But how do you make up for roommates that leave the door open when they go out, and you're already gone? I had this happen to me Sophmore year, and it really pissed me off. Then I moved off campus and lived in a house where miscelaneous people would sleep on our couch, and ironically, I didn't care.:P
Granted, this means you have to actually -leave- your room, which is asking for a lot.:P
Also, look out for your roommate's friends. As a freshman, you're almost destined to get a stupid jock roommate with a lot of shitty friends. (They like to piss on freshman geeks that way in admissions at some places, I'm sure.) Most people are always looking for a way to steal shit from someone.
I'd suggest getting a lock box and keeping all your non-computing shit in it. This includes keeping things like CDRs, CF, cameras, and what have you, in the box. These things like to disappear, as they're valuable and fairly common for people to own: "No, this isn't your SD card. I got this with my camera." It might be a good idea to chain the box to your bed (or some other unmoveable object) as well, as it will make a nice target for someone foraging through a room: they see a box with a lock on it, and no valuables in the room, and they're going to assume they found the mother lode.
Keep the key to the lock box on your laniard/keychain/whatever, and with you at all times. Get a laptop lock (if you have a laptop) or just some cable + a lock if you have a desktop, and chain the machine to your desk/cubicle/whatever they give you. Maybe do the same for your stereo, if you have one, or you think it's necessary. Try not to make it obvious what a given key is for, either. (Don't label it, ffs. You wouldn't put a sticky note near your computer that said "root" with the password on it, would you? Use your head.)
I suspect that being messy might also increase your chances of not having your shit stolen. For example, if you've got a laptop and a messy room, there's more stuff all over the place to distract one's vision. If they just step in, there's not a single object on the desk saying "steal me" - they'll just see a pile of stuff.
I honestly don't think things such as security cameras would be necessary. However, it certainly couldn't hurt to stash a webcam somewhere and have it upload photos somewhere else - you never know when it might provide you with "valuable information" - for instance, cheating girlfriends roommates that steal food.
I'd recommend that you don't simply let people use your computer to check their email, or what have you. If you do, you might want to get fast user switching set up and create as lackluster an account as possible (just a browser, ma'am), regardless of what OS you run. Having people constantly use your machine ("Yeah, ask Jim in room 301 if you can use his laptop to check your mail, John, he's a nice guy.") is a good way to draw potentially unwanted attention. The people I know that have had computers stolen from their rooms usually had a lot of people in their rooms using their machines.
Finally, it probably wouldn't hurt to write bsome quick/get some software that alerts you (via email, say) where the machine is, so that in the event that it is stolen, it can be tracked relatively easily.
Then explain to me why, in 2004, I am still unable to set up a Windows XP/2003 machine in a "multiuser" capacity, where each user has an unpriviledged account, and still retain application functionality.
Many applications as recent as 2002 still break/won't work in such an environment.
it seems to me that WinXP SP2 is functionally (at its core) a new OS. There's quite a bit different about it, and it's quite a bit more responsive, I find.
Granted, it's not as much a jump as their previous releases in terms of how it is perceived by users, but they had to do something. It's been 3 years since any release at all, and I suspect their shareholders wwere getting a bit pissed. Plus, this way it looks like they're covering their ass over the worms/virus issue.
MS, RIAA, MPAA, and others have long been stepping all over everyone else. If it were not for linux and the advent of digital audio and video being available for download on the internet, choice and competition would have long since been stomped out completely.
Think about it: were it not for linux (and its associated softwares), there would be no significant software presence with ether Novell or IBM. A lot of software companies (mainly open-source based companies such as RedHat) would simply cease to exist. There would be Apple with the same fringe customers they had 20 years ago, and there would be a very small remnant of people still using Unix in the year 2004 via Sun and IBM. Other than that, Windows would be what gets put on computers.
Without MP3s and digital video available to consumers, bootlegging would have been able to have been stomped out years ago, if for no other reason than price. the MPAA/RIAA companies would have been able to produce media at next-to-nothing costs, and meanwhile have prevented anyone else from entering the arena unless they have the consent of the RIAA. I don't know how many times I've said to a friend, "You should see such-and-such movie, it's awesome. But you can't rent it from Blockbuster, and/or it's been discontinued and is really hard to find. So here's the movie I found online." Without digital video, a lot of good movies would simply get lost (Pi, for instance).
I agree with you. However, I think MS is taking the wrong approach to solve this "users are idiots" problem.
