Elaine (with Apple-ish grin): I just bought a Macbook Jerry (non-chalantly sipping his coffee in front of his Dell): So? I've got Vista. Elaine (frowning): But this is a Mac, Jerry. Jerry: But it's not Vista. Elaine: No, it's not Vista. It's a Mac. Jerry: It's very shiny. What'd that thing cost you? Elaine (defensive): What does that matter? Jerry: One thousand? Elaine: Jerry... Jerry: Two thousand? Elaine: Stop... Jerry: Three th-- Elaine: $2755. Jerry: Inclu-- Elaine: Including tax. Jerry: 1250 Elaine: 1250 what? Jerry: Vista. Elaine: But it's not a Mac! Jerry: It checks email. Elaine: So does my Mac. Jerry: Surfs the web. Elaine: So does my Mac. Jerry: Makes movies. Elaine: So does...it does? I thought Windows didn't make movies. Jerry (shrugs and sips): Vista. (Door explodes open!) Kramer: Jerry! The Dell store down the street is selling computers with Vista for $1500! Jerry: 1250 Kramer (walking over to Jerry's laptop): Oooh, is that... Jerry: Vista. Kramer: Niiiice.
Yah, my brother was in a similar type accident. Everyone was fine, barely a scrape on a bumper. Police show up and 15 minutes later my brother sees the other guys on a stretcher. He asks the cop to watch for insurance fraud. Cop replies, "No kidding. I've got two ambulances and $15 worth of touch up paint. We'll make a note."
Although it dose make me sad to see the outright hatred of most of the world toward Bush/Cheney.
Seriously, pick up a newspaper every now and again. Counts of Iraqi dead number in the hundreds of thousands. That escapade has become a precedent for Israel and Russia overstepping their bounds concerning retaliation.
America is a great country with greater people. But our current leaders, like many other countries' leaders, suck.
And regarding the 14 year old -- I think it's lame that China made a 14 year old girl lie, but I'll paraphrase the U.S.'s Liukin: "She did the work, she's super talented, she deserved the medal."
Well, in the summary's defense, they were referring to 2.0.1 and the lack of information Apple put out about that one. But the new update (unnumbered in the summary) has "plenty of information", at least from the people who had the misfortune of installing it.
I think the problem isn't how realistic the person looks when they are still...I'm fairly certain we can digitally construct a completely human-looking image down to the rising acne.
It's the combination of the "perfect human" image with the stiff animation. Be it the Hulk or Final Fantasy, people don't move like that: they don't glide, they don't have still features. Watch those cartoon commercials where they've basically cartooned over real people talking and moving: THAT'S how much people move around. Most cartoons, when someone is speaking, running, standing...they're frozen or manage the occasional eye-blink or hand gesture. Try to stand perfectly still for 10 seconds...you probably can't, and even if you could it feels totally awkward.
What "Emily" has done is shown, again, that nobody's head or facial expression is ever really still, and that's what gets you away from looking at an animated feature and start looking at life-like computer generated actions.
Right...keep getting those two authors confused. Thanks for the factcheck. While I didn't read Blue Mars, I was under the impression the cable had broken open a bunch of underground watersheds...I figured that would play into the "blueing" of Mars.
And yes, everything was tongue-in-cheek. It hurts a little inside to suggest you'd think otherwise (Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers? Sheesh.).
In the recent remake of the Time Machine, in order to make room for condominiums, they blew out part of the moon. Too much of the moon -- gravitational anomalies on Earth, falling meteors...
SPOILER
In Red Mars by Ben Bova, they accidentally wrap a space elevator cable around the planet Mars...this does indeed release some water, but anything within a couple miles of the cable is flattened.
--SPOILER
In an episode of the Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, a supercollider is set up to encircle a small moon...the resulting collision of the particles tears the moon apart.
My point? It doesn't take real scientists to determine that you don't mess with the moon. I'm not even going to go into the whole werewolf advocacy groups...
I'll have you know that I have a nice summer home on the Red Spot of Jupiter and have lived there happily for quite some time so anytime you feel like dying please do drop by.
The BSOD is called the BSOD because MS, in their infinite wisdom, opened themselves up to such a joke by deciding to deliver critical system messages with a "calming" blue background and white text.
