I wish people would stop bashing on New Line for releasing the extended version of FOTR a few months after releasing the theatrical version. New Line made this perfectly clear right from the start and, unless you were an idiot or had money to burn, you had no reason to buy the initial release if you knew it was the later version that you would secretly lust for.
sweettooth, what more did you expect from New Line? An Uruk-Hai warrior standing at every store bashing you on the head whilst shouting "longer version out in November" if you tried to buy the standard release?
Don't any of your friends who are so DVD-crazy that they buy films as soon as they are released read any film or home video magazines that would have spelt it out for them in big letters? Don't they have a friend (such as yourself) who would tell them to hold their horses until the super-duper version comes out?
In short, sweettooth, what the hell did New Line do wrong except keep their customers well informed and is it their fault that nobody in your inner circle knew what practically everyone else who cared managed to find out?
Yeah, New Line. Real SOBs for telling you just what they're going to do and then actually doing it...
It would be good for everyone out there who's a about to subscribe to a cable modem service in the UK (including me) to know just which company we're talking about.
...but the english tend to use gallons of lard when cooking at home...
I'm English and (unsurprisingly, as I live in England) so are most of the people that I know. There isn't any lard in my house. Or, from what I've seen when eating at friends' houses, anywhere else.
The supermarket aisles devote about 50 times more space to butters and margarines than they do to lard, so that suggests that demand for lard isn't exactly huge.
Perhaps, like all Frenchmen having smelly breath or all Australians being called Bruce, this is one of another one of those urban myths that you Americans have bought into?
(BTW, "Lard! Eat this Shit and DIE!" is a reference to the late, great, Bill Hicks. Great comedian. Great loss.)
...and all of the hardware review sites which depend on ATi's generosity for pre-release hardware have released their necessarily favorable reviews.
Err, what were you expecting? If you give a kid a new toy that's faster, shinier and has more bells and whistles than his old one then he's going to be impressed and say that it's faster, shinier and has more bells and whistles than the old one.
I have no doubt that if nVidia, ATi, Matrox or whoever released a card that stank the place right up then these guys would write about it - what do you think they'd do, michael, fake benchmark results?
Do these cards represent good value for money? No, not unless you have money to burn. Are they interesting to gamers? Yes, because what's in a $600 graphics card today is what'll be in a $200 one in a few months time.
I don't understand how a story like this can make front-page slashdot, yet the story about the man burning his penis with his laptop can't. A distinct failure in public safety awareness, if I ever saw one.
Taco obviously spends more time looking at things with an electron microscope than he does with his new wife.
Re:Astrophysics: Unscientific
on
Collecting Stardust
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Most of modern astrophysics isn't scientific, in fact.
As someone who studied astrophysics at university, I can honestly say that statement is just bull. Yes, astrophysics is mainly a theoretical science, but that doesn't make the science any less valid.
The fact that you couldn't get through reading A Brief History Of Time without dismissing its contents as "anything more than fantasy" suggests to me that you're the kind of person who doens't have the capacity for anything other than simple thought.
I'll ask you two simple questions that illustrate just how dependent science in general is on theories:
Q: How do you know that the Earth is round? (Ie, how can you prove it?)
Q: How do you know that gravity exists? (Again, prove its existance.)
Observational astronomy has helped astrophysicists prove and refine their theories. Want proof of the effect of gravity on light as predicted by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity? Then just look at gravitational lensing caused by the Sun. Etc, etc.
Astrophysics may be a relatively new science (it's less than a hundred years old) but it's backed up by astronomy (the oldest science) pretty damn well.
Get a part-time job, "borrow" the money from your parents (or grandparents), hold up a bank (but not a small store - always rob from the rich, never from the poor), sell a kidney or just wait 12 months for them to appear as budget titles.
Buy both and you'll never be bored (or seen in public) again.
GTA3 is the only game that my girlfriend (of 8+ years) has given a name to: she calls it Carjack.
Although she's yet to pick up a joypad and start racing around town, gunning down cops, putting out fires whilst picking up secret packages, she does see the lighter side of the game. It's fun, it isn't meant to be taken seriously, so why treat it as anything more than light entertainment?
