I was reading not long ago about a Sam and Max game that was slated for release on the X-Box, it was being developed by 'Infinite Machine', however their website hasn't been working for a long time, so perhaps they've gone under. In any case there was this article on ign about it, and this page about it on the unofficial website.
So is this game THIS game, or some other, completely unrelated Sam and Max game.
I'm betting that it's using work done on THAT game and expanding on it for this title.
Absolutely, you have no reason to buy Office, why should you. However there are a few more than '20' people who do use a large number of the features in Word, who do use mail merge, who do use tables, inserted images, table of contents, hyperlinks, embedded worksheets, version tracking, etc. etc. etc.
So, yes, you can indeed do all your 'simple' document in a plethora of applications other than a full blown copy of Word or Wordperfect, but those of us who create a lot of documents, including all sorts of formatting (Headers, footers, autotext etc) and other such features, find document creation to be far more of a chore when we have the tools to do such things taken away.
Sure no-one could surely use ALL the feautres in Word, Excel etc... but there are plenty of us who use a lot of them.
I can't see this being anything but bad for the end users. As much as everyone loves to bash MS, the Office package has served me very well for a very long time, since I switched from WordStar way back when.
I would have to agree that if you're going to offer anything else then Open Office or its ilk would have to be the way to go, don't give products to new users that end up making incompatible files with the vast majority of other users. It'll just leave them confused, frustrated and annoyed.
I'm all for using alternate products, but not at the expense of usability.
For god's sake, how many times do reviewers, fans etc. need to be told that the game is SINGLE PLAYER focused?
For god sake just leave the multiplayer questions alone. I for one am very much looking forward to another engrossing SINGLE player game.
My favourite games of relatively recent time have all been SINGLE player games like Half Life, Medal of Honour etc. I really do prefer the scripted, well thought out drama, scares, fun etc. I vastly prefer this to the mindless blastfest that most multiplayer games seem to end up being.
So, please, just leave the questions about multiplayer alone. It'll be there, it just won't be the damn focus. I applaud them for trying to make a scary, moody game, and look forward to playing it.
Erm... geeze, that's very darn harsh... In Australia at least, SMS only costs the SENDER money, it's free to receive them.
Although there are the cases where you request information from a service, and they cost (I assume), although they are things you've explicitely asked for... how can it be legal to charge someone to receive messages on their phone they don't want?
I have received a couple of pieces of spam SMS here... but they didn't cost me anything to read and delete them straight away...
Can I ask, in regards to your sig... neither my IE6 browser (I assume the target of your ridicule), OR Mozilla 1.1 brings up anything when I view said page, or if I go back a level to what I assume is your homepage...
As such... what is that page trying to demonstrate?
As apposed to going to Account, add account, and doing exactly the same thing in OE? What's better about Mozillas way of handling it? I have my Outlook Express very easily pulling mail from a number of accounts, keeping them all nicely seperate, but viewable at the same time.
I just can't sit well with the whole method of creating things purely for usability with no thought for asthetics. It's all function over form... Not to say that going completely form over function is clever either... but just look at how much room this thing takes up!
You've just rendered a large chunk of whatever room the computer's in unusable, whereas if you're using a normal chair you can roll it back under your desk, thereby freeing up floorspace.
I just thought it fitting to say "Thankyou" to all who provided a great list of titles and reasons for watching. (Well, all bar the twit who said "Uhm, if Mononoke Hime made you feel underwhelmed, then just forget about this Anime thing and go back to watching college movies...". Fine, fine stereotyping there sir. Fine work)
I now have some definitive points to start from in trying to discover the wonder in Anime (Be it a medium/style/format...:)
In regards to those who gave 'serious' American Cartoons... yeah, I had considered all the Fritz the Cat, Metal Gear etc... but all of them aren't really 'serious', they are just comedies like all the kiddy cartoons, only with a more adult bent.... and drugs.
I shalst do my best now to hire some DVDs and sit down and watch these films/series.
I was going to say something about the comment "Maybe Spielberg and company will fare better trying to convince North American audiences to watch serious animated films.", I wanted to say "Dammit, there are so serious animated features that aren't Anime!"
But then I tried to find some.
And looking at this list, I came to the realisation that... bugger... there really aren't any, at least no big films that are serious and aren't Anime... well I'll be buggered!
I like Anime... at least some of it, but sometimes I think the quality of animation in the films is over praised... I feel that the fluidity and realism in many 'western' animated features far outdoes that seen in most Anime, which always seem to skimp on frames, or animates the bare minimum that's required to get the image across.
I had a co-worker who LOVED princess Mononoke, but after watching it I was left quite underwhelmed.