First, they should make all programs be -forced- to default to a specific directory - or one of several specific directories - that are all in their "home" directory (or "My Documents", whatever). These files would then be automatically divided up by task (or session) or data type.
For instance, if grandma turned on her computer and connected her digital camera, she'd be prompted with something like, "What do you want to call the images on your camera?" or something to that effect. The data would then be stored in (say) "My Documents\photos\$date\italy vacation".
The same kind of mechanism would be employed via Office and other applications, doing 'automatic' negotiations with some sort of schedule mechanism to determine whether the data is part of a "project" or to be filed chronologically and in the seperate data-type folders. Possibly something like a feature I've heard about in the upcoming OSX 10.4 that provides a mechanism to easily find any data string, anywhere, "instantly".
WinFS sounds like an ill-conceived idea to me. There are much better ways to impliment what they're trying to do, with less overhead, and better results.
You might think that economists study people, but what they tend to do is make blanket statements about economic forces that support their political views first and foremost - and then try to fabricate some 'scientific' reasoning to back it up.
The problem with economists is that they try to be real scientists, when they're not. They're social scientists. Social scientists should study trends and events, over a long period of time, and make assessments based on those trends. There is no trend that even remotely relates to the current outsourcing of IT, as there has never been a situation where a country has sent high-paid, high-education jobs overseas! At best, you might be able to use the "outsourcing" of the Roman Legions to the barbarian hordes as a similar situation. At best.
There is no evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, that outsoucing tech jobs is helping anyone but the richest in America. That alone should be evidence enough for you that outsourcing is bad.
Bullshit. If the jobs weren't competitive, they wouldn't be outsourced.
It's perfectly reasonable to keep a job, reguardless of what it is, within the US. Manufacturing is still a profitable field, even.
Don't believe me? Example: Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. They produce all-natural, organic, "whole earth" soaps. Such materials don't generally come cheaply, either.
If you've ever been around people that enjoy the outdoors (campers, hikers, etc.), you've probably known someone that uses Dr. Bronners. It's incredibly strong soap (most applications can use a dilution of well under 1:3), and it's also quite cheap - $12 for 32 oz.
The interesting thing here is, their least-paid employee makes $42,000 a year - with full benefits for them and their families and partial company ownership. How can they do that, you say? Well, quite simply they don't float the profits to the top: their highest paid executive is only allowed to make 4 times as much as the lowest paid employee as opposed to the factor of 500 that most executives make.
It has nothing to do with being "competitive", or being put in a disadvantageous position by employing you. It has everything to do with profit margin and executive greed. I'd also wager that publicly traded companies are significantly responsible for the trend as well.
It's quite obvious why MS would do this. It's basically the same reason why they let piracy run rampantly and unhindered for so many years, and then suddenly started making stronger efforts to get people authorized via the BSA.
Quite simply, they want people on their new technology, and want to force people - as a society - to upgrade.
How will they do this? The same way they've done it in the past. Want to run Office 2000? Great, you'll "have to" upgrade to Windows 2000 as well, because it's unstable under Windows 98. Want to be able to read that document you just got from a friend? You need to upgrade to Office 2003.
Now, how do those situations translate to the current situation? In much the same way they're taking over the video game market with the Xbox, MSN Messenger, and DirectX: make it beneficial to the early adopters, get them hooked, and then draw people in via social networking.
DirectX started out as a free 'add on' - Direct3D. It wasn't used by much, because it sucked. Then people started writing games using it, and it matured to what we have today. People wanted those games, so they got them, regardless of what they were based on. I suspect this will happen with the new "longhorn" technologies: people will install the frameworks "for the hell of it", install applications using those frameworks, and friends will see the new stuff and desire it. Then they'll follow suit, so on and so forth...
In the case of the Xbox, they sold/sell a decent contender at much below production costs to try and get significant market share. They also bought out as many game providers as possible. This relates to the longhorn tech because MS is basically giving away the components - for now. In the future (aka, the Xbox2, or lonhorn itself), there will be a premium for the better products (better graphics/continued support or better stability, etc.) because they've established a market demand for those products by giving them away for free.
In essence, it seems to me like MS is trying to turn around a potentially harmful situation (mass migration due to a huge, sudden platform change) into a positive one for them. Good for them. This has a lot of potential to really harm Linux in many ways.
You missed the point entirely. or you're trolling. Either way...
