Are you saying Americans were directly liable of detainee abuse? Sorry. It's not there. Would you prefer another foreign military to take people out of American prisons because we have the death penalty or notify authorities and allow the American process to fix that? And if America chooses not to change that position you don't agree with (death penalty is legal here. In Iraq, DETAINEE ABUSE IS ILLEGAL), do you declare war again to correct this problem? New sanctions?
Most people in America would rather foreign governments to respect our sovereignity and just bring any serious infractions of humanitarian standards to public notice after allowing the government time to fix it themselves. Even the broad generalizations from (most) websites pointed out that ALL of this detainee abuse was pointed out to different levels of authority in the Iraqi government and still the Iraqis chose to do nothing about it. What is America's recourse then? Snatch the detainees away? Hold onto more detainees when public opinion at the time was so adamant we shouldn't hold on to them? Where would we send them if we're to withdraw: Guantanamo? Maybe try an Iraqi in American courts for crimes committed in Iraq? Think through your assumption and then get back to the internet.
The 400,000 documents also reports the finding of mass graves of unmarked masses killed by Saddam's troops. These documents are more in line with the numbers reported in other places and far below what would have continued if Saddam had stayed in power. Whether you disagree with the reasons for the invasion or methods, or what have you, the rate of deaths in Iraq has lowered since 2003 when compared to the previous 23 years Saddam was in power.
Sorry I haven't had time to go through all 400,000 documents yet, but the news sites that have had access to the database for much longer are not alleging that US troops tortured anyone. If any troops are to blame, it's the Iraqis.
Your use of expletives causes you to look irrational and takes away weight from something I might have considered otherwise. To paint the entire media as supportive of the mission in Iraq is a simple over-generalization and I am sure you are aware of this, and will remember when you calm down and stop trying to argue with the internet.
There's somewhere between 34-45 million people of 300+ million people without health insurance now, according to the census data website. Even with health insurance, treatments for conditions like Cancer and/or rehabilitation goes way over the $250k per sickness/per year that most people have. If the health insurance was abolished, most people, barring the 5-10% of truly rich, wouldn't be able to pay today's listed prices. Costs would HAVE to come down for the medical providers to not lose out on that other 75% of their business.
Would there be this horrible period of price adjustment? Oh, sure. It'd be painful (literally) for a while. But for businesses not to fail, prices several steps up the cost chain, such as R&D, marketing, distribution, personnel wages, cost of student loans for doctors, etc. would all have to adjust to meet the reality that without insurance, a majority of people wouldn't be able to pay at all. It'd be mass deflation across several industries, which is never popular because people feel that their worth is decreasing, when in fact the unit of measurement is changing. As of now, insurance has a (correlative so far, causation being hard to prove) inflationary effect on costs since it was popularized in the past 60 years.
Forcing them to get insurance? That's a great idea. Take it a step further but invert the idea. Ban all health insurance period. Then, when the insurance companies disappear and aren't paying the current high costs (which they currently negotiate down in private agreements due to their collective bargaining power), and the people setting the costs receive no business since no one can afford the current prices, the providers will HAVE to lower prices across the board to have a hope of attracting any business that has a realistic expectation of paying.
Net result? Prices come down and the same thing happens: most people will be able to afford health care and a segment of the population still won't be able to afford it. The percentages will change some, but probably not too drastically. If people can't afford $100 a month a prescription, they won't be able to afford $100 a month for insurance that reduces the copay of a prescription to $10. I base the dollar amounts on the rates I paid at previous jobs.
All Western European schools keep people in school longer than America does. Britain has 190 days. Canada has 190. Japan keeps kids in schools much longer than Americans do. South Koreans, Australians, and other outliers do as well. We are actually behind by only going to school 180 days or so. South Africa is 200. Philippines is 200. Hong Kong goes September to July. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_term
for a single lifetime. Then they die, and they never really get the hand off they should have to the next person, who will most likely be a dictator, sans benevolence. That's why Plato called the Republic practically unattainable - there aren't enough Philosopher Kings to handle the mess in the most expedient and trustworthy manner.
Also, certain governments, like Singapore, have tried paying their government officials salaries that are so high that they become less bribable. This works, since Singapore is seen as less corrupt than many countries in similar levels of development, but modern society in America might have a problem paying government officials after several hundred years of distrusting politicians.
