It's easier to say "ZOUNDS, we must BAN this THING" than it is to say "Our driver training is not up to scratch, we don't review our training at regular intervals and we don't have mandatory retests for the people we entrust our children to" because that would sound like they've not done their job.
Sadly this isn't restricted to driving buses either.
Well damn then, I guess it was a cruel joke. In light of my snarky comment, I invite you to come to my house and watch it on my big screen. When you leave, you may take George W. back with you.
I'll be right over. Put the popcorn on, I'll bring the beer.
George... well, you can keep him. But thanks for the offer! I appreciate it;-)
Both MySpace and Facebook lost visitors in September, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a Web-tracking service. The number of unique U.S. visitors at MySpace fell 4% to 47.2 million from 49.2 million in August, and the number of visitors to Facebook fell 12% to 7.8 million from 8.9 million.
"While MySpace still holds the lead overall, Facebook has increased its number of US visitors under the age of 18 (about 2.5 times), while MySpace has dropped about 30% for the same age group"
"For big, slow-moving corporations, this presents a problem. When Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation acquired the community site MySpace nearly a year ago, the site was at the height of its popularity. But now there are indications that the teenagers who made MySpace cool may be moving on to other things." The whole story is worth reading as well...
And as others have said, Bebo, Twitter, etc are coming along as well.
I'm sorry but this is ridiculous. MySpace was the last Next Big Thing and is losing users to FaceBook at a tremendous rate. Facebook will face the same fate and so will the next one and the next one and so on.
In six months' time Facebook will be "worth" half that and in a year it'll be worth nothing.
I like social media, I think it's highly useful and may very well change the face of the internet in the same way the web changed the face of traditional media like newspapers, but this is Dot Com Bubble 2.0 as far as I can see. Crazy prices for Crazy products. Good on them for making the $$$$ but seriously... it's insane.
if I thought the missile defence screen actually worked...
but it doesn't. Which begs the question: is this security theatre played out on a large scale for our amusement and if it is then what's in it for Putin and Bush?
Y'know, those guys that can remember incredible sequences of numbers/playing cards etc, but have regular sized IQs... they create a story (The jack of hearts held on tightly to the queen of spades, stuff like that) and remember that in order to remember the sequence.
Wonder how that could be applied to computer memory...
Wah? Huh? If you're going to do this kind of thing of COURSE you should tell your kids... cos yeah, ignorance is always the best option. Imagine if they found out?
Kid: Mom, Dad, have you been spying on me? Mom: Why yes, yes we have Johnny. Kid: Lock and load...
Come on, I thought the era of parenting/managing by stealth was long since dead and buried. Surely open communication, cooperation and engaging with kids (or employees for that matter - it's the same deal really) makes better sense?
Or is there still a group out there that thinks education is bad, mkay? Don't teach our kids about sexual health because (GASP) they might become sexually active! OMG STFU WTF.
Hint: they're going to anyway, surely it's better for them to learn properly than from some xxx website.
Isn't that interesting... a website called "crime research" that doesn't know the meaning of the word "copyright" or even "just quote the intro and link to the original story ya munters"...
Is it really this hard? I went to a trade show about five years ago and saw funky PC designs from some division of Hyundai that were orange plastic pyramids and things of that sort... It's Not Hard, just get on with it. Hire a designer, fer cryin' out loud.
snip The patent will no longer cover the XML file formats that Microsoft is using and therefore anyone is free to interoperate with Microsoft file formats without fear of patent litigation from this particular patent snip
The prior art around AbiWord's handling of XML basically did for the original patent Microsoft was after. The new one doesn't really have the same issues for the industry at large.
the interwebs are just a series of tubes, right...?
There should be a test for politicians about the internet. It should involve:
knowing the difference between the internet and the web; being able to explain why censoring the web is difficult if not impossible; why ISPs aren't liable for the content they host; and some other stuff.
Actually, there should be an easier test - if you want to be a politician you should be BANNED FROM EVERY BECOMING ONE by law.
No, not the planets - the scientists. Astro-types can be morons, geologists shall be klingons...
