All this talk of formatting, fonts and styles. Why so much bitching and moaning about a rather unimportant subject?
In most modern text editors (I guess vim could be considered modern), you set the font for the entire project before you even start typing. I know in certain situations different fonts are required in the same project, but those are few and far between (humor me).
As for formatting, ever heard of doing that in the writing process? It's rather quite easy. I can type up a 30 p. project in 8 hours and never have to worry about format or font(font being set at beginning), because I actively format the entire project in the writing process. When you finish a paragraph, hit Enter then press Tab. It's that easy.
I know the most common argument is going to be "Not possible when writing several drafts!". That's a complete load of BS. How hard is it to move your pinky up and to the left less than 1/2 inch to hit the Tab button? If you actively format even your rough drafts, formatting never has to be worried about again (just make sure your Ins mode isn't on replace) for the rest of the project. It takes less that 1 minute per 10 pages to do so, and is well worth the effort (did a study, sadly enough).
Life is a process. Living organisms are really just extremely complicated machines. Ingest fuel, seek fuel, expel byproduct. With most life forms we know, this is done by giving the power supply (stomachs, basically) means to gather it's own fuel.
What's happening here is essentially the same thing, it's just in a way we've not seen before.
The idea is that the very processes of digestion is incredibly stressful on the human body, so if you minimize it, you can extend your lifespan.
We--human beings--are the process of countless thousands of years of evolution. We evolved from a genus that itself was the product of millions of years of evolution. And you're trying to tell me that the one thing every animal on the planet does for survival (eat) is stressful? What the fuck was the point of evolution, then?
My take on it is this: we're humans, we eat. And eat, for a little change of pace we eat some more. This has been goin on for (effectively) millions of years. I'm getting a little irked that people think a process that has been perfected by the hands of natural evolution is still stressful for us to accomplish. For those "scientists" that would say that: you're a god damned moron.
It's not that digestion is stressful, nor is it that most humans today ingest too much cholesterol or fat. It's the process in which we make most of our staple food that kills us. Hydrogenization. Look at good 'ol American Cheese. 2H away from plastic. Look at our non-local dairy milk, enough hydrogen to be utilized as a fuel. All this extra hydrogen isn't good for us, trust me.
Think I'm wrong? Look at the oldest man on the planet (119), looks like he's barely 60. His secret? Nothing but naturally grown and harvested food. This includes fruit and grains (who gives a damn about the starch), naturally raised and slaughtered meats, etc. etc.. Those are the things our bodies are "accustomed" to. What our bodies were meant to use as fuel.
Want to live longer? Start a garden, buy a couple cows and chickens and start breeding for meat. Fuck all the plasticized food American food companies try cramming down our throats, it'll kill us quicker than any bad habit you can think of.
Well, Ringo, why don't you go pull your head out of your ass and start telling musicians that they're criminals for causing noise pollution. While you're at it, tell everyone who likes to stroke the canvas to stop wasting their time manuafacturing pieces that will end up offending people in thrift stores.
Wait, don't stop there! Go tell every sculpturist that they're heinous prics for depriving the earth of it's precious clays and metals.
Being an artist means accepting other forms of art as well. Some of the best pieces I've seen were on brick walls in down-town Denver or the projects of Boulder. With discriminatory artists like you walking around, the types that would vandalize to express themselves are more welcome in my home than you would ever be.
The argument that 24 FPS should be enough for every medium is false, and here's why:
The reason film projection can smoothly present video is because the blur on film caused by movement of the target on a slow-shutter camera. This blur actually helps because when displayed with 24 other frames in one second (all having the blur effect themselves) it looks rather fluid. Even digital movie cameras accomplish their video quality using the same trick.
Video cards however, do not have the luxury of using this trick for video games. To show the movement of an avatar, for example; every single measurable instant of movement must be rendered for each measurable instant. Those instants are misleadingly called "frames". Achieving higher framerates is actually critical for good gameplay because there are more instants in a given amount of time. That's why low fps seems to feel sluggish on some games because 15/20/25/etc. instants are certainly not enough to show fluid movement. I myself feel right at home right around 75 fps on any first person shooter or what not. This is because the human brain registers information from the brain at about 75 Htz (at least that's what I was taught).