4th graders are smart enough to think abstractly, and draw the lines between analogies and real life. They're not like 1st graders, where they haven't been alive long enough to have encountered all the normal things, like computers or chat. Most of the boys will be playing video games, and most of the girls will have brothers who also play video games, or know what goes on.
But you still have explain stuff like networking. They know computers "talk" to eachother, but not how. And they don't want to hear about TCP/IP, IPv4, routers, or other jargon unless its explained by the activity. So what do I suggest?
If you got the time and space, have the kids stand in a line, and then have 2 or 3 kids be the "servers" who ask yes or no questions to the "data" who are other kids. Say the goal is to "sort" all the kids by boy and girl, or hair color, or where they sit in the room, or who likes Pokemon and who doesn't, or anything like that. We're not explaining a metatags system, so keep it pretty binary by only needing two groups, or as few choices as possible.
This interaction will be like a game to them, and they will have fun, but the application means the ones who won't learn from lecture actually get something out of it. Add more labels or levels to the interaction if you want, with things like, "Some computers speak only a certain kind of language." and make the kids speak in code words to differentiate. Use cans on a string for "cable," and cones made out of paper or cardboard for "wireless."
Once they understand that you maintain the computers and the lines that let you do that, you can explain the aerospace stuff, and how it's used in our business. You allow multiple people to work on the same documents, so make copies and let one kid hand them out, or other kids have to ask him for the documents. You could explain SSL certs by saying only kids with a special badge on could pick up a copy of the documents, and they got to be handed out by a trusted third party like... well, that may be a couple layers of abstraction above even 4th graders.
And this is coming from a Army E5 Sergeant, currently working in Tikrit, who works in JAG, and did lots of Detainee Operations while I'm over here. If you saw any kind of abuse, bad treatment, or did any yourself, you have a duty to report bad treatment or abuse of Iraqis. It doesn't matter if it's physical abuse like beatings or emotional or humilitation types of abuse such as racial epithets like "Hadji" "Towel Head" or anything else.
If you're not reporting these things, then you are in violation of many orders and a couple of UCMJ articles. If you would like me to cite specific examples, please send me a private message and I will provide you with my CENTCOM email address to start the process of reporting others. Because its people who don't report these things that make the rest of the Army look bad, since none of it will get prosecuted and dealt with in an appropriate way.
Of course, I should take an AC comment with a grain of salt: either you were protecting your own identity from fear of retribution, or you were making it up. Either way, you should send me a message, and we can make sure the right thing is done.
660 posts and its only the third story down? Wow. Hope you get to read this.
I work in the JAG Corps for the US Army, so I don't get the benefit of long mandatory ruck marches every other week or dismounted patrols, and since I'm not allowed to get in trouble, no "extra" push-ups. So I had to self motivate a bunch to improve my fitness level past the mininum standards.
The military has all kinds of free resources online if you want to find out what their workout recommendations are. Its good enough to have made millions of people physically fit and lean enough to fight over time. I recommend going here where they break down the actual manuals the US Army and US Marine Corps use. In standard Army fashion, its broken down into super bite size chunks of instructions so any officer can do it.
Also, check out this PDF file where it outlines a day to day Army regimen for 3 months. It's aimed at people who haven't yet joined the military, but are waiting for their time, like high school seniors, or people waiting on wiavers. It's group oriented, but the majority of it can be done alone.
Also, most of the exercises are done without anything to assist you. The only two things in the Army they ever use for exercise in addition to your body weight are your weapon, and someone else. So when I exercise in my house, or CHU in Iraq, I do timed sets in this order: situps, push-ups, crunches, wide arm pushups, obliques, close hand push-ups, flutter kicks, dips (on the edge of my bed/cot). I repeat until I can't do 5 of a given exercise. Doesn't take 30 minutes, since I don't rest between sets.
And for running? Go get a treadmill and listen to podcasts. My wife sends me a CD with a month worth of podcasts that I put on my iPod to listen to. I am entertained enough where I don't mind running in place. But the ideal is to run outside since your joints become stronger from actually running on surfaces that are not perfect, just like free weights versus machines.
