I have the same issue as you. I never use bells and whistles on phones. Mobile phones are simply a convenience for me to call someone if I need to, while I'm out and about. I like them to be simple, slim and usable.
Check out the Samsung SGH-X230. I just picked one up outright for ~$130. It's.6 cm deep (ie, very slim), big display, hard buttons and it just works.
I spend ~12 hours a day in front of a computer, almost all of those in browsers, mainly for coding and scripting - it's safe to say I'm a reasonably demanding user.
I'll probably lose your attention right here, because I'm going to start speaking qualitatively: In a comparison of all browsers (Safari, Opera, IE, FF, SeaMonkey, IE, Chrome, Maxathon) that I have installed, Chrome, IE and Maxathon have always *felt* consistently faster, lighter and more responsive.
Every time I use FF (and Safari and to a lesser degree, SeaMonkey) they feel like they're dragging their feet across the finish line. The interfaces are clunky. The dialog sequences are clunky and odd - and any time I've cared to check, FF uses excessive amounts of memory.
So, in terms of my requirements: Speed, minimum footprint and stability, before Chrome, it was IE (without plugins).
The most common complaint about Chrome is that it's feature light. Personally, I find Maxathon runs rings around FF in terms of functionality- yet still feels more sprightly.
So, in this instance, bloat, by my definition, is the amount of drag that browser causes by using it, relative to its functionality.
Have a look out for Worms World Party. I'm a die hard worms fan, and hated any of the '3D' versions they brought out.
WWP is the perfect combo, imo, of features, weapons, fun, while staying true to the sidescroller format.
More interesting to note, it's still played in reasonable numbers [10 - 50 people at once] on the servers - lag isn't a concern so much, so it's always fun.
Incidentally: With a combination of the ISO + a few no CD patches you CAN play online. Took me about 2 hours of fiddling w/ patch files, but you can do it!
The difference of 10-20 km/h translates to a 20 - 30m addition of stopping distance (excluding the reaction time distance). That's a significant amount of distance, and could easily translate to the difference between your [or someone else's] safety, and harm.
The speeding laws are set. For the major part, everyone else deals with them. Neither you, nor I are exempt from these laws, so attempting to justify the transgression is futile. Don't take this as a personal attack: I'm merely pointing out that it's a cut and dry case of breaking an arbitrary limit, that has very real consequences.
The justification of speeding on a deserted highway is equally asinine. Do you know it's clear? Did you clear all debris, animals, potholes, etc. If you crash, your car doesn't turn into powder. You're a victim: You're dead. Someone else has to come and clear up the mess. Someone else has to inform your devastated family. It's not victimless in the slightest.
If you want to speed, go onto the track. They're designed for it.
Incidentally, whilst it sucks that you got searched, etc - if you'd not been speeding, you'd not have been stopped.
Alternatively, I've always found myself to be quite a decent FPS player, and will always finish in the top 3 in HL2 DM, TF2, Unreal Tourny, Day of Defeat - all quite different playing dynamics.
Quake3, however, is a different kettle of fish. The people I play against are significantly harder [read, they finish on 30 and I'm on 5], whereas if I play down a level, it'll be similar results but in my favour.
Quake3 is obviously built for speed and sheer mayhem, but the thing that I do find is that its maps are heavily weighted towards longer living players. IE - weapon stops are quite a distance away - on more open / busy maps, you can spend 5 - 6 respawns just trying to get to a weapon successfully.
In addition to which, weapon stay seems to be turned off, so people camping near weapons just keep on collecting them, preventing others from getting them.
Not sure if I'm being a cry-baby or these points have merit.
I don't know anything about your background or travels, but I find the picture that you paint of russia contrasts strongly with that of what I've seen.
Bear in mind that Moscow has been the world's most expensive city to live in for multiple consecutive years now [ 12 ]
What you seem to be regurgitating in your post is rhetoric, which you've taken it upon yourself to extrapolate wildly.
There are multiple vectors for disassembling your post, but the most obvious ones are:
So what have we got? Millions and millions of PCs, which run OS that cannot be patched or updated. So, guess what, these millions PCs neither patched, not updated.