The entry of a word on a keyboard is quick. you're able to type in a "flow of consciousness", which, for some people, leads to a higher level of sentence-structure cohesiveness. For a decent/normal keyboardist, the construction of a word is a single thought. Typing "word" is essentially a single mental gesture, telling your fingers (all 10 of them) to perform.
When you write on paper, however, you're usually shackled by the speed at which you write, as well as the the relative "confusion" of having to make letters look nice, and forming words with pieces. Each word, or even each letter, is a single mental gesture, and a person generally has to back track and continually review their work so as to not repeat themselves. ("And and then I went to the store.")
I have a wacom tablet. I use it. It is indeed nice.
Maybe I've only used shitty tablets (most are), but all the ones I've seen only have a single level of sensitivity, and not the best accuracy, either. It's hard to justify the $500+ price tag that gets placed on such a device, when a wacom that performs better is a significantly smaller fraction of that sum.
20 years after PG-13 came out, the rating is now functionally meaningless.
The content in PG-13 films is now well above what your average R film was 20 years ago. Nudity, vulgarity, swearing (even 'fuck'), and violence are all relatively common PG-13 trends.
Not only that, but there's hardly anyone that gives a damn about PG-13 anyway - unless they've got very, very little kids (4, 5?). Look at "American Pie", "Scary Movie" and the slew of other (shitty) teenage films. They're evidently targeted at those that idolize the teenage years of life - namely, middle schoolers.
Sounds like an exam a professor of mine gave for a Critical Thinking course.
He gave out 5 sheets of paper. On the first page there was a line with "Name:" prefaced before it, and one other word. "Why?"
The correct answer was, of course, "Because." Partial credit was obviously awarded to those that filled up all 5 pages, but only 1 person got 100%. (They'd had the prof several times before and knew how the guy thought.)
I wonder what happens if there's a 'freak accident" at SCO headquarters, and someone steals the 'critical evidence', or the buidling is possibly burned to the ground?
People have been advertising in games for years. They've even made a fair share of games that are exclusive advertising - the Yo! Noids game(s?) for NES come to mind, and I've seen McD's games, 7-up (with Spot) (and I'm sure others) as well. It's nothing new. The Yo! Noids game was actually pretty fun/well made, too, IIRC.
If someone were to make a game with their mascot that was fun and entertaining, I'd play it. I don't care if it's advertising. Take, for instance, the geico lizard. You could do some very fun (and funny) things with that if you've got the right creative people involved.
There are even the games that have 'fake' advertising in them. Duke Nuke'em 3D comes to mind. Granted, in the case of Duke3d, the fake advertising adds to the fun-loving nature of the game. However, in games where the level of realism is imperative to the game's environment, it makes perfect sense to have real (say) soda company banners, machines, etc. in place of the mock stuff. Something like Deus Ex (or maybe even Duke3d, with the soda machines that replentish life) would be good for this kind of thing - just don't make the adverts so overwhelming and distracting that they remove you from the game experience.
On the grounds of tracking views, it seems a bit crooked to me. IF they're going to do that and make a lot of money off you on top of your initial game purchase, they should at least charge less for the game. This kind of advertising makes mroe sense for single-player games as well - people are more likely to pirate a single-player-only game, as it has less replay/multiplayer value than the alternative - I imaigne that this effect might eventually lead to free games (similar to how TV is free).
ALso, I can understand how companies might do this to help suppliment the cost of development. Modern games take a very significant financial investment, what with all the high-quality models, audio, engines and textures that are now in games. They're approaching the quality of movies, ffs.
eI shouldn't have to turn it off. Features should be off by default so that casual word processor users can get work done. If you want a feature, you can then turn it on.
This applies to both OOo and MSO, as far as I'm concerned.
To be more specific, E17 has been years in the remaking.
They've been quite far into awesome development progress when Mandrake and Rasterman get the inspiration to scrap the code base and do a "rewrite". I was using E CVS snapshots 3 years ago that were more advanced, more featureful, and more pretty than what's currently available.
I suspect the reason why E17 isn't catching up to where it used to be is because a lot of the developers have left. EFM was getting really, really nice, and they scrapped the code base. I've got a friend that was working on it. He left shortly afterwards. Rasterman and Mandrake are apparently impossible to work with, between this and their moving around the world, etc.
If they have hen-peck keyboarding skills, then I can understand this statement. However, if you've made it far enough in the business world to require the use of a computer, there's no excuse for not having sufficient typing ability. None. Not only that, but typing is much faster for most people than writing, and the creation of the text usually requires significantly less thought.