Ghost in the shell was pretty good... Ninja Scroll was fun, but I'm just yet to see something that really makes me think "Wow! So that's what they've been talking about!"
Someone, please point me to the definative quality Anime so I can be proved wrong!:)
You said: "the person who burns MP3's to CD, or prints and frames pictures, is doing quite similar work to what Redhat does with Linux"
But the major difference here is that those that coded for Linux did so with the understanding that it was for the use of all. They coded and devoted their time to developing the system not expecting people to pay for it.
Now, just because the website owner isn't yet selling framed versions of their photos (such as on, say www.deviantart.com, where many, many people post photos and artworks for people to see... however if they choose to charge for a print of it, they can choose to, and get money from it, as they should.
Or, say, just because the tv station isn't yet selling a boxed DVD set of their series, doesn't mean they aren't GOING to. By jumping the gun, and doing these things beforehand, with no permission from the creator of the works, they are effectively stealing from the original creator of the works.
I kinda like your library 'shareware version' book analogy, quite nice...:)
Oh, and I just realised, on re-reading that rant of mine, that it sounds like in all cases it was someone going to their own website and copying things and making profit from them... I meant someone else, not the original owner of the pieces.
I was with you... I really was, right up to "...so the effect on the original copyright holders is nil. Since they didn't, you are providing a service which you should be able to charge for."
Um... It's not ok to charge for distributing, via a semi-permanent medium, content that someone else has spent money, time, effort creating and holds copywrite over.
By your way of thinking it's ok to:
* Scan the contents of a book, create a new, bound copy, and start selling that for a profit. Hey, anyone could have gone to a library and read it, so why can't you make money from selling copies of it?
* Take copies of photos that you may have up on a website (for instance), print them up nice, frame them, and start selling them... hey, anyone could have gone to your website and done the same... right?
* How about taking some music you may have posted on your site... you've put it there as free MP3s for people to listen to, but not for re-distribution or profit... so someone comes along, likes your music (excellent you think), then burns all your songs to a CD and starts selling them as a profit...
They're making money from selling something YOU made... without asking YOU, without having done any of the effort to create the piece themselves. And yet they're making money.
I don't have a problem with people sharing copies with no money changing hands, especially if it's just so people can see a show they otherwise would have missed.
But charging money for it? That's stepping over the line... that's exactly the type of thing that's going to get such laws brought in.
I was only living in the US for 3 months, but man did the ads get annoying.
During Buffy there'd be these huge ads that rolled in, taking up the bottom 1/4 to 1/3 of the screen, advertising some competition or another show on UPN... god it was disgusting.
Australian TV shows have been doing it too... they just can't hold themselves back can they?
To quote a cheesy movie: (JP) "They were so interested in whether they could, that they never stopped to think if they should."
However, the difference here is probably that we're talking about adverts for products, not other station related promos...
Gee tops... I just downloaded it (WinXP) and still found:
* It still puts an icon on the desktop and quicklaunch bar without asking
* It now puts a system tray icon also without asking, did it use to do that?
* It still always starts up with the damn 'Register now' dialog. Don't they make enough money via making it one of the standards out there and virtually forcing any company serious about video on the web to purchase QTPro in order to create compatible video? (I have no problem with that as a way of making money, I completely agree that if you're creating content for the web using their system, then, yup, pay for it, their prices are reasonable... but surely I shouldn't be bugged about the fact that this product exists when I have no desire to ever create a.mov file... I make MPEGs or Divx...:)
* Still can't play fullscreen unless you pay for it
* I still don't see why it's so damn loved... as cludgy as the interface of WMP is, at least I can easily create playlists by dragging my files into the player, can always play fullscreen and I don't have to put up with any 'register now' pretty please' dialogues.
Of course I _have_ to have QT on my system if I want to watch all the latest movie trailers in nice quality, but their software isn't nice, it's intrusive, and I don't like that.
(Of course it has nothing on Realplayer... man I dislike that!)
he he, yeah... I made a special point to drive on it then, as it was free and I thought it my duty to get as much use out of it as I could before it cost money.
(It has to be said I do use it now, but only when using my girlfriend's company car which has the eTag paid for... I have no qualms with a company paying for it... I'm just not gonna!)
The *sarcasm*glorious*sarcasm* Citylink freeway in Melbourne is the same, except all cars do get photographed.
For those who have paid for a 'day pass', when you don't have a transponder fitted, this photo of your licence plate is married to a payment you make via phone.
I also have a problem with a private company 'owning' this portion of our freeway, especially as a chunk of it used to be 'free'. As such that major way into the city is no longer used by myself in my car as I wish to not support them.
(Of course, they also have the oh so great tunnel under our mighty river, the Yarra. This tunnel flooded initially, leaks intermitently, and was only designed to last 30 years... what happens after that I don't know, but I'd prefer not to be driving in it at the time.)