The last check of google reports over 194,000 hits for WGA cracks [3].
I'd love to see the data behind your bold claim, in which you plead ignorance, but continue to fabricate 'statistics'.
A lot of computers in Russia run cracked version of Windows. I do not know the exact figure, but I would think 99%.
On a closing note, I'm amazed noone else has yet flamed you for posting:
When I try to use an alternative OS, like Linux, a lot of scanners, USB devices, video-cards, etc. just do not work, as drivers either non-existent or bad, made by rear-engineering. Because the hardware vendors provide drivers only for 1 and only OS.
Maybe you should do some research in general, and pay a visit to distrowatch...
You might find (as might a lot of other people) this video very interesting. It deals with your exact question, within your scope, and a lot of others as well.
I normally don't invest 30 minutes in watching an online video, but this was fascinating:
Morse was never the problem really - I was 10 at the time, and eager to learn something new. It was more wrapping my head around the electronics etc.
Totally unresearched question: Are licenses portable? I live in France [but am Australian]. I doubt my french is good enough to take an exam in. Are they generally transferable, or do I just have to suck it up?:)
Allow me if you will, to pick you brain. When I was about 10, I was graced the friendship of a local ham. I setup an ancient FT-7 transceiver, a long wire antenna in a semi-random direction, and was fascinated by the world that it opened up.
Sadly, at the time, my brain couldn't wrap around the requisites to get a license, and it all fell into obscurity. Now, I live in a city, so my dreams of building vast antennas is kind of over.
To get to the point: I've still got a large attraction to the world of ham and packet radio. What are, do you [or anyone else] consider the best/better resources to get a starting point on everything again.
I'd love to get a simple rig up, if possible. I've got a very solid computing background, but not much of an electronics background. I know the difference between and NPN and a PNP transistor, if that counts.
- I've never had cell phone reception in a Parisian movie theater [but that could be my phone I guess..] - Ever been through US customs? I'm almost certain they jam in the immigration waiting rooms.
Oh, no doubt. You can have incredible runs with melee weapons - especially those in UT. The pressure pistons work a treat - they were the best thing to use in dialup days - if you left them charged, you were so laggy people couldn't hit you, but you'd just run up and touch them...
In any case, it's elements like this that make the difference between humans and bots - and the games much more fun.
As a casual gamer + AI observer, in my opinion the biggest / most obvious difference are human traits. While this may sound obvious, let me elaborate:
- Traits are different to mistakes or intelligence. Mistakes are missing, shooting into walls, walking over edges, etc. - Traits are: becoming too involved in a firefight, that you *know* you're going to lose, being so wound up on one enemy that you miss seeing others, hiding behind corners to wait for others to become injured, etc
Playing against humans has much more appeal than bots, because people are 'fun'. No bot is ever going to run at you with an axe ( or other lowest equivalent weapon ) when you've got the BFG - but humans will - and will often win with this tactic through sheer stupidity or blind chance.
I can only imagine programming human traits is a lot more difficult than 'standard' AI.
In the videos, I got most of the choices right by applying the question: Who is applying human behavioral patterns?
AVS is not necessary to process a transaction. Anyone with a merchant account has the full ability to control their scrub by adjusting their AVS settings, from full matching, partial or none at all.
Curiously, the more tired I got, I'd have bursts of intense mental availability: I'd be able to code quickly and concisely - other times I'd have problems remembering what I was doing, what I had been doing, and why I'd just walked to do it.
I had trouble synthesizing speech at the end, and severe issues concentrating.
It got to the point where it felt that stabbing myself in the face would have been more pleasant than staying awake.
1) The added inconvenience the majority of sober users have to go through to attempt to prevent a minority causing damage 2) Get back to us on this one when you're in an emergency situation. 3) See above.
Slashdot Mirror
I have the same issue as you.
I never use bells and whistles on phones. Mobile phones are simply a convenience for me to call someone if I need to, while I'm out and about.
I like them to be simple, slim and usable.
Check out the Samsung SGH-X230. I just picked one up outright for ~$130. It's .6 cm deep (ie, very slim), big display, hard buttons and it just works.