I'd like to note for the record that the words Black and Blue both begin with the letter B.
Was the original video on YouTube from a new station or someone's handicam? I can see copyright infringement from the former, of course (though fair use comes into play -- but I'm not sure fair use exists anymore), but not if it's a personal recording. I'll assume the former.
Which is a question that I rarely seen discussed. If Global Warming is true, is it really a problem?
It's not a problem for the Earth in general. It's been much warmer and much colder and it still sustains a multitude of life. But it's a problem for many of the current species on the planet, including humans.
The effects of global warming are truly complex and even the most informed scientists can't say for sure what will happen. If the arctic ice melts, oceans will rise, sure. But will the evaporation of the oceans create more cloud cover to cool the Earth? Or will that cloud cover trap more heat?
Our issues as humans is water supply. You'll notice more commercials for desalinization plants and such. Living in the Central Valley of California, I know that if we have a winter like the one two years ago, we're going to have problems from golf courses to agriculture. Last winter was good, but not great in terms of snow pack. Humans are putting a lot of hope into technology to continue our way of life.
Anyway, global warming won't take out the Earth, and it likely won't make it unlivable for humans. We'll kill each other off first vying for resources such as water, trees, meat, etc.
But what's also funny is that they are a Mac shop (at least 60/40 from another site I saw).
In my couple years at an ad agency, it was 90% Mac (mmm...PowerMac) and only the 10 or so accountants on the 7th floor used Windows. Then we switched accounting and marketing software, so half the company changed to Windows 95 or NT (am I dating myself?)
Art directors and the studio shop continued to use Macs and likely still do, if only for the familiarity. Macs = education and Macs = design for many people.
How about the government leaves us alone and sees to its actual responsibilities and, oh i don't know, obeys its own laws and attempts to embody American ideals?
I think some sort of TSA security is needed to check for actual explosive devices. It seems pointless to check people as, since 9/11, if anyone so much as sneezes out of turn on an airplane, personal responsibility actually comes in from the cold and people stomp on the perpetrator. This is good.
So check for bombs that have timing devices, but good luck if you're trying to set one off manually from your seat these days. You'll be chewed to pieces.
Where everything is disorganized and you simply wander through everything tossing it out of the way like looking through your dirty clothes hamper
You know, I'd keep all my clothes in the hamper if I could just say, "Tennis shorts, black" and have it come popping to the top. This is why desktop searching, indexing, etc is becoming so prevalent. Most people don't have any real organization (being in tech support for awhile, I can attest to the directory "structure" on some people's machines) -- so companies are focusing on speeding up searches.
Still, in the end it clearly does illustrate that you have to be careful what you send over the tubes.
Personal responsibility. While I think the person who posted the pics was indeed malicious and deserves whatever he gets, the "victim" made the decision to give some random person his photo and risk his marriage over it.
I shrug at both of them as both are deserving of their fates.
My big concern is the government will redefine terrorism and, using the personal data they've acquired when last I purchased a drink at my local coffee shop, they'll put my in Gitmo and not even let me have a phone call.
DHS: "You've been charged with vocally disapproving of a political party and/or political party's representative and possibly doing so in a threatening manner."
Victim: "I called our president a complete genocidal psychopath for killing 600,000 Iraqis and over 4000 Americans. I just want him out of office. Surely you can understand that?!"
DHS: "Your excuses aren't important right now. You'll be locked up until the War on Terror concludes as you are a threat to our freedom. And don't call me Shirley."
Anyway, regarding data being lost, I think we should let capitalism take hold and when we give over personal information, we sign a contract saying they'll keep it safe or pay us X amount of dollars. Of course, then we'll likely never hear of breaches...
I can understand software copyrights but not a freaking patent.
Exactly. Patenting a software idea, as broad as the patent office was accepting them, is worthless. Copyrighting particular code and licensing it is a good idea. But patenting "a mouse clickable interface for shopping" and then suing everyone on the face of the planet shows that most people have no idea what they're talking about.
Just like devices -- I'm not certain, but don't inventions need a working prototype to be accepted as patents? Software should be the same way, only the specific code, like the specific blueprints, cannot be copied, only licensed (depending on who you are). Patenting an "idea" is retarded.