How can it be faster to hold down a key on the keyboard (the command key) and the left mouse button to get a menu of things to accomplish with, say a webpage (such as view source, save as etc.), than to just click the right mouse button?
What's this 'remember which button to use' crud? Surely your instinct is to always click the left mouse button for just about everything... then if you want to do something a little other than 'normal', the right mouse button comes into play... surely it's easier and quicker to do that than a keyboard/mouse click combo.
And also, by the same logic, should you be slowed down by the number of clicks too? Having to always think how many times to click should slow you to a crawl surely?
I'm not subscribing to this logic at all.
My first mouse with my 8088 had two buttons, then our next mouse had three... now there were almost no occasions when I had a use for the third button... it didn't slow me down though, I just never used it.
Now I have the scroll wheel... that's sped things up for me again, it's more intuative to scroll pages of text up and down with that than the click-hold-drag method of the scroll bar.
I've also used Macs, and not having a second button slows me down a LOT (Yes, I know it's because it's what I'm used to). Having to have a finger hovering over the command key so I can bring up menus on webpages, or holding down the mouse button for an inordinant amount of time for a menu to appear etc. Does not seem to make a more usuable interface to me.
That's such a very constructive post there, not at all personally attacking at all.
If you're so non-geek and have such a busy life, what are you doing reading down to this level in a comment history within a Slashdot article on a decidedly geek based topic.
Perhaps I too love going out with friends and spending quality time away from the 'puter, but also I may wish to have some entertainment on the web for those little dull moments at work.
When did I say that I saw "the value of sitting infront of a monitor all evening clicking links"?
Sure people want information from the web, but if they didn't want entertainment, how do you explain: OSDN visits a month: More than 5 million (Source, FAQ) AtomFilms unique visits a month: 18.7 Million (Source http://www.atomshockwave.com/mediakit/traffic_demo graphics.html)
And what does AtomFilms do? They entertain. Lot's of plugins there... Shockwave, Realmedia, Windows Media etc.
Yes Flash can be used for evil, it happens so very often... but there are some great uses for it, it provides high quality entertainment in a compact file format... nothing wrong with that, and sites like AtomFilms demonstrate just how good some of the uses can be.
You projected. I said the issue is more complex, I didn't actually say anything about how much oil we have. I don't have the data to make that claim. You don't have the data to make that claim. Quite possibly, nobody does. All I see are various dogmatic claims made on poor models and bad thinking.
* But we're both taking opposite views on having this limited knowledge. You seem to be following down the path of "We can probably keep going for ages with what we've got, we seem to keep finding more of it, and can refine it better". Whereas I go down the track of "Regardless of how much there actually is, it's a non-renuable resource and it seems foolish to be spending as little time/money as the world is investing in other energy sources".
The whole 'linear' vs 'non-linear' argument is pretty much mute.
"Moot." (Pet peeve.)
*Yes indeed, I completely agree with the peeve on that, more a typo than anything... I apologise.:)
Sure, by using these linear projections they come up with dates that continue to fall by the wayside, but that doesn't mean that the concerns aren't real and pressing.
You do realize that you just said that the truth doesn't matter, don't you?
* No, what I said was that while they may have their dates wrong, it doesn't mean that the concerns in regards to someday running out of oil/coal/whatever is not valid. Just because they have their date set at 2050, and this is most likely going to be proven incorrect, it doesn't mean that the points they raise in regards to consumtion aren't valid.
False projections do result in concerns that are not real. They may get lucky and stumble on the truth, but how can you tell? It is not just possible, but likely that the current understanding is so flawed as to be damaging if acted on.
* Not really... how do we know they aren't even half making up their projections to try and stir the pot a bit (I agree these endless predictions of when we're going to run out of fuels are probably more damaging than good, but they may not agree). The issue is that those of us in the Western world are generally too comfortable and too removed from the possibility that these are not endless resources. Most of the populace don't particularly care either as the supplies seem so huge that 'there's no way it's going to affect me'. By proposing these dates which are within a large number of people's lifespan, maybe they hope that it will mean that people think about the consequences of their consumption a bit more.
Poor thinking is poor thinking. Just doing "something" is a fallacy, not a wise course of action, no matter how many people parrot the party line.
* Who's saying that we should just do 'something'? You're acting as if there aren't good, solid ideas on how to set up renuable energy sources; good, solid ideas on how to more effeciently recycle waste; good, solid ideas on how to better distribute/grow food. There are. It's not as if there's just a bunch of brainless fools running around with solar panels stuck to their heads pleading for action. There's a lot of research that has already been done, and plenty more that could be done with more money, that is pushing us well in the right direction to have non/low polluting vehicles, non/low polluting power sources, excellent recyling etc.
