"And it's looking more like XP will be getting just 3 by the end of life period, now... either Microsoft have absolutely amazing QA which means they're fixing all the bugs in their OS's by the last service pack or they want to force people onto their newest OS with the promises of bug fixes etc."
On the third hand, Windows 2000 (unlike Windows NT) comes with IE and Windows Update, allowing people to patch incrementally instead of having to subscribe to the CD-ROM of the Month club. That, and the patching process of NT 5.x is much easier than its predecessors, not requiring you to, for example, reinstall operating system components after installing a Service Pack, making it easier to install incremental patches rather than having to wait for patches to reach a critical mass to justify publishing and installing an NT 3/4 Service Pack.
And really, the differences between NT4SP6 and the first release of 2K were pretty drastic (it went from suckage to non-suckage, after all). SP6 lets NT4 read NTFS5 partitions and other such forward-looking tweaks, but there's only so much goodness you can cram into NT4 before it becomes easier to start with a new kernel version and driver standards (especially since 2K introduced Device Manager goodness).
One final note: NT 3.51 only had 5 Service Packs, IIRC. The step from 3.51 to 4.0, now that was a pointless upgrade; a beta of the Windows 9x interface for 3.51 was already in the wild.
That doesn't mean anything. I know Marylanders that think their state capital is Baltimore, and Pennsylvanians disagree over whether theirs is Philadelphia or Pittsburg.
"Use progressional logic until you've come to the far reaching conclusion that Postal 2 is the "most politically correct game every made". Absolutely brilliant."
Not that ridiculous when you think about it. Even Mario usually resorts to violence. There are childrens' games where the option of violence is not available, of course, but it seems to have more moral value if the player instead chooses to avoid violent action of their own volition.
"The 360 is effectively dead and no longer relevant. "
Now now, this is Slashdot: if you're going to troll, you need to make allusions to NetCraft confirming that Nintendo is dying, preferably using words like "kiddie" and "Fisher-Price."
Personally, I find it interesting that he's a Japanese executive talking to a Japanese journalist in Japan talking about the importance of a US holiday. Anybody want to wager whether or not the original Japanese source has a parenthetical explaining when Thanksgiving is, or whether its assumed that the Japanese readership already knows all about it?
And what about Mexico? According to the labelling on my games, Nintendo treats the US, Canada, Mexico and the rest of Latin America as one single market (just look at Reggie's job title).
To play devil's advocate, attempted murder is a lesser charge than murder, so in that instance (at least) how bad off the victim is (regardless of your intent) is the deciding factor. Case in point.
In this era of "national security letters" and Guantanamo Bay, exactly how is the average citizen going to get any proof without being whisked away by the federal government to be held incommunicado indefinately?
"Would you really want your memory erased with a pill?"
YES! I can think of something from my past I would rather not remember.
"The emotional stress of a memory is just as important as the events."
And what does this say of memories that serve little or no purpose other than to torment and haunt the person remembering them? I mean, using the example of someone suffering from PTST from Hurricane Katrina, why is it "important" to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat to make sure the roof is still over your bed?
"This looks to me just like another way to escape reality."
Must "escaping reality" always be a bad thing? After all, that's why 99.9% of the people are posting here right now.
"Why not just give them some heroin to ease their pain?"
Obviously the high wears off, otherwise there'd be no money in pushing the stuff. Besides, in my case there's pretty much just that one thing I don't want to remember any more, I don't want to forget everything.
"Do we really want our soldiers to be able to just take a pill after a battle so that they will not remember?"
Who are you to make such a personal decision for them?
"There is nothing really in the article that says that the memories would be totally erased but messing with memory formation is pushing the limits what I want done to me."
Then I envy you for not having something you'd want to forget so badly. I'm not going to pretend I really have PTSD or went through anything like Katrina or war, but it's enough to leave me lying in bed awake at night with a self-induced stress headache, unable to stop clenching my fists, and there is simply no "life lesson" to be learned from what I'm remembering and zero relation to my present life. Some might suggest drinking it away, you filippantly suggested heroin, but I suspect if I were to try something like that I wouldn't stop. I've never touched anything harder than caffein, but I don't exactly relish choosing pain over substance abuse.
Not everything about the human condition has nice, neat little logical ties between everything, or has some deeper meaning or important lesson to be valued; sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
"if you ever have this happen again or anything like it, ask for the customer service number, take down the name of the person telling you that and file a complaint about them."
No. It's on them to earn my money, and if the company can't be bothered to see for itself whether or not its policies are being enforced, then why should I do their job for them?
Customer service is not a substitute for management.
Then you are suggesting that BellSouth (et al) would actually seek new easements for these new wires, and that landowners would have the right to refuse to sell these new easements? I believe it's far more rational to assume that BellSouth has no intention of running new wires at all, let alone run them through an entirely new set of easements.
"Japanese would refuse to group with Americans for reasons I never precisely found out, but the common sentiment was that Japanese felt Americans were too stupid to group with."