So, next time you hear "24 fps is all you should need!", you can tell them why it's not.
Alternatives are confiriming the email (respond with this specially crafted string as subject) or running some computationally expensive operation.
Unfortunately, spammers already cracked this one, too. Any information used to get past filters will ultimately be presented in the header (otherwise is illegal). Get a sample, run some numbers and bam: you have an algorithm.
I need not go further into the explanation for most to know how they did it. Probably don't need much more proof either, for many recieve spam with keys in their subject or headers.
Someone before mentioned: "...We need to get rid of SMTP..."
And you want to know why it isn't being used yet? The first "pulse" would provide enough thrust to turn the passengers of said ship into pancakes against their seats.;)
Funny you say that: " shudder at the thought, but most likely, cancer will always be around because only idealists and cancer victims want to eradicate it."
Ever stop to think there's a reason for cancer? Every ecosystem has an equalizing factor. A predator to limit the population, keep it from destroying the rest of the ecosystem.
Well, humans seem to have no natural predator, so we created one for ourselves. Cancer. Insurance and pharmacy companies are just dying to cash in on the treatment of the disease. Less cash they get if they actually cure it, tho;)
The "new" generation of scientists lauded by everyone to be the future of this country already knows what needs to be done.
I have been involved in science and radical theories since I was a wee lad (some say I still am:-P), and came to the realization rather early what fields need more good men. AI, Aerospace, Mechanical Eng., Nuclear Physics, Quantum Physics, Partical Physics; all these fields offer such useful and potent technology should more people focus on them.
The factor keeping innovation out of those fields right now however is lack of funding or interest in said fields, because you can't honestly give an estimation as to how much time it'd take to come up with something profitable.
AI is profitable, Biometrics is profitable; a booster design that far surpasses all current designs in both efficiency and power (which is the only thing Aero companies would be interested in) is a little over the top save with years of research and testing. That's simply not a risk anyone is willing to invest in (yet).
As well as a %33 increase in unit prices since '99.
That %35 isn't necessarily a good sign. Consumer wise, the gaming industry hasn't grown much at all (been on the decline, actually).
I draw this knowledge from experience, I've managed video game stores. A good friend of mine is an owner of a game depot franchise, see: former employer.
Forgive me for enlightening the/. public to something most people hardly think about, Jackass.
The most important factor of an analyzation of any entertainment based industry is this: When there's no extra money, what money is there isn't going to be spent on luxuries.
When you're jobless and worried about next month's rent, or tight on the line with cash as it is; are you really going to go out and spend precious money on video games?
Unless you're completely irresponsible with your cash, no! America's economy, while slowly on it's way back up, still does not afford the people of America (most of them, anyway) enough cash to spend on luxuries.
The reason 1999's VC numbers are so high is because 1999's economy was arguably the best it had been in decades. Since then it has been a downhill turn.
This is not to say video games are dead, just that they're on the DL until our economy gets back on it's feet. When jobs are as plentiful as they were in 1999 (I was 14 and making more money than my working mother, that is a good economy), video games will skyrocket yet again, trust me.
Funny, considering Counter-Strike has had in-game voice capability since 1.4. I used Roger-Wilco prior, and was quite unsatisfied with the results. Having tried Ventrilo I was still quite dis-sastisfied.
I usually got around all this by starting a voice conference in ICQ and plugging the hotkey through one of the F buttons.
In our government system, any 1 Veto is a veto. Plain and simple. Now, it can be rewritten and they can try to pass it under the prez's radar, but that generally doesn't happen.
It integrated one variable into the inherent multiplayer gameplay that no other game dared employ fully.
Teamwork.
That game was famous for a reason, it was one of the most innovative games I had seen in a long time. It was the most realistic strategy game on the net when it was around, it involved everything a real military general would have to worry about.