This is not a case of crying about the end of the world and wondering what to do about it, it's merely getting further support to continue along the better path of human development rather than the destructive one.
While you may want the web for just information and nothing else, some of us like to occasionally visit a site that's only point is to entertain via graphics, or demonstrate some very nice interactive graphics, sound etc.
Why are you determined to LIMIT the web to be a text only domain?
Sure my main use of the web is for text rich informative sites, but I don't want to be using a browser that can't support the entertaining flash driven sites with some very impressive graphical artistry if I wish to see them.
Just because YOU only want text and static pictures does mean EVERYONE wants that out of the web... remember, when reading and posting on Slashdot you are conversing with a very limited subset of the web community... don't let your view of the web community be overshadowed by that.
First up, I wish there was a way of rating the researchers... We've had plenty of studies saying that video game playing produces beneficial results too. The problem is that these things are all reported as just because they are the most recent report, they must be right. They have no weighting based on the thoroughness of the research. Who's to say that this was a particularly well run trial?
But I digress...
"Those in the half-videogame category, who spent between one and three hours each day playing games for three to four days a week, had roughly equal alpha and beta wave activity before they started playing a game."
So that sounds like a pretty normal level of playing games, even high... and that has no adverse effect... good... I shall remain 'normal'
But
"Beta wave activity in people in the videogame group, who spent between two and seven hours each day playing games, was constantly near zero even when they weren't playing, showing that they hardly used the prefrontal regions of their brains."
I would have thought that the difference between 2 and 7 hours a day is pretty huge... The 'half-videogame' group got between 1-3 hours 3-4 days a week... so hang on... the half-videogame group could have up to 12 hours a week of game playing, while the videogame group could have just 14 hours a week playing... that's only 2 hours difference a week... hmmmm. (Ok, I'm taking the extreme cases in each group, but I would have thought a better split?)
"Many of the people in this group told researchers that they got angry easily, couldn't concentrate, and had trouble associating with friends."
OK, but what about the other groups? What about the types of people chosen for each group? Were they already predisposed to such behaviour? Did they choose a good even sample group across each section to get a nice baseline?
We always get a tiny bit of the story with these articles... we hardly ever get to know how well the research was conducted, whether the researcher went into it already biased... or what.
However... I do like one part of it...
"Those in the visual group, who were used to visual stimulation, such as from television, easily developed videogame-type brains."
Now that's just plain COOL! I wanna Videogame brain! Will my cortex look like a Sim City map? Will my neurons behave like units from Warcraft or C&C? Will my frontal lobe be texture mapped and antialiased?
Yes indeed there are many replenishable resources... except perhaps wheat isn't the best example, as the amount of over farming that's being done is creating more and more barren soil that cannot support the production of crops. Earth can only produce so much food per year per hectare before you're using more nutrients than the soil can be replenished with. To stop that, farmers use fertilisers, which have all sorts of horrible side effects like algea blooms etc.
Having said that I'm sure that there can be methods to produce enough food developed... in fact there's already far too much made, there's so much waste in 1st world countries it's just ridiculous, when others are languishing without... but it's not just the US there, lot's of us do it.
But continuing on in this blind thought that there's an ample supply of oil, there's plenty more where what we've found came from, why worry etc. is such a narrow minded view. The point is: It's a non-renuable resource! Once it's used up (And hip-hip horray, it may not happen in our lifetime, so why the hell should we worry about it), where are you left?
Why aren't more governments using wind, water and solar power generation. The Australian Government is one of the worst in this respect. We've got a ridiculously large country, with an amazing abundance of wind, water and sun... and what do they do? They insist that we must keep up our coal burning power stations... Both poluting more than we ever have (Damn that Kyoto(sp?) treaty, we're going to make MORE pollution), and speeding our way through a limited resource...
Why not put up more wind generators? Why not put in more hydro generators using wave energy? Why not massive solar farms? All of these technologies are effectively 'free', effectively 'umlimited', and non-polluting. And all of them are within our current technological abilities...
Are they being used much?
Nup.
The whole 'linear' vs 'non-linear' argument is pretty much mute. Sure, by using these linear projections they come up with dates that continue to fall by the wayside, but that doesn't mean that the concerns aren't real and pressing.
The problem is there are some damn large companies and damn large countries depending on the support of said damn large companies all dependant on these old fossil fuels.
Humph... I continue to watch the horizon become more and more muddied with polution... I continue to be able to spend less and less time in the sun because the Ozone layer above grand old Australia is stripped bare... I continue to watch plenty of amazing creatures being wiped out by ignorant countries that presume that their 'long held' 'customs' are more important than the survival of an entire species of creature.
