Again, I could trivially find a dozen stories explaining how the players, coaches, announcers, etc DID complain. The Confederations Cup was hosted there in 2009 as a sort of "practice run", and they hated them, then, too.
FIFA considered a ban after all of the complaints, but rejected it because they claimed vuvuzelas were "an important aspect of South African culture". Which is bullshit, the entire thing only became a big phenomenon after some S.A. company began mass producing cheap plastic versions of the thing about 10 years ago.
All of this has already been discussed to death by anyone following the issue and the World Cup, though. It's really not hard to find mass amounts of information on it rather than guessing...
Or maybe you'd like me to provide about a thousand links to players, coaches, and announcers complaining about how much it has been affecting the games so far this Cup?
Definitely - this has been REALLY noticeable in most of the matches I have watched. There have been a bunch of instances already where defenders miscommunicated so badly they gave up some really strange scoring chances. It made them and the general play of the match sometimes look completely confused and amateurish, until you realized that they just couldn't hear anything their teammates or goalkeeper was yelling at them...
Yes! And even calling it "a national and cultural tradition" is pretty ridiculous. It's been around in some form in SA sporting competitions for what, 15+ years, but apparently it's only really become popular since some South African company started mass producing a cheap plastic version about 10 years ago.
It's a stupid, annoying fad, and pretending that "Westerners are trying to stop an ancient African tradition" is a bunch of crap.
Actually, though, I agree that it should not be banned in the S.A. World Cup. FIFA collectively voted decided to host the World Cup in South Africa, and it's not fair to restrict their fans' cheering. But he vast majority of the fans of the countries that make up FIFA think the thing is a stupid distraction. So they have every right to say "blow your horn all you want in the future - and we'll have no interest in ever hosting a major tournament there again..."
I can't imagine them banning vuvus would have much of an impact on the game -- for example, the crowd noise itself would be almost equally effective at preventing the players from communicating
Actually, it is much worse than normal crowd noise - they have already shown that a vuduzela can generate 125dB from 1m. 40,000 of those things can most definitely cause a level of hearing damage that normal cheering cannot.
I was in one of the louder indoor arenas (the HP Pavilion in San Jose) when it got over 105dB in the NHL playoffs - that was enough to cause my eardrums to literally start clipping, and a bit of pain after a while. I couldn't imagine 125+ dB for almost 2 hours straight...
Yeah, but that's just for duplicating it as a "normal house". I think you MASSIVELY underestimate the "security stuff"... ie, the giant underground bunker underneath the East Wing known as the "Presidential Emergency Operations Center". Not to mention all of the security systems (laser blinders? Stinger batteries? Flying monkeys??) we don't know about...
(also, it's probably not necessary for a back of the hand calculation like this, since it seems to have been done by expert real estate appraising companies already - they estimated it at approximately $300M - again not including any bunker(s) or security systems they don't know about)
Yeah, I understand the differences between "open source" and "free software" just fine, thanks... I don't think anything I wrote was incorrect.
I was (a bit too subtly, I think) pointing out that the poster was using "free" in the context of "available for no cost" (a perfectly good context for many computer users) while most Linux distributions are more concerned with "open source and unrestricted" (often requirements for official distribution).
And joking that his confusion would undoubtedly bring out some "free software" corrections - as apparently it has, just not aimed in the right direction;)
You're just walked square into the middle of the "free software" vs "open source" debate. Now they've got you right where they want you, there is no escape!
Picasa is free (and awesome) but not open source - so Ubuntu and Fedora will never ship it.
Sure, web browsers are based on HTTP which of course uses TCP/IP for transport. Obviously the XBox supports TCP/IP. So did the Dreamcast modem, over a PPP link.
The joke was that the browser was fairly awful by 2000 standards, let alone today, and mostly unusable at the time due to the horribly slow connection and TV-based interface. Supporting it on XBox Live would only be interesting as an exercise in nostalgia and example of how archaic it is only 10 years later.
