6. And then we'll have those people that don't really care what the topic is, but like to show how long they've been around/. by making pointless generalizations about what everyone else will say. They won't actually add anyting to the discussion, or make any relevant points or provide any insights, but they will feel good about themselves because, umm, they posted something.
7. After that, another group will come in, pointing out the pointlessness of the above group's post, in posts that are, if possible, even more pointless and off topic. But then, just before the end of their posts, this last group will throw in some almost-related-to-the-topic bit, like "maybe it was glaciers!", so that they can preted that their post was in fact on-topic.
Ending Spam?
on
Ending Spam
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Does anyone else find it funny that a book called "Ending Spam" talks about spam filtering? Maybe I'll go write a book; "Ending World Hunger: How To Filter Sally Struthers From Your Television".
John Carmack will never, ever be regaurded the same way that John Lennon is. p. Probably true - but it is appropriate. John Lennon was a singer/songwriter/philosopher/whatever; he was a content creator. That is, he told stories. John Carmack isn't a content creator - at least, not beyond the most basic level. He doesn't really tell stories - he builds tools that other people use (well, they used to, anyway - I haven't heard about too many games using the Doom 3 engine) to tell stories. So he may not be remembered as a John Lennon, but maybe as a Gutenberg, a creator of the tools others use to tell their stories.
Not exactly the point you were addressing, but hey.
Upon further inspection, it seems very likely that it wasn't a simple case of poor analysis combined with paranoia, but that there was intentional selection and interpertation done to create a false impression.
This guy is in a long line of people who must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the new Star Wars movies are not as good as the original trilogy.
Why would anyone need to prove it? Proving one movie is better than another is an impossible venture - atistic worth and entertainment value are completely subjective, and cannot be proven. All he has to do, and all anyone "has" to do, is provide reasons that they think the new movies are worse than the originals - and then you and I can either agree with those reasons or disagree with those reasons.
For myself, I tend to more or less agree with Stephenson. For example, what he was getting at with his remarks about the opening battle - I don't entirely agree with him about not knowing who the owner of the ship is (as has been pointed out, you can get that from the opening crawl), but the whole opening battle scene just felt empty. It reminded me of something Lucas said in an interview or commentary for the original Star Wars (I think) - "a special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing." That is exactly what the opening battle, and some of the other action scenes, felt like to me; here we have these absolutely stunning visual effects, but I just don't care what is happening because I'm not at all emotionally invested in it. I suppose there is a story somewhere in there, but the audience isn't party to it. All we get is shit blowing up and these two jedi making inane comments to each other, with very little rhyme or reason for what is going on. There's special effects, all right, but we the audience have been left out of the story leading up to them.
Combine this with much higher standard resoltion output and you have something that COULD replace a PC
Every video card I've owned for the last eight or ten years, going back to my Diamond Stealth 64, has been capable of outputting resolutions up to 2048x1536 (although at very low refresh rates/few colors for the older ones). The limiting factor (aside from RAMDACs that probably couldn't actually do that and the analog connection itself) has been that there haven't been displays available that could do it. In fact, aside from high-end 22" CRTs (and large LCDs, like the 30" apple cinema display), there still isn't anything that can do it. Likewise, while the new PS3 may be capable of outputting 2 1080p signals, there are unfortunately very few display devices out there that actually support this full resolution - even high-end CRT TVs don't offer the full 1920x1080 resolution of the spec (although they do display the picture, and it is very nice, it isn't actually displayed at the true spec resolution). So, unless you can afford a couple of extremely expensive (>$3000) display devices, twin 1080p really isn't a "standard resolution" even for the next generation of consoles. The fact is that PC video cards have long been capable of extremely high resolutions, but display technology (at least, affordable display technology) has not kept up with their capabilities. Last I checked the vast majority of people still do not have high-def TVs, so the "standard resolution" of the next generation of consoles will probably still be 640x480 or whatever standard TV resolution is.
Of course, if we simply increased the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) by just five MPH, we would likely do far, FAR more good not just for the environment, but for world stability as well.
Surely you mean MPG. I think we've got all the MPH we need:-\
patientINFORM is being evangelized as a way for ordinary citizens to look up experimental treatment online, in essence circumventing their doctor
How is gathering infromation on experimental treatments "circumventing their doctor"? It seems to me that it is better to be informed about potential or experimental treatments for an ailment you are suffering from - if you are interested, bring it up with your doctor. And no, that doesn't mean you should TELL your doctor you want this or that treatment; the idea is to inform yourself, not attempt to replace the years of training and practice a doctor has. Seems like a non-issue to me.
Now I'm not saying that I know for certain that this storm killed my router, but SOMETHING sure did between Friday night and Sunday evening. Of course it was a D-Link, so it's just as likely it died of (un?)natural causes.
On a related note, I did a quick journal article search for Benny Peiser (really quicik - only used scholar.google). Interestingly (or not, whatever), it didn't turn up a single paper in a peer-reviewed journal that had ever been cited by another (I didn't actually wade through them to see if he had any papers period - though there were only 6 pages of returns). He is apparently an editor for something called "Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age Civilizations" - clearly an expert in the field of climate change (yeah right).
