Digital cameras work fine. Find a valid example. Most people dismiss Linux because: [...] c) usability DOES factor in, but the average person just needs a Lindows-like PC.. email,. web, office app, and oh yeah support for USB cameras and pen drives. Linux does that with great ease of use.
On RedHat 9, you have to manually load a kernel module to make Linux recognize when a digital camera (or other usb hard drive device) has been plugged in. I had to google for the answer, and then go to the command line and load the module. That is not user-friendly.
Wow, I really had no idea the kind of stigma roleplaying has around here.
One other thing I never said was that roleplaying was the only thing I ever did. While in high school, I played hockey for two years, then joined Mock Trial and set crew for the school play the other two years.
In college I played intramural ice hockey on and off, and at one point (while I had time) I was a very active member of the university anime club. I also partied a lot.
On the subject of self-confidence and roleplaying, who's the less confident? The person who doesn't roleplay because he doesn't want to be seen as the old pimply dude living in his parents' basement, or the guy who does what he likes to do because he likes to do it, and doesn't let other people's unfortunate misconceptions bother him?
I've met a few of these people, but I'm guessing that you remember them because they're the most distinctive, not the most common.
Most of us are actually pretty normal people. I'll admit that basically all roleplayers are nerds, but there are a lot of very successful, social nerds. Your preconceptions just prevent you from realizing it.
(Wow, this guy's well-dressed and fit with good hair and no BO, and he's the life of the party... and the chicks are climbing all over him. No way he could be a nerd!)
The point is, to be super smart is NOT ENOUGH. You have to be well rounded to be successful. You have to be able to get along with everyone. The jocks, the stoners, the band folks, the chess club. Proclaiming your social group to be complete when it consists of an elf, a dwarf and two battle gnomes is just deluding yourself (even if you married the elf).
I see here that I'm the victim of a straw-man attack.:)
I never claimed that a D&D provides a "complete social group." To the contrary, I agree with your above statement. On the other hand, if you have no social group, then D&D can be an excellent step towards being able to interact with people in general -- not just elves, dwarves, and gnomes.
Frankly, it's ridiculous to expect someone who's a chronic introvert to suddenly become the well-rounded socialite that you claim to be. I have no delusions that D&D makes people cool or popular. On the other hand, it can make people feel better about themselves, which can be very helpful when interacting with others.
I really hate to see this post modded Funny... Apart from the irony of a bunch of Slashdotters pointing at someone and saying "HAHA! YOU NERD!!", I think everyone's missing out on the fact that this post is largely correct.
I got into D&D early on in high school, at a time when I felt like I had very few people to hang out with. It helped me meet new people and, yes, develop social skills. It also showed me that there were a lot more nerds out there than I originally thought. A lot of us spend a long time thinking that we're the nerdiest person around until we meet other people who we can relate to. Just understanding that there are other people out there who share your interests is a confidence boost.
Oh, and I'm 25 and going to be married next May... and out of the people I play D&D with, half are happily married, and none are virgins.
That's all I need. Every computer will come preinstalled with Some Supported Media Formats Are Not Currently Associated With RealPlayer Would You Like To Correct This Player, and Upgrade To QuickTime Player Pro Player.
As commercial media players go, Windows Media Player is a lot less obnoxious than the rest.
The big fallacy of this letter is the assumption that open source developers write open source code for a living. In truth, the vast majority of us code as a hobby and have "real" jobs elsewhere. We're not devaluing our own abilities because we don't make money; the reward we receive for our work is the body of professional-quality open code that's already out there for free.
I "moved out of my parents' basement" because I got a job developing closed-source software. That doesn't prevent me from developing open-source software as well.
Not only does it do math, it's also got a bunch of constants built in, and it can convert units on the fly, even to some more esoteric ones. Try entering the following searches
gravitational constant speed of light in cubits per fortnight mass of jupiter in stones radius of earth * 2 * pi in light years
It's enough to keep a science nerd occupied for hours.:)
"Anyone but Bush in 2004" is of course a bit of an exaggeration. I'm guessing fully 30% of the population of the United States would make a worse president than George W. As it stands, I'd vote for anyone who showed a lick of financial competence and wasn't planning on siphoning off more of my rights (Patriot Act 2, anyone?) and kowtowing to the Christian right. Oh, and someone who doesn't want the power to arbitrarily designate me as a terrorist and send me off to some internment camp. The governemnt can do that right now, you realize.
