Factual error: Dr. Octavius says his fusion relies on tritium and that there is only 25 pounds of the substance in the world. In reality, tritium is merely an isotope of hydrogen and is a good deal more common than that. For example, there is a large region of the North Pacific that contains tritium-rich salt water.
Would that be the same pool of "heavy water" that GIJoe had to beat Cobra to in order to complete a MASS device? Cause if it is, man, what a coincidence!!!
The #1 drawback to online magazine subscriptions is Commode Compatibility. Yeah, I've got a wireless network, so I could take my laptop and either hold it on my lap (Eeewww!) or setup a table, but those don't particularly appeal. The other alternative would be to print out articles to read, but that could take a lot of paper, and when time is of the essence I really don't want to wait on a printer.
I guess I could get an iLoo if they were for real, but I don't think my wife would think one of those parked in the backyard was be a big improvement over a stack of month-old magazines on the back of the toilet.
I agree. WASD is a terrible control scheme for me! I'm constantly putting my fingers on the wrong keys. On some keyboards, for instance, the Caps Lock doesn't feel significantly different from the A key. Plus, it essentially renders your little finger useless, since it then