I spend ~12 hours a day in front of a computer, almost all of those in browsers, mainly for coding and scripting - it's safe to say I'm a reasonably demanding user.
I'll probably lose your attention right here, because I'm going to start speaking qualitatively:
In a comparison of all browsers (Safari, Opera, IE, FF, SeaMonkey, IE, Chrome, Maxathon) that I have installed, Chrome, IE and Maxathon have always *felt* consistently faster, lighter and more responsive.
Every time I use FF (and Safari and to a lesser degree, SeaMonkey) they feel like they're dragging their feet across the finish line.
The interfaces are clunky. The dialog sequences are clunky and odd - and any time I've cared to check, FF uses excessive amounts of memory.
So, in terms of my requirements: Speed, minimum footprint and stability, before Chrome, it was IE (without plugins).
The most common complaint about Chrome is that it's feature light. Personally, I find Maxathon runs rings around FF in terms of functionality- yet still feels more sprightly.
So, in this instance, bloat, by my definition, is the amount of drag that browser causes by using it, relative to its functionality.
Which makes it perfect and unbloated ;)
If you're looking for features and no FF bloat, check out Maxthon2
If I had the choice of hanging on more tightly or vaporising, I know what I'd be doing!
Have a look out for Worms World Party.
I'm a die hard worms fan, and hated any of the '3D' versions they brought out.
WWP is the perfect combo, imo, of features, weapons, fun, while staying true to the sidescroller format.
More interesting to note, it's still played in reasonable numbers [10 - 50 people at once] on the servers - lag isn't a concern so much, so it's always fun.
Incidentally: With a combination of the ISO + a few no CD patches you CAN play online.
Took me about 2 hours of fiddling w/ patch files, but you can do it!
..weren't we promised that in the far off distance of the year 2000?
The difference of 10-20 km/h translates to a 20 - 30m addition of stopping distance (excluding the reaction time distance).
That's a significant amount of distance, and could easily translate to the difference between your [or someone else's] safety, and harm.
The speeding laws are set. For the major part, everyone else deals with them. Neither you, nor I are exempt from these laws, so attempting to justify the transgression is futile.
Don't take this as a personal attack: I'm merely pointing out that it's a cut and dry case of breaking an arbitrary limit, that has very real consequences.
The justification of speeding on a deserted highway is equally asinine. Do you know it's clear? Did you clear all debris, animals, potholes, etc.
If you crash, your car doesn't turn into powder. You're a victim: You're dead. Someone else has to come and clear up the mess. Someone else has to inform your devastated family.
It's not victimless in the slightest.
If you want to speed, go onto the track. They're designed for it.
Incidentally, whilst it sucks that you got searched, etc - if you'd not been speeding, you'd not have been stopped.
Alternatively, I've always found myself to be quite a decent FPS player, and will always finish in the top 3 in HL2 DM, TF2, Unreal Tourny, Day of Defeat - all quite different playing dynamics.
Quake3, however, is a different kettle of fish. The people I play against are significantly harder [read, they finish on 30 and I'm on 5], whereas if I play down a level, it'll be similar results but in my favour.
Quake3 is obviously built for speed and sheer mayhem, but the thing that I do find is that its maps are heavily weighted towards longer living players.
IE - weapon stops are quite a distance away - on more open / busy maps, you can spend 5 - 6 respawns just trying to get to a weapon successfully.
In addition to which, weapon stay seems to be turned off, so people camping near weapons just keep on collecting them, preventing others from getting them.
Not sure if I'm being a cry-baby or these points have merit.
Apart from that, it seems quite balanced.
I don't know anything about your background or travels, but I find the picture that you paint of russia contrasts strongly with that of what I've seen.
Bear in mind that Moscow has been the world's most expensive city to live in for multiple consecutive years now [ 1 2 ]
What you seem to be regurgitating in your post is rhetoric, which you've taken it upon yourself to extrapolate wildly.
There are multiple vectors for disassembling your post, but the most obvious ones are:
The last check of google reports over 194,000 hits for WGA cracks [3].
I'd love to see the data behind your bold claim, in which you plead ignorance, but continue to fabricate 'statistics'.