Anyway, just wanted to add to what you said above - from a quick (admittedly incomplete) search, it appears that Dr. Peiser has no history of contributing to serious research, nor of working with people that do, which may make the editors of a major publication like Science still less likely to want to publish his work.
Science (and many other journals) does have some pretty wacky policies (from the standpoint of encouraging scientific dialogue, anyway), though this is not uncommon - one of the many problems with the current scholarly publishing world (which has a lot of problems).
So what they're saying is that this technology just happens to have potential more or less exclusively in areas populated by companies/agencies that have a lot of money floating around for research grants, eh?
I don't expect to be flying on an Indian or Brazilian designed airliner to be in service during my life-time.
Ever hear of a company called Embraer? They are a Brazilian company that currently produces airliners including the very popular EMB-120 Brasilian turboprop. No, they don't produce huge jetliners (I think the biggest is the new ERJ-195 with ~110 seats, but I'm not sure it's even flying yet). But Brazil at least does have a successful aviation business that supplies airliners worldwide. Not sure about India.
About the characters... but I don't seem to be able to use them in a post. No fair! I went through a lot of work hitting ctrl-c ctrl-v, all for nothing! How am I supposed to properly discuss this topic if I can't even post the network domain characters?
While I agree in principle to the assertion that the only way to have completely fair reviews is for those doing the reviews to go out and purchase off-the-shelf parts, I have to disagree with Consumer Reports being a good model of a reviewer.
While they seem to be more or less fair in their reveiws, their reveiws are also, in general, absolute crap. As in, they rarely seem to have any idea of how to go about producing a useful review in most of the subjects I'm interested in.
Their car reviews are absolutely abominable (the one and only useful thing they offer is measures of reliability, and that isn't really from their reviews but from hearsay sent in from the general public). Same with most of their elecronics reviews - specifically audio equipment. They don't seem to have any clue how to go about actually testing equipment, so the extent of any of their reviews is the feature list vs. price - they don't ever actually seem to do any real testing.
Those are just a couple of examples, there are many, many more. Basically I agree that their system of only reviewing things they have gone out and bought is commendable (as is their policy on advertising, etc., although I think that is unnecessary), and really the only way to ensure complete objectivity, but they unfortunately seem to largely be incompetent when it comes to producing meaningful reviews.
to bumping the video memory from 128 to 256? Seems silly at this point to go up to 512. Ah well - I'm sure they won't have problems finding kids whose parents will buy these for them.
Slashdot Mirror
6. And then we'll have those people that don't really care what the topic is, but like to show how long they've been around /. by making pointless generalizations about what everyone else will say. They won't actually add anyting to the discussion, or make any relevant points or provide any insights, but they will feel good about themselves because, umm, they posted something.
7. After that, another group will come in, pointing out the pointlessness of the above group's post, in posts that are, if possible, even more pointless and off topic. But then, just before the end of their posts, this last group will throw in some almost-related-to-the-topic bit, like "maybe it was glaciers!", so that they can preted that their post was in fact on-topic.
If you can't see it, it ain't there?
Funny, I think that's their goal for me, too.
Wait, am I supposed to be bashing Microsoft, or the spammers? I hate these confusing topics...
John Carmack will never, ever be regaurded the same way that John Lennon is. p.
Probably true - but it is appropriate. John Lennon was a singer/songwriter/philosopher/whatever; he was a content creator. That is, he told stories. John Carmack isn't a content creator - at least, not beyond the most basic level. He doesn't really tell stories - he builds tools that other people use (well, they used to, anyway - I haven't heard about too many games using the Doom 3 engine) to tell stories. So he may not be remembered as a John Lennon, but maybe as a Gutenberg, a creator of the tools others use to tell their stories.
Not exactly the point you were addressing, but hey.
Hmmm...
Why would anyone need to prove it? Proving one movie is better than another is an impossible venture - atistic worth and entertainment value are completely subjective, and cannot be proven. All he has to do, and all anyone "has" to do, is provide reasons that they think the new movies are worse than the originals - and then you and I can either agree with those reasons or disagree with those reasons.
For myself, I tend to more or less agree with Stephenson. For example, what he was getting at with his remarks about the opening battle - I don't entirely agree with him about not knowing who the owner of the ship is (as has been pointed out, you can get that from the opening crawl), but the whole opening battle scene just felt empty. It reminded me of something Lucas said in an interview or commentary for the original Star Wars (I think) - "a special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing." That is exactly what the opening battle, and some of the other action scenes, felt like to me; here we have these absolutely stunning visual effects, but I just don't care what is happening because I'm not at all emotionally invested in it. I suppose there is a story somewhere in there, but the audience isn't party to it. All we get is shit blowing up and these two jedi making inane comments to each other, with very little rhyme or reason for what is going on. There's special effects, all right, but we the audience have been left out of the story leading up to them.
Yes! Made the top ten, baby!!!!!!
I wonder where the number would be if all of SBC's networks (they own pacbell, and have for several years) were to be counted as one?
