But if I reading it correctly, it sounds like these nanowires are basically bacterial poop?
How fast does the bateria work? Could you drop a couple barrels of it on enemy hardware (tanks, planes, buildings, refineries, etc) and have it eat the metal away, or would sun/rain/snow/heat wash them away?
I have a four year old daughter, and she uses my laptop all the time. I have several programs installed for her. They are all games, but they all have some kind of educational or social aspect to them. Some are for phonics, some are teaching how to share and play with other kids. Almost all of them use some form of counting, color recognizing, and other basic children themes. She asks me frequently to use the computer, and if its available, I usually let her. She has learned very quickly how to use the mouse, how to double click, click-and-drag, and what some of the keys on the keyboard do.
Because of this, she can also count to 30, knows a couple dozen words in Spanish, is able to recognize pretty much every animal that you might find in a zoo, and several other things that I didn't expect a four-year-old to know.
Now while I appreciate the fact that she enjoys using this obviously beneficial software, I'm not ready to go spend several hundred dollars on her own computer, because, well, she's 4. What I will do, however, in another year or two is build her a computer out of older parts. It will be fast enough to run any program or game she has now, and can be easily upgrade in the future. When she has a real need for a modern-speed laptop (high school, college, etc) I will be happy to buy her one.
In short, I don't think buying them their own laptop is necessary if there is already a computer in the house that will suffice. It seems obvious to me that the computer usage has played a big role in her development. That along with us reading to her, playing with her, and generally talking to her a lot, I feel that she is in really good shape to start school next year.
One thing I have learned, however, is to unplug the network connection while she's playing. Sometimes she finds her way into the 'certificate' section, and a couple times managed to unknowingly print several dozen pictures of various Disney characters on my network-shared laser printer.
that allow players to increase the power of their own online game characters by killing other players...
I know not all games are like this, but WoW doesn't 'increase the power of their own online game character' by killing other players. You get nothing directly from killing another player. No experience, no items from their body, no money. The only thing that you DO get is a kill point (an Honorable Kill (HK) point for players that are within a certain number of levels from you). Your contribution in that players death earns you Contribution Points. Those points are used to determine your rank (Private, Corporal for Alliance; Grunt, Scout, etc. for Horde).
Advancing rank gives you access to items that other players normally don't have, like special insignias, weapons, armor, and some relatively useful trinkets.
Also, some WoW servers are PvP, which means opposing factions can kill each other at any time, and some servers are PvE, which means PvP participation is strictly voluntary. If you don't want to PK, then you don't turn your flag on or attack another flagged player. (The only exception to this is when you have to kill a flagged NPC for a quest, and get flagged yourself, but that doesn't happen a lot.)
Personally I think that private companies/organizations and the government need to stop regulating what the children see, and put that responsibility where it should be, on the parents. If you don't know what your child is doing with their time or money, then you're a bad parent. Get involved, get the facts. Don't jump to conclusions, yelling and screaming. Treat them like you'd want to be treated, with respect. As a parent myself, I've seen this work more often than it fails, and it has brought my children much closer to me than yelling and grounding them would have.
(Don't get me wrong, there is still yelling and grounding, but not over stupid things like video games.)
In my opinion this is no different than the real-estate or weight-loss infomercials, where they show the folks who really made a big difference. At the bottom of the screen is the normal "Non typical results, results may vary" or whatever. While this DOES let the user know that these aren't typical results, they still give "hope" to the users, to aid the their decision to buy the item or service.
On the flip side, have you ever seen an infomercial where the consumer gave the product a bad review? Of course not, because even if the person did give a bad review to the person doing the survey, the company would just choose not to display that one.
One thing that would not be acceptable to me was if they actually altered the responses themselves. If they keep them original and whole, but choose to either display it or not, thats perfectly fine in my opinion. Changing wording around or otherwise editing text that someone has written, without their permission, shouldn't be tolerated.
Have your webpages check to see what browser the client is using, and if it is IE7 (or hey, ANY version of IE) refuse to render the page and pop up a link to Mozilla or Firefox and tell the user that his current browser is broken, and a plague on the web, and that he should follow the given link and download a REAL broswer if he (or she) wants to see your content. (turn around is fair play I say!)
I think the best part is that this was modded 'Funny', when it seems to me that the comment was intended to be serious. Apparently the moderator sees the same flaw that some others already have.
In most other realms, competition is viewed as a good thing. It seems that with Microsoft (or any other large software company) that they want to completely squash the opposition.