Honestly, if your girlfriend can't appreciate that playing GTA3 doesn't make you an evil person and that it won't turn you into an Uzi-totting, maas-murderer then she's the one with the problem, not you. (Unless, of course, you are an Uzi-totting, maas-murderer, in which case you're both screwed.)
how can eBay (yes,/. editors, that's how it's spelt, how can you not get that much right?)
i hope your gross misuse of the english language was intentional, otherwise you certainly look like quite the moron.
I look like quite the moron? Why would that be? Because I know the correct conjugation of the verb "to spell" that's needed here?
Why don't you check out dictionary.com before you post next time. Here's the link that you're after: definition of spelt. And, for your additional benefit, here are a few examples courtesy of Google, found simply by searching for the exact phrase "how a word is spelt": Google results.
What were you thinking? That the correct usage would be "how it's spelled"? Sad that you're so quick to criticise when your knowledge is so fragile. Oh well, at least you were logged in as an AC, so at least you've learnt (yes, learnt, not learned) something without suffering too much personal embarrassment.
Not that I condone it for even a second - how can eBay (yes,/. editors, that's how it's spelt, how can you not get that much right?) be sure that the person requesting the information is a legitimate law enforcement official?
Even if they were, any information garnered in this way would immediately be thrown out of court in most countries (including the US) as inadmissible, because the source would be deemed an illegal search if the proper warrants hadn't been obtained.
Without even examining the link it's obvious why eBay would do this - verifying the legality and scope of every warrant that it is presented with takes time, and time costs money. Rather than spend this time and money unproductively (cooperating with police officers doesn't produce revenues), they choose the path of least resistance.
Unfortunately, eBay is sufficiently large enough (or at least it thinks it is) that it doesn't see this as a reason for people to defect to less popular rival online auction sites.
Where it's not obvious, could you please expand on any acronyms used by story submitters?
Someone who's Australian (or world travelled) might know off the top of their head that SMH refers to they Sydney Morning Herald but it would be nice if the rest of us don't have to go clicking through links or searching the web just to find out what this TLA (three letter acronym) or that ETLA (extended three letter acronym) stand for.
On the other hand, that sounds too much like actual editing for a/. editor to do, doesn't it?
With 2.2 million credit card numbers to check, how do they know that the cards haven't been compromised?
Sure, their owners might not have reported any fraudulent use yet (and the card issuers themselves may not have spotted any) but all it takes is for this hacker/cracker to have made one copy of the records which he then disseminated to one or more friends for a problem to occur.
At the very least, the owners of the system that was broken into should be contacting their customers to let them know that there is a small but real risk that their cards numbers might be out there and that they should double check their statements for any unusual items.
But, given that most companies would see something as proactive as this as marketing suicide (rather than use it to enforce the fact that they do everything to protect the security of their customers), I doubt that they will be so bold.
Come on, if the/. editors can't be bothered with the basic site management what makes you think that they would ever get off their collective butts to do something as proactive as contacting the thrid party sites to which they're linking?
I mean, if a/. editor won't check each story submission for spelling mistakes and accurate links what makes you think they'll lift a finger to do anything more difficult?
How many dupes, fakes and blatant adverts have you seen in the last three months? 10? 20? more? It seems as if at least one story every other day is a dupe - how hard could it be to implement a basic system to weed these out?
The sad thing is such blatant unprofessionalism only hurts/. in the long run. If/. can't take itself seriously then how is anyone else supposed to do so?
It's a good thing (for Taco, if not anybody else) that/. has already found a financial big brother because if you tried to market a site as badly managed as this one as an investment opportunity VCs would laugh in your face.
Unfortunately, failures are part of the creative process - not everyone or everything can succeed.
For every Van Gogh there are a million artists (with and without both ears) who are never recognised for their talents. Sometimes it's because they don't have any luck, sometimes it's because they just plain suck.