Mathematics is another matter entirely, but that's not what handwriting recog is usually used for, anyway.
Tablets are just a fringe/novelty item and have no significantly practical use. My school just made the students pay a shitload of money for Gateway m275s, a combo tablet/laptop machine. They suck as laptops, and nobody uses the handwriting ability because it's awkward writing on a screen - regardless of the handwriting recognition.
How about a development platform that smacks a word processor designer in the head when they design features that do things without being asked (such as automatically making lists when none are wanted, auto-indenting, etc.)? I'd pay for that.
Is this the same John Dvorak that used to (still does?) work for PC Magazine, circa 1996 or so? I recall the PC Magazine Dvorak has gotten quite a few people to write him off as a complete idiot, both here on slashdot, as well as within the Windows world.
If he's not working for PC Magazine anymore, and is indeed this ABC News guy, it's possible that PC Magazine thought so as well.:)
It seems that Java is the pop language of this decade. It's the programming equivilant of Britney Spears or Creed. It's cool to diss them because they're part of popular culture, but deep down there's some aspect of their music (or persona, etc.) that you like.
This campaign is not so much against IE, but for the use of safer and more user-friendly browsers.
Yeah, right. This is rhetoric nonsense. Of course it's "against IE", if it's for the use of a better browser. If you're making a case for something, it - at the very least - implies that the item it's comparing it to is inferior in some way. Yes, this is a case against IE.
Don't say foolish things like this just to seem like you're not partial. You are. There's nothing wrong with being partial, when your partiality is based off of sound logical reasoning.
No. Airplanes would be the perfect target. Nothing is perfectly secure. Attacking something that is seen as secure and "terrorist-proof" would be the ideal way to make Americans all the more fearful, unfortunately.
Slashdot Mirror
Correct.
:P
:P
But how do you make up for roommates that leave the door open when they go out, and you're already gone? I had this happen to me Sophmore year, and it really pissed me off. Then I moved off campus and lived in a house where miscelaneous people would sleep on our couch, and ironically, I didn't care.
Granted, this means you have to actually -leave- your room, which is asking for a lot.
Also, look out for your roommate's friends. As a freshman, you're almost destined to get a stupid jock roommate with a lot of shitty friends. (They like to piss on freshman geeks that way in admissions at some places, I'm sure.) Most people are always looking for a way to steal shit from someone.
I'd suggest getting a lock box and keeping all your non-computing shit in it. This includes keeping things like CDRs, CF, cameras, and what have you, in the box. These things like to disappear, as they're valuable and fairly common for people to own: "No, this isn't your SD card. I got this with my camera." It might be a good idea to chain the box to your bed (or some other unmoveable object) as well, as it will make a nice target for someone foraging through a room: they see a box with a lock on it, and no valuables in the room, and they're going to assume they found the mother lode.
Keep the key to the lock box on your laniard/keychain/whatever, and with you at all times. Get a laptop lock (if you have a laptop) or just some cable + a lock if you have a desktop, and chain the machine to your desk/cubicle/whatever they give you. Maybe do the same for your stereo, if you have one, or you think it's necessary. Try not to make it obvious what a given key is for, either. (Don't label it, ffs. You wouldn't put a sticky note near your computer that said "root" with the password on it, would you? Use your head.)
I suspect that being messy might also increase your chances of not having your shit stolen. For example, if you've got a laptop and a messy room, there's more stuff all over the place to distract one's vision. If they just step in, there's not a single object on the desk saying "steal me" - they'll just see a pile of stuff.
I honestly don't think things such as security cameras would be necessary. However, it certainly couldn't hurt to stash a webcam somewhere and have it upload photos somewhere else - you never know when it might provide you with "valuable information" - for instance, cheating girlfriends roommates that steal food.
I'd recommend that you don't simply let people use your computer to check their email, or what have you. If you do, you might want to get fast user switching set up and create as lackluster an account as possible (just a browser, ma'am), regardless of what OS you run. Having people constantly use your machine ("Yeah, ask Jim in room 301 if you can use his laptop to check your mail, John, he's a nice guy.") is a good way to draw potentially unwanted attention. The people I know that have had computers stolen from their rooms usually had a lot of people in their rooms using their machines.
Finally, it probably wouldn't hurt to write bsome quick/get some software that alerts you (via email, say) where the machine is, so that in the event that it is stolen, it can be tracked relatively easily.