You need to run more than you do muscular endurance training. It's the only way to shed pounds. Run 4 times a week, and do muscular endurance 3, with the third day being when you do both running and muscular endurance on the same day. Rest on Sunday. I've gone from 220lbs in June 2005 to 170lbs today. I could drop to 160 if I didn't have to do any work at all, just exercised and prepared all my own meals, instead of eating at the chow hall.
My last PT test, I did 80 pushups, 75 situps, each in two minutes, and then ran two miles in 13:45 minutes. And I trained up to that in as little as 4 months while being in Iraq. It works.
I know a decision of where to base the campaign setting has been made, but could you please describe that decision making process, and why one setting over another? Why not one of the other previous established campaign settings, or a completely generic, no references "Fantasy world?"
There were many guides during the switch between 2nd edition and 3rd edition on how to translate statistics for monsters, encounters, classes, etc., before all the source material got reprinted out. Will conversion between 3.X to 4.0 be easier and allow me to derive more lasting worth from the 3.X books with information that will not be republished any time soon?
People keep asking if it is possible to publish an edition where only three or four books of "crunchy" information, like new rules, monsters, etc. are needed to play. Technically, I only need the PH to do anything in D&D since it has combat and environmental rules, and I just need some imagination to decide what statistics would look like for a Orc Fighter. In my personal campaign, I would just use statistics that "made sense" to represent monsters. I also know that this is not typical.
I understand the main source of revenue would be the books, and the future online offerings, such as setting up online "tables" to play on, more interactive character creation programs, etc, are only going to be secondary revenue sources initially. I, personally, look forward to an online source of connectivity with old group members or being able to play if someone is on a business trip, or in my case, a deployment to Iraq.
With the new edition being streamlined for ease and customizability, are the primary sources of new material and revenue going to be less "crunchy" and more creative, as in modules, campaign settings, campaigns, etc? I picked up the Eberron Campaign Setting just to read the lore, as I did the Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Dragonlance, and Ravenloft settings, back in 2nd and 1st Edition. Rules supplements hold little appeal to me, and 3rd edition sourcebooks seemed to be more rules driven than creative.
You can tell a tech is getting mainstream when they start talking about married people in the same sentences as some of these gadgets and technologies.
It is strange to think I almost prefer the age when people dealing with technology were assumed to be single... at least I still have slashdot.
Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday July 17, @02:00AM
from the advertising-in-tech-media-is-drying-up dept.
CmdrTaco writes with articles from various specialist blogs covering the closing of Slashdot and its affiliates, due to the large decrease in ad revenue that has moved on to real blogs with commentary consisting of real substance and editorial content, instead of Soviet Russia, Netcraft, All your base, you must be new here, natalie portman, and other internet memes. Users will have two weeks to burn all their Karma, and subscribers will be priveledged to know that their remaining subscriptions will pay for the editors' unemployment.
> slashdot, memes, karmaburning, yes, no, wontsomeonethinkofthechildren (tagging beta)
Am I the only person thinking that perhaps this could be used for reasons other than "proving innocence" or creating an Orwellian state? Here's some of the good uses I can think of, but this is off the top of my head:
-Sensing what people without means to normally communicate want to do by being provided with yes/no, outside/inside, feed/don't feed me gruel, etc. -Fine tuning the discovery of what functions use certain brain patterns to better develop an idea of conciousness -Strap a monkey in and do the same tests to see how similar we are processing wise.
This is just off the top of my head. Please feel free to contribute more.
it's not a huge popular name like other successful MMO's. It's popular with the critics, but not with the general gaming public like Blizzard was with World of Warcraft, Sony was before Everquest, and SquareEnix was before Final Fantasy XI. Urqhuart (sp?) is better known in the current community for Planescape, KOTOR 2, and now NWN 2 than for Fallout, and it looks like he won't be involved. I worry it's just been too long. Fallout: Tactics didn't help the situation, either.
I know other MMO's have been "successful" without big names, like Asheron's Call, Eve Online, etc, but those might not return the $75 million investment like WoW does every two months (7 mil x $15 US and less in Asia), or FFXI does every half a year (500k x (13$ +$1 per char)) per month).