Slashdot Mirror
I was reading not long ago about a Sam and Max game that was slated for release on the X-Box, it was being developed by 'Infinite Machine', however their website hasn't been working for a long time, so perhaps they've gone under. In any case there was this article on ign about it, and this page about it on the unofficial website.
So is this game THIS game, or some other, completely unrelated Sam and Max game.
I'm betting that it's using work done on THAT game and expanding on it for this title.
In any case, I can't wait, I love the duo.
Absolutely, you have no reason to buy Office, why should you. However there are a few more than '20' people who do use a large number of the features in Word, who do use mail merge, who do use tables, inserted images, table of contents, hyperlinks, embedded worksheets, version tracking, etc. etc. etc.
So, yes, you can indeed do all your 'simple' document in a plethora of applications other than a full blown copy of Word or Wordperfect, but those of us who create a lot of documents, including all sorts of formatting (Headers, footers, autotext etc) and other such features, find document creation to be far more of a chore when we have the tools to do such things taken away.
Sure no-one could surely use ALL the feautres in Word, Excel etc... but there are plenty of us who use a lot of them.
I can't see this being anything but bad for the end users. As much as everyone loves to bash MS, the Office package has served me very well for a very long time, since I switched from WordStar way back when.
I would have to agree that if you're going to offer anything else then Open Office or its ilk would have to be the way to go, don't give products to new users that end up making incompatible files with the vast majority of other users. It'll just leave them confused, frustrated and annoyed.
I'm all for using alternate products, but not at the expense of usability.
For god's sake, how many times do reviewers, fans etc. need to be told that the game is SINGLE PLAYER focused?
For god sake just leave the multiplayer questions alone. I for one am very much looking forward to another engrossing SINGLE player game.
My favourite games of relatively recent time have all been SINGLE player games like Half Life, Medal of Honour etc. I really do prefer the scripted, well thought out drama, scares, fun etc. I vastly prefer this to the mindless blastfest that most multiplayer games seem to end up being.
So, please, just leave the questions about multiplayer alone. It'll be there, it just won't be the damn focus. I applaud them for trying to make a scary, moody game, and look forward to playing it.
Erm... geeze, that's very darn harsh... In Australia at least, SMS only costs the SENDER money, it's free to receive them.
Although there are the cases where you request information from a service, and they cost (I assume), although they are things you've explicitely asked for... how can it be legal to charge someone to receive messages on their phone they don't want?
I have received a couple of pieces of spam SMS here... but they didn't cost me anything to read and delete them straight away...
Can I ask, in regards to your sig... neither my IE6 browser (I assume the target of your ridicule), OR Mozilla 1.1 brings up anything when I view said page, or if I go back a level to what I assume is your homepage...
As such... what is that page trying to demonstrate?
As apposed to going to Account, add account, and doing exactly the same thing in OE? What's better about Mozillas way of handling it? I have my Outlook Express very easily pulling mail from a number of accounts, keeping them all nicely seperate, but viewable at the same time.
How long until the porn industry does something with one of these?
"The first erotic feature to include low-level fly bys of all the action!"
I just can't sit well with the whole method of creating things purely for usability with no thought for asthetics. It's all function over form... Not to say that going completely form over function is clever either... but just look at how much room this thing takes up!
You've just rendered a large chunk of whatever room the computer's in unusable, whereas if you're using a normal chair you can roll it back under your desk, thereby freeing up floorspace.
I just thought it fitting to say "Thankyou" to all who provided a great list of titles and reasons for watching. (Well, all bar the twit who said "Uhm, if Mononoke Hime made you feel underwhelmed, then just forget about this Anime thing and go back to watching college movies...". Fine, fine stereotyping there sir. Fine work)
:)
:)
I now have some definitive points to start from in trying to discover the wonder in Anime (Be it a medium/style/format...
In regards to those who gave 'serious' American Cartoons... yeah, I had considered all the Fritz the Cat, Metal Gear etc... but all of them aren't really 'serious', they are just comedies like all the kiddy cartoons, only with a more adult bent.... and drugs.
I shalst do my best now to hire some DVDs and sit down and watch these films/series.
Thanks again.
But then I tried to find some.
And looking at this list, I came to the realisation that... bugger... there really aren't any, at least no big films that are serious and aren't Anime... well I'll be buggered!
I like Anime... at least some of it, but sometimes I think the quality of animation in the films is over praised... I feel that the fluidity and realism in many 'western' animated features far outdoes that seen in most Anime, which always seem to skimp on frames, or animates the bare minimum that's required to get the image across.
I had a co-worker who LOVED princess Mononoke, but after watching it I was left quite underwhelmed.