That's a good point. Because they don't tell you what went right with your choices, only what went wrong (and nothing about the results of the other choice you might've made). While the pessimistic tone of the game isn't a pick-me-up, life can be like that sometimes too. Mugger pulls a woman into the alley in front of you. Do you keep walking and hope he just takes her money? Or do you try to help and possibly get her or both of you killed? Or the mugger killed?
Life: there are no right answers, only different outcomes.
The Witcher is along the same lines as Fable, albeit a little more MMORPG and less Arcade in terms of combat. But the decisions you make during the game -- which are based on what you've gone through in the game -- come back to bite you later on. For example, in the first chapter, I'm trying to either protect or give up a witch to an unruly mob of townspeople. She has her story, while I go through about 5 of the townspeople's stories. Depending on what clues you've uncovered in the town, you might have discovered who's lying and who's not -- or worse, like me, you're pretty sure at least ONE of the townspeople is lying, but not necessarily the others...
So how do you decide the fate of the witch?
The physical gameplay wasn't as fluid as Fable, and you can't go wooing every woman you meet (most conversations are through multiple choice), but it was a very deep, dark game, both with the decision-making and the character development. It did have some fairly "mature" content.
"Biggs, they're all over me." "Stay there, Luke, I'm coming." "I can't shake 'em, I can't shake 'em!" Luke turns to camera: But I could if I were driving a Scion TC with Turbo! Scion TC!
If you press something like 888, you get localish car sales. I think there's one for real estate too. Granted, you can't press BUY NOW, because you'd really need to hide the remote from your children...
With people considering a space elevator, why not consider a space vacuum cleaner? A long tube with one end in space and the other split like, say, a flying spaghetti monster, with multiple ends to suck up particulates. And little dogs.
Slashdot Mirror
Star Raiders
Elaine (with Apple-ish grin): I just bought a Macbook
Jerry (non-chalantly sipping his coffee in front of his Dell): So? I've got Vista.
Elaine (frowning): But this is a Mac, Jerry.
Jerry: But it's not Vista.
Elaine: No, it's not Vista. It's a Mac.
Jerry: It's very shiny. What'd that thing cost you?
Elaine (defensive): What does that matter?
Jerry: One thousand?
Elaine: Jerry...
Jerry: Two thousand?
Elaine: Stop...
Jerry: Three th--
Elaine: $2755.
Jerry: Inclu--
Elaine: Including tax.
Jerry: 1250
Elaine: 1250 what?
Jerry: Vista.
Elaine: But it's not a Mac!
Jerry: It checks email.
Elaine: So does my Mac.
Jerry: Surfs the web.
Elaine: So does my Mac.
Jerry: Makes movies.
Elaine: So does...it does? I thought Windows didn't make movies.
Jerry (shrugs and sips): Vista.
(Door explodes open!)
Kramer: Jerry! The Dell store down the street is selling computers with Vista for $1500!
Jerry: 1250
Kramer (walking over to Jerry's laptop): Oooh, is that...
Jerry: Vista.
Kramer: Niiiice.
Yah, my brother was in a similar type accident. Everyone was fine, barely a scrape on a bumper. Police show up and 15 minutes later my brother sees the other guys on a stretcher. He asks the cop to watch for insurance fraud. Cop replies, "No kidding. I've got two ambulances and $15 worth of touch up paint. We'll make a note."
Nothing came of it.
Although it dose make me sad to see the outright hatred of most of the world toward Bush/Cheney.
Seriously, pick up a newspaper every now and again. Counts of Iraqi dead number in the hundreds of thousands. That escapade has become a precedent for Israel and Russia overstepping their bounds concerning retaliation.
America is a great country with greater people. But our current leaders, like many other countries' leaders, suck.
And regarding the 14 year old -- I think it's lame that China made a 14 year old girl lie, but I'll paraphrase the U.S.'s Liukin: "She did the work, she's super talented, she deserved the medal."
Well, in the summary's defense, they were referring to 2.0.1 and the lack of information Apple put out about that one. But the new update (unnumbered in the summary) has "plenty of information", at least from the people who had the misfortune of installing it.