Sony realised that Sovereign wasn't going to set the world on fire. Rather than waste more money launching what they considered would be a flop they canned the project. Sure, money has been wasted, but not as much as could have been. More importantly, Sony's games division doesn't have a "it-took-you-five-years-to-develop-that-piece-of-c rap" hanging round its neck for the next five years. Which is more than can be said for some game developers...
Sony should be applauded for its decision. Sure, we want games but we want good games, not ones that even the developers aren't happy putting on their CV.
BTW, if you're after cheap games, then there's a simple solution: don't buy them when they're launched, just wait six months or so. All titles, especially on the PC platform, are discounted a few months down the line.
What kind of geek AM I? What kind of geek ARE you, pal? Right back atcha!
All geeks know it's stormtroopers, one word, not storm troopers, two words. Jeez, next you'll be putting a hyphen in Jar Jar Binks's name. I bet you don't even know the difference between a Corellian YT-1300 freighter and a YT-1900 one.
The easiest way of me getting data (Word docs, code, etc) to and from a place of business where I'm freelancing and my home is by emailing the files from one web-based email address to that same email address.
Because the data is being sent from and to the same server, there's no chance that the email won't be delivered. So, you know that (barring a major server or internet breakdown) your data will be there waiting for you at the other end - no need to carry around any media at all.
It can even be made practically secure - just zip up your files and attach a password to the transmitted zip file.
Also, should you get side-tracked and not make it home (eg, if you get lucky and score, despite being a geek) then you don't have to worry about carting around a floppy disk or CD-R all day, or worry about losing it (leaving it at her place).
A technical solution alone won't work because spammers will adapt to whatever barriers are put up in their way - it's what they've done up until now (address spoofing is just one example) and it's what they'll carry on doing.
Rather than one solution we need many: technical, legal and educational.
Technology obviously has its place. For a start, sender addresses need to be authenticated and mail servers need to be made more secure. But achieving these objectives alone will take years for developers and admistrators to implement. Remember, all a spammer needs is just one open relay and he's in business.
Spamming is definitely something that needs to be legislated. Granted, legislating the internet is no mean task - for one thing it requires international cooperation on a massive scale - but it's the best, and most effective long-term solution to the problem. If a spammer, regardless of where he operates from, found himself liable to huge fines and a jail sentence then he'd have to be seriously nuts to continue in his line of business.
Thirdly, for the immediate future at least, we need to teach people how to deal with spam. Obviously, we need to drum into them the basics - never, never, never buy anything from a spammer, never reply to spam, use effective filtering, don't give out your email address freely on the web - but teaching them about the more complex stuff, such as bayesian filtering would help too.
When one hammer won't crack a nut, you need a bigger hammer.
An easy way to make millions from home with little effort!;
University Diplomas;
Free anything; and, of course
Spam lists.
Spammers try to sell (gullible) people what they might buy, never what they won't. I've yet to see a spammer selling flights to Mars - although I do predict it will be a growth area for spammers in 20 years time.
If you think that Linux doesn't need a stable WIMP interface and desktop environment and that a CLI will suffice for all Linux users then you are sadly mistaken.
A CLI and a CLI alone might be fine for you but it won't work for 99 percent of Linux users. How do you expect to browse the web in Mozilla, edit a picture in Gimp, type and format a letter in OpenOffice or play a game with a CLI alone?
At a time when the Linux community is pushing open source software as a viable alternative to Microsoft-dominated solutions how will forcing every new adopter to learn a non-intuitive set of commands help promote Linux as the way forward?
I'm sorry if you see both GNOME and KDE as a waste of time. Please accept the fact that the overwhelming majority don't and that the future growth of the Linux community is dependent on an easy-to-use desktop that delivers as much as (if not more than) Windows does.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish people would stop bashing on New Line for releasing the extended version of FOTR a few months after releasing the theatrical version. New Line made this perfectly clear right from the start and, unless you were an idiot or had money to burn, you had no reason to buy the initial release if you knew it was the later version that you would secretly lust for.
sweettooth, what more did you expect from New Line? An Uruk-Hai warrior standing at every store bashing you on the head whilst shouting "longer version out in November" if you tried to buy the standard release?