Ghost in the shell was pretty good... Ninja Scroll was fun, but I'm just yet to see something that really makes me think "Wow! So that's what they've been talking about!"
Someone, please point me to the definative quality Anime so I can be proved wrong! :)
But the major difference here is that those that coded for Linux did so with the understanding that it was for the use of all. They coded and devoted their time to developing the system not expecting people to pay for it.
Now, just because the website owner isn't yet selling framed versions of their photos (such as on, say www.deviantart.com, where many, many people post photos and artworks for people to see... however if they choose to charge for a print of it, they can choose to, and get money from it, as they should.
Or, say, just because the tv station isn't yet selling a boxed DVD set of their series, doesn't mean they aren't GOING to. By jumping the gun, and doing these things beforehand, with no permission from the creator of the works, they are effectively stealing from the original creator of the works.
I kinda like your library 'shareware version' book analogy, quite nice... :)
Oh, and I just realised, on re-reading that rant of mine, that it sounds like in all cases it was someone going to their own website and copying things and making profit from them... I meant someone else, not the original owner of the pieces.
:)
Me use poor english...
I was with you... I really was, right up to "...so the effect on the original copyright holders is nil. Since they didn't, you are providing a service which you should be able to charge for."
Um... It's not ok to charge for distributing, via a semi-permanent medium, content that someone else has spent money, time, effort creating and holds copywrite over.
By your way of thinking it's ok to:
* Scan the contents of a book, create a new, bound copy, and start selling that for a profit. Hey, anyone could have gone to a library and read it, so why can't you make money from selling copies of it?
* Take copies of photos that you may have up on a website (for instance), print them up nice, frame them, and start selling them... hey, anyone could have gone to your website and done the same... right?
* How about taking some music you may have posted on your site... you've put it there as free MP3s for people to listen to, but not for re-distribution or profit... so someone comes along, likes your music (excellent you think), then burns all your songs to a CD and starts selling them as a profit...
They're making money from selling something YOU made... without asking YOU, without having done any of the effort to create the piece themselves. And yet they're making money.
I don't have a problem with people sharing copies with no money changing hands, especially if it's just so people can see a show they otherwise would have missed.
But charging money for it? That's stepping over the line... that's exactly the type of thing that's going to get such laws brought in.
I was only living in the US for 3 months, but man did the ads get annoying.
During Buffy there'd be these huge ads that rolled in, taking up the bottom 1/4 to 1/3 of the screen, advertising some competition or another show on UPN... god it was disgusting.
Australian TV shows have been doing it too... they just can't hold themselves back can they?
To quote a cheesy movie: (JP)
"They were so interested in whether they could, that they never stopped to think if they should."
However, the difference here is probably that we're talking about adverts for products, not other station related promos...
Urgh.
Argh.
And spit.
Gee tops... I just downloaded it (WinXP) and still found:
.mov file... I make MPEGs or Divx... :)
* It still puts an icon on the desktop and quicklaunch bar without asking
* It now puts a system tray icon also without asking, did it use to do that?
* It still always starts up with the damn 'Register now' dialog. Don't they make enough money via making it one of the standards out there and virtually forcing any company serious about video on the web to purchase QTPro in order to create compatible video? (I have no problem with that as a way of making money, I completely agree that if you're creating content for the web using their system, then, yup, pay for it, their prices are reasonable... but surely I shouldn't be bugged about the fact that this product exists when I have no desire to ever create a
* Still can't play fullscreen unless you pay for it
* I still don't see why it's so damn loved... as cludgy as the interface of WMP is, at least I can easily create playlists by dragging my files into the player, can always play fullscreen and I don't have to put up with any 'register now' pretty please' dialogues.
Of course I _have_ to have QT on my system if I want to watch all the latest movie trailers in nice quality, but their software isn't nice, it's intrusive, and I don't like that.
(Of course it has nothing on Realplayer... man I dislike that!)
he he, yeah... I made a special point to drive on it then, as it was free and I thought it my duty to get as much use out of it as I could before it cost money.
(It has to be said I do use it now, but only when using my girlfriend's company car which has the eTag paid for... I have no qualms with a company paying for it... I'm just not gonna!)
The *sarcasm*glorious*sarcasm* Citylink freeway in Melbourne is the same, except all cars do get photographed.
For those who have paid for a 'day pass', when you don't have a transponder fitted, this photo of your licence plate is married to a payment you make via phone.
I also have a problem with a private company 'owning' this portion of our freeway, especially as a chunk of it used to be 'free'. As such that major way into the city is no longer used by myself in my car as I wish to not support them.
(Of course, they also have the oh so great tunnel under our mighty river, the Yarra. This tunnel flooded initially, leaks intermitently, and was only designed to last 30 years... what happens after that I don't know, but I'd prefer not to be driving in it at the time.)
