actually thought the balance board was rather counter intuitive as a controller, for certain things at least. For example when you are ski-ing or snowboarding, sure you have to balance (though if you are able to stand still in a certain position without falling over I'd say you were balanced okay), but your direction of movement is largely decided by the angle of your skis/board rather than where your center of gravity is - if you get your center of gravity in the wrong place you'd fall over sure, but your board or skis would be going in the direction that your feet had them carving. I found myself trying to push down on the board with my feet a lot more than just shifting my balance.
That's actually a lot like how skiing and snowboarding are in the real world. You steer the skis by turning them, which is, by far, easiest by leaning to the side you want to go, especially at speed. Your actual direction is determined by the direction your skis are pointed, rather than the direction you're looking.
t also predicted my body age as 33 which I was a bit miffed about,
I'm 27. With the balance tests I've seen my "age" vary between 22 and 40 over the last month, with the bulk of the scores being in the 24-28 range. (the 40 is an anomaly, I did the balance test right after doing 30 minutes of step aerobics, aside from that one time, I've not seen an "age" over 33). I wouldn't take it too seriously. It's a video game, after all.
XP Home isn't an SMP kernel. XP Pro is. That may have changed with SP3 (I honestly haven't bothered to check), but with SP2 and earlier, XP Home can't utilize more than a single logical or physical processor. Since most computers are going dual core.... *shrugs*
True. I should probably clarify... I can't stand to look at code that follows the general trends. *shrugs* If it works without bugs (or somebody who understands it is fixing the bugs) who cares?
Back when I wrote code, I would, when writing for myself, not document a damned thing. However, if i wrote for general purposes I would explain each section in a large amount of detail. I would even point out what kind of problems that cutting out a particular section of code would cause.
I generally can't stand code that was written by a male... specifically because it's not usually commented, or when it is commented, it's stuff that is relatively useless, like:
//hope this works
There are people who break the mold, though... when writing for myself, I don't generally comment it. My coding style hasn't changed in a decade, and I have a damned near eidetic memory. I can look at code I wrote 10 years ago, and still understand how it works and not need comments. When I'm writing for somebody else, I'll comment the bejeezus out of it, just like the story claims. *shrugs* I've been known to pull out examples of code I wrote a long time ago and spend time adding comments before I pass it on to somebody who needs it.:)
Likewise mine runs quiet enough that I can't really hear it most of the time.... but it is getting difficult to assemble one that's quiet enough, particularly if you need something approaching power, and/or a small form factor case.
Part of the problem is that for an HTPC to be successful, it needs to be silent. That's one of the reasons that some of them get put in another room entirely... it's not easy to build a PC that's fast enough to be useable as an HTPC and low powered enough that it can be passively cooled.
Admittedly my experience is a little lacking when it comes to dumb terminals, but how are they at transmitting OpenGL etc.? Do they need powerful graphics, too? That will add to the heat.
Ok, so they have had this democracy for several years now... If we leave and everything collapses, then that means that it's not what the people want.
All it takes is a handful of well-armed people to topple a government. It's not necessarily that the people don't want a democracy (I'm not Iraqi, so I don't know... but the Iraqi I used to work with was in favour of democratizing the country), it's that there's enough people who don't want one still running around with guns and bombs. The local police/defense force simply isn't strong enough to cope with them yet.
They're going to have to call an election sooner or later, though: That's the only way they can unseat Dion. They may as well get it over with, and hope that it's while people remember that the Conservatives suck.
Freedom of press is an illusion. It doesn't actually exist, nor should it be carte blanche to publish anything you choose. The idea behind the concept was that the press should be free to publish information about the government or world events, as a mechanism to keep the government in check. It was *not* intended as giving the press the freedom to publish whatever it wants without fear of repercussions. In an ideal world, the press will respect its moral obligation to moderate itself, and that kind of legislation wouldn't be needed. In a world where sex sells, and the press cares more about sensationalism than it does the facts, somebody has to keep them in line.
You're right, in that there's a slippery slope in my argument. However, I do think that there's a few topics that should absolutely be censored, and whose possession/distribution should be as illegal as their production/commission. Who decides? The public as a whole. You may personally disagree with their decisions (a person may be smart, but people are dumb), but in the end, the majority will usually make good decisions in that direction.
You may want to watch the news for a phrase that's been coming up a lot lately... around here, they're calling it "youtube crime". The basic idea is that people are committing crimes they wouldn't otherwise commit, filming it, and putting it on YouTube in hopes of gaining infamy. There's a motion in the Canadian parliament at the moment to impose stricter penalties on hate crimes if they are filmed and published, specifically because of this. Most crimes would happen anyway... but there's an element that wouldn't otherwise commit crimes if they weren't encouraged by the promise of infamy.