Don't any of your friends who are so DVD-crazy that they buy films as soon as they are released read any film or home video magazines that would have spelt it out for them in big letters? Don't they have a friend (such as yourself) who would tell them to hold their horses until the super-duper version comes out?
In short, sweettooth, what the hell did New Line do wrong except keep their customers well informed and is it their fault that nobody in your inner circle knew what practically everyone else who cared managed to find out?
Yeah, New Line. Real SOBs for telling you just what they're going to do and then actually doing it...
Sheesh. Some people.
It would be good for everyone out there who's a about to subscribe to a cable modem service in the UK (including me) to know just which company we're talking about.
So, please, which one is it?
...but the english tend to use gallons of lard when cooking at home...
I'm English and (unsurprisingly, as I live in England) so are most of the people that I know. There isn't any lard in my house. Or, from what I've seen when eating at friends' houses, anywhere else.
The supermarket aisles devote about 50 times more space to butters and margarines than they do to lard, so that suggests that demand for lard isn't exactly huge.
Perhaps, like all Frenchmen having smelly breath or all Australians being called Bruce, this is one of another one of those urban myths that you Americans have bought into?
(BTW, "Lard! Eat this Shit and DIE!" is a reference to the late, great, Bill Hicks. Great comedian. Great loss.)
...and all of the hardware review sites which depend on ATi's generosity for pre-release hardware have released their necessarily favorable reviews.
Err, what were you expecting? If you give a kid a new toy that's faster, shinier and has more bells and whistles than his old one then he's going to be impressed and say that it's faster, shinier and has more bells and whistles than the old one.
I have no doubt that if nVidia, ATi, Matrox or whoever released a card that stank the place right up then these guys would write about it - what do you think they'd do, michael, fake benchmark results?
Do these cards represent good value for money? No, not unless you have money to burn. Are they interesting to gamers? Yes, because what's in a $600 graphics card today is what'll be in a $200 one in a few months time.
So my question is, how do you get rid of the mouse cursor under X without using a window manager?
Get a cat cursor to chase it away!
I don't understand how a story like this can make front-page slashdot, yet the story about the man burning his penis with his laptop can't. A distinct failure in public safety awareness, if I ever saw one.
Taco obviously spends more time looking at things with an electron microscope than he does with his new wife.
Most of modern astrophysics isn't scientific, in fact.
As someone who studied astrophysics at university, I can honestly say that statement is just bull. Yes, astrophysics is mainly a theoretical science, but that doesn't make the science any less valid.
The fact that you couldn't get through reading A Brief History Of Time without dismissing its contents as "anything more than fantasy" suggests to me that you're the kind of person who doens't have the capacity for anything other than simple thought.
I'll ask you two simple questions that illustrate just how dependent science in general is on theories:
Q: How do you know that the Earth is round? (Ie, how can you prove it?)
Q: How do you know that gravity exists? (Again, prove its existance.)
Observational astronomy has helped astrophysicists prove and refine their theories. Want proof of the effect of gravity on light as predicted by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity? Then just look at gravitational lensing caused by the Sun. Etc, etc.
Astrophysics may be a relatively new science (it's less than a hundred years old) but it's backed up by astronomy (the oldest science) pretty damn well.
That's a tough call, so why make it?
Get a part-time job, "borrow" the money from your parents (or grandparents), hold up a bank (but not a small store - always rob from the rich, never from the poor), sell a kidney or just wait 12 months for them to appear as budget titles.
Buy both and you'll never be bored (or seen in public) again.
GTA3 is the only game that my girlfriend (of 8+ years) has given a name to: she calls it Carjack.
Although she's yet to pick up a joypad and start racing around town, gunning down cops, putting out fires whilst picking up secret packages, she does see the lighter side of the game. It's fun, it isn't meant to be taken seriously, so why treat it as anything more than light entertainment?
Honestly, if your girlfriend can't appreciate that playing GTA3 doesn't make you an evil person and that it won't turn you into an Uzi-totting, maas-murderer then she's the one with the problem, not you. (Unless, of course, you are an Uzi-totting, maas-murderer, in which case you're both screwed.)