I figure if we give them names they can waste their time arguing about that instead of winding the mainstream media up into a frenzy of "Pluto's not a planet" stories.
no matter how you dress them up. Fortunately, in print at any rate, they're pretty easy to spot. Readers hate them but for some insane reason advertisers seem to love them. I've lost track of the number of times I've been contacted by some PR troll saying "Hi, we've just bought an ad and now we'd like to place some editorial". I usually end up describing just how/where/when they can place their 'editorial' in some detail.
Why do they like it? Readers actively hate it (I know I do and our in-house research agrees (nothing online I can point to I'm afraid)) and yet still advertisers try to do it.
This is much worse though, I think. Fake TV news is worse by far because it's harder to spot and it seems like the TV stations are happy to run it. Since most mainstream folk get their news through mainstream TV news (cable or free to air) it can potentially be very damaging.
Ah, you may have hit the nail on the head there... I definitely wasn't trolling (despite the mod... ay caramba!) but my disappointment with HL2 was, as you say, because we were being fed through the story sausage machine rather than having a more open game play. Perhaps HL was the same and I just didn't notice, but in HL2 I thought it was quite blatent and really interfered with the fun. There were far more "let's explain what's going on" cut scene equivalents than I would have liked.. OK, it's a great way to tell the story and much better than the boring old video clip jump that I hate so much.
The whole "drive along the road, pause when you see Something Unusual, shoot everything, find the supplies, jump back into the buggy, drive on to the next Something Unusual" lather, rinse, repeat... really got to me. That was always the weakest bit of HL in my view (I'm thinking of having to climb down the giant tower thing to trigger some switch to climb back up to fry the monster in the tube... I haven't played for a while as you can tell).
I really did like the 1984 atmosphere though. Wandering around and mingling with the crowd, peeking into doors to see what's going on, having your photo taken every time you popped up (that was sheer brilliance) were fantastic. The atmosphere was great all the way through, although I found Ravenholm a tad tedious. I guess it was about being excited rather than creepy/scared (I really enjoyed Clive Barker's Undying game for generating that feeling) but I was hoping for something... I don't know. Something that did what HL did in the first place. Where you develop from fighting with a blunt instrument to the bee gun. Where the bad guys stop being sonic dogs with no heads and become the marines! Yeah! And the gymnast assassins... come on, where were they in HL2?
I have to say that's really why I was dissapointed in HalfLife2... the story simply didn't do it for me.
HL was a journey. You started off with nothing and the character learned along the way... the bad guys changed and the demands on the player's abilities grew as well (this isn't a book it's a game. I want to learn stuff, even if it's how to take out the giant gorilla thing with the buzzy bee gun). By the end of the game I felt I'd done something.
HL2 looked way cooler but really, where was the story? It was hit and run, shoot everything and then, THEN, just as you get to the big Boss fight at the end... we get the Matrix effect and you're away with the fairies. There was no upgrading of the bad guys along the way, no new skills (notice how the boat and the dune buggy handled the same way? Learn it once, use it again and again) and OK, I enjoyed sending the sand lions in to fight on my behalf but really, that was the high point.
I'm not talking about the look (which was excellent) or the "feel" of the game (which I enjoyed) but the story line itself.
Slashdot Mirror
It's easier to say "ZOUNDS, we must BAN this THING" than it is to say "Our driver training is not up to scratch, we don't review our training at regular intervals and we don't have mandatory retests for the people we entrust our children to" because that would sound like they've not done their job.
Sadly this isn't restricted to driving buses either.
what does it mean for my porn collection?
(this is a joke. Of course I don't have a porn collection, dear).
than a game and a beer. Preferably a cold one.
and now... the Dell Smeg Fridgo'matic Dual Core.
(yes, I did just write smeg. tee hee. tee hee hee).
Well damn then, I guess it was a cruel joke. In light of my snarky comment, I invite you to come to my house and watch it on my big screen. When you leave, you may take George W. back with you.
I'll be right over. Put the popcorn on, I'll bring the beer.
George... well, you can keep him. But thanks for the offer! I appreciate it ;-)
Yeah, the big button that then says "I'm sorry but this isn't available in [your country] iTunes store yet".
I'm stunned. I thought the era of evil foreigners was long over (well, online evil foreigners that is).
oh well. I'll wait for a pirate to break the law to let me watch a free internet video. What a strange world.