Those were all 'silly' examples. More seriously, the crime in child pornography resides in the person abusing the child. It does not reside in the viewer. Next you'll tell me that I'm guilty of terrorism for having read about how to manufacture a bomb? Or guilty of illegal immigration for having learned some Spanish? Look, if a crime was committed, go after the perpetrator, not everyone to whom you can draw a line with your purple crayon.
Mmm. love a good strawman.
No. You wouldn't be guilty of those. If, however, you were one of a million people downloading a video of some kid getting beaten up by his classmates, then *yes*, you would be, to an extent, guilty. His classmates wouldn't have done it if they didn't think they would get their 15 minutes out of it. By creating a market for it, you're encouraging it.
You apparently missed the part where I said I could think of a counterexample, too.... My point wasn't that it should always be illegal to distribute content like that, it was that it shouldn't always be legal.
Well you bring up a good point. But my reply is that SHOULD it be illegal to just distribute something (not for profit) that shows an illegal act?
Absolutely. At the risk of incurring a "think of the children!" response, I'm going to use child porn as an example. By allowing distribution of child porn, you would be creating a market for it. People may discover their interest in it by viewing material that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to do, and that would in turn increase demand for the materials.
Whether it's illegal or not to possess or distribute it is ancillary at that point: once there's a market, and demand, there will be people trying to fill the demand. It will naturally lead to increased production of the stuff.
You may see it as a slippery slope argument, but I see it as wanting to punish everybody who's responsible for the market for the material in the first place. Something like that is exploitive and very harmful to children, and the punishment for it should be meted out at all levels on the distribution and consumption chain.
Now... you can probably think of a counterexample. I can think of a counterexample. But be careful making blanket statements, because I think that most of us would agree that for the example I've given, those people should have the book thrown at them.
*nods* I'm much the same as you are in that respect... but I've recently found my desires have changed as far as computing goes. Basically... there's exactly one computer game that I want to play any more, and its requirements are not even close to stunning. All it asks for, at a minimum, is an Intel 945 chipset, nVidia GeForce 6600, or ATI Radeon 9500 or better, coupled with 512MB of RAM, and an 800MHz P3 or Athlon. Show me *any* new computer that you can buy today which doesn't meet those specs. And it runs under Linux and MacOS.
So I've been slowly switching all of the computers I use over to laptops. And my gaming is done on the Nintendo Wii. With a console, there's two major advantages: you only have to spend $200 to buy one, and you know that for several years, you'll never have to upgrade. I buy a $500 laptop, install Linux, and I'm off to the races, with a great computer that'll do me for several years. And I'm no longer in the upgrade hell cycle that you see in PC gaming.
Psst... it's called "CSIS".... Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.
*shrugs* it will just take one person to challenge the provisions in the treaty. I'd take it to the supreme court, but it's unlikely that they'll enforce that anyway. As with most treaties, they don't usually bother enforcing some of the more arcane provisions until some nit complains that you're violating them.
And my Dell laptop is up to desktop in about 45s from cold. Not hibernating (issues with the sound driver for Intel HD Audio in Linux... doesn't un-sleep properly.)
When I had it running under Vista (when it left the factory), it was about 1m30 to boot. Under XP MCE 2005, it was about 1m15... I still dual boot with XP, because the bluetooth control software for my Nokia phone is XP-only, and because some of the games I play do not work under WINE.
A lot of what goes into determining your boot time is factors like hard drive speed, and how many services you have running... admittedly, a 30s POST is bordering on obscene, but that could have something to do with your hardware configuration (master/slave conflict, maybe?), or you could be in need of a new BIOS.
Indeed. I absolutely loved every game I added to your list, in spite of some very badly designed game engines in two of the cases (Dreamfall, and Advent Rising). They're all games I still play.
Put that into perspective a moment... I still play The Longest Journey. TLJ is a linear storyline, with zero branching at all, and its engine was already dated when it originally came out, in 1999. But the story it tells is so good, and so enthralling, that I can easily overlook those aspects and just enjoy myself.
I'm not faulting storytelling. I'm just saying that you have to sacrifice some elements that gamers have come to expect in order to allow for it.
Loved the King's Quest and Space Quest games. Liked Police quest as well... but those games were very linear. More recently, there's games like The Longest Journey and its sequel, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, and also Advent Rising. There's also the NWN games, and the KOTOR series, just to name a few.
But all of those games have exactly the same problem with them: they're linear. Stories are, by definition, linear (unless you count Choose Your Own Adventure). If you're going to tell a great story through a game, you either limit yourself to one or two possible plotlines/endings, making for a *very* linear game, or you take on the enormous task of plotting out every option in the multiverse that gets determined by every choice you can make in game.
I'm going to assume that you actually missed it, and not that it was a facetious remark... if it was, then I apologize.
