that Adobe would make more money if they could sell 20 copies at $50 a peice for every one they sell at their inflated price right now. Has any other company made that switch?
Still waiting for the true "slacker" MMORPG
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Forthcoming MMORPGs
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· Score: 2, Funny
You start out in a small bedroom with only a few pairs of ripped jeans and t-shirts. Early missions involve looting mom's purse for money to go to the local hotspot to see your friend's crummy band.
As you go up in levels, you are given the skills needed to talk mom and dad into letting you move into the basement, and eventually at higher levels you'll reach the elusive status of 'Van Ownership'.
Challenges you might face include losing your skanky girlfriend, getting busted for pot, or discovering that preppy button down dude down the street is smarter then you after all.
If I were a business, and two prospectice employees were presented to me and I had to make a choice between A) an experienced, older person who knows how to use the common tools in the busess, and B) A young upstart who can do a few things really good, but intergrate well with the rest of the office . . .
After learning that the older guy requiress less money then the young upstart, I'd have to go ahead and go with the older guy.
It almost seems as if the world doesn't have time to keep up the charade. You can meet with US politicians and talk till your face turns blue, but the reality is action and policy is directed by business leaders, and with rare exception our politicans, from the President on down, are going to accomidate those who fund their campaigns.
Perhaps China realizes this. Why meet with Bush when you know trade policy is going to be in the hands of the American tycoons? Heck, we probably wouldn't go to war unless it somehow served the interests of America's business power elite.
I'm not saying this is exactly how it is with America's politics, but it sure as heck seems that way. And if it's true, China is snubbing Bush because they simply want to talk to who's really in charge.
Everyone knows video games lead to behavior in real life.
Microsoft Flight Simulator made me get my pilot's license.
Sim City drove me to get a master's in urban planning.
Civ II inspired me to travel back in time to the dawn of man and take control of a group of wandering settlers, start a city, and grow my civilization through thousands of years.
Oh yeah, and the Grand Theft Auto series reminds me to lock my doors when driving my car.
Remember XP was released on the heals of ME, which was highly unstable (it was a peice of crap). Marketing the heavy beta testing and stability was key to get consumers to stay with Windows. And, for the most part, the claims were true. While not 100% perfect, XP is by and large the most stable consumer version of Windows released to date.
Now that the masses are comfortable with the relitive stability of XP, that stability is likely not high on the list of priorities of the end user; it's assumed that the OS will be stable.
Microsoft may be on to something here. Produce an opperating system that's widely used, release a new version full of bugs and make people think they need to upgrade, and just when people are are their wits end with the crummy software, release an OS consumers must migrate to in order to have stability. Who knows how long they can keep it up.
One of the more rational posts I've seen so far. It is and should be a fantasy world, void of any politically charged subject matter. I simply can't understand why any group of people would wish to be defined by a real world organization that carries with it so much baggage in a light, enjoyable environment.
Photography is a hobby shared by people of any background which you can choose to be a part of or not. Being gay, on the other hand, is a state of being. I could understand playing with folks with a shared hobby, but I would be a little uncomfortable walking around and seeing different guilds setup by exclusionary groups.
And I really can't imagine why a homosexual would want to limit themselves to being a part of a group filled with people just like them, any more then I would want to be a part of a straight only group. I don't buy the idea that homosexuals need organization in every facet of life is for some sort of 'protection' or 'mutual support'; I've played in groups where it came out in casual conversation that a member of the group was gay, and nobody cared.
Rick: I just got back from dinner with my boyfriend. Player: You boyfriend? You're gay? Rick: Yeah Player: Wow. I didn't know that. So Rick, you going to be around later for the raid?.... And that's all that is discussed on the issue . . . ever.
I'd hate if Rick suddenly felt public pressure to join a group full of "his people". He'd miss out on some good times, and so would the rest of us.
There has been signifigant legal precident that private establishments can not descriminate on a number of things. A resturant can have a no shoes/shirt requirement, but can not put up a sign that reads "Whites only".