And the answer to my question is totalitarian governments in general, not just communist ones.
Mod me offtopic. I've got a strong opinion and karma to burn.:)
...such as Greenpeace, labeled by some as ecoterrorists.
So, tell me... Are you in favor of rounding up everyone that's ever donated monet to Greenpeace and shipping them off to Guatanamo Bay to be detained indefinitely?
And now, as you're nodding your head, think about what kind of government ships dissidents off to jail without due process. Doesn't that scare you a bit?
One time, I was browsing through an insurance brochure, and I came across something called "AD&D Insurance" or somesuch (or maybe AD&D was some subsection of life insurance, I'm not sure which). As an avid roleplayer, that really jumped out at me, so I took a look.
Turns out AD&D stood for "Accidental Death & Dismemberment."
...what was so great about Goldeneye. The level designs were horribly uninspired, if I remember right. I admit that it was fun playing four-player games, but the only real innovation was that they could all be played on one screen, which made it easier to get gamers together. That aside, nothing about Goldeneye impressed me at all; in fact, it compared poorly to the likes of Quake 1, which was fairly old at the time.
Yeah, mine went away too... My girlfriend is a med student, and she was the one who prodded me to give it up (I was drinking maybe 6 or more cans of soda a day). Cold turkey worked for me, but I was really bad the first few days, and pretty grumpy and waspish for about a month. People will tell you that getting over a caffeine addiction only takes three days; that's a load of crap. It takes a month.:)
Anyway, cold turkey is a good way to go -- just be prepared to deal with being in a bad mood.
P.S., re the smoking comments on top. Apparently you can treat UC and the like with nicotine after you get them. Smoking as a preventative measure prior to diagnosis is a good way to get lung cancer and heart disease.
To the contrary, given his statement that everything is a game, one might assume that he's talking about the game of social interaction, which Slashdotters are stereotypcally bad at. In a sense, finding an ideal mate is a game in itself, and species that play this game (as opposed to mating indescriminatly) tend to have an evolutionary advantage, as healthy qualities are passed on.
It'd be fun in, say, a space strategy game to be able to create a realistic solar system from a random number seed. Now, presumably these simulations were run on a supercomputer and took hundreds of CPU hours to do... However, I'm guessing that if you do enough runs, you can look at the numbers and come up with a simple algorithm that would give fairly reasonable results. Honestly, I'd love to get my hands on their data, even if it does look like a spreadsheet.
Internet Explorer works and you should find it usable for light use. However it still has some problems, and is not quite ready for production, full time use yet.
So now they're claiming that IE works as well in Crossover Office as it does under native Windows. Go figure.
When your company is down on its luck, it's easy to say things like, "oh, our customers would really love to hear about all of these great offers we have for them," as opposed to, "let's not spam these people who trusted us not to inundate them with crap."
It's probably a fair guess that most companies don't start making ethically questionable decisions like the above example unless they would otherwise go out of business. What you really need to ask yourself is whether or not you are prepared to let your company go under rather than letting go of your ethical standards. It's not an easy question to answer.
Okay, so it's a content management system... I get that. What I'm curious about is whether Plone would be useful for things on a small scale -- for instance, a site that has a few (maybe five) people who can update it, and require no review or workflow to do so. Is it good for this, or is it too complicated for simple needs?
...but they're most certainly aware that, if someone wasn't going to pay for software in the first place, they're better off if that person is running pirated Microsoft software than Linux. Because the more market penetration Linux has, the less reason there is for other people to buy Windows. So while Microsoft's estimated losses will plummet under this new plan, its real losses will rise. Funny how that works.
Console RPGs come immediately to mind, if you're not afraid to give them a shot. Try Xenosaga or one of the many recent Final Fantasy games (some of which are available for the PC). Also, if you don't mind your graphics beind dated by 10 years, grab a SNES emulator and play some of the older ones on there.
Deus Ex also had a pretty good story, and isn't yet so far behind the times as to be unplayable. And, heck, GTA3 (and presumably Vice City) has a fairly coherent story as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Digital cameras work fine. Find a valid example. Most people dismiss Linux because:
[...]
c) usability DOES factor in, but the average person just needs a Lindows-like PC.. email,. web, office app, and oh yeah support for USB cameras and pen drives. Linux does that with great ease of use.