Oh please. No one cares about security, or media conversion. Show me some benchmarks that have frames per second with 16x Anti-Aliasing on Microsoft Flight Simulator X with DirectX 10 on a new Geforce 8800. That's all that really matters.
I know this post is late, and its far down the list, but I haven't been on Slashdot for 2 days and instantly hit the reply button without reading anything.
It easily has the best story I've ever encountered in any game. It is dynamic as well, being an almost completely different game if you choose fighter instead of mage, from the combat, dialogs, sequence of events, etc. It is great. I hope you can find a copy, and if you need one, let me know on my web page. My brother has a copy and I can steal his.
The plus side is that its a computer game, so perhaps you can use the mouse for a while longer than you can play on a console.
In ten minutes, I could find all the candidates' pages for your district, give you a quick summary of their stances on almost any issue, and then send you to the ballot box with that information. If the submitter posts to slashdot, then it's pretty safe to say he's Googled once or twice in his life.
The poster is just looking for an excuse to be lazy and wishy washy. If he's concerned his vote would be used for harm if he voted the wrong way, then he needs to make sure his vote is used to stop people he doesn't want in office. 10 minutes and Google will tell you who you don't want.
I realize this was brought up in the story, but I really do think that when AMD bought ATI, they were looking forward at stuff like this. If AMD started adding ATI GPU instructions to their cores, and you get 4 of them on one slot along with the memory controller, what kind of frame rates and graphical shenanigans will happen then?
Of course, the problem is that my AMD 64 3200 will do DirectX 8 with my old GeForce, and will do DirectX 10 if I buy the new ATI card after Vista ships since its the video card handling that. But if I buy the new AMD multicore CPU w/ GPU instructions, will I have to upgrade my processor rather than my video card to get new features? And if I do, what will the processor price points be since new Intel/AMD extreme chips cost $1000 at launch, and the bleeding edge graphics cards cost $500?
As of right now, I get a big boost in game performance if I just upgrade my old video card and buy a new one.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you saying Americans were directly liable of detainee abuse? Sorry. It's not there. Would you prefer another foreign military to take people out of American prisons because we have the death penalty or notify authorities and allow the American process to fix that? And if America chooses not to change that position you don't agree with (death penalty is legal here. In Iraq, DETAINEE ABUSE IS ILLEGAL), do you declare war again to correct this problem? New sanctions?
Most people in America would rather foreign governments to respect our sovereignity and just bring any serious infractions of humanitarian standards to public notice after allowing the government time to fix it themselves. Even the broad generalizations from (most) websites pointed out that ALL of this detainee abuse was pointed out to different levels of authority in the Iraqi government and still the Iraqis chose to do nothing about it. What is America's recourse then? Snatch the detainees away? Hold onto more detainees when public opinion at the time was so adamant we shouldn't hold on to them? Where would we send them if we're to withdraw: Guantanamo? Maybe try an Iraqi in American courts for crimes committed in Iraq? Think through your assumption and then get back to the internet.
The 400,000 documents also reports the finding of mass graves of unmarked masses killed by Saddam's troops. These documents are more in line with the numbers reported in other places and far below what would have continued if Saddam had stayed in power. Whether you disagree with the reasons for the invasion or methods, or what have you, the rate of deaths in Iraq has lowered since 2003 when compared to the previous 23 years Saddam was in power.
Sorry I haven't had time to go through all 400,000 documents yet, but the news sites that have had access to the database for much longer are not alleging that US troops tortured anyone. If any troops are to blame, it's the Iraqis.
Your use of expletives causes you to look irrational and takes away weight from something I might have considered otherwise. To paint the entire media as supportive of the mission in Iraq is a simple over-generalization and I am sure you are aware of this, and will remember when you calm down and stop trying to argue with the internet.
There's somewhere between 34-45 million people of 300+ million people without health insurance now, according to the census data website. Even with health insurance, treatments for conditions like Cancer and/or rehabilitation goes way over the $250k per sickness/per year that most people have. If the health insurance was abolished, most people, barring the 5-10% of truly rich, wouldn't be able to pay today's listed prices. Costs would HAVE to come down for the medical providers to not lose out on that other 75% of their business.