Anyway, thanks for the links.
I think the problem isn't how realistic the person looks when they are still...I'm fairly certain we can digitally construct a completely human-looking image down to the rising acne.
It's the combination of the "perfect human" image with the stiff animation. Be it the Hulk or Final Fantasy, people don't move like that: they don't glide, they don't have still features. Watch those cartoon commercials where they've basically cartooned over real people talking and moving: THAT'S how much people move around. Most cartoons, when someone is speaking, running, standing...they're frozen or manage the occasional eye-blink or hand gesture. Try to stand perfectly still for 10 seconds...you probably can't, and even if you could it feels totally awkward.
What "Emily" has done is shown, again, that nobody's head or facial expression is ever really still, and that's what gets you away from looking at an animated feature and start looking at life-like computer generated actions.
Capiche
It's capisce. Hurts my ears when you say it.*
* See "My Blue Heaven" with Steve Martin for details.
Right...keep getting those two authors confused. Thanks for the factcheck. While I didn't read Blue Mars, I was under the impression the cable had broken open a bunch of underground watersheds...I figured that would play into the "blueing" of Mars.
And yes, everything was tongue-in-cheek. It hurts a little inside to suggest you'd think otherwise (Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers? Sheesh.).
In the recent remake of the Time Machine, in order to make room for condominiums, they blew out part of the moon. Too much of the moon -- gravitational anomalies on Earth, falling meteors...
SPOILER
In Red Mars by Ben Bova, they accidentally wrap a space elevator cable around the planet Mars...this does indeed release some water, but anything within a couple miles of the cable is flattened.
--SPOILER
In an episode of the Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, a supercollider is set up to encircle a small moon...the resulting collision of the particles tears the moon apart.
My point? It doesn't take real scientists to determine that you don't mess with the moon. I'm not even going to go into the whole werewolf advocacy groups...
I'll have you know that I have a nice summer home on the Red Spot of Jupiter and have lived there happily for quite some time so anytime you feel like dying please do drop by.
perceived slowness in the interface
It's real, I tell you! The slowness is....ooooh, shiny Apple Logo on the back...
The BSOD is called the BSOD because MS, in their infinite wisdom, opened themselves up to such a joke by deciding to deliver critical system messages with a "calming" blue background and white text.
I'd like to note for the record that the words Black and Blue both begin with the letter B.
Was the original video on YouTube from a new station or someone's handicam? I can see copyright infringement from the former, of course (though fair use comes into play -- but I'm not sure fair use exists anymore), but not if it's a personal recording. I'll assume the former.
Which is a question that I rarely seen discussed. If Global Warming is true, is it really a problem?
It's not a problem for the Earth in general. It's been much warmer and much colder and it still sustains a multitude of life. But it's a problem for many of the current species on the planet, including humans.
The effects of global warming are truly complex and even the most informed scientists can't say for sure what will happen. If the arctic ice melts, oceans will rise, sure. But will the evaporation of the oceans create more cloud cover to cool the Earth? Or will that cloud cover trap more heat?
Our issues as humans is water supply. You'll notice more commercials for desalinization plants and such. Living in the Central Valley of California, I know that if we have a winter like the one two years ago, we're going to have problems from golf courses to agriculture. Last winter was good, but not great in terms of snow pack. Humans are putting a lot of hope into technology to continue our way of life.
Anyway, global warming won't take out the Earth, and it likely won't make it unlivable for humans. We'll kill each other off first vying for resources such as water, trees, meat, etc.
But what's also funny is that they are a Mac shop (at least 60/40 from another site I saw).
In my couple years at an ad agency, it was 90% Mac (mmm...PowerMac) and only the 10 or so accountants on the 7th floor used Windows. Then we switched accounting and marketing software, so half the company changed to Windows 95 or NT (am I dating myself?)
Art directors and the studio shop continued to use Macs and likely still do, if only for the familiarity. Macs = education and Macs = design for many people.
How about the government leaves us alone and sees to its actual responsibilities and, oh i don't know, obeys its own laws and attempts to embody American ideals?