Where did that land them before? In court for an anti-trust lawsuit. (Which seems to have had very little, if any, impact on them as a company. How many billions of dollars busiess do they do in a year?)
Competition should be the motivation to strive for excellence, not to hit your competition over the head with a giant iron hammer that still has yet to be patched with SP2.
What does 'Since 1984' mean? What was the cutoff date for those stats? Prior to any news of a new movie, have there been any Voltron toys in stores for years? I don't recall seeing any for a long time now.
Let me tell ya 'bout a little piece of CODE. That made me so sick it sent me to da ka-MODE. Infinite loops can get kinda HAIRY. Just ask Mr. Wall, some call him LARRY.
You must not get out much. This type of thing happens, and in my opinion makes perfect sense. Who better to secure your network than the person who got in? Calling these guys criminals (now I'm talking about the ones who actually do nothing malicious OTHER than enter a system that they do not own) is a social thing, not necessarily an ethical one. (I wont get into the debate about whether or not someone can walk into your house because the door is open, blah blah blah) but not only would these companies allow them to do what they obviously enjoy, but they would get a nice paycheck to keep them honest.
Your white hat professionals may have taken a class, been taught by a friend, employers, etc, but most of those people will never match up to the teenager to took it upon himself to learn the details of how to enter a system. Thats the difference between having just a 'job', and having a great passion for what you do.
I don't know which online games this pertains to, but if it involved World of Warcraft, who just celebrated 1.5 million subscribers in China, and earlier 2 million subscribers worldwide, (as far as I know, the 2 million figure came before the release in China, so I'd assume there were no overlaps) thats just 3.5 million. If everyone paid month-by-month for $15/month, then 3.5M * 15 = 52.5 million dollars of income every month, from WoW alone (not counting game sales, just their monthly fee). If they start putting advertisements in the game, they better damn well give the option of playing for free, or turning the ads off for paying customers. I'll go back to playing America's Army, where (hopefully) its still free.
At least with the trade channel in WoW, you can turn it off.
I wouldn't be surprised if players riding on Gryphons and bats got barraged with adverisements while they flew. Thats when I usually go get a drink anyway.
If someone is able to break into your system offer to pay them to keep it secure from others like themselves.
What was the famous counterfeiters name that the FBI hired to spot fakes? He was the basis for the movie 'Catch me if you Can'.
Allow them to use their powers for good, because if you don't, they will continue to use their powers, in whichever direction (good or bad) that they can. The big companies might as well use them as a tool (and pay them) to create/maintain better secured software.
I don't think the M to AO rating hurt Rockstar, aside from their stock going down. I don't know of one person who would change their mind to buy the game just because of that extra content. In fact I know some people who probably weren't planning to buy it (mostly because they thought it would be too much like Vice City) but now think they will go out and try the new content, regardless of the rating.
If that game ends up into the hands of a minor, regardless of rating, then the parenting ability of the parents should be questioned. Its not for kids, plain and simple.
Since many of the comments are on the topic of gold farming in WoW, I just have one question:
Are that many people actually buying the farmed gold? I guess the simple fact that the farming shops are alive and booming answers that question.
I haven't look at any auction sites or whatever, but it seems to me that the people who pay these farmers, or pay for their accounts, might be more likely to give it up if people wouldn't buy what they're selling. Then they'd be out $15/month (or however much theyre paying per month/quarter/year/etc) for each farming account.
Simple rule of capitalism: lower the demand and you lower the supply. Obviously some farmed-gold purchaser isn't going to read this comment and say 'Omg I've seen the error of my ways, I'll stop right away and toil for hours to get my OWN gold, and be so proud of it', but basically as long as there are buyers, there will be sellers.
Perhaps Blizzard should cut out the middleman and sell their own gold for real money. They've already got game codes and credit cards. Sacrifice one day of game play for 10g, or 5g, or 20g, or whatever. I bet lots of folks would do something like that.
If Linux weren't a threat, Microsoft wouldn't be smearing it in a campaign but instead treating it as an annoying little gnat - by ignoring it and lauding it's own positives. By paying so much attention to and attempting to shape Linux's image publicly, Microsoft is validating it by its own advertising despite the negative content.
People with brains will realize what is propaganda and check Linux out on their own. Thanks to MS.
I completely agree with this... However...
The operative part here is 'with brains'. The problem is that there are a LOT of Pointy Haired Bosses out there that will believe whatever propaganda a big corporation like Microsoft will throw at them. Especially when they are bombarded with more propaganda about how MS is the answer to all their technology problems, they're on their side, etc etc.