Would there be this horrible period of price adjustment? Oh, sure. It'd be painful (literally) for a while. But for businesses not to fail, prices several steps up the cost chain, such as R&D, marketing, distribution, personnel wages, cost of student loans for doctors, etc. would all have to adjust to meet the reality that without insurance, a majority of people wouldn't be able to pay at all. It'd be mass deflation across several industries, which is never popular because people feel that their worth is decreasing, when in fact the unit of measurement is changing. As of now, insurance has a (correlative so far, causation being hard to prove) inflationary effect on costs since it was popularized in the past 60 years.
Forcing them to get insurance? That's a great idea. Take it a step further but invert the idea. Ban all health insurance period. Then, when the insurance companies disappear and aren't paying the current high costs (which they currently negotiate down in private agreements due to their collective bargaining power), and the people setting the costs receive no business since no one can afford the current prices, the providers will HAVE to lower prices across the board to have a hope of attracting any business that has a realistic expectation of paying.
Net result? Prices come down and the same thing happens: most people will be able to afford health care and a segment of the population still won't be able to afford it. The percentages will change some, but probably not too drastically. If people can't afford $100 a month a prescription, they won't be able to afford $100 a month for insurance that reduces the copay of a prescription to $10. I base the dollar amounts on the rates I paid at previous jobs.
All Western European schools keep people in school longer than America does. Britain has 190 days. Canada has 190. Japan keeps kids in schools much longer than Americans do. South Koreans, Australians, and other outliers do as well. We are actually behind by only going to school 180 days or so. South Africa is 200. Philippines is 200. Hong Kong goes September to July. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_term
for a single lifetime. Then they die, and they never really get the hand off they should have to the next person, who will most likely be a dictator, sans benevolence. That's why Plato called the Republic practically unattainable - there aren't enough Philosopher Kings to handle the mess in the most expedient and trustworthy manner.
Also, certain governments, like Singapore, have tried paying their government officials salaries that are so high that they become less bribable. This works, since Singapore is seen as less corrupt than many countries in similar levels of development, but modern society in America might have a problem paying government officials after several hundred years of distrusting politicians.
4th graders are smart enough to think abstractly, and draw the lines between analogies and real life. They're not like 1st graders, where they haven't been alive long enough to have encountered all the normal things, like computers or chat. Most of the boys will be playing video games, and most of the girls will have brothers who also play video games, or know what goes on.
But you still have explain stuff like networking. They know computers "talk" to eachother, but not how. And they don't want to hear about TCP/IP, IPv4, routers, or other jargon unless its explained by the activity. So what do I suggest?
If you got the time and space, have the kids stand in a line, and then have 2 or 3 kids be the "servers" who ask yes or no questions to the "data" who are other kids. Say the goal is to "sort" all the kids by boy and girl, or hair color, or where they sit in the room, or who likes Pokemon and who doesn't, or anything like that. We're not explaining a metatags system, so keep it pretty binary by only needing two groups, or as few choices as possible.
This interaction will be like a game to them, and they will have fun, but the application means the ones who won't learn from lecture actually get something out of it. Add more labels or levels to the interaction if you want, with things like, "Some computers speak only a certain kind of language." and make the kids speak in code words to differentiate. Use cans on a string for "cable," and cones made out of paper or cardboard for "wireless."
Once they understand that you maintain the computers and the lines that let you do that, you can explain the aerospace stuff, and how it's used in our business. You allow multiple people to work on the same documents, so make copies and let one kid hand them out, or other kids have to ask him for the documents. You could explain SSL certs by saying only kids with a special badge on could pick up a copy of the documents, and they got to be handed out by a trusted third party like... well, that may be a couple layers of abstraction above even 4th graders.
And this is coming from a Army E5 Sergeant, currently working in Tikrit, who works in JAG, and did lots of Detainee Operations while I'm over here. If you saw any kind of abuse, bad treatment, or did any yourself, you have a duty to report bad treatment or abuse of Iraqis. It doesn't matter if it's physical abuse like beatings or emotional or humilitation types of abuse such as racial epithets like "Hadji" "Towel Head" or anything else.
If you're not reporting these things, then you are in violation of many orders and a couple of UCMJ articles. If you would like me to cite specific examples, please send me a private message and I will provide you with my CENTCOM email address to start the process of reporting others. Because its people who don't report these things that make the rest of the Army look bad, since none of it will get prosecuted and dealt with in an appropriate way.