Then explain to me why, in 2004, I am still unable to set up a Windows XP/2003 machine in a "multiuser" capacity, where each user has an unpriviledged account, and still retain application functionality.
Many applications as recent as 2002 still break/won't work in such an environment.
it seems to me that WinXP SP2 is functionally (at its core) a new OS. There's quite a bit different about it, and it's quite a bit more responsive, I find.
Granted, it's not as much a jump as their previous releases in terms of how it is perceived by users, but they had to do something. It's been 3 years since any release at all, and I suspect their shareholders wwere getting a bit pissed. Plus, this way it looks like they're covering their ass over the worms/virus issue.
Yes, but no.
MS, RIAA, MPAA, and others have long been stepping all over everyone else. If it were not for linux and the advent of digital audio and video being available for download on the internet, choice and competition would have long since been stomped out completely.
Think about it: were it not for linux (and its associated softwares), there would be no significant software presence with ether Novell or IBM. A lot of software companies (mainly open-source based companies such as RedHat) would simply cease to exist. There would be Apple with the same fringe customers they had 20 years ago, and there would be a very small remnant of people still using Unix in the year 2004 via Sun and IBM. Other than that, Windows would be what gets put on computers.
Without MP3s and digital video available to consumers, bootlegging would have been able to have been stomped out years ago, if for no other reason than price. the MPAA/RIAA companies would have been able to produce media at next-to-nothing costs, and meanwhile have prevented anyone else from entering the arena unless they have the consent of the RIAA. I don't know how many times I've said to a friend, "You should see such-and-such movie, it's awesome. But you can't rent it from Blockbuster, and/or it's been discontinued and is really hard to find. So here's the movie I found online." Without digital video, a lot of good movies would simply get lost (Pi, for instance).
I agree with you. However, I think MS is taking the wrong approach to solve this "users are idiots" problem.
First, they should make all programs be -forced- to default to a specific directory - or one of several specific directories - that are all in their "home" directory (or "My Documents", whatever). These files would then be automatically divided up by task (or session) or data type.
For instance, if grandma turned on her computer and connected her digital camera, she'd be prompted with something like, "What do you want to call the images on your camera?" or something to that effect. The data would then be stored in (say) "My Documents\photos\$date\italy vacation".
The same kind of mechanism would be employed via Office and other applications, doing 'automatic' negotiations with some sort of schedule mechanism to determine whether the data is part of a "project" or to be filed chronologically and in the seperate data-type folders. Possibly something like a feature I've heard about in the upcoming OSX 10.4 that provides a mechanism to easily find any data string, anywhere, "instantly".
WinFS sounds like an ill-conceived idea to me. There are much better ways to impliment what they're trying to do, with less overhead, and better results.
It has nothing to do with being "first". It has to do with it being unique.
Every scenario is different. Yes, there are trends, but no two scenarios have the exact same factors. You did see my mention of Rome, yes?
You might think that economists study people, but what they tend to do is make blanket statements about economic forces that support their political views first and foremost - and then try to fabricate some 'scientific' reasoning to back it up.
The problem with economists is that they try to be real scientists, when they're not. They're social scientists. Social scientists should study trends and events, over a long period of time, and make assessments based on those trends. There is no trend that even remotely relates to the current outsourcing of IT, as there has never been a situation where a country has sent high-paid, high-education jobs overseas! At best, you might be able to use the "outsourcing" of the Roman Legions to the barbarian hordes as a similar situation. At best.
There is no evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, that outsoucing tech jobs is helping anyone but the richest in America. That alone should be evidence enough for you that outsourcing is bad.
Bullshit. If the jobs weren't competitive, they wouldn't be outsourced.
It's perfectly reasonable to keep a job, reguardless of what it is, within the US. Manufacturing is still a profitable field, even.
Don't believe me? Example: Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. They produce all-natural, organic, "whole earth" soaps. Such materials don't generally come cheaply, either.
If you've ever been around people that enjoy the outdoors (campers, hikers, etc.), you've probably known someone that uses Dr. Bronners. It's incredibly strong soap (most applications can use a dilution of well under 1:3), and it's also quite cheap - $12 for 32 oz.
The interesting thing here is, their least-paid employee makes $42,000 a year - with full benefits for them and their families and partial company ownership. How can they do that, you say? Well, quite simply they don't float the profits to the top: their highest paid executive is only allowed to make 4 times as much as the lowest paid employee as opposed to the factor of 500 that most executives make.