Of course, weather or not a resturant has an obligation to protect minorities from some of their racist customers is another story.
That I would second. While in college as an undergrad I spent all four years in the dorms. No worries whatsoever. No matter what happened, I had a place to stay and food to eat (not a nice place, and not good food, but it was there). A college student has pleanty to worry about; bills shouldn't be one of them.
My utilities included apartment was my third place I lived after college. I just liked how easy it was. I wrote one check a month, and that covered everything.
It's rare, but you may be able to find a place that includs utilities, specifically electricity in the rental price. I lived in a small studio apartment for over three 1/2 years with all my utilities taken care of (power/water/gas/garbage. ..everything but phone/cable/internet), and not having to worry about power useage was great. You could keep things on all the time and never give it a second thought.
I even used electric space heaters in the winter (the only heat option the apartment had was a fireplace or leaving the gas oven on, which wasn't too safe).
Anyone who draws a lot of power as a matter of habit can benifit from a place like that. In the U.S., an apartment with 'free' utilities is a rarity, and I don't know how common they are in the UK, but it's worth checking out.
Re:Jilting at windmills
on
Africa, The MMOG
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The designer of the game claims both that it will have state of the art graphics and that it will run on low-end computers. Sorry, but you can't do both at the same time!
I'm not sure I agree with that compleatly. I've noticed that over the last ten years, graphics hardware has evolved at a much higher rate then graphics itself, something I've attributed to a propensity to develop software graphics engines that are bloated and inefficent. In the span of 18 months, the raw power of a graphics card may double, yet the quality of the graphics output from the software may increase only 15-20% in the same period of time.
It's a trend I see in every aspect of computer hardware. For example, in 1995 I had a computer with an 80 meg HDD. The driver for the ethernet device in the latest motherboard I purchased was 35 megs. I highly, highly doubt that the network capabilities of my new computer really requires a jump from a few K to drive the device up to 35 megabytes; I simply think that the party that designed the driver produced a bloated driver because it was. . . well, easier.
I think, based on my observations, that software designers use the dramatic increases in performance of hardware to compensate for increasingly large and inefficent code. Why spend countless man hours to develop a lean, mean peice of software when you can throw a ton of stock code, make a few adjustments, and have a working peice of sofware with a noticable increase from previous generations.
If hardware development stopped today. . . if CPUs and GPUs stopped getting faster and faster, and we were forced to get every ounce of performance out of our computers, I don't see how it would be a major difficulty in expect that graphics would continue to improve as programmers were required to be efficent as well as talented. And I think if a software developer built a graphics engine from the ground up with efficenancy as the opperitive word, we could get higher end graphics on older systems.
I like the idea, if only because I'm seen a few problems with pay pal, and Google usually knows how to do things right. Their philosophy--which may or may not be intentional--seems to be 'provide users with services they want without pissing them off'. AdSense, Gmail or Google Earth have all followed that mindset, and all of them are pretty good services.
So, if that is applied to an online payment system it can be nothing but a good thing.
The problem is that Google hasn't always followed that. Their new google tool bar, for example, employs the stealthy 'bundle with another package and install without explicit direction from the user', the same sort of tactic typically employed by spyware. I don't know if this was a mistake or an oversight, but it does proove that Google isn't always going to do the right thing. Hopefully with money at stake and millions of consumers watching to see how well it works Google won't botch it.
After seeing this, and scratching my head (as I'm sure most other people have done) thinking 'Why in heaven's name would a news website get in a huss over another website directing traffic at them?', I can only come up with one reasonable conclusion.
Lawyers doing legal things because they can.
I've always guessed it was the lawyers who have convinced the *IAAs to keep pushing law suits despite overwhelming evidence that filesharing helps the industry.
So, it stands to reason that they would push to have places like Google news punished for helping their clients. What they are doing may be copyright infringment, which means that there may be room for a lawsuit, which means lawyers may get paid. That it's an incredibly foolish business practice is incidental; IP laywers, at least the ones who represent established orginizations, seem to always err by persuing those who do something technically illegal but benifet their clients.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I see it as a choice between Cheep, Durible and Performance. You won't get all three, but I don't think it's a reach to expect you get two of them.