I seem to recall a certain patch (one of the service packs for sure, but I forget which one) completely breaking every single website I had on my IIS5 box running Windows 2000 Advanced Server. I rolled back the patch, and viola, my sites were functioning again.
Windows patches have been, in my opinion, definitely one of those things that I have NOT 'run out to get' or be the first in line to download and install. I want to wait to see how many things break, and how long it takes to get fixed, before I install any such patches.
Luckily at my next position, we used Apache on Linux. It ran flawlessly for almost two years (constant uptime) until an unknowing janitor unplugged the UPS to mop. He knew what the UPS was, and knew that he could unplug it briefly and not cause a problem. Only thing was that he forgot to plug it back in, and I lost my ~600 uptime. (No more janitors in the server room after that.)
If I needed to watch videos at $1.99 a pop "On-the-go" THAT badly, I think I'd just DVR VH1 for a while, create a DVD of however many videos will fit, and just use my non pay-per-view portable dvd player to view them wherever I wanted. I could then also watch regular movies, old tv show dvds, and whatever else.
Sometimes I think that people buy these songs/videos just to be part of the in-crowd. Do people really need to be entertained THAT much when they're not at their residence?
At almost 2 bucks each, that will make a hefty bill VERY quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
But if I reading it correctly, it sounds like these nanowires are basically bacterial poop?
How fast does the bateria work? Could you drop a couple barrels of it on enemy hardware (tanks, planes, buildings, refineries, etc) and have it eat the metal away, or would sun/rain/snow/heat wash them away?
I have a four year old daughter, and she uses my laptop all the time. I have several programs installed for her. They are all games, but they all have some kind of educational or social aspect to them. Some are for phonics, some are teaching how to share and play with other kids. Almost all of them use some form of counting, color recognizing, and other basic children themes. She asks me frequently to use the computer, and if its available, I usually let her. She has learned very quickly how to use the mouse, how to double click, click-and-drag, and what some of the keys on the keyboard do.
Because of this, she can also count to 30, knows a couple dozen words in Spanish, is able to recognize pretty much every animal that you might find in a zoo, and several other things that I didn't expect a four-year-old to know.
Now while I appreciate the fact that she enjoys using this obviously beneficial software, I'm not ready to go spend several hundred dollars on her own computer, because, well, she's 4. What I will do, however, in another year or two is build her a computer out of older parts. It will be fast enough to run any program or game she has now, and can be easily upgrade in the future. When she has a real need for a modern-speed laptop (high school, college, etc) I will be happy to buy her one.
In short, I don't think buying them their own laptop is necessary if there is already a computer in the house that will suffice. It seems obvious to me that the computer usage has played a big role in her development. That along with us reading to her, playing with her, and generally talking to her a lot, I feel that she is in really good shape to start school next year.
One thing I have learned, however, is to unplug the network connection while she's playing. Sometimes she finds her way into the 'certificate' section, and a couple times managed to unknowingly print several dozen pictures of various Disney characters on my network-shared laser printer.
What some countries need are robotic fans that are programmed NOT to erupt in violent riots at the drop of a hat at every soccer game.
(I say 'soccer for the benefit of the US readers, but I realize elsewhere in the world its called football.)
that allow players to increase the power of their own online game characters by killing other players...
I know not all games are like this, but WoW doesn't 'increase the power of their own online game character' by killing other players. You get nothing directly from killing another player. No experience, no items from their body, no money. The only thing that you DO get is a kill point (an Honorable Kill (HK) point for players that are within a certain number of levels from you). Your contribution in that players death earns you Contribution Points. Those points are used to determine your rank (Private, Corporal for Alliance; Grunt, Scout, etc. for Horde).
Advancing rank gives you access to items that other players normally don't have, like special insignias, weapons, armor, and some relatively useful trinkets.
Also, some WoW servers are PvP, which means opposing factions can kill each other at any time, and some servers are PvE, which means PvP participation is strictly voluntary. If you don't want to PK, then you don't turn your flag on or attack another flagged player. (The only exception to this is when you have to kill a flagged NPC for a quest, and get flagged yourself, but that doesn't happen a lot.)
Personally I think that private companies/organizations and the government need to stop regulating what the children see, and put that responsibility where it should be, on the parents. If you don't know what your child is doing with their time or money, then you're a bad parent. Get involved, get the facts. Don't jump to conclusions, yelling and screaming. Treat them like you'd want to be treated, with respect. As a parent myself, I've seen this work more often than it fails, and it has brought my children much closer to me than yelling and grounding them would have.