It's not about the sheer performance of a game, it's about the reality of it.;)
Think about it, you'll know what I mean eventually.
The thing that irks me the most about discussing such technical topics around the technically literate is that they don't see the one factor that makes the product. Usability.
I personally could give a shit less about 128 megs of ram here, 500 Mhz here, 5 FPS there. The one thing I care about is getting things done. If a computer is capable of doing such, then it is good. Anything actually capable of getting things done is worth the price in my mind. If that price is $200, then hell yeah!.
Notice that this is coming from a teenager who counts fps and mhz, relevates it to the available RAM, etc. I still could give a shit less, as long as it gets it done in a timely (meaning not taking half your day, not compiling a kernel in 1.4 seconds) manner.
I'm willing to bet an extreme amount of money that these things get the job done, and get it done in a timely fashion. For the average Joe-Sixpack, what more do you need? In all honesty, nothing much.
We finally (yes, at 17 I said finally) live in an age where function is over fashion. This age is maturing into something a little bit more than that, where efficiency is actually a variable in the thinking of the average customer. Computers like this (which I'm willing to bet get things done timely) are actually a wanted commodity now.
I expect this company to flourish, not only because of their mission statement (you get the jist of it after awhile;)), but because of their ingenious in integrating it into their business model. They want to give you a computer that gets things done for less than $300. If that's not a truly samaritan business model, I don't know what is. All I know is that business models like this succeed when there's actually a message behind it.
Think HP, when they were desperately looking for investors. Think IBM, before they got their IPO. Think Sid Meier before CivII; think even of BMW and VW before WWII. These people have the right idea in mind. Make a usable computer available to the public for the same cost as a (gasp!) video game system.
I don't know about most business analysts out there, but this company hit the market where most of the future market comes from, the teens. They relevated the cost of a good working (and unique! Teens love unique) computer for the same cost of a Playstation 2 or an X-Box.
With all do honesty, probabbly around %80 (from personal experience anyway, don't take this data to heart) of all teens recognize the importance of Internet access and a working computer. I'm willing to bet that almost all of these teens would rather take the computer;)
Meaning what? That this company has finally done something that only Microsoft (with it's multi-billion marketing dept.) has managed to do once in their almost 30 year history of existance. It hit on a rather large demographic, the American teen.
Expect this company to be around for awhile, people, I do;)
Man, I had to give up modding you as a troll to chew you out.
hyÂpocÂriÂsy ( P ) n. pl. hyÂpocÂriÂsies
1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
2. An act or instance of such falseness.
The guy professed that he keeps his political views and personal fun seperate. This means that while he doesn't support Blizzard, he holds no bias towards things that he finds fun because of said company's actions. Therefore, he's going to buy Blizzard's next game because it is fun; not because he finds Blizzard Entertainment's business model to be lucrative.
Hypocrisy? No. Hypocrisy is an insult for a reason, it used to be because everyone knew what it meant and would use the word in a like manner. With idiots like this running around that don't know what "practice what you preach" means, I can't trust a person's use of it anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
I was wondering how long before a Spike plug engine would fly.
Altho it terminated after a couple hundred feet, we know one thing. It can lift off. The hardest part of any flight.
All you nay-sayers, go fly a god damn kite.
Step 1: Record a voice sample of you saying (disguising voice, of course) "I'M DOWNLOADING PORN!."
:-P
Step 2: Wait until (male?) victim leaves his computer unattended.
Step 3: Replace victim's sound alerts (yes, all of them) with aforementioned sound sample.
Step 4: Turn volume ALL the way up.
Step 5: Wear a diaper, there'll be a long line getting to the bathroom
All this talk of formatting, fonts and styles. Why so much bitching and moaning about a rather unimportant subject?
In most modern text editors (I guess vim could be considered modern), you set the font for the entire project before you even start typing. I know in certain situations different fonts are required in the same project, but those are few and far between (humor me).