I think some sort of TSA security is needed to check for actual explosive devices. It seems pointless to check people as, since 9/11, if anyone so much as sneezes out of turn on an airplane, personal responsibility actually comes in from the cold and people stomp on the perpetrator. This is good.
So check for bombs that have timing devices, but good luck if you're trying to set one off manually from your seat these days. You'll be chewed to pieces.
Where everything is disorganized and you simply wander through everything tossing it out of the way like looking through your dirty clothes hamper
You know, I'd keep all my clothes in the hamper if I could just say, "Tennis shorts, black" and have it come popping to the top. This is why desktop searching, indexing, etc is becoming so prevalent. Most people don't have any real organization (being in tech support for awhile, I can attest to the directory "structure" on some people's machines) -- so companies are focusing on speeding up searches.
Still, in the end it clearly does illustrate that you have to be careful what you send over the tubes.
Personal responsibility. While I think the person who posted the pics was indeed malicious and deserves whatever he gets, the "victim" made the decision to give some random person his photo and risk his marriage over it.
I shrug at both of them as both are deserving of their fates.
My big concern is the government will redefine terrorism and, using the personal data they've acquired when last I purchased a drink at my local coffee shop, they'll put my in Gitmo and not even let me have a phone call.
DHS: "You've been charged with vocally disapproving of a political party and/or political party's representative and possibly doing so in a threatening manner."
Victim: "I called our president a complete genocidal psychopath for killing 600,000 Iraqis and over 4000 Americans. I just want him out of office. Surely you can understand that?!"
DHS: "Your excuses aren't important right now. You'll be locked up until the War on Terror concludes as you are a threat to our freedom. And don't call me Shirley."
Anyway, regarding data being lost, I think we should let capitalism take hold and when we give over personal information, we sign a contract saying they'll keep it safe or pay us X amount of dollars. Of course, then we'll likely never hear of breaches...
I can understand software copyrights but not a freaking patent.
Exactly. Patenting a software idea, as broad as the patent office was accepting them, is worthless. Copyrighting particular code and licensing it is a good idea. But patenting "a mouse clickable interface for shopping" and then suing everyone on the face of the planet shows that most people have no idea what they're talking about.
Just like devices -- I'm not certain, but don't inventions need a working prototype to be accepted as patents? Software should be the same way, only the specific code, like the specific blueprints, cannot be copied, only licensed (depending on who you are). Patenting an "idea" is retarded.
That's a good point. Because they don't tell you what went right with your choices, only what went wrong (and nothing about the results of the other choice you might've made). While the pessimistic tone of the game isn't a pick-me-up, life can be like that sometimes too. Mugger pulls a woman into the alley in front of you. Do you keep walking and hope he just takes her money? Or do you try to help and possibly get her or both of you killed? Or the mugger killed?
Life: there are no right answers, only different outcomes.
The Witcher is along the same lines as Fable, albeit a little more MMORPG and less Arcade in terms of combat. But the decisions you make during the game -- which are based on what you've gone through in the game -- come back to bite you later on. For example, in the first chapter, I'm trying to either protect or give up a witch to an unruly mob of townspeople. She has her story, while I go through about 5 of the townspeople's stories. Depending on what clues you've uncovered in the town, you might have discovered who's lying and who's not -- or worse, like me, you're pretty sure at least ONE of the townspeople is lying, but not necessarily the others...
So how do you decide the fate of the witch?
The physical gameplay wasn't as fluid as Fable, and you can't go wooing every woman you meet (most conversations are through multiple choice), but it was a very deep, dark game, both with the decision-making and the character development. It did have some fairly "mature" content.
Fable was fun though. :-)
No no...
"Biggs, they're all over me."
"Stay there, Luke, I'm coming."
"I can't shake 'em, I can't shake 'em!"
Luke turns to camera: But I could if I were driving a Scion TC with Turbo! Scion TC!
If you press something like 888, you get localish car sales. I think there's one for real estate too. Granted, you can't press BUY NOW, because you'd really need to hide the remote from your children...
With people considering a space elevator, why not consider a space vacuum cleaner? A long tube with one end in space and the other split like, say, a flying spaghetti monster, with multiple ends to suck up particulates. And little dogs.