WTF? US viewers only?
It's called the WORLD wide web, not the fucking US-wide web.
What possible reason could there be for not showing it elsewhere? What evil could I possibly get up to with a (free to watch) movie clip?
Ridiculous.
What do the presidential candidates say about it? I'm tired of ten year plans when at best a president's going to get eight years in the hot seat.
Do either McCain or Obama have policies about space exploration in general and the moon commitment in particular?
and to reply to myself (stupid submit button... stupid):
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116182858175204222-hQdPgEpkAYLfclS_PCCvtIVQvSo_20071025.html?mod=blogs
Both MySpace and Facebook lost visitors in September, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a Web-tracking service. The number of unique U.S. visitors at MySpace fell 4% to 47.2 million from 49.2 million in August, and the number of visitors to Facebook fell 12% to 7.8 million from 8.9 million.
Google is your friend...
http://mashable.com/2007/07/11/myspace-losing-to-facebook/
"While MySpace still holds the lead overall, Facebook has increased its number of US visitors under the age of 18 (about 2.5 times), while MySpace has dropped about 30% for the same age group"
or:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/03/business/03online.html?ex=1306987200&en=50eeef6343012d1c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
"For big, slow-moving corporations, this presents a problem. When Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation acquired the community site MySpace nearly a year ago, the site was at the height of its popularity. But now there are indications that the teenagers who made MySpace cool may be moving on to other things." The whole story is worth reading as well...
And as others have said, Bebo, Twitter, etc are coming along as well.
I'm sorry but this is ridiculous. MySpace was the last Next Big Thing and is losing users to FaceBook at a tremendous rate. Facebook will face the same fate and so will the next one and the next one and so on.
... it's insane.
In six months' time Facebook will be "worth" half that and in a year it'll be worth nothing.
I like social media, I think it's highly useful and may very well change the face of the internet in the same way the web changed the face of traditional media like newspapers, but this is Dot Com Bubble 2.0 as far as I can see. Crazy prices for Crazy products. Good on them for making the $$$$ but seriously
if I thought the missile defence screen actually worked...
but it doesn't. Which begs the question: is this security theatre played out on a large scale for our amusement and if it is then what's in it for Putin and Bush?
Just curious.
on Jupiter:
http://www.dansimmons.com/books/ilium_cont.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilium/Olympus
Ilium and Olympus by Dan Simmons.
Loved it. Not as good as the Hyperion cantos but then again what is?
WTF does that mean?
I am SO not a rocket scientist.
Y'know, those guys that can remember incredible sequences of numbers/playing cards etc, but have regular sized IQs... they create a story (The jack of hearts held on tightly to the queen of spades, stuff like that) and remember that in order to remember the sequence.
Wonder how that could be applied to computer memory...
Wah? Huh? If you're going to do this kind of thing of COURSE you should tell your kids... cos yeah, ignorance is always the best option. Imagine if they found out?
Kid: Mom, Dad, have you been spying on me?
Mom: Why yes, yes we have Johnny.
Kid: Lock and load...
Come on, I thought the era of parenting/managing by stealth was long since dead and buried. Surely open communication, cooperation and engaging with kids (or employees for that matter - it's the same deal really) makes better sense?
Or is there still a group out there that thinks education is bad, mkay? Don't teach our kids about sexual health because (GASP) they might become sexually active! OMG STFU WTF.
Hint: they're going to anyway, surely it's better for them to learn properly than from some xxx website.
Isn't that interesting... a website called "crime research" that doesn't know the meaning of the word "copyright" or even "just quote the intro and link to the original story ya munters"...
2 E04EC92CC2570FE0025DF44
original story here:
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/UNID/FD9D3F1F
www.apple.com/store
just deposit the cash in my account, OK?
Is it really this hard? I went to a trade show about five years ago and saw funky PC designs from some division of Hyundai that were orange plastic pyramids and things of that sort... It's Not Hard, just get on with it. Hire a designer, fer cryin' out loud.
because its patent (on XML in this instance) was soundly thrashed about and it had to re-word it thus reducing its impact.