As for formatting, ever heard of doing that in the writing process? It's rather quite easy. I can type up a 30 p. project in 8 hours and never have to worry about format or font(font being set at beginning), because I actively format the entire project in the writing process. When you finish a paragraph, hit Enter then press Tab. It's that easy.
I know the most common argument is going to be "Not possible when writing several drafts!". That's a complete load of BS. How hard is it to move your pinky up and to the left less than 1/2 inch to hit the Tab button? If you actively format even your rough drafts, formatting never has to be worried about again (just make sure your Ins mode isn't on replace) for the rest of the project. It takes less that 1 minute per 10 pages to do so, and is well worth the effort (did a study, sadly enough).
Life is a process. Living organisms are really just extremely complicated machines. Ingest fuel, seek fuel, expel byproduct. With most life forms we know, this is done by giving the power supply (stomachs, basically) means to gather it's own fuel.
What's happening here is essentially the same thing, it's just in a way we've not seen before.
The idea is that the very processes of digestion is incredibly stressful on the human body, so if you minimize it, you can extend your lifespan.
We--human beings--are the process of countless thousands of years of evolution. We evolved from a genus that itself was the product of millions of years of evolution. And you're trying to tell me that the one thing every animal on the planet does for survival (eat) is stressful? What the fuck was the point of evolution, then?
My take on it is this: we're humans, we eat. And eat, for a little change of pace we eat some more. This has been goin on for (effectively) millions of years. I'm getting a little irked that people think a process that has been perfected by the hands of natural evolution is still stressful for us to accomplish. For those "scientists" that would say that: you're a god damned moron.
It's not that digestion is stressful, nor is it that most humans today ingest too much cholesterol or fat. It's the process in which we make most of our staple food that kills us. Hydrogenization. Look at good 'ol American Cheese. 2H away from plastic. Look at our non-local dairy milk, enough hydrogen to be utilized as a fuel. All this extra hydrogen isn't good for us, trust me.
Think I'm wrong? Look at the oldest man on the planet (119), looks like he's barely 60. His secret? Nothing but naturally grown and harvested food. This includes fruit and grains (who gives a damn about the starch), naturally raised and slaughtered meats, etc. etc.. Those are the things our bodies are "accustomed" to. What our bodies were meant to use as fuel.
Want to live longer? Start a garden, buy a couple cows and chickens and start breeding for meat. Fuck all the plasticized food American food companies try cramming down our throats, it'll kill us quicker than any bad habit you can think of.
As an artist myself, I'm completely appalled.
Well, Ringo, why don't you go pull your head out of your ass and start telling musicians that they're criminals for causing noise pollution. While you're at it, tell everyone who likes to stroke the canvas to stop wasting their time manuafacturing pieces that will end up offending people in thrift stores.
Wait, don't stop there! Go tell every sculpturist that they're heinous prics for depriving the earth of it's precious clays and metals.
Being an artist means accepting other forms of art as well. Some of the best pieces I've seen were on brick walls in down-town Denver or the projects of Boulder. With discriminatory artists like you walking around, the types that would vandalize to express themselves are more welcome in my home than you would ever be.
The argument that 24 FPS should be enough for every medium is false, and here's why:
The reason film projection can smoothly present video is because the blur on film caused by movement of the target on a slow-shutter camera. This blur actually helps because when displayed with 24 other frames in one second (all having the blur effect themselves) it looks rather fluid. Even digital movie cameras accomplish their video quality using the same trick.
Video cards however, do not have the luxury of using this trick for video games. To show the movement of an avatar, for example; every single measurable instant of movement must be rendered for each measurable instant. Those instants are misleadingly called "frames". Achieving higher framerates is actually critical for good gameplay because there are more instants in a given amount of time. That's why low fps seems to feel sluggish on some games because 15/20/25/etc. instants are certainly not enough to show fluid movement. I myself feel right at home right around 75 fps on any first person shooter or what not. This is because the human brain registers information from the brain at about 75 Htz (at least that's what I was taught).