A $500 laptop will last a few years if it's handled carefully. You still wouldn't throw one in your backpack full of books and other assorted hard objects.
I had forgotten about that. It's a brillient idea and i's comforting to know the desingers realized your run of the mill school children would break your typical laptop the first week they received it.
But yes, that's more or less what I'm looking for; those seem to be pretty durible and designed for heavy use. Heck, I'd spend up to $400 on one if they could design it so it didn't look like a Play-School toy, included the OS, an entry level version of MS Office suite, and had a good battery.
I still don't see, however, how there can't be a market for things like that outside of education?
Heck, for that matter, imagine your home theatre with a Beowolf Cluster of these things.
Forgive me for being slightly off topic, but the discussion regarding the thinkpad has got me to thinking. The thinkpad has come in iterations that are physically robust and sturdy, but still are (to me) a little too fragile. Most laptops are far worse, and it's always a little nerve racking to carry around a $1k piece of equipment which appears as if it would shatter if dropped from more then four feet.
I've never had a laptop where I didn't wear out the keyboard in less then a year. Screens go bad too easily (and I'm scared to death to let anything touch them). Batteries, while they have improved over the last decade, still have far too little life in them.
Yet, with improving technology and manufacturing, the focus seems to be on faster processors and high performance graphics chips (which in turn eat up more power). How is it that there is no market out there for a good, cheap notebook that does the essentials (runs a browser and an office suite) that's as durable as a, well, an actual traditional paper notebook?
I'd love something that I can throw in a backpack or satchel and not have to worry if it's going to get broken by other books, or scratched to heck, or have the screen go bad from being crushed. Something that can last 15-20 hours between charging, so I don't have to always be looking for a power port. I don't need it to play games or do any high end video work. A decent, durable display that'll do 1024x768 would be fine. I don't need excessive power; a 1.6ghz processor with 128m of ram and a 50gig hdd would be more then enough. Finally, put in a keyboard that is indestructible.
I guess what I'm getting at is that I'd be more then willing to sacrifice performance for durability. Am I the only one who thinks this way? Or are there laptop manufacturers out there who make decent, cheap machines that are built like tanks, but don't necessarily have a higher end hardware inside?
Neither terrorists nor feds are nerds and as such don't read Slashdot.
I hope.
My guess is that they're moving opperations to Santa's compound on the North Poll. Nobody (other then those closely tracking Santa's movements) knows where he is, so it's a pretty good place to hide a military instilation.
Meanwhile, Santa is being relocated to an office building in Colorado Springs.
So, if I was a hostile nation that could sneak one suitcase bomb into the US, couldn't I just set it off near the AFB they're moving NORAD to before launching my missles?
I'd kill all the NORAD personnel, and even if they were others it'd take them a few hours to get the mountain up and running. By then the missles will have already flown.
In a nutshell, because people pay to see bad movies. Too many are coaxed into seeing a crummy flick by heavy advertising, and by the time word gets out that the work is bad, the producers have recouped a large amount of their costs in the first week of release. If it's a smidgeon above truly awful, they can keep it running for weeks.
There are a few things you can do to avoid seeing bad movies:
1. Don't rely on advertising. The most talented people working in Hollywood, it seems, are producing commercials for films. It's reached the point where it's near impossible to tell if a movie is any good (or bad) just by seeing the previews. Remember, just because you see a commercial on TV for the same movie 5 times an hour doesn't mean it's good (and usually, it's a fair indicator that it's bad)
2. Don't watch a movie the weekend it's released. Let other poor saps spend their money and ask them.
3. Place trust in critics, especially in advertisements. Glossing over the movie section of your local paper, you'll note that every film out has raving quotes from critics. Take note of which critics they're quoting. As a general rule, the more credible the news source the better. If the Washington Post or Rolling Stone (Travis is not always right, but he does a pretty good job) publishes a favorable review, there's a good chance it'll be quoted in the movie's advertisements, and there's a good chance the movie will be pretty good. On the other hand, if you read "Best Movie of the Year!", and under the quote you find some guy from AM 530 in Toledo, Ohio, chances are the movie sucks, because every credible critic found it unwatchable.