(Don't get me wrong, there is still yelling and grounding, but not over stupid things like video games.)
In my opinion this is no different than the real-estate or weight-loss infomercials, where they show the folks who really made a big difference. At the bottom of the screen is the normal "Non typical results, results may vary" or whatever. While this DOES let the user know that these aren't typical results, they still give "hope" to the users, to aid the their decision to buy the item or service.
On the flip side, have you ever seen an infomercial where the consumer gave the product a bad review? Of course not, because even if the person did give a bad review to the person doing the survey, the company would just choose not to display that one.
One thing that would not be acceptable to me was if they actually altered the responses themselves. If they keep them original and whole, but choose to either display it or not, thats perfectly fine in my opinion. Changing wording around or otherwise editing text that someone has written, without their permission, shouldn't be tolerated.
"It's in the Canadian Criminal Code eh, like there's legal precedents set in cases in law."
"Yeah, so like give us our free beer, eh."
"You want free beer? Go to the brewery. Now get outta here before I put the two of YOU in a bottle."
On that good 'ole Canadian Criminal Code.
(Special thanks to Bob & Doug)
Yeah you can usually find them pining for the fjords.
I was studying them once when a moose bit my sister.
No really...
Okay so he got the icon from a slice-removed pizza pie. But where, I ask, WHERE did he get the idea for that 'wakka wakka' sound?
Have your webpages check to see what browser the client is using, and if it is IE7 (or hey, ANY version of IE) refuse to render the page and pop up a link to Mozilla or Firefox and tell the user that his current browser is broken, and a plague on the web, and that he should follow the given link and download a REAL broswer if he (or she) wants to see your content. (turn around is fair play I say!)
I think the best part is that this was modded 'Funny', when it seems to me that the comment was intended to be serious. Apparently the moderator sees the same flaw that some others already have.
Time for Microsoft to implement a new "innovative" filesystem type that is 'unfortunately' not compatible with previous Windows XP filesystem types.
Embrace.
Enhance.
Exterminate.
"I won't rest until we can eliminate wrongdoing," says eBay's Alastair MacGibbon.
That's going to be one tired fella. I think I just heard the price of coffee, Mountain Dew, and Jolt cola going up slightly in his locale.
In most other realms, competition is viewed as a good thing. It seems that with Microsoft (or any other large software company) that they want to completely squash the opposition.
Where did that land them before? In court for an anti-trust lawsuit. (Which seems to have had very little, if any, impact on them as a company. How many billions of dollars busiess do they do in a year?)
Competition should be the motivation to strive for excellence, not to hit your competition over the head with a giant iron hammer that still has yet to be patched with SP2.
What does 'Since 1984' mean? What was the cutoff date for those stats? Prior to any news of a new movie, have there been any Voltron toys in stores for years? I don't recall seeing any for a long time now.
Let's see how I fare in this industry...
Let me tell ya 'bout a little piece of CODE.
That made me so sick it sent me to da ka-MODE.
Infinite loops can get kinda HAIRY.
Just ask Mr. Wall, some call him LARRY.
*misc beatbox sounds*
You must not get out much. This type of thing happens, and in my opinion makes perfect sense. Who better to secure your network than the person who got in? Calling these guys criminals (now I'm talking about the ones who actually do nothing malicious OTHER than enter a system that they do not own) is a social thing, not necessarily an ethical one. (I wont get into the debate about whether or not someone can walk into your house because the door is open, blah blah blah) but not only would these companies allow them to do what they obviously enjoy, but they would get a nice paycheck to keep them honest.
Your white hat professionals may have taken a class, been taught by a friend, employers, etc, but most of those people will never match up to the teenager to took it upon himself to learn the details of how to enter a system. Thats the difference between having just a 'job', and having a great passion for what you do.
I don't know which online games this pertains to, but if it involved World of Warcraft, who just celebrated 1.5 million subscribers in China, and earlier 2 million subscribers worldwide, (as far as I know, the 2 million figure came before the release in China, so I'd assume there were no overlaps) thats just 3.5 million. If everyone paid month-by-month for $15/month, then 3.5M * 15 = 52.5 million dollars of income every month, from WoW alone (not counting game sales, just their monthly fee). If they start putting advertisements in the game, they better damn well give the option of playing for free, or turning the ads off for paying customers. I'll go back to playing America's Army, where (hopefully) its still free.
At least with the trade channel in WoW, you can turn it off.