On RedHat 9, you have to manually load a kernel module to make Linux recognize when a digital camera (or other usb hard drive device) has been plugged in. I had to google for the answer, and then go to the command line and load the module. That is not user-friendly.
Wow, I really had no idea the kind of stigma roleplaying has around here.
One other thing I never said was that roleplaying was the only thing I ever did. While in high school, I played hockey for two years, then joined Mock Trial and set crew for the school play the other two years.
In college I played intramural ice hockey on and off, and at one point (while I had time) I was a very active member of the university anime club. I also partied a lot.
On the subject of self-confidence and roleplaying, who's the less confident? The person who doesn't roleplay because he doesn't want to be seen as the old pimply dude living in his parents' basement, or the guy who does what he likes to do because he likes to do it, and doesn't let other people's unfortunate misconceptions bother him?
Damn, you both failed your saving rolls?
It was the Ring of Engagement +3. It gave her a huge penalty on her will save versus marriage proposals.
Ouch.
... and the chicks are climbing all over him. No way he could be a nerd!)
I've met a few of these people, but I'm guessing that you remember them because they're the most distinctive, not the most common.
Most of us are actually pretty normal people. I'll admit that basically all roleplayers are nerds, but there are a lot of very successful, social nerds. Your preconceptions just prevent you from realizing it.
(Wow, this guy's well-dressed and fit with good hair and no BO, and he's the life of the party
The point is, to be super smart is NOT ENOUGH. You have to be well rounded to be successful. You have to be able to get along with everyone. The jocks, the stoners, the band folks, the chess club. Proclaiming your social group to be complete when it consists of an elf, a dwarf and two battle gnomes is just deluding yourself (even if you married the elf).
:)
I see here that I'm the victim of a straw-man attack.
I never claimed that a D&D provides a "complete social group." To the contrary, I agree with your above statement. On the other hand, if you have no social group, then D&D can be an excellent step towards being able to interact with people in general -- not just elves, dwarves, and gnomes.
Frankly, it's ridiculous to expect someone who's a chronic introvert to suddenly become the well-rounded socialite that you claim to be. I have no delusions that D&D makes people cool or popular. On the other hand, it can make people feel better about themselves, which can be very helpful when interacting with others.
I really hate to see this post modded Funny... Apart from the irony of a bunch of Slashdotters pointing at someone and saying "HAHA! YOU NERD!!", I think everyone's missing out on the fact that this post is largely correct.
I got into D&D early on in high school, at a time when I felt like I had very few people to hang out with. It helped me meet new people and, yes, develop social skills. It also showed me that there were a lot more nerds out there than I originally thought. A lot of us spend a long time thinking that we're the nerdiest person around until we meet other people who we can relate to. Just understanding that there are other people out there who share your interests is a confidence boost.
Oh, and I'm 25 and going to be married next May... and out of the people I play D&D with, half are happily married, and none are virgins.
That's all I need. Every computer will come preinstalled with Some Supported Media Formats Are Not Currently Associated With RealPlayer Would You Like To Correct This Player, and Upgrade To QuickTime Player Pro Player.
As commercial media players go, Windows Media Player is a lot less obnoxious than the rest.
Funny how this jail-related comment is bulletted with (*)s.
The big fallacy of this letter is the assumption that open source developers write open source code for a living. In truth, the vast majority of us code as a hobby and have "real" jobs elsewhere. We're not devaluing our own abilities because we don't make money; the reward we receive for our work is the body of professional-quality open code that's already out there for free.
I "moved out of my parents' basement" because I got a job developing closed-source software. That doesn't prevent me from developing open-source software as well.
Not only does it do math, it's also got a bunch of constants built in, and it can convert units on the fly, even to some more esoteric ones. Try entering the following searches
:)
gravitational constant
speed of light in cubits per fortnight
mass of jupiter in stones
radius of earth * 2 * pi in light years
It's enough to keep a science nerd occupied for hours.
"Anyone but Bush in 2004" is of course a bit of an exaggeration. I'm guessing fully 30% of the population of the United States would make a worse president than George W. As it stands, I'd vote for anyone who showed a lick of financial competence and wasn't planning on siphoning off more of my rights (Patriot Act 2, anyone?) and kowtowing to the Christian right. Oh, and someone who doesn't want the power to arbitrarily designate me as a terrorist and send me off to some internment camp. The governemnt can do that right now, you realize.