I'm not sure, were you picking those as examples of countries with no chance for a nuclear power program, or those with a promising start?
Sure, Haiti is lucky to have ANY electricity these days, but Morocco and Bangladesh are actively pursuing nuclear power, and Mexico already has several nuclear reactors used both for research and power generation.
Ten thousand years ago or so, various species of wolf out-competed the Dire Wolf and drove that animal to extinction.
And yet another straw man/unproven argument on this topic...
First, Dire Wolves died out 10,000 years ago, so any explanation for their extinction is speculation.
Second, humans migrated to the Americas at LEAST 15,000 years ago (possibly more). So you could just as easily argue that humans were the cause.
Third, the most common hypothesis (which is still largely guesswork) about their extinction is that the it was for the same reasons much of the other megafauna of the Americas died out - the leading ones being climate changes - and possibly human hunting - causing extinction of the prey megafauna, leaving their natural predators with nothing left to survive on.
It's not like anything was hidden or obscured, he did tell us the resolution very clearly, displayed in HUGE text behind him during the keynote - 326 ppi.
What more do you want? If you don't like to see examples of marketing, you should probably go live in a cave (and a very remote one at that, caves are very marketable these days...)
Actually, I'd say the jury is still out (soon to be literally!) I think the initial report was $10k, and it's still possible that's how much the guy received. Nick Denton said Gawker paid $5k, plus certain "bonuses".
I have seen hypotheses that the $5k "payment" figure was intentional to keep it below a felony level (and that the "bonuses" were "extra" due to increased web site traffic). If that were true, though, it definitely implies they considered what they were doing could potentially be illegal...
Well, I was in large part just joking. But (IMHO of course)...
NWN2 was just more of the same to me. After playing NWN (which I don't think was that great) NWN2 couldn't hold my interest for long. Never tried MotB, heard it was interesting but really buggy. Besides, they kind of screwed themselves bothering to make good expansions to a largely uninteresting base game.
I really liked KOTOR2, actually, despite the bugs - until it just ENDED. Sigh. I feel for them, but it's still their game and their reputation...
Can't comment on Fallout: NV yet, as their reputation lately is high concept and flawed execution:)
And as you said, DS3 seems doomed from the start, since the last two DS games were pretty lame to begin with. (I had some fun playing them multiplayer, but the single player experience is SO BORING!)
Planescape Torment was hands down a fantastic game. Icewind Dales were very good, too. So were the original Fallouts. But those were all Black Isle, not Obsidian.
And before you say "yeah, but a lot of those developers moved to Obsidian" - well, big deal, that didn't work out so well for Flagship Studios and Hellgate: London, either...
Please don't try to tell me that a first person shooter is in any way "overuse of the brain". Even with a game like Starcraft for experrienced gamers many of the details are now muscle memory and rote repetition of patterns.
Even the very idea of "brain overuse" causing mental problems makes me shudder... what has happened to our society!?
Besides, a baseball pitcher, football quarterback, hockey goalie, auto racer, etc, require just as much (or more) focus, attention, and often strategy as most video games...
Except it's not really "video conferencing", it's more like "video calling". From the looks of it, it's just a point-to-point call between two phones - over wifi only.
Fun feature for some, maybe, but "change the way we communicate forever?" Ives needs to take a deep breath and look around a bit, it's not revolutionary or even NEW...
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is, the best defense is often one where a player is so well marked no one even tries to pass it to him.
Also, how do you "interfere with a goal"? It's either a goal or it isn't and if it is then the interference sure didn't do much.
Again, I could trivially find a dozen stories explaining how the players, coaches, announcers, etc DID complain. The Confederations Cup was hosted there in 2009 as a sort of "practice run", and they hated them, then, too.
FIFA considered a ban after all of the complaints, but rejected it because they claimed vuvuzelas were "an important aspect of South African culture". Which is bullshit, the entire thing only became a big phenomenon after some S.A. company began mass producing cheap plastic versions of the thing about 10 years ago.