So, next time you hear "24 fps is all you should need!", you can tell them why it's not.
Thermal paper! Ever heard of a refrigerator?
Children who often play videogames are very quick to learn musical instruments.
Coincidence? I think not.
A good phrase is, "Poor planning on your part does not constitue an emergency on mine." If you can figure out a nice way to say that, let me know.
;)
"Someone hear a violin?"
Alternatives are confiriming the email (respond with this specially crafted string as subject) or running some computationally expensive operation.
Unfortunately, spammers already cracked this one, too. Any information used to get past filters will ultimately be presented in the header (otherwise is illegal). Get a sample, run some numbers and bam: you have an algorithm.
I need not go further into the explanation for most to know how they did it. Probably don't need much more proof either, for many recieve spam with keys in their subject or headers.
Someone before mentioned: "...We need to get rid of SMTP..."
He was right as day.
And you want to know why it isn't being used yet? The first "pulse" would provide enough thrust to turn the passengers of said ship into pancakes against their seats. ;)
Funny you say that: " shudder at the thought, but most likely, cancer will always be around because only idealists and cancer victims want to eradicate it."
;)
Ever stop to think there's a reason for cancer? Every ecosystem has an equalizing factor. A predator to limit the population, keep it from destroying the rest of the ecosystem.
Well, humans seem to have no natural predator, so we created one for ourselves. Cancer. Insurance and pharmacy companies are just dying to cash in on the treatment of the disease. Less cash they get if they actually cure it, tho
Because that's the "line" of the sky they're aiming their sensors at, nimrod.
The "new" generation of scientists lauded by everyone to be the future of this country already knows what needs to be done.
:-P), and came to the realization rather early what fields need more good men. AI, Aerospace, Mechanical Eng., Nuclear Physics, Quantum Physics, Partical Physics; all these fields offer such useful and potent technology should more people focus on them.
I have been involved in science and radical theories since I was a wee lad (some say I still am
The factor keeping innovation out of those fields right now however is lack of funding or interest in said fields, because you can't honestly give an estimation as to how much time it'd take to come up with something profitable.
AI is profitable, Biometrics is profitable; a booster design that far surpasses all current designs in both efficiency and power (which is the only thing Aero companies would be interested in) is a little over the top save with years of research and testing. That's simply not a risk anyone is willing to invest in (yet).
I rest assured that no PR guy influenced him to donate to charity.
Ever hear of the Gates foundation? It is managed by it's namesake founder. Tell me a PR guy is behind that and I'll smack you, seriously.
As well as a %33 increase in unit prices since '99.
/. public to something most people hardly think about, Jackass.
That %35 isn't necessarily a good sign. Consumer wise, the gaming industry hasn't grown much at all (been on the decline, actually).
I draw this knowledge from experience, I've managed video game stores. A good friend of mine is an owner of a game depot franchise, see: former employer.
Forgive me for enlightening the
Just like they wouldn't bring something as goofy as Pokemon over.
You'd be real surprised at the wierd shit they've managed to sell billions of to American customers.
Dance Dance: Revolution, anyone? It's up to the 6th remix so far and still selling like coke in California.
On top of that, as a show of Bill Gate's greed, he's logged at least a billion in charitable donations.
Bill Gates isn't the demon you make him to be, he hasn't been in charge of MS for some time now. Instead, look at his CEO
The most important factor of an analyzation of any entertainment based industry is this: When there's no extra money, what money is there isn't going to be spent on luxuries.
When you're jobless and worried about next month's rent, or tight on the line with cash as it is; are you really going to go out and spend precious money on video games?
Unless you're completely irresponsible with your cash, no! America's economy, while slowly on it's way back up, still does not afford the people of America (most of them, anyway) enough cash to spend on luxuries.
The reason 1999's VC numbers are so high is because 1999's economy was arguably the best it had been in decades. Since then it has been a downhill turn.