But I'd have to agree with you that with few exceptions, most movies put out these days just aren't that good. There seems to be a lack of craftsmanship in filmmaking that was common three decades ago. The good news, especially if you're under 30, is that there is a wealth of fine films out there that you probably haven't seen. These films can typically be owned on DVD for less then the cost of two tickets to the multiplex.
What do record companies even do these days?
Pay to produce an album? A high quality recording can now be produced in a home studio for signifigantly less then it used to cost. A band can now afford to produce its own album.
Distribute the album? Traditional record stores are becomming irrevelent. A physical CD can be easily sold and shipped using a turn key e-commerce site. Distrubiting music via the Internet is a pretty painless task (as long as you don't mess with DRM crud).
Promote the album? I suppose your typical artist can't afford the legalized payola record companies pay to radio stations to get airplay, but then again who listens to terrestrial radio anymore? With satelite and internet radio, which offers a much better (read: not bought and paid for) playlist, an artist has a greater chance of being exposed if, you know, they're actually good.
The question is this: Since the role of the record company is increasily becomming obsolete, why on earth would an artist want to deal with the indentured servitude, low percentage of sales, or lose ownership of their own work?
I can easily see the giant record companies be replaced with artist management companies which help the artist with inexpensive but effective promotion, orginizing tour dates and making deals with various distribution channels. The difference being that the artist management company represents the artist and exclusivly promotes the artist's interest, and ensures that the artist receives the bulk of the profits.
I can't wait to see a small-time artist get approached by a major label, fully expecting the artist to be wowed and grateful to get signed, and hearing 'no thanks. I can do better and make more money on my own'. It's coming.
Exactly.
The RIAA had a flawed business model, and P2P was to the consumer a much better alternitive. When sales really started slumping, they blamed P2P and were unwilling to look at their own camp to see what they were doing wrong.
They made matters worse by calling their own customers terrorists, bringing legal action against children ect. (hint: It's generally not a good idea to piss of your target market)
Finally, they're starting to wake up to the fact that if they change the way they do business, they can be profitable again. Suddenly, *suprise* P2P is no longer a threat.
Everyone knows that all the tactics that were employed to stop file sharing were at best comical and at worst really annoying, but had zero effect in the grand scheme of things. Sad, sad state of affairs.
I really don't like my cell phone. Too many features I never use, and lacking in what I'd really want. I just want a phone that does the simple things. A phone that sounds clear and doesn't drop calls. A phone that keeps its charge for a long time. That's pretty much it.
I hate text messaging, and I make up a story that I don't know how to read them. I can figure it out, I just refuse to communicate that way. If you want to talk to me, call me. If I'm not there, leave a message. I'd much rather say my phone doesn't support text messaging.
What I would pay for is a phone that looks nice. That is, a phone that doesn't look like some cheap plastic toy.
Give me duribility and reliability, and I'd have no problem dropping a few hundred bucks on a phone. I don't want a camera, I don't want to play video games, I don't want to surf the web . . I just want a phone.
Without commenting on the right or wrong of software piracy, I'm curious to know if there are any real world examples out there if a high-priced, heavily pirated software title where the vendor decided to lower the price to a reasonable level.
Just about everyone I know has photoshop, but nobody I know plunked down the several hundred dollars for it. These are the same people who have no issues with spending $50 on a game rather then go through the hassle of pirating it, and would likely puchase the graphics editor if it was more realistically priced.
I would think that Adobe would make more money if they could sell 20 copies at $50 a peice for every one they sell at their inflated price right now. Has any other company made that switch?