All of this has already been discussed to death by anyone following the issue and the World Cup, though. It's really not hard to find mass amounts of information on it rather than guessing...
Yeah... the players are TOTALLY in control of the fans, no worry there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9s_Escobar
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7944919.stm
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/08/world/main6072208.shtml
Or maybe you'd like me to provide about a thousand links to players, coaches, and announcers complaining about how much it has been affecting the games so far this Cup?
Definitely - this has been REALLY noticeable in most of the matches I have watched. There have been a bunch of instances already where defenders miscommunicated so badly they gave up some really strange scoring chances. It made them and the general play of the match sometimes look completely confused and amateurish, until you realized that they just couldn't hear anything their teammates or goalkeeper was yelling at them...
Yes! And even calling it "a national and cultural tradition" is pretty ridiculous. It's been around in some form in SA sporting competitions for what, 15+ years, but apparently it's only really become popular since some South African company started mass producing a cheap plastic version about 10 years ago.
It's a stupid, annoying fad, and pretending that "Westerners are trying to stop an ancient African tradition" is a bunch of crap.
Actually, though, I agree that it should not be banned in the S.A. World Cup. FIFA collectively voted decided to host the World Cup in South Africa, and it's not fair to restrict their fans' cheering. But he vast majority of the fans of the countries that make up FIFA think the thing is a stupid distraction. So they have every right to say "blow your horn all you want in the future - and we'll have no interest in ever hosting a major tournament there again..."
I can't imagine them banning vuvus would have much of an impact on the game -- for example, the crowd noise itself would be almost equally effective at preventing the players from communicating
Actually, it is much worse than normal crowd noise - they have already shown that a vuduzela can generate 125dB from 1m. 40,000 of those things can most definitely cause a level of hearing damage that normal cheering cannot.
I was in one of the louder indoor arenas (the HP Pavilion in San Jose) when it got over 105dB in the NHL playoffs - that was enough to cause my eardrums to literally start clipping, and a bit of pain after a while. I couldn't imagine 125+ dB for almost 2 hours straight...
More importantly, it means that one pound of dark matter COULD weigh over ten thousand pounds!
Yeah, but that's just for duplicating it as a "normal house". I think you MASSIVELY underestimate the "security stuff"... ie, the giant underground bunker underneath the East Wing known as the "Presidential Emergency Operations Center". Not to mention all of the security systems (laser blinders? Stinger batteries? Flying monkeys??) we don't know about...
(also, it's probably not necessary for a back of the hand calculation like this, since it seems to have been done by expert real estate appraising companies already - they estimated it at approximately $300M - again not including any bunker(s) or security systems they don't know about)
Yeah, I understand the differences between "open source" and "free software" just fine, thanks... I don't think anything I wrote was incorrect.
I was (a bit too subtly, I think) pointing out that the poster was using "free" in the context of "available for no cost" (a perfectly good context for many computer users) while most Linux distributions are more concerned with "open source and unrestricted" (often requirements for official distribution).
And joking that his confusion would undoubtedly bring out some "free software" corrections - as apparently it has, just not aimed in the right direction ;)
You're just walked square into the middle of the "free software" vs "open source" debate. Now they've got you right where they want you, there is no escape!
Picasa is free (and awesome) but not open source - so Ubuntu and Fedora will never ship it.
At first I thought it said "Porn Stars More Infected Than Thought"...
Sure, web browsers are based on HTTP which of course uses TCP/IP for transport. Obviously the XBox supports TCP/IP. So did the Dreamcast modem, over a PPP link.
The joke was that the browser was fairly awful by 2000 standards, let alone today, and mostly unusable at the time due to the horribly slow connection and TV-based interface. Supporting it on XBox Live would only be interesting as an exercise in nostalgia and example of how archaic it is only 10 years later.
Or - whoosh ;)
But only if they emulate the Dreamcast built-in 56k modem as well...
I'm not sure, were you picking those as examples of countries with no chance for a nuclear power program, or those with a promising start?