It has nothing to do with being "competitive", or being put in a disadvantageous position by employing you. It has everything to do with profit margin and executive greed. I'd also wager that publicly traded companies are significantly responsible for the trend as well.
It's quite obvious why MS would do this. It's basically the same reason why they let piracy run rampantly and unhindered for so many years, and then suddenly started making stronger efforts to get people authorized via the BSA.
Quite simply, they want people on their new technology, and want to force people - as a society - to upgrade.
How will they do this? The same way they've done it in the past. Want to run Office 2000? Great, you'll "have to" upgrade to Windows 2000 as well, because it's unstable under Windows 98. Want to be able to read that document you just got from a friend? You need to upgrade to Office 2003.
Now, how do those situations translate to the current situation? In much the same way they're taking over the video game market with the Xbox, MSN Messenger, and DirectX: make it beneficial to the early adopters, get them hooked, and then draw people in via social networking.
DirectX started out as a free 'add on' - Direct3D. It wasn't used by much, because it sucked. Then people started writing games using it, and it matured to what we have today. People wanted those games, so they got them, regardless of what they were based on. I suspect this will happen with the new "longhorn" technologies: people will install the frameworks "for the hell of it", install applications using those frameworks, and friends will see the new stuff and desire it. Then they'll follow suit, so on and so forth...
In the case of the Xbox, they sold/sell a decent contender at much below production costs to try and get significant market share. They also bought out as many game providers as possible. This relates to the longhorn tech because MS is basically giving away the components - for now. In the future (aka, the Xbox2, or lonhorn itself), there will be a premium for the better products (better graphics/continued support or better stability, etc.) because they've established a market demand for those products by giving them away for free.
In essence, it seems to me like MS is trying to turn around a potentially harmful situation (mass migration due to a huge, sudden platform change) into a positive one for them. Good for them. This has a lot of potential to really harm Linux in many ways.
You missed the point entirely. or you're trolling. Either way...
The entry of a word on a keyboard is quick. you're able to type in a "flow of consciousness", which, for some people, leads to a higher level of sentence-structure cohesiveness. For a decent/normal keyboardist, the construction of a word is a single thought. Typing "word" is essentially a single mental gesture, telling your fingers (all 10 of them) to perform.
When you write on paper, however, you're usually shackled by the speed at which you write, as well as the the relative "confusion" of having to make letters look nice, and forming words with pieces. Each word, or even each letter, is a single mental gesture, and a person generally has to back track and continually review their work so as to not repeat themselves. ("And and then I went to the store.")
I have a wacom tablet. I use it. It is indeed nice.
Maybe I've only used shitty tablets (most are), but all the ones I've seen only have a single level of sensitivity, and not the best accuracy, either. It's hard to justify the $500+ price tag that gets placed on such a device, when a wacom that performs better is a significantly smaller fraction of that sum.
20 years after PG-13 came out, the rating is now functionally meaningless.
The content in PG-13 films is now well above what your average R film was 20 years ago. Nudity, vulgarity, swearing (even 'fuck'), and violence are all relatively common PG-13 trends.
Not only that, but there's hardly anyone that gives a damn about PG-13 anyway - unless they've got very, very little kids (4, 5?). Look at "American Pie", "Scary Movie" and the slew of other (shitty) teenage films. They're evidently targeted at those that idolize the teenage years of life - namely, middle schoolers.
Sounds like an exam a professor of mine gave for a Critical Thinking course.
He gave out 5 sheets of paper. On the first page there was a line with "Name:" prefaced before it, and one other word. "Why?"
The correct answer was, of course, "Because." Partial credit was obviously awarded to those that filled up all 5 pages, but only 1 person got 100%. (They'd had the prof several times before and knew how the guy thought.)
I wonder what happens if there's a 'freak accident" at SCO headquarters, and someone steals the 'critical evidence', or the buidling is possibly burned to the ground?
Seems suspicous to me. I'd not put it past them.
People have been advertising in games for years. They've even made a fair share of games that are exclusive advertising - the Yo! Noids game(s?) for NES come to mind, and I've seen McD's games, 7-up (with Spot) (and I'm sure others) as well. It's nothing new. The Yo! Noids game was actually pretty fun/well made, too, IIRC.
If someone were to make a game with their mascot that was fun and entertaining, I'd play it. I don't care if it's advertising. Take, for instance, the geico lizard. You could do some very fun (and funny) things with that if you've got the right creative people involved.