This is not to say video games are dead, just that they're on the DL until our economy gets back on it's feet. When jobs are as plentiful as they were in 1999 (I was 14 and making more money than my working mother, that is a good economy), video games will skyrocket yet again, trust me.
Funny, considering Counter-Strike has had in-game voice capability since 1.4. I used Roger-Wilco prior, and was quite unsatisfied with the results. Having tried Ventrilo I was still quite dis-sastisfied.
I usually got around all this by starting a voice conference in ICQ and plugging the hotkey through one of the F buttons.
Wrong.
In our government system, any 1 Veto is a veto. Plain and simple. Now, it can be rewritten and they can try to pass it under the prez's radar, but that generally doesn't happen.
I loved that game, thank you very much.
;)
It integrated one variable into the inherent multiplayer gameplay that no other game dared employ fully.
Teamwork.
That game was famous for a reason, it was one of the most innovative games I had seen in a long time. It was the most realistic strategy game on the net when it was around, it involved everything a real military general would have to worry about.
It's not about the sheer performance of a game, it's about the reality of it.
Think about it, you'll know what I mean eventually.
The thing that irks me the most about discussing such technical topics around the technically literate is that they don't see the one factor that makes the product. Usability.
;)), but because of their ingenious in integrating it into their business model. They want to give you a computer that gets things done for less than $300. If that's not a truly samaritan business model, I don't know what is. All I know is that business models like this succeed when there's actually a message behind it.
;)
;)
I personally could give a shit less about 128 megs of ram here, 500 Mhz here, 5 FPS there. The one thing I care about is getting things done. If a computer is capable of doing such, then it is good. Anything actually capable of getting things done is worth the price in my mind. If that price is $200, then hell yeah!.
Notice that this is coming from a teenager who counts fps and mhz, relevates it to the available RAM, etc. I still could give a shit less, as long as it gets it done in a timely (meaning not taking half your day, not compiling a kernel in 1.4 seconds) manner.
I'm willing to bet an extreme amount of money that these things get the job done, and get it done in a timely fashion. For the average Joe-Sixpack, what more do you need? In all honesty, nothing much.
We finally (yes, at 17 I said finally) live in an age where function is over fashion. This age is maturing into something a little bit more than that, where efficiency is actually a variable in the thinking of the average customer. Computers like this (which I'm willing to bet get things done timely) are actually a wanted commodity now.
I expect this company to flourish, not only because of their mission statement (you get the jist of it after awhile
Think HP, when they were desperately looking for investors. Think IBM, before they got their IPO. Think Sid Meier before CivII; think even of BMW and VW before WWII. These people have the right idea in mind. Make a usable computer available to the public for the same cost as a (gasp!) video game system.
I don't know about most business analysts out there, but this company hit the market where most of the future market comes from, the teens. They relevated the cost of a good working (and unique! Teens love unique) computer for the same cost of a Playstation 2 or an X-Box.
With all do honesty, probabbly around %80 (from personal experience anyway, don't take this data to heart) of all teens recognize the importance of Internet access and a working computer. I'm willing to bet that almost all of these teens would rather take the computer
Meaning what? That this company has finally done something that only Microsoft (with it's multi-billion marketing dept.) has managed to do once in their almost 30 year history of existance. It hit on a rather large demographic, the American teen.
Expect this company to be around for awhile, people, I do
Man, I had to give up modding you as a troll to chew you out.
hyÂpocÂriÂsy ( P )
n. pl. hyÂpocÂriÂsies
1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
2. An act or instance of such falseness.
The guy professed that he keeps his political views and personal fun seperate. This means that while he doesn't support Blizzard, he holds no bias towards things that he finds fun because of said company's actions. Therefore, he's going to buy Blizzard's next game because it is fun; not because he finds Blizzard Entertainment's business model to be lucrative.
Hypocrisy? No. Hypocrisy is an insult for a reason, it used to be because everyone knew what it meant and would use the word in a like manner. With idiots like this running around that don't know what "practice what you preach" means, I can't trust a person's use of it anymore.