What you're missing is that this is a single chip. One chip with 32gbit is a 4gbyte single chip. Couple 4 of these on a single thumb drive (and they're small enough to do it), and you've got a 16gbyte USB thumb drive. And it only cost them $16 to build. Well... $20, considering packaging and control chips etc.
Now contrast that against the current cost of a 16GB flash drive. 16GB thumb drives don't exist... the biggest I've seen is 4GB... and 16GB SSDs cost over $200.
Slashdot Mirror
the same can be said of Windows....
That's actually a lot like how skiing and snowboarding are in the real world. You steer the skis by turning them, which is, by far, easiest by leaning to the side you want to go, especially at speed. Your actual direction is determined by the direction your skis are pointed, rather than the direction you're looking.
I'm 27. With the balance tests I've seen my "age" vary between 22 and 40 over the last month, with the bulk of the scores being in the 24-28 range. (the 40 is an anomaly, I did the balance test right after doing 30 minutes of step aerobics, aside from that one time, I've not seen an "age" over 33). I wouldn't take it too seriously. It's a video game, after all.
XP Home isn't an SMP kernel. XP Pro is. That may have changed with SP3 (I honestly haven't bothered to check), but with SP2 and earlier, XP Home can't utilize more than a single logical or physical processor. Since most computers are going dual core.... *shrugs*
True. I should probably clarify... I can't stand to look at code that follows the general trends. *shrugs* If it works without bugs (or somebody who understands it is fixing the bugs) who cares?
I generally can't stand code that was written by a male... specifically because it's not usually commented, or when it is commented, it's stuff that is relatively useless, like:
There are people who break the mold, though... when writing for myself, I don't generally comment it. My coding style hasn't changed in a decade, and I have a damned near eidetic memory. I can look at code I wrote 10 years ago, and still understand how it works and not need comments. When I'm writing for somebody else, I'll comment the bejeezus out of it, just like the story claims. *shrugs* I've been known to pull out examples of code I wrote a long time ago and spend time adding comments before I pass it on to somebody who needs it.
Likewise mine runs quiet enough that I can't really hear it most of the time.... but it is getting difficult to assemble one that's quiet enough, particularly if you need something approaching power, and/or a small form factor case.
Part of the problem is that for an HTPC to be successful, it needs to be silent. That's one of the reasons that some of them get put in another room entirely... it's not easy to build a PC that's fast enough to be useable as an HTPC and low powered enough that it can be passively cooled.
Admittedly my experience is a little lacking when it comes to dumb terminals, but how are they at transmitting OpenGL etc.? Do they need powerful graphics, too? That will add to the heat.
All it takes is a handful of well-armed people to topple a government. It's not necessarily that the people don't want a democracy (I'm not Iraqi, so I don't know... but the Iraqi I used to work with was in favour of democratizing the country), it's that there's enough people who don't want one still running around with guns and bombs. The local police/defense force simply isn't strong enough to cope with them yet.
Sudden can also mean an unexpected change to the status quo, particularly when that status quo has been in effect for *way* too long.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irony
Probably... Overuse of acronyms may very well cause a TIA
They're going to have to call an election sooner or later, though: That's the only way they can unseat Dion. They may as well get it over with, and hope that it's while people remember that the Conservatives suck.
But... but! That's what WINE is for!
Freedom of press is an illusion. It doesn't actually exist, nor should it be carte blanche to publish anything you choose. The idea behind the concept was that the press should be free to publish information about the government or world events, as a mechanism to keep the government in check. It was *not* intended as giving the press the freedom to publish whatever it wants without fear of repercussions. In an ideal world, the press will respect its moral obligation to moderate itself, and that kind of legislation wouldn't be needed. In a world where sex sells, and the press cares more about sensationalism than it does the facts, somebody has to keep them in line.
You're right, in that there's a slippery slope in my argument. However, I do think that there's a few topics that should absolutely be censored, and whose possession/distribution should be as illegal as their production/commission. Who decides? The public as a whole. You may personally disagree with their decisions (a person may be smart, but people are dumb), but in the end, the majority will usually make good decisions in that direction.
You may want to watch the news for a phrase that's been coming up a lot lately... around here, they're calling it "youtube crime". The basic idea is that people are committing crimes they wouldn't otherwise commit, filming it, and putting it on YouTube in hopes of gaining infamy. There's a motion in the Canadian parliament at the moment to impose stricter penalties on hate crimes if they are filmed and published, specifically because of this. Most crimes would happen anyway... but there's an element that wouldn't otherwise commit crimes if they weren't encouraged by the promise of infamy.
Mmm. love a good strawman.
No. You wouldn't be guilty of those. If, however, you were one of a million people downloading a video of some kid getting beaten up by his classmates, then *yes*, you would be, to an extent, guilty. His classmates wouldn't have done it if they didn't think they would get their 15 minutes out of it. By creating a market for it, you're encouraging it.