You start out in a small bedroom with only a few pairs of ripped jeans and t-shirts. Early missions involve looting mom's purse for money to go to the local hotspot to see your friend's crummy band.
As you go up in levels, you are given the skills needed to talk mom and dad into letting you move into the basement, and eventually at higher levels you'll reach the elusive status of 'Van Ownership'.
Challenges you might face include losing your skanky girlfriend, getting busted for pot, or discovering that preppy button down dude down the street is smarter then you after all.
I dunno. Too close to home?
If I were a business, and two prospectice employees were presented to me and I had to make a choice between A) an experienced, older person who knows how to use the common tools in the busess, and B) A young upstart who can do a few things really good, but intergrate well with the rest of the office . . .
After learning that the older guy requiress less money then the young upstart, I'd have to go ahead and go with the older guy.
It almost seems as if the world doesn't have time to keep up the charade. You can meet with US politicians and talk till your face turns blue, but the reality is action and policy is directed by business leaders, and with rare exception our politicans, from the President on down, are going to accomidate those who fund their campaigns.
Perhaps China realizes this. Why meet with Bush when you know trade policy is going to be in the hands of the American tycoons? Heck, we probably wouldn't go to war unless it somehow served the interests of America's business power elite.
I'm not saying this is exactly how it is with America's politics, but it sure as heck seems that way. And if it's true, China is snubbing Bush because they simply want to talk to who's really in charge.
Everyone knows video games lead to behavior in real life.
Microsoft Flight Simulator made me get my pilot's license.
Sim City drove me to get a master's in urban planning.
Civ II inspired me to travel back in time to the dawn of man and take control of a group of wandering settlers, start a city, and grow my civilization through thousands of years.
Oh yeah, and the Grand Theft Auto series reminds me to lock my doors when driving my car.
Remember XP was released on the heals of ME, which was highly unstable (it was a peice of crap). Marketing the heavy beta testing and stability was key to get consumers to stay with Windows. And, for the most part, the claims were true. While not 100% perfect, XP is by and large the most stable consumer version of Windows released to date.
Now that the masses are comfortable with the relitive stability of XP, that stability is likely not high on the list of priorities of the end user; it's assumed that the OS will be stable.
Microsoft may be on to something here. Produce an opperating system that's widely used, release a new version full of bugs and make people think they need to upgrade, and just when people are are their wits end with the crummy software, release an OS consumers must migrate to in order to have stability. Who knows how long they can keep it up.
e-mail senders will be guaranteed their messages won't be filtered and will bear a seal alerting recipients they're legitimate.
If I didn't ask for it, it's not legitimate. Period.
Junk mail is junk mail, regardless of who it's from.
One of the more rational posts I've seen so far. It is and should be a fantasy world, void of any politically charged subject matter. I simply can't understand why any group of people would wish to be defined by a real world organization that carries with it so much baggage in a light, enjoyable environment.
.... And that's all that is discussed on the issue . . . ever.
Photography is a hobby shared by people of any background which you can choose to be a part of or not. Being gay, on the other hand, is a state of being. I could understand playing with folks with a shared hobby, but I would be a little uncomfortable walking around and seeing different guilds setup by exclusionary groups.
And I really can't imagine why a homosexual would want to limit themselves to being a part of a group filled with people just like them, any more then I would want to be a part of a straight only group. I don't buy the idea that homosexuals need organization in every facet of life is for some sort of 'protection' or 'mutual support'; I've played in groups where it came out in casual conversation that a member of the group was gay, and nobody cared.
Rick: I just got back from dinner with my boyfriend.
Player: You boyfriend? You're gay?
Rick: Yeah
Player: Wow. I didn't know that. So Rick, you going to be around later for the raid?
I'd hate if Rick suddenly felt public pressure to join a group full of "his people". He'd miss out on some good times, and so would the rest of us.
There has been signifigant legal precident that private establishments can not descriminate on a number of things. A resturant can have a no shoes/shirt requirement, but can not put up a sign that reads "Whites only".
Of course, weather or not a resturant has an obligation to protect minorities from some of their racist customers is another story.