YMMV. Among English-speakers, I tend to see admiration of Japanese players, with people speaking in hushed tones of the times they found themselves in a Japanese party and got mad (in their words) experience points.
Personally, I think the main cause of the segregation (other than time zones, they're 14 hours ahead of EST) is problems with the auto-translate function. There's no easy way to ask "What monsters should we fight now?" for example. I say this as someone who's been unlucky enough to be stuck with leadership of a party where I was the only one who spoke English (and if anything, I suspect some of them were complaining among each other of the stupidity of one of the Japanese party members, not me).
"The answer is clear. The U.S. must invade Japan to overthrow the government responsible for this cyber terrorism."
Dude, this is Japan we're talking about. Forget the UK, Australia or Canada, Japan is easily the 51st state (and the largest aircraft carrier in the US Navy). How could having the US military move the 2 or 3 blocks from their bases to the Japanese Diet possibly make them kiss our ass more than they already do? Heck, looking at how things go with the DoD, making Japan a state would actually reduce the presence of the US military in Japan, since they'd be subject to domestic base closures.
All you'd have is a bunch of pimply-faced youths on both sides of the Pacific rejoicing as they are then able to import pop culture from each other without having to pay international shipping.
I found myself in a similar situation at the DS launch. I preordered one at my local EB and, once they came in, I was called and told that, because of the demand for the console, they weren't going to let me have the DS I paid for unless I also paid for their "extended warranty."
I got a refund instead and bought my DS in Wal-Mart.
Slashdot Mirror
"And it's looking more like XP will be getting just 3 by the end of life period, now... either Microsoft have absolutely amazing QA which means they're fixing all the bugs in their OS's by the last service pack or they want to force people onto their newest OS with the promises of bug fixes etc."
On the third hand, Windows 2000 (unlike Windows NT) comes with IE and Windows Update, allowing people to patch incrementally instead of having to subscribe to the CD-ROM of the Month club. That, and the patching process of NT 5.x is much easier than its predecessors, not requiring you to, for example, reinstall operating system components after installing a Service Pack, making it easier to install incremental patches rather than having to wait for patches to reach a critical mass to justify publishing and installing an NT 3/4 Service Pack.
And really, the differences between NT4SP6 and the first release of 2K were pretty drastic (it went from suckage to non-suckage, after all). SP6 lets NT4 read NTFS5 partitions and other such forward-looking tweaks, but there's only so much goodness you can cram into NT4 before it becomes easier to start with a new kernel version and driver standards (especially since 2K introduced Device Manager goodness).
One final note: NT 3.51 only had 5 Service Packs, IIRC. The step from 3.51 to 4.0, now that was a pointless upgrade; a beta of the Windows 9x interface for 3.51 was already in the wild.
"the short version is that the family of "Tron""
Anybody else fist thought of the Dave Chapelle Show before thinking of the Disney movie?
Except AMD's 64-bit chips are backwards compatible. Thank God, too, because precious few desktop components have 64-bit drivers.
AMD has shown you can have both! My Athlon 64 3400+ is running at 2400 MHz!
That doesn't mean anything. I know Marylanders that think their state capital is Baltimore, and Pennsylvanians disagree over whether theirs is Philadelphia or Pittsburg.
"Use progressional logic until you've come to the far reaching conclusion that Postal 2 is the "most politically correct game every made". Absolutely brilliant."
Not that ridiculous when you think about it. Even Mario usually resorts to violence. There are childrens' games where the option of violence is not available, of course, but it seems to have more moral value if the player instead chooses to avoid violent action of their own volition.
Does the game feature scantilly-clad tufted titmouses?
"The 360 is effectively dead and no longer relevant. "
Now now, this is Slashdot: if you're going to troll, you need to make allusions to NetCraft confirming that Nintendo is dying, preferably using words like "kiddie" and "Fisher-Price."
Personally, I find it interesting that he's a Japanese executive talking to a Japanese journalist in Japan talking about the importance of a US holiday. Anybody want to wager whether or not the original Japanese source has a parenthetical explaining when Thanksgiving is, or whether its assumed that the Japanese readership already knows all about it?
And what about Mexico? According to the labelling on my games, Nintendo treats the US, Canada, Mexico and the rest of Latin America as one single market (just look at Reggie's job title).
"How much copper does NASA and ESA throw into space?"
Far, far less than there is for the taking in the asteroid belt.
"Time to horde pennies maybe."
Maybe if you're a numismatist. If you intend to do anything else with those coins, destroying them is a federal offense.
How many Slashdotters actually know what the capital of West Virginia is without having to look it up?
"It is not illegal, in fact, even president Clinton agreed that the president has such powers under constitutional law to do so."
President != federal court. It is not for the executive to decide the legallity of something. Read your Constitution.
"Both administrations, as well as independent review boards from both sides, all agree there is nothing illegal about this."
Independent review board != federal court
"The stupid left wing media just can't let it go, and americans are like sheep, they follow whereever the media leads."