Yeah, girth is nice (and so is length) but it's what you do with it that really counts...
I can't believe that we're seriously talking about giving the BIOS the boot!
Thank you very much. I'll be here all week...
how can eBay (yes, /. editors, that's how it's spelt, how can you not get that much right?)
i hope your gross misuse of the english language was intentional, otherwise you certainly look like quite the moron.
I look like quite the moron? Why would that be? Because I know the correct conjugation of the verb "to spell" that's needed here?
Why don't you check out dictionary.com before you post next time. Here's the link that you're after: definition of spelt. And, for your additional benefit, here are a few examples courtesy of Google, found simply by searching for the exact phrase "how a word is spelt": Google results.
What were you thinking? That the correct usage would be "how it's spelled"? Sad that you're so quick to criticise when your knowledge is so fragile. Oh well, at least you were logged in as an AC, so at least you've learnt (yes, learnt, not learned) something without suffering too much personal embarrassment.
Not that I condone it for even a second - how can eBay (yes, /. editors, that's how it's spelt, how can you not get that much right?) be sure that the person requesting the information is a legitimate law enforcement official?
Even if they were, any information garnered in this way would immediately be thrown out of court in most countries (including the US) as inadmissible, because the source would be deemed an illegal search if the proper warrants hadn't been obtained.
Without even examining the link it's obvious why eBay would do this - verifying the legality and scope of every warrant that it is presented with takes time, and time costs money. Rather than spend this time and money unproductively (cooperating with police officers doesn't produce revenues), they choose the path of least resistance.
Unfortunately, eBay is sufficiently large enough (or at least it thinks it is) that it doesn't see this as a reason for people to defect to less popular rival online auction sites.
Where it's not obvious, could you please expand on any acronyms used by story submitters?
/. editor to do, doesn't it?
Someone who's Australian (or world travelled) might know off the top of their head that SMH refers to they Sydney Morning Herald but it would be nice if the rest of us don't have to go clicking through links or searching the web just to find out what this TLA (three letter acronym) or that ETLA (extended three letter acronym) stand for.
On the other hand, that sounds too much like actual editing for a
With 2.2 million credit card numbers to check, how do they know that the cards haven't been compromised?
Sure, their owners might not have reported any fraudulent use yet (and the card issuers themselves may not have spotted any) but all it takes is for this hacker/cracker to have made one copy of the records which he then disseminated to one or more friends for a problem to occur.
At the very least, the owners of the system that was broken into should be contacting their customers to let them know that there is a small but real risk that their cards numbers might be out there and that they should double check their statements for any unusual items.
But, given that most companies would see something as proactive as this as marketing suicide (rather than use it to enforce the fact that they do everything to protect the security of their customers), I doubt that they will be so bold.
Come on, if the /. editors can't be bothered with the basic site management what makes you think that they would ever get off their collective butts to do something as proactive as contacting the thrid party sites to which they're linking?
/. editor won't check each story submission for spelling mistakes and accurate links what makes you think they'll lift a finger to do anything more difficult?
/. in the long run. If /. can't take itself seriously then how is anyone else supposed to do so?
/. has already found a financial big brother because if you tried to market a site as badly managed as this one as an investment opportunity VCs would laugh in your face.
I mean, if a
How many dupes, fakes and blatant adverts have you seen in the last three months? 10? 20? more? It seems as if at least one story every other day is a dupe - how hard could it be to implement a basic system to weed these out?
The sad thing is such blatant unprofessionalism only hurts
It's a good thing (for Taco, if not anybody else) that
Entropy? Nah, it's fashion.
Last year's story was sooo 2002.
Unfortunately, failures are part of the creative process - not everyone or everything can succeed.
c rap" hanging round its neck for the next five years. Which is more than can be said for some game developers...
For every Van Gogh there are a million artists (with and without both ears) who are never recognised for their talents. Sometimes it's because they don't have any luck, sometimes it's because they just plain suck.