How can it be faster to hold down a key on the keyboard (the command key) and the left mouse button to get a menu of things to accomplish with, say a webpage (such as view source, save as etc.), than to just click the right mouse button?
What's this 'remember which button to use' crud? Surely your instinct is to always click the left mouse button for just about everything... then if you want to do something a little other than 'normal', the right mouse button comes into play... surely it's easier and quicker to do that than a keyboard/mouse click combo.
And also, by the same logic, should you be slowed down by the number of clicks too? Having to always think how many times to click should slow you to a crawl surely?
I'm not subscribing to this logic at all.
My first mouse with my 8088 had two buttons, then our next mouse had three... now there were almost no occasions when I had a use for the third button... it didn't slow me down though, I just never used it.
Now I have the scroll wheel... that's sped things up for me again, it's more intuative to scroll pages of text up and down with that than the click-hold-drag method of the scroll bar.
I've also used Macs, and not having a second button slows me down a LOT (Yes, I know it's because it's what I'm used to). Having to have a finger hovering over the command key so I can bring up menus on webpages, or holding down the mouse button for an inordinant amount of time for a menu to appear etc. Does not seem to make a more usuable interface to me.
That's such a very constructive post there, not at all personally attacking at all.
If you're so non-geek and have such a busy life, what are you doing reading down to this level in a comment history within a Slashdot article on a decidedly geek based topic.
Perhaps I too love going out with friends and spending quality time away from the 'puter, but also I may wish to have some entertainment on the web for those little dull moments at work.
When did I say that I saw "the value of sitting infront of a monitor all evening clicking links"?
Humph.
Sure people want information from the web, but if they didn't want entertainment, how do you explain:o graphics.html)
OSDN visits a month: More than 5 million (Source, FAQ)
AtomFilms unique visits a month: 18.7 Million (Source http://www.atomshockwave.com/mediakit/traffic_dem
And what does AtomFilms do? They entertain. Lot's of plugins there... Shockwave, Realmedia, Windows Media etc.
Yes Flash can be used for evil, it happens so very often... but there are some great uses for it, it provides high quality entertainment in a compact file format... nothing wrong with that, and sites like AtomFilms demonstrate just how good some of the uses can be.
You projected. I said the issue is more complex, I didn't actually say anything about how much oil we have. I don't have the data to make that claim. You don't have the data to make that claim. Quite possibly, nobody does. All I see are various dogmatic claims made on poor models and bad thinking.
:)
* But we're both taking opposite views on having this limited knowledge. You seem to be following down the path of "We can probably keep going for ages with what we've got, we seem to keep finding more of it, and can refine it better". Whereas I go down the track of "Regardless of how much there actually is, it's a non-renuable resource and it seems foolish to be spending as little time/money as the world is investing in other energy sources".
The whole 'linear' vs 'non-linear' argument is pretty much mute.
"Moot." (Pet peeve.)
*Yes indeed, I completely agree with the peeve on that, more a typo than anything... I apologise.
Sure, by using these linear projections they come up with dates that continue to fall by the wayside, but that doesn't mean that the concerns aren't real and pressing.
You do realize that you just said that the truth doesn't matter, don't you?
* No, what I said was that while they may have their dates wrong, it doesn't mean that the concerns in regards to someday running out of oil/coal/whatever is not valid. Just because they have their date set at 2050, and this is most likely going to be proven incorrect, it doesn't mean that the points they raise in regards to consumtion aren't valid.
False projections do result in concerns that are not real. They may get lucky and stumble on the truth, but how can you tell? It is not just possible, but likely that the current understanding is so flawed as to be damaging if acted on.
* Not really... how do we know they aren't even half making up their projections to try and stir the pot a bit (I agree these endless predictions of when we're going to run out of fuels are probably more damaging than good, but they may not agree). The issue is that those of us in the Western world are generally too comfortable and too removed from the possibility that these are not endless resources. Most of the populace don't particularly care either as the supplies seem so huge that 'there's no way it's going to affect me'. By proposing these dates which are within a large number of people's lifespan, maybe they hope that it will mean that people think about the consequences of their consumption a bit more.
Poor thinking is poor thinking. Just doing "something" is a fallacy, not a wise course of action, no matter how many people parrot the party line.
* Who's saying that we should just do 'something'? You're acting as if there aren't good, solid ideas on how to set up renuable energy sources; good, solid ideas on how to more effeciently recycle waste; good, solid ideas on how to better distribute/grow food. There are. It's not as if there's just a bunch of brainless fools running around with solar panels stuck to their heads pleading for action. There's a lot of research that has already been done, and plenty more that could be done with more money, that is pushing us well in the right direction to have non/low polluting vehicles, non/low polluting power sources, excellent recyling etc.