Of course, I should take an AC comment with a grain of salt: either you were protecting your own identity from fear of retribution, or you were making it up. Either way, you should send me a message, and we can make sure the right thing is done.
660 posts and its only the third story down? Wow. Hope you get to read this.
I work in the JAG Corps for the US Army, so I don't get the benefit of long mandatory ruck marches every other week or dismounted patrols, and since I'm not allowed to get in trouble, no "extra" push-ups. So I had to self motivate a bunch to improve my fitness level past the mininum standards.
The military has all kinds of free resources online if you want to find out what their workout recommendations are. Its good enough to have made millions of people physically fit and lean enough to fight over time. I recommend going here where they break down the actual manuals the US Army and US Marine Corps use. In standard Army fashion, its broken down into super bite size chunks of instructions so any officer can do it.
Also, check out this PDF file where it outlines a day to day Army regimen for 3 months. It's aimed at people who haven't yet joined the military, but are waiting for their time, like high school seniors, or people waiting on wiavers. It's group oriented, but the majority of it can be done alone.
Also, most of the exercises are done without anything to assist you. The only two things in the Army they ever use for exercise in addition to your body weight are your weapon, and someone else. So when I exercise in my house, or CHU in Iraq, I do timed sets in this order: situps, push-ups, crunches, wide arm pushups, obliques, close hand push-ups, flutter kicks, dips (on the edge of my bed/cot). I repeat until I can't do 5 of a given exercise. Doesn't take 30 minutes, since I don't rest between sets.
And for running? Go get a treadmill and listen to podcasts. My wife sends me a CD with a month worth of podcasts that I put on my iPod to listen to. I am entertained enough where I don't mind running in place. But the ideal is to run outside since your joints become stronger from actually running on surfaces that are not perfect, just like free weights versus machines.
You need to run more than you do muscular endurance training. It's the only way to shed pounds. Run 4 times a week, and do muscular endurance 3, with the third day being when you do both running and muscular endurance on the same day. Rest on Sunday. I've gone from 220lbs in June 2005 to 170lbs today. I could drop to 160 if I didn't have to do any work at all, just exercised and prepared all my own meals, instead of eating at the chow hall.
My last PT test, I did 80 pushups, 75 situps, each in two minutes, and then ran two miles in 13:45 minutes. And I trained up to that in as little as 4 months while being in Iraq. It works.
I know a decision of where to base the campaign setting has been made, but could you please describe that decision making process, and why one setting over another? Why not one of the other previous established campaign settings, or a completely generic, no references "Fantasy world?"
There were many guides during the switch between 2nd edition and 3rd edition on how to translate statistics for monsters, encounters, classes, etc., before all the source material got reprinted out. Will conversion between 3.X to 4.0 be easier and allow me to derive more lasting worth from the 3.X books with information that will not be republished any time soon?
People keep asking if it is possible to publish an edition where only three or four books of "crunchy" information, like new rules, monsters, etc. are needed to play. Technically, I only need the PH to do anything in D&D since it has combat and environmental rules, and I just need some imagination to decide what statistics would look like for a Orc Fighter. In my personal campaign, I would just use statistics that "made sense" to represent monsters. I also know that this is not typical.
I understand the main source of revenue would be the books, and the future online offerings, such as setting up online "tables" to play on, more interactive character creation programs, etc, are only going to be secondary revenue sources initially. I, personally, look forward to an online source of connectivity with old group members or being able to play if someone is on a business trip, or in my case, a deployment to Iraq.
With the new edition being streamlined for ease and customizability, are the primary sources of new material and revenue going to be less "crunchy" and more creative, as in modules, campaign settings, campaigns, etc? I picked up the Eberron Campaign Setting just to read the lore, as I did the Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Dragonlance, and Ravenloft settings, back in 2nd and 1st Edition. Rules supplements hold little appeal to me, and 3rd edition sourcebooks seemed to be more rules driven than creative.
You can tell a tech is getting mainstream when they start talking about married people in the same sentences as some of these gadgets and technologies.