Sony realised that Sovereign wasn't going to set the world on fire. Rather than waste more money launching what they considered would be a flop they canned the project. Sure, money has been wasted, but not as much as could have been. More importantly, Sony's games division doesn't have a "it-took-you-five-years-to-develop-that-piece-of-
Sony should be applauded for its decision. Sure, we want games but we want good games, not ones that even the developers aren't happy putting on their CV.
BTW, if you're after cheap games, then there's a simple solution: don't buy them when they're launched, just wait six months or so. All titles, especially on the PC platform, are discounted a few months down the line.
What kind of geek AM I? What kind of geek ARE you, pal? Right back atcha!
All geeks know it's stormtroopers, one word, not storm troopers, two words. Jeez, next you'll be putting a hyphen in Jar Jar Binks's name. I bet you don't even know the difference between a Corellian YT-1300 freighter and a YT-1900 one.
Kids. Sheesh.
Ditto.
The easiest way of me getting data (Word docs, code, etc) to and from a place of business where I'm freelancing and my home is by emailing the files from one web-based email address to that same email address.
Because the data is being sent from and to the same server, there's no chance that the email won't be delivered. So, you know that (barring a major server or internet breakdown) your data will be there waiting for you at the other end - no need to carry around any media at all.
It can even be made practically secure - just zip up your files and attach a password to the transmitted zip file.
Also, should you get side-tracked and not make it home (eg, if you get lucky and score, despite being a geek) then you don't have to worry about carting around a floppy disk or CD-R all day, or worry about losing it (leaving it at her place).
Temporary online storage like this works wonders.
A technical solution alone won't work because spammers will adapt to whatever barriers are put up in their way - it's what they've done up until now (address spoofing is just one example) and it's what they'll carry on doing.
Rather than one solution we need many: technical, legal and educational.
Technology obviously has its place. For a start, sender addresses need to be authenticated and mail servers need to be made more secure. But achieving these objectives alone will take years for developers and admistrators to implement. Remember, all a spammer needs is just one open relay and he's in business.
Spamming is definitely something that needs to be legislated. Granted, legislating the internet is no mean task - for one thing it requires international cooperation on a massive scale - but it's the best, and most effective long-term solution to the problem. If a spammer, regardless of where he operates from, found himself liable to huge fines and a jail sentence then he'd have to be seriously nuts to continue in his line of business.
Thirdly, for the immediate future at least, we need to teach people how to deal with spam. Obviously, we need to drum into them the basics - never, never, never buy anything from a spammer, never reply to spam, use effective filtering, don't give out your email address freely on the web - but teaching them about the more complex stuff, such as bayesian filtering would help too.
When one hammer won't crack a nut, you need a bigger hammer.
- Penis emlargements;
- Viagra;
- Boob jobs;
- Sex;
- Porn;
- Rebuilt credit;
- Credit cards;
- Cheap mortgages;
- Cheap health insurance;
- Cheap dental insurance;
- An easy way to make millions from home with little effort!;
- University Diplomas;
- Free anything; and, of course
- Spam lists.
Spammers try to sell (gullible) people what they might buy, never what they won't. I've yet to see a spammer selling flights to Mars - although I do predict it will be a growth area for spammers in 20 years time....I found that out from google ages ago...
If you think that Linux doesn't need a stable WIMP interface and desktop environment and that a CLI will suffice for all Linux users then you are sadly mistaken.
A CLI and a CLI alone might be fine for you but it won't work for 99 percent of Linux users. How do you expect to browse the web in Mozilla, edit a picture in Gimp, type and format a letter in OpenOffice or play a game with a CLI alone?
At a time when the Linux community is pushing open source software as a viable alternative to Microsoft-dominated solutions how will forcing every new adopter to learn a non-intuitive set of commands help promote Linux as the way forward?
I'm sorry if you see both GNOME and KDE as a waste of time. Please accept the fact that the overwhelming majority don't and that the future growth of the Linux community is dependent on an easy-to-use desktop that delivers as much as (if not more than) Windows does.
Those "little pc's" would be great for a bunch of dedicated servers in a compact space...
/....
Hey, you don't mean a Beowulf cluster do you?
Nah, you can't mean that. Not on