This is not a case of crying about the end of the world and wondering what to do about it, it's merely getting further support to continue along the better path of human development rather than the destructive one.
While you may want the web for just information and nothing else, some of us like to occasionally visit a site that's only point is to entertain via graphics, or demonstrate some very nice interactive graphics, sound etc.
Why are you determined to LIMIT the web to be a text only domain?
Sure my main use of the web is for text rich informative sites, but I don't want to be using a browser that can't support the entertaining flash driven sites with some very impressive graphical artistry if I wish to see them.
Just because YOU only want text and static pictures does mean EVERYONE wants that out of the web... remember, when reading and posting on Slashdot you are conversing with a very limited subset of the web community... don't let your view of the web community be overshadowed by that.
First up, I wish there was a way of rating the researchers... We've had plenty of studies saying that video game playing produces beneficial results too. The problem is that these things are all reported as just because they are the most recent report, they must be right. They have no weighting based on the thoroughness of the research. Who's to say that this was a particularly well run trial?
But I digress...
"Those in the half-videogame category, who spent between one and three hours each day playing games for three to four days a week, had roughly equal alpha and beta wave activity before they started playing a game."
So that sounds like a pretty normal level of playing games, even high... and that has no adverse effect... good... I shall remain 'normal'
But
"Beta wave activity in people in the videogame group, who spent between two and seven hours each day playing games, was constantly near zero even when they weren't playing, showing that they hardly used the prefrontal regions of their brains."
I would have thought that the difference between 2 and 7 hours a day is pretty huge... The 'half-videogame' group got between 1-3 hours 3-4 days a week... so hang on... the half-videogame group could have up to 12 hours a week of game playing, while the videogame group could have just 14 hours a week playing... that's only 2 hours difference a week... hmmmm. (Ok, I'm taking the extreme cases in each group, but I would have thought a better split?)
"Many of the people in this group told researchers that they got angry easily, couldn't concentrate, and had trouble associating with friends."
OK, but what about the other groups? What about the types of people chosen for each group? Were they already predisposed to such behaviour? Did they choose a good even sample group across each section to get a nice baseline?
We always get a tiny bit of the story with these articles... we hardly ever get to know how well the research was conducted, whether the researcher went into it already biased... or what.
However... I do like one part of it...
"Those in the visual group, who were used to visual stimulation, such as from television, easily developed videogame-type brains."
Now that's just plain COOL! I wanna Videogame brain! Will my cortex look like a Sim City map? Will my neurons behave like units from Warcraft or C&C? Will my frontal lobe be texture mapped and antialiased?
Yes indeed there are many replenishable resources... except perhaps wheat isn't the best example, as the amount of over farming that's being done is creating more and more barren soil that cannot support the production of crops. Earth can only produce so much food per year per hectare before you're using more nutrients than the soil can be replenished with. To stop that, farmers use fertilisers, which have all sorts of horrible side effects like algea blooms etc.
Having said that I'm sure that there can be methods to produce enough food developed... in fact there's already far too much made, there's so much waste in 1st world countries it's just ridiculous, when others are languishing without... but it's not just the US there, lot's of us do it.
But continuing on in this blind thought that there's an ample supply of oil, there's plenty more where what we've found came from, why worry etc. is such a narrow minded view. The point is: It's a non-renuable resource! Once it's used up (And hip-hip horray, it may not happen in our lifetime, so why the hell should we worry about it), where are you left?
Why aren't more governments using wind, water and solar power generation. The Australian Government is one of the worst in this respect. We've got a ridiculously large country, with an amazing abundance of wind, water and sun... and what do they do? They insist that we must keep up our coal burning power stations... Both poluting more than we ever have (Damn that Kyoto(sp?) treaty, we're going to make MORE pollution), and speeding our way through a limited resource...
Why not put up more wind generators? Why not put in more hydro generators using wave energy? Why not massive solar farms? All of these technologies are effectively 'free', effectively 'umlimited', and non-polluting. And all of them are within our current technological abilities...
Are they being used much?
Nup.
The whole 'linear' vs 'non-linear' argument is pretty much mute. Sure, by using these linear projections they come up with dates that continue to fall by the wayside, but that doesn't mean that the concerns aren't real and pressing.
The problem is there are some damn large companies and damn large countries depending on the support of said damn large companies all dependant on these old fossil fuels.
Humph... I continue to watch the horizon become more and more muddied with polution... I continue to be able to spend less and less time in the sun because the Ozone layer above grand old Australia is stripped bare... I continue to watch plenty of amazing creatures being wiped out by ignorant countries that presume that their 'long held' 'customs' are more important than the survival of an entire species of creature.
It's quite sickening.