It is strange to think I almost prefer the age when people dealing with technology were assumed to be single... at least I still have slashdot.
Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday July 17, @02:00AM
from the advertising-in-tech-media-is-drying-up dept.
CmdrTaco writes with articles from various specialist blogs covering the closing of Slashdot and its affiliates, due to the large decrease in ad revenue that has moved on to real blogs with commentary consisting of real substance and editorial content, instead of Soviet Russia, Netcraft, All your base, you must be new here, natalie portman, and other internet memes. Users will have two weeks to burn all their Karma, and subscribers will be priveledged to know that their remaining subscriptions will pay for the editors' unemployment.
> slashdot, memes, karmaburning, yes, no, wontsomeonethinkofthechildren (tagging beta)
Nothing to see.
But Thank you! Come again!
In Soviet Russia, Products reverse brand you!
All your 7-11 belong to us.
Etc, etc. I'll be impressed when someone makes an emacs or vi related comment.
Am I the only person thinking that perhaps this could be used for reasons other than "proving innocence" or creating an Orwellian state? Here's some of the good uses I can think of, but this is off the top of my head:
-Sensing what people without means to normally communicate want to do by being provided with yes/no, outside/inside, feed/don't feed me gruel, etc.
-Fine tuning the discovery of what functions use certain brain patterns to better develop an idea of conciousness
-Strap a monkey in and do the same tests to see how similar we are processing wise.
This is just off the top of my head. Please feel free to contribute more.
it's not a huge popular name like other successful MMO's. It's popular with the critics, but not with the general gaming public like Blizzard was with World of Warcraft, Sony was before Everquest, and SquareEnix was before Final Fantasy XI. Urqhuart (sp?) is better known in the current community for Planescape, KOTOR 2, and now NWN 2 than for Fallout, and it looks like he won't be involved. I worry it's just been too long. Fallout: Tactics didn't help the situation, either.
I know other MMO's have been "successful" without big names, like Asheron's Call, Eve Online, etc, but those might not return the $75 million investment like WoW does every two months (7 mil x $15 US and less in Asia), or FFXI does every half a year (500k x (13$ +$1 per char)) per month).
This exact comment has already been posted. Try to be more original...
déjà vu - (d'zhä v') - n. A feeling of having seen or experienced something before.
Oh please. No one cares about security, or media conversion. Show me some benchmarks that have frames per second with 16x Anti-Aliasing on Microsoft Flight Simulator X with DirectX 10 on a new Geforce 8800. That's all that really matters.
I know this post is late, and its far down the list, but I haven't been on Slashdot for 2 days and instantly hit the reply button without reading anything.
It easily has the best story I've ever encountered in any game. It is dynamic as well, being an almost completely different game if you choose fighter instead of mage, from the combat, dialogs, sequence of events, etc. It is great. I hope you can find a copy, and if you need one, let me know on my web page. My brother has a copy and I can steal his.
The plus side is that its a computer game, so perhaps you can use the mouse for a while longer than you can play on a console.
In ten minutes, I could find all the candidates' pages for your district, give you a quick summary of their stances on almost any issue, and then send you to the ballot box with that information. If the submitter posts to slashdot, then it's pretty safe to say he's Googled once or twice in his life.
The poster is just looking for an excuse to be lazy and wishy washy. If he's concerned his vote would be used for harm if he voted the wrong way, then he needs to make sure his vote is used to stop people he doesn't want in office. 10 minutes and Google will tell you who you don't want.
I realize this was brought up in the story, but I really do think that when AMD bought ATI, they were looking forward at stuff like this. If AMD started adding ATI GPU instructions to their cores, and you get 4 of them on one slot along with the memory controller, what kind of frame rates and graphical shenanigans will happen then?
Of course, the problem is that my AMD 64 3200 will do DirectX 8 with my old GeForce, and will do DirectX 10 if I buy the new ATI card after Vista ships since its the video card handling that. But if I buy the new AMD multicore CPU w/ GPU instructions, will I have to upgrade my processor rather than my video card to get new features? And if I do, what will the processor price points be since new Intel/AMD extreme chips cost $1000 at launch, and the bleeding edge graphics cards cost $500?
As of right now, I get a big boost in game performance if I just upgrade my old video card and buy a new one.