Sure, Haiti is lucky to have ANY electricity these days, but Morocco and Bangladesh are actively pursuing nuclear power, and Mexico already has several nuclear reactors used both for research and power generation.
Ten thousand years ago or so, various species of wolf out-competed the Dire Wolf and drove that animal to extinction.
And yet another straw man/unproven argument on this topic...
First, Dire Wolves died out 10,000 years ago, so any explanation for their extinction is speculation.
Second, humans migrated to the Americas at LEAST 15,000 years ago (possibly more). So you could just as easily argue that humans were the cause.
Third, the most common hypothesis (which is still largely guesswork) about their extinction is that the it was for the same reasons much of the other megafauna of the Americas died out - the leading ones being climate changes - and possibly human hunting - causing extinction of the prey megafauna, leaving their natural predators with nothing left to survive on.
Holy crap, that is truly awesome.
Well, until you get a phone call while shaving. "What the!? Oh damn, there goes my eyebrow!"
It's not like anything was hidden or obscured, he did tell us the resolution very clearly, displayed in HUGE text behind him during the keynote - 326 ppi.
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-wwdc-2010-179-rm-eng-1276194052.jpg
What more do you want? If you don't like to see examples of marketing, you should probably go live in a cave (and a very remote one at that, caves are very marketable these days...)
The Nexus One is NOT in fact a real android!
You are NOT related to the Microsoft KIN!
The Blackberry is NOT edible! Neither is the LG Chocolate.
And you can NOT shave with a Moto Razr. Trust me, I have tried.
Because of Uwe Boll.
All of this discussion and long, detailed posts on the topic is irrelevant, because you pretty much summed up the real answer in 4 words...
Actually, I'd say the jury is still out (soon to be literally!) I think the initial report was $10k, and it's still possible that's how much the guy received. Nick Denton said Gawker paid $5k, plus certain "bonuses".
I have seen hypotheses that the $5k "payment" figure was intentional to keep it below a felony level (and that the "bonuses" were "extra" due to increased web site traffic). If that were true, though, it definitely implies they considered what they were doing could potentially be illegal...
Well, I was in large part just joking. But (IMHO of course)...
NWN2 was just more of the same to me. After playing NWN (which I don't think was that great) NWN2 couldn't hold my interest for long. Never tried MotB, heard it was interesting but really buggy. Besides, they kind of screwed themselves bothering to make good expansions to a largely uninteresting base game.
I really liked KOTOR2, actually, despite the bugs - until it just ENDED. Sigh. I feel for them, but it's still their game and their reputation...
Can't comment on Fallout: NV yet, as their reputation lately is high concept and flawed execution :)
And as you said, DS3 seems doomed from the start, since the last two DS games were pretty lame to begin with. (I had some fun playing them multiplayer, but the single player experience is SO BORING!)
Planescape Torment was hands down a fantastic game. Icewind Dales were very good, too. So were the original Fallouts. But those were all Black Isle, not Obsidian.
And before you say "yeah, but a lot of those developers moved to Obsidian" - well, big deal, that didn't work out so well for Flagship Studios and Hellgate: London, either...
Please don't try to tell me that a first person shooter is in any way "overuse of the brain". Even with a game like Starcraft for experrienced gamers many of the details are now muscle memory and rote repetition of patterns.
Even the very idea of "brain overuse" causing mental problems makes me shudder... what has happened to our society!?
Besides, a baseball pitcher, football quarterback, hockey goalie, auto racer, etc, require just as much (or more) focus, attention, and often strategy as most video games...
Obsidian: we'll take your hit game and make a sequel that's half as good!
Except it's not really "video conferencing", it's more like "video calling". From the looks of it, it's just a point-to-point call between two phones - over wifi only.
Fun feature for some, maybe, but "change the way we communicate forever?" Ives needs to take a deep breath and look around a bit, it's not revolutionary or even NEW...
Absolutely! They were fine with paying $10,000 for a stolen iPhone, so I don't see why they would have an issue with paying $1600 for a WWDC ticket.