You apparently missed the part where I said I could think of a counterexample, too.... My point wasn't that it should always be illegal to distribute content like that, it was that it shouldn't always be legal.
Absolutely. At the risk of incurring a "think of the children!" response, I'm going to use child porn as an example. By allowing distribution of child porn, you would be creating a market for it. People may discover their interest in it by viewing material that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to do, and that would in turn increase demand for the materials.
Whether it's illegal or not to possess or distribute it is ancillary at that point: once there's a market, and demand, there will be people trying to fill the demand. It will naturally lead to increased production of the stuff.
You may see it as a slippery slope argument, but I see it as wanting to punish everybody who's responsible for the market for the material in the first place. Something like that is exploitive and very harmful to children, and the punishment for it should be meted out at all levels on the distribution and consumption chain.
Now... you can probably think of a counterexample. I can think of a counterexample. But be careful making blanket statements, because I think that most of us would agree that for the example I've given, those people should have the book thrown at them.
Y'know... every time I come across the acronym IANAL, I have the same thought. It's particularly apt in a thread about pornography.
*nods* I'm much the same as you are in that respect... but I've recently found my desires have changed as far as computing goes. Basically... there's exactly one computer game that I want to play any more, and its requirements are not even close to stunning. All it asks for, at a minimum, is an Intel 945 chipset, nVidia GeForce 6600, or ATI Radeon 9500 or better, coupled with 512MB of RAM, and an 800MHz P3 or Athlon. Show me *any* new computer that you can buy today which doesn't meet those specs. And it runs under Linux and MacOS.
So I've been slowly switching all of the computers I use over to laptops. And my gaming is done on the Nintendo Wii. With a console, there's two major advantages: you only have to spend $200 to buy one, and you know that for several years, you'll never have to upgrade. I buy a $500 laptop, install Linux, and I'm off to the races, with a great computer that'll do me for several years. And I'm no longer in the upgrade hell cycle that you see in PC gaming.
Psst... it's called "CSIS".... Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.
*shrugs* it will just take one person to challenge the provisions in the treaty. I'd take it to the supreme court, but it's unlikely that they'll enforce that anyway. As with most treaties, they don't usually bother enforcing some of the more arcane provisions until some nit complains that you're violating them.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/
and as somebody else said... *whoosh*...
And my Dell laptop is up to desktop in about 45s from cold. Not hibernating (issues with the sound driver for Intel HD Audio in Linux... doesn't un-sleep properly.)
When I had it running under Vista (when it left the factory), it was about 1m30 to boot. Under XP MCE 2005, it was about 1m15... I still dual boot with XP, because the bluetooth control software for my Nokia phone is XP-only, and because some of the games I play do not work under WINE.
A lot of what goes into determining your boot time is factors like hard drive speed, and how many services you have running... admittedly, a 30s POST is bordering on obscene, but that could have something to do with your hardware configuration (master/slave conflict, maybe?), or you could be in need of a new BIOS.
Indeed. I absolutely loved every game I added to your list, in spite of some very badly designed game engines in two of the cases (Dreamfall, and Advent Rising). They're all games I still play.
Put that into perspective a moment... I still play The Longest Journey. TLJ is a linear storyline, with zero branching at all, and its engine was already dated when it originally came out, in 1999. But the story it tells is so good, and so enthralling, that I can easily overlook those aspects and just enjoy myself.
I'm not faulting storytelling. I'm just saying that you have to sacrifice some elements that gamers have come to expect in order to allow for it.
Loved the King's Quest and Space Quest games. Liked Police quest as well... but those games were very linear. More recently, there's games like The Longest Journey and its sequel, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, and also Advent Rising. There's also the NWN games, and the KOTOR series, just to name a few.
But all of those games have exactly the same problem with them: they're linear. Stories are, by definition, linear (unless you count Choose Your Own Adventure). If you're going to tell a great story through a game, you either limit yourself to one or two possible plotlines/endings, making for a *very* linear game, or you take on the enormous task of plotting out every option in the multiverse that gets determined by every choice you can make in game.
I'm going to assume that you actually missed it, and not that it was a facetious remark... if it was, then I apologize.
What you're missing is that this is a single chip. One chip with 32gbit is a 4gbyte single chip. Couple 4 of these on a single thumb drive (and they're small enough to do it), and you've got a 16gbyte USB thumb drive. And it only cost them $16 to build. Well... $20, considering packaging and control chips etc.
Now contrast that against the current cost of a 16GB flash drive. 16GB thumb drives don't exist... the biggest I've seen is 4GB... and 16GB SSDs cost over $200.
You do know you can buy a red Inspiron or XPS laptop? They even have them in pink. :)
:)
Yes, you can't get the ultra-portable mini yet, but you can get them in 14", and the XPS at 13".