Every video card I've owned for the last eight or ten years, going back to my Diamond Stealth 64, has been capable of outputting resolutions up to 2048x1536 (although at very low refresh rates/few colors for the older ones). The limiting factor (aside from RAMDACs that probably couldn't actually do that and the analog connection itself) has been that there haven't been displays available that could do it. In fact, aside from high-end 22" CRTs (and large LCDs, like the 30" apple cinema display), there still isn't anything that can do it.
Likewise, while the new PS3 may be capable of outputting 2 1080p signals, there are unfortunately very few display devices out there that actually support this full resolution - even high-end CRT TVs don't offer the full 1920x1080 resolution of the spec (although they do display the picture, and it is very nice, it isn't actually displayed at the true spec resolution). So, unless you can afford a couple of extremely expensive (>$3000) display devices, twin 1080p really isn't a "standard resolution" even for the next generation of consoles. The fact is that PC video cards have long been capable of extremely high resolutions, but display technology (at least, affordable display technology) has not kept up with their capabilities.
Last I checked the vast majority of people still do not have high-def TVs, so the "standard resolution" of the next generation of consoles will probably still be 640x480 or whatever standard TV resolution is.
Surely you mean MPG. I think we've got all the MPH we need
How is gathering infromation on experimental treatments "circumventing their doctor"? It seems to me that it is better to be informed about potential or experimental treatments for an ailment you are suffering from - if you are interested, bring it up with your doctor. And no, that doesn't mean you should TELL your doctor you want this or that treatment; the idea is to inform yourself, not attempt to replace the years of training and practice a doctor has. Seems like a non-issue to me.
Now I'm not saying that I know for certain that this storm killed my router, but SOMETHING sure did between Friday night and Sunday evening. Of course it was a D-Link, so it's just as likely it died of (un?)natural causes.
Ah, that explains why the XBox 360 will be shipping with Excel Spreadsheet: The Game.
Hey, I think I played that once. It was like Terminal Velocity, but with faces of MS developers on the ground.
On a related note, I did a quick journal article search for Benny Peiser (really quicik - only used scholar.google). Interestingly (or not, whatever), it didn't turn up a single paper in a peer-reviewed journal that had ever been cited by another (I didn't actually wade through them to see if he had any papers period - though there were only 6 pages of returns). He is apparently an editor for something called "Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age Civilizations" - clearly an expert in the field of climate change (yeah right).
Anyway, just wanted to add to what you said above - from a quick (admittedly incomplete) search, it appears that Dr. Peiser has no history of contributing to serious research, nor of working with people that do, which may make the editors of a major publication like Science still less likely to want to publish his work.
Science (and many other journals) does have some pretty wacky policies (from the standpoint of encouraging scientific dialogue, anyway), though this is not uncommon - one of the many problems with the current scholarly publishing world (which has a lot of problems).
See, this is why I'm in favour of the two-party system; you just can't trust those third parties. Bunch of savages.
Wait, what are we talking about again?
Hey, research funding has to come from somewhere.
Ever hear of a company called Embraer? They are a Brazilian company that currently produces airliners including the very popular EMB-120 Brasilian turboprop. No, they don't produce huge jetliners (I think the biggest is the new ERJ-195 with ~110 seats, but I'm not sure it's even flying yet). But Brazil at least does have a successful aviation business that supplies airliners worldwide. Not sure about India.
About the characters... but I don't seem to be able to use them in a post. No fair! I went through a lot of work hitting ctrl-c ctrl-v, all for nothing!
How am I supposed to properly discuss this topic if I can't even post the network domain characters?
While I agree in principle to the assertion that the only way to have completely fair reviews is for those doing the reviews to go out and purchase off-the-shelf parts, I have to disagree with Consumer Reports being a good model of a reviewer.
While they seem to be more or less fair in their reveiws, their reveiws are also, in general, absolute crap. As in, they rarely seem to have any idea of how to go about producing a useful review in most of the subjects I'm interested in.
Their car reviews are absolutely abominable (the one and only useful thing they offer is measures of reliability, and that isn't really from their reviews but from hearsay sent in from the general public). Same with most of their elecronics reviews - specifically audio equipment. They don't seem to have any clue how to go about actually testing equipment, so the extent of any of their reviews is the feature list vs. price - they don't ever actually seem to do any real testing.
Those are just a couple of examples, there are many, many more. Basically I agree that their system of only reviewing things they have gone out and bought is commendable (as is their policy on advertising, etc., although I think that is unnecessary), and really the only way to ensure complete objectivity, but they unfortunately seem to largely be incompetent when it comes to producing meaningful reviews.
I don't know, but I think we're all smoking it now.
Would Mr. File please pick up one of the white courtesy phones? Your OS needs to talk to you.
Never mind that if you have 10 million of them you either have 10 megabits (well, in HD manufacturer lingo, anyway) or 10 megabytes, not 10 gigabytes.
Where Godzilla really came from.
to bumping the video memory from 128 to 256? Seems silly at this point to go up to 512. Ah well - I'm sure they won't have problems finding kids whose parents will buy these for them.
I just crack myself up.
Yes; there is the distinct possibility that the audience will run away.