:)
And the answer to my question is totalitarian governments in general, not just communist ones.
Mod me offtopic. I've got a strong opinion and karma to burn.
...such as Greenpeace, labeled by some as ecoterrorists.
So, tell me... Are you in favor of rounding up everyone that's ever donated monet to Greenpeace and shipping them off to Guatanamo Bay to be detained indefinitely?
And now, as you're nodding your head, think about what kind of government ships dissidents off to jail without due process. Doesn't that scare you a bit?
Anyone but Bush in 2004.
One time, I was browsing through an insurance brochure, and I came across something called "AD&D Insurance" or somesuch (or maybe AD&D was some subsection of life insurance, I'm not sure which). As an avid roleplayer, that really jumped out at me, so I took a look.
:)
Turns out AD&D stood for "Accidental Death & Dismemberment."
How appropriate.
...what was so great about Goldeneye. The level designs were horribly uninspired, if I remember right. I admit that it was fun playing four-player games, but the only real innovation was that they could all be played on one screen, which made it easier to get gamers together. That aside, nothing about Goldeneye impressed me at all; in fact, it compared poorly to the likes of Quake 1, which was fairly old at the time.
Part of the fun of downloading a game is the thrill of the score when you find a pirated copy and get it for free. :)
Yeah, mine went away too... My girlfriend is a med student, and she was the one who prodded me to give it up (I was drinking maybe 6 or more cans of soda a day). Cold turkey worked for me, but I was really bad the first few days, and pretty grumpy and waspish for about a month. People will tell you that getting over a caffeine addiction only takes three days; that's a load of crap. It takes a month. :)
Anyway, cold turkey is a good way to go -- just be prepared to deal with being in a bad mood.
P.S., re the smoking comments on top. Apparently you can treat UC and the like with nicotine after you get them. Smoking as a preventative measure prior to diagnosis is a good way to get lung cancer and heart disease.
To the contrary, given his statement that everything is a game, one might assume that he's talking about the game of social interaction, which Slashdotters are stereotypcally bad at. In a sense, finding an ideal mate is a game in itself, and species that play this game (as opposed to mating indescriminatly) tend to have an evolutionary advantage, as healthy qualities are passed on.
Let's use it for games!
It'd be fun in, say, a space strategy game to be able to create a realistic solar system from a random number seed. Now, presumably these simulations were run on a supercomputer and took hundreds of CPU hours to do... However, I'm guessing that if you do enough runs, you can look at the numbers and come up with a simple algorithm that would give fairly reasonable results. Honestly, I'd love to get my hands on their data, even if it does look like a spreadsheet.
From their page:
Internet Explorer works and you should find it usable for light use. However it still has some problems, and is not quite ready for production, full time use yet.
So now they're claiming that IE works as well in Crossover Office as it does under native Windows. Go figure.
When your company is down on its luck, it's easy to say things like, "oh, our customers would really love to hear about all of these great offers we have for them," as opposed to, "let's not spam these people who trusted us not to inundate them with crap."
It's probably a fair guess that most companies don't start making ethically questionable decisions like the above example unless they would otherwise go out of business. What you really need to ask yourself is whether or not you are prepared to let your company go under rather than letting go of your ethical standards. It's not an easy question to answer.
If your company is named Sun, joining something called Eclipse can't possibly be good for you.
Okay, so it's a content management system... I get that. What I'm curious about is whether Plone would be useful for things on a small scale -- for instance, a site that has a few (maybe five) people who can update it, and require no review or workflow to do so. Is it good for this, or is it too complicated for simple needs?
...but they're most certainly aware that, if someone wasn't going to pay for software in the first place, they're better off if that person is running pirated Microsoft software than Linux. Because the more market penetration Linux has, the less reason there is for other people to buy Windows. So while Microsoft's estimated losses will plummet under this new plan, its real losses will rise. Funny how that works.
Console RPGs come immediately to mind, if you're not afraid to give them a shot. Try Xenosaga or one of the many recent Final Fantasy games (some of which are available for the PC). Also, if you don't mind your graphics beind dated by 10 years, grab a SNES emulator and play some of the older ones on there.
Deus Ex also had a pretty good story, and isn't yet so far behind the times as to be unplayable. And, heck, GTA3 (and presumably Vice City) has a fairly coherent story as well.