0 0041E39CC2571D4007DF1C8
Story on it here: http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/UNID/E6D44C46
snip
The patent will no longer cover the XML file formats that Microsoft is using and therefore anyone is free to interoperate with Microsoft file formats without fear of patent litigation from this particular patent
snip
The prior art around AbiWord's handling of XML basically did for the original patent Microsoft was after. The new one doesn't really have the same issues for the industry at large.
the interwebs are just a series of tubes, right...?
There should be a test for politicians about the internet. It should involve:
knowing the difference between the internet and the web;
being able to explain why censoring the web is difficult if not impossible;
why ISPs aren't liable for the content they host;
and some other stuff.
Actually, there should be an easier test - if you want to be a politician you should be BANNED FROM EVERY BECOMING ONE by law.
Yeah.
I've got a few:
Morons
Pylons
Nylons
Klingons
No, not the planets - the scientists. Astro-types can be morons, geologists shall be klingons...
I figure if we give them names they can waste their time arguing about that instead of winding the mainstream media up into a frenzy of "Pluto's not a planet" stories.
Who's with me?
no matter how you dress them up. Fortunately, in print at any rate, they're pretty easy to spot. Readers hate them but for some insane reason advertisers seem to love them. I've lost track of the number of times I've been contacted by some PR troll saying "Hi, we've just bought an ad and now we'd like to place some editorial". I usually end up describing just how/where/when they can place their 'editorial' in some detail.
Why do they like it? Readers actively hate it (I know I do and our in-house research agrees (nothing online I can point to I'm afraid)) and yet still advertisers try to do it.
This is much worse though, I think. Fake TV news is worse by far because it's harder to spot and it seems like the TV stations are happy to run it. Since most mainstream folk get their news through mainstream TV news (cable or free to air) it can potentially be very damaging.
welcome our robotic chimpanzee overlords....
can they play chess?
Ah, you may have hit the nail on the head there... I definitely wasn't trolling (despite the mod... ay caramba!) but my disappointment with HL2 was, as you say, because we were being fed through the story sausage machine rather than having a more open game play. Perhaps HL was the same and I just didn't notice, but in HL2 I thought it was quite blatent and really interfered with the fun. There were far more "let's explain what's going on" cut scene equivalents than I would have liked.. OK, it's a great way to tell the story and much better than the boring old video clip jump that I hate so much.
The whole "drive along the road, pause when you see Something Unusual, shoot everything, find the supplies, jump back into the buggy, drive on to the next Something Unusual" lather, rinse, repeat... really got to me. That was always the weakest bit of HL in my view (I'm thinking of having to climb down the giant tower thing to trigger some switch to climb back up to fry the monster in the tube... I haven't played for a while as you can tell).
I really did like the 1984 atmosphere though. Wandering around and mingling with the crowd, peeking into doors to see what's going on, having your photo taken every time you popped up (that was sheer brilliance) were fantastic. The atmosphere was great all the way through, although I found Ravenholm a tad tedious. I guess it was about being excited rather than creepy/scared (I really enjoyed Clive Barker's Undying game for generating that feeling) but I was hoping for something... I don't know. Something that did what HL did in the first place. Where you develop from fighting with a blunt instrument to the bee gun. Where the bad guys stop being sonic dogs with no heads and become the marines! Yeah! And the gymnast assassins... come on, where were they in HL2?
Still. Tis only a game. I suppose.
I have to say that's really why I was dissapointed in HalfLife2... the story simply didn't do it for me.
HL was a journey. You started off with nothing and the character learned along the way... the bad guys changed and the demands on the player's abilities grew as well (this isn't a book it's a game. I want to learn stuff, even if it's how to take out the giant gorilla thing with the buzzy bee gun). By the end of the game I felt I'd done something.
HL2 looked way cooler but really, where was the story? It was hit and run, shoot everything and then, THEN, just as you get to the big Boss fight at the end... we get the Matrix effect and you're away with the fairies. There was no upgrading of the bad guys along the way, no new skills (notice how the boat and the dune buggy handled the same way? Learn it once, use it again and again) and OK, I enjoyed sending the sand lions in to fight on my behalf but really, that was the high point.
I'm not talking about the look (which was excellent) or the "feel" of the game (which I enjoyed) but the story line itself.