That I would second. While in college as an undergrad I spent all four years in the dorms. No worries whatsoever. No matter what happened, I had a place to stay and food to eat (not a nice place, and not good food, but it was there). A college student has pleanty to worry about; bills shouldn't be one of them.
My utilities included apartment was my third place I lived after college. I just liked how easy it was. I wrote one check a month, and that covered everything.
It's rare, but you may be able to find a place that includs utilities, specifically electricity in the rental price. I lived in a small studio apartment for over three 1/2 years with all my utilities taken care of (power/water/gas/garbage. . .everything but phone/cable/internet), and not having to worry about power useage was great. You could keep things on all the time and never give it a second thought.
I even used electric space heaters in the winter (the only heat option the apartment had was a fireplace or leaving the gas oven on, which wasn't too safe).
Anyone who draws a lot of power as a matter of habit can benifit from a place like that. In the U.S., an apartment with 'free' utilities is a rarity, and I don't know how common they are in the UK, but it's worth checking out.
The designer of the game claims both that it will have state of the art graphics and that it will run on low-end computers. Sorry, but you can't do both at the same time!
I'm not sure I agree with that compleatly. I've noticed that over the last ten years, graphics hardware has evolved at a much higher rate then graphics itself, something I've attributed to a propensity to develop software graphics engines that are bloated and inefficent. In the span of 18 months, the raw power of a graphics card may double, yet the quality of the graphics output from the software may increase only 15-20% in the same period of time.
It's a trend I see in every aspect of computer hardware. For example, in 1995 I had a computer with an 80 meg HDD. The driver for the ethernet device in the latest motherboard I purchased was 35 megs. I highly, highly doubt that the network capabilities of my new computer really requires a jump from a few K to drive the device up to 35 megabytes; I simply think that the party that designed the driver produced a bloated driver because it was. . . well, easier.
I think, based on my observations, that software designers use the dramatic increases in performance of hardware to compensate for increasingly large and inefficent code. Why spend countless man hours to develop a lean, mean peice of software when you can throw a ton of stock code, make a few adjustments, and have a working peice of sofware with a noticable increase from previous generations.
If hardware development stopped today. . . if CPUs and GPUs stopped getting faster and faster, and we were forced to get every ounce of performance out of our computers, I don't see how it would be a major difficulty in expect that graphics would continue to improve as programmers were required to be efficent as well as talented. And I think if a software developer built a graphics engine from the ground up with efficenancy as the opperitive word, we could get higher end graphics on older systems.
I like the idea, if only because I'm seen a few problems with pay pal, and Google usually knows how to do things right. Their philosophy--which may or may not be intentional--seems to be 'provide users with services they want without pissing them off'. AdSense, Gmail or Google Earth have all followed that mindset, and all of them are pretty good services.
So, if that is applied to an online payment system it can be nothing but a good thing.
The problem is that Google hasn't always followed that. Their new google tool bar, for example, employs the stealthy 'bundle with another package and install without explicit direction from the user', the same sort of tactic typically employed by spyware. I don't know if this was a mistake or an oversight, but it does proove that Google isn't always going to do the right thing. Hopefully with money at stake and millions of consumers watching to see how well it works Google won't botch it.
After seeing this, and scratching my head (as I'm sure most other people have done) thinking 'Why in heaven's name would a news website get in a huss over another website directing traffic at them?', I can only come up with one reasonable conclusion.
Lawyers doing legal things because they can.
I've always guessed it was the lawyers who have convinced the *IAAs to keep pushing law suits despite overwhelming evidence that filesharing helps the industry.
So, it stands to reason that they would push to have places like Google news punished for helping their clients. What they are doing may be copyright infringment, which means that there may be room for a lawsuit, which means lawyers may get paid. That it's an incredibly foolish business practice is incidental; IP laywers, at least the ones who represent established orginizations, seem to always err by persuing those who do something technically illegal but benifet their clients.
I wonder what it's like to think like that.