There are even the games that have 'fake' advertising in them. Duke Nuke'em 3D comes to mind. Granted, in the case of Duke3d, the fake advertising adds to the fun-loving nature of the game. However, in games where the level of realism is imperative to the game's environment, it makes perfect sense to have real (say) soda company banners, machines, etc. in place of the mock stuff. Something like Deus Ex (or maybe even Duke3d, with the soda machines that replentish life) would be good for this kind of thing - just don't make the adverts so overwhelming and distracting that they remove you from the game experience.
On the grounds of tracking views, it seems a bit crooked to me. IF they're going to do that and make a lot of money off you on top of your initial game purchase, they should at least charge less for the game. This kind of advertising makes mroe sense for single-player games as well - people are more likely to pirate a single-player-only game, as it has less replay/multiplayer value than the alternative - I imaigne that this effect might eventually lead to free games (similar to how TV is free).
ALso, I can understand how companies might do this to help suppliment the cost of development. Modern games take a very significant financial investment, what with all the high-quality models, audio, engines and textures that are now in games. They're approaching the quality of movies, ffs.
eI shouldn't have to turn it off. Features should be off by default so that casual word processor users can get work done. If you want a feature, you can then turn it on.
This applies to both OOo and MSO, as far as I'm concerned.
I can't be sure, as I don't know wher ethat came from, but I seem to recall that one of the E folks was a brit.
:)
IIRC, they call cigarettes 'fags' over there. As in, "I'm going to go suck a fag, you want to come?"
Hopefully this can be confirmed/denied by an authentic brit.
To be more specific, E17 has been years in the remaking.
They've been quite far into awesome development progress when Mandrake and Rasterman get the inspiration to scrap the code base and do a "rewrite". I was using E CVS snapshots 3 years ago that were more advanced, more featureful, and more pretty than what's currently available.
I suspect the reason why E17 isn't catching up to where it used to be is because a lot of the developers have left. EFM was getting really, really nice, and they scrapped the code base. I've got a friend that was working on it. He left shortly afterwards. Rasterman and Mandrake are apparently impossible to work with, between this and their moving around the world, etc.
Excentric is the word, people.
... back to the keyboard? What, are you kidding?
If they have hen-peck keyboarding skills, then I can understand this statement. However, if you've made it far enough in the business world to require the use of a computer, there's no excuse for not having sufficient typing ability. None. Not only that, but typing is much faster for most people than writing, and the creation of the text usually requires significantly less thought.
Mathematics is another matter entirely, but that's not what handwriting recog is usually used for, anyway.
Tablets are just a fringe/novelty item and have no significantly practical use. My school just made the students pay a shitload of money for Gateway m275s, a combo tablet/laptop machine. They suck as laptops, and nobody uses the handwriting ability because it's awkward writing on a screen - regardless of the handwriting recognition.
How about a development platform that smacks a word processor designer in the head when they design features that do things without being asked (such as automatically making lists when none are wanted, auto-indenting, etc.)? I'd pay for that.
Is this the same John Dvorak that used to (still does?) work for PC Magazine, circa 1996 or so? I recall the PC Magazine Dvorak has gotten quite a few people to write him off as a complete idiot, both here on slashdot, as well as within the Windows world.
:)
If he's not working for PC Magazine anymore, and is indeed this ABC News guy, it's possible that PC Magazine thought so as well.
It seems that Java is the pop language of this decade. It's the programming equivilant of Britney Spears or Creed. It's cool to diss them because they're part of popular culture, but deep down there's some aspect of their music (or persona, etc.) that you like.
This campaign is not so much against IE, but for the use of safer and more user-friendly browsers.
Yeah, right. This is rhetoric nonsense. Of course it's "against IE", if it's for the use of a better browser. If you're making a case for something, it - at the very least - implies that the item it's comparing it to is inferior in some way. Yes, this is a case against IE.
Don't say foolish things like this just to seem like you're not partial. You are. There's nothing wrong with being partial, when your partiality is based off of sound logical reasoning.
No. Airplanes would be the perfect target. Nothing is perfectly secure. Attacking something that is seen as secure and "terrorist-proof" would be the ideal way to make Americans all the more fearful, unfortunately.
The International Open-Source Network has created a desktop manual aimed at end-users with little or no prior knowledge of PCs.
I seriously hope it's not written in English, then. Everyone able to use a computer that can speak English already likely is.