Where were you at the start of the Iraq war, or do you only complain when it's not leading your way?
And while reading your Constitution, note that the phrase "unless somebody else somewhere got away with it before" appears nowhere in the document.
To play devil's advocate, attempted murder is a lesser charge than murder, so in that instance (at least) how bad off the victim is (regardless of your intent) is the deciding factor. Case in point.
"Why wait until you have proof?"
In this era of "national security letters" and Guantanamo Bay, exactly how is the average citizen going to get any proof without being whisked away by the federal government to be held incommunicado indefinately?
"Would you really want your memory erased with a pill?"
YES! I can think of something from my past I would rather not remember.
"The emotional stress of a memory is just as important as the events."
And what does this say of memories that serve little or no purpose other than to torment and haunt the person remembering them? I mean, using the example of someone suffering from PTST from Hurricane Katrina, why is it "important" to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat to make sure the roof is still over your bed?
"This looks to me just like another way to escape reality."
Must "escaping reality" always be a bad thing? After all, that's why 99.9% of the people are posting here right now.
"Why not just give them some heroin to ease their pain?"
Obviously the high wears off, otherwise there'd be no money in pushing the stuff. Besides, in my case there's pretty much just that one thing I don't want to remember any more, I don't want to forget everything.
"Do we really want our soldiers to be able to just take a pill after a battle so that they will not remember?"
Who are you to make such a personal decision for them?
"There is nothing really in the article that says that the memories would be totally erased but messing with memory formation is pushing the limits what I want done to me."
Then I envy you for not having something you'd want to forget so badly. I'm not going to pretend I really have PTSD or went through anything like Katrina or war, but it's enough to leave me lying in bed awake at night with a self-induced stress headache, unable to stop clenching my fists, and there is simply no "life lesson" to be learned from what I'm remembering and zero relation to my present life. Some might suggest drinking it away, you filippantly suggested heroin, but I suspect if I were to try something like that I wouldn't stop. I've never touched anything harder than caffein, but I don't exactly relish choosing pain over substance abuse.
Not everything about the human condition has nice, neat little logical ties between everything, or has some deeper meaning or important lesson to be valued; sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
"forget or perhaps simply never store the memories of what happened to them"
Where was this back when I was in high school? Seriously, they should put this into the cafeterian food...
"if you ever have this happen again or anything like it, ask for the customer service number, take down the name of the person telling you that and file a complaint about them."
No. It's on them to earn my money, and if the company can't be bothered to see for itself whether or not its policies are being enforced, then why should I do their job for them?
Customer service is not a substitute for management.
Then you are suggesting that BellSouth (et al) would actually seek new easements for these new wires, and that landowners would have the right to refuse to sell these new easements? I believe it's far more rational to assume that BellSouth has no intention of running new wires at all, let alone run them through an entirely new set of easements.
"Japanese would refuse to group with Americans for reasons I never precisely found out, but the common sentiment was that Japanese felt Americans were too stupid to group with."
YMMV. Among English-speakers, I tend to see admiration of Japanese players, with people speaking in hushed tones of the times they found themselves in a Japanese party and got mad (in their words) experience points.
Personally, I think the main cause of the segregation (other than time zones, they're 14 hours ahead of EST) is problems with the auto-translate function. There's no easy way to ask "What monsters should we fight now?" for example. I say this as someone who's been unlucky enough to be stuck with leadership of a party where I was the only one who spoke English (and if anything, I suspect some of them were complaining among each other of the stupidity of one of the Japanese party members, not me).
"The answer is clear. The U.S. must invade Japan to overthrow the government responsible for this cyber terrorism."
Dude, this is Japan we're talking about. Forget the UK, Australia or Canada, Japan is easily the 51st state (and the largest aircraft carrier in the US Navy). How could having the US military move the 2 or 3 blocks from their bases to the Japanese Diet possibly make them kiss our ass more than they already do? Heck, looking at how things go with the DoD, making Japan a state would actually reduce the presence of the US military in Japan, since they'd be subject to domestic base closures.
All you'd have is a bunch of pimply-faced youths on both sides of the Pacific rejoicing as they are then able to import pop culture from each other without having to pay international shipping.
"But since this incident an Air Force unit I used to belong to can no play music cd's on computers. Doing so can result in corporal punishment."
If you play Jessica Simpson anywhere in my earshot I'd beat your ass, too! I'm all for this program!
Used car dealership ads--powered by Google!
Yeah, I have to pay to listen to my satellite radio, but the lack of advertising alone is worth it in my opinion.
I found myself in a similar situation at the DS launch. I preordered one at my local EB and, once they came in, I was called and told that, because of the demand for the console, they weren't going to let me have the DS I paid for unless I also paid for their "extended warranty."
I got a refund instead and bought my DS in Wal-Mart.
"And those bell wires will be T1 and above wires that are paid for."
Running through property seized through eminent domain, which the state governments got for them because they agreed to be a common carrier.
If the Bells want to set up such a network, then I should have the right to refuse to have the wires to this network running through my property.