I wouldn't be surprised if players riding on Gryphons and bats got barraged with adverisements while they flew. Thats when I usually go get a drink anyway.
If someone is able to break into your system offer to pay them to keep it secure from others like themselves.
What was the famous counterfeiters name that the FBI hired to spot fakes? He was the basis for the movie 'Catch me if you Can'.
Allow them to use their powers for good, because if you don't, they will continue to use their powers, in whichever direction (good or bad) that they can. The big companies might as well use them as a tool (and pay them) to create/maintain better secured software.
I don't think the M to AO rating hurt Rockstar, aside from their stock going down. I don't know of one person who would change their mind to buy the game just because of that extra content. In fact I know some people who probably weren't planning to buy it (mostly because they thought it would be too much like Vice City) but now think they will go out and try the new content, regardless of the rating.
If that game ends up into the hands of a minor, regardless of rating, then the parenting ability of the parents should be questioned. Its not for kids, plain and simple.
Don't forget about:
The Mustard Man
The Wary Fat Kid
Badger Badger Badger
I'm sure there are tons more, but I just can't think of them at the moment.
Since many of the comments are on the topic of gold farming in WoW, I just have one question:
Are that many people actually buying the farmed gold? I guess the simple fact that the farming shops are alive and booming answers that question.
I haven't look at any auction sites or whatever, but it seems to me that the people who pay these farmers, or pay for their accounts, might be more likely to give it up if people wouldn't buy what they're selling. Then they'd be out $15/month (or however much theyre paying per month/quarter/year/etc) for each farming account.
Simple rule of capitalism: lower the demand and you lower the supply. Obviously some farmed-gold purchaser isn't going to read this comment and say 'Omg I've seen the error of my ways, I'll stop right away and toil for hours to get my OWN gold, and be so proud of it', but basically as long as there are buyers, there will be sellers.
Perhaps Blizzard should cut out the middleman and sell their own gold for real money. They've already got game codes and credit cards. Sacrifice one day of game play for 10g, or 5g, or 20g, or whatever. I bet lots of folks would do something like that.
If Linux weren't a threat, Microsoft wouldn't be smearing it in a campaign but instead treating it as an annoying little gnat - by ignoring it and lauding it's own positives. By paying so much attention to and attempting to shape Linux's image publicly, Microsoft is validating it by its own advertising despite the negative content.
People with brains will realize what is propaganda and check Linux out on their own. Thanks to MS.
I completely agree with this... However...
The operative part here is 'with brains'. The problem is that there are a LOT of Pointy Haired Bosses out there that will believe
whatever propaganda a big corporation like Microsoft will throw at them. Especially when they are bombarded with more propaganda about how MS is the answer to all their technology problems, they're on their side, etc etc.
I seem to recall a certain patch (one of the service packs for sure, but I forget which one) completely breaking every single website I had on my IIS5 box running Windows 2000 Advanced Server. I rolled back the patch, and viola, my sites were functioning again.
Windows patches have been, in my opinion, definitely one of those things that I have NOT 'run out to get' or be the first in line to download and install. I want to wait to see how many things break, and how long it takes to get fixed, before I install any such patches.
Luckily at my next position, we used Apache on Linux. It ran flawlessly for almost two years (constant uptime) until an unknowing janitor unplugged the UPS to mop. He knew what the UPS was, and knew that he could unplug it briefly and not cause a problem. Only thing was that he forgot to plug it back in, and I lost my ~600 uptime. (No more janitors in the server room after that.)
Lets get ready to
RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMBLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
In the white corner, we have the king of search engines, the free email giant, Goooooooogle!
In the blue corner, we have the epitome of capitalism, the pay-for-upgrade master of disaster, Miiiiiiicrosoooooooft.
This is a cage match gentlemen. Anything goes.
*buys ticket*
I would really like to see the basis for the '95% compatible with Windows XP' statement.
Half the stuff I have will run on XP but not Windows 2000. That's the whole reason I got the XP "pay-for upgrade" in the first place.
If I needed to watch videos at $1.99 a pop "On-the-go" THAT badly, I think I'd just DVR VH1 for a while, create a DVD of however many videos will fit, and just use my non pay-per-view portable dvd player to view them wherever I wanted. I could then also watch regular movies, old tv show dvds, and whatever else.
Sometimes I think that people buy these songs/videos just to be part of the in-crowd. Do people really need to be entertained THAT much when they're not at their residence?
At almost 2 bucks each, that will make a hefty bill VERY quickly.