On a closing note, I'm amazed noone else has yet flamed you for posting:
Maybe you should do some research in general, and pay a visit to distrowatch...
You know you can stream off usenet, right?
I stream all DVDs, movies, etc - with no delay.
Check out alt.binz's streaming option.
You might find (as might a lot of other people) this video very interesting.
It deals with your exact question, within your scope, and a lot of others as well.
I normally don't invest 30 minutes in watching an online video, but this was fascinating:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4097602514885833865&ei=zainSeyIO5PSjgL298GhC
Danger to myself is not so much of a concern.
Danger to others is.
Have my first helicopter to abandoned sea fort abseil coming up when the weather is nice.
Would like to try for an oil rig.
There has to be a database of these somewhere.
Seems it is:
As an avid 'urban explorer' - an oil rig has long since been a hot target.
Are there maintained lists of abandoned rigs?
Anyone in the know?
You don't seem to understand the very foundations of his charity.
Morse was never the problem really - I was 10 at the time, and eager to learn something new.
It was more wrapping my head around the electronics etc.
Totally unresearched question: Are licenses portable? I live in France [but am Australian]. I doubt my french is good enough to take an exam in. Are they generally transferable, or do I just have to suck it up? :)
Allow me if you will, to pick you brain.
When I was about 10, I was graced the friendship of a local ham. I setup an ancient FT-7 transceiver, a long wire antenna in a semi-random direction, and was fascinated by the world that it opened up.
Sadly, at the time, my brain couldn't wrap around the requisites to get a license, and it all fell into obscurity.
Now, I live in a city, so my dreams of building vast antennas is kind of over.
To get to the point: I've still got a large attraction to the world of ham and packet radio.
What are, do you [or anyone else] consider the best/better resources to get a starting point on everything again.
I'd love to get a simple rig up, if possible. I've got a very solid computing background, but not much of an electronics background. I know the difference between and NPN and a PNP transistor, if that counts.
Thanks in advance!
- I've never had cell phone reception in a Parisian movie theater [but that could be my phone I guess..]
- Ever been through US customs? I'm almost certain they jam in the immigration waiting rooms.
Oh, no doubt. You can have incredible runs with melee weapons - especially those in UT. The pressure pistons work a treat - they were the best thing to use in dialup days - if you left them charged, you were so laggy people couldn't hit you, but you'd just run up and touch them...
In any case, it's elements like this that make the difference between humans and bots - and the games much more fun.
As a casual gamer + AI observer, in my opinion the biggest / most obvious difference are human traits.
While this may sound obvious, let me elaborate:
- Traits are different to mistakes or intelligence. Mistakes are missing, shooting into walls, walking over edges, etc.
- Traits are: becoming too involved in a firefight, that you *know* you're going to lose, being so wound up on one enemy that you miss seeing others, hiding behind corners to wait for others to become injured, etc
Playing against humans has much more appeal than bots, because people are 'fun'. No bot is ever going to run at you with an axe ( or other lowest equivalent weapon ) when you've got the BFG - but humans will - and will often win with this tactic through sheer stupidity or blind chance.
I can only imagine programming human traits is a lot more difficult than 'standard' AI.
In the videos, I got most of the choices right by applying the question: Who is applying human behavioral patterns?
AVS is not necessary to process a transaction.
Anyone with a merchant account has the full ability to control their scrub by adjusting their AVS settings, from full matching, partial or none at all.
I managed about 90 or so a few years ago.
Curiously, the more tired I got, I'd have bursts of intense mental availability: I'd be able to code quickly and concisely - other times I'd have problems remembering what I was doing, what I had been doing, and why I'd just walked to do it.
I had trouble synthesizing speech at the end, and severe issues concentrating.
It got to the point where it felt that stabbing myself in the face would have been more pleasant than staying awake.
At that point, I went to bed.
1) The added inconvenience the majority of sober users have to go through to attempt to prevent a minority causing damage
2) Get back to us on this one when you're in an emergency situation.
3) See above.
WOOP DE WOOP NIGGA WHAAAT
..and a fantastic way to seed all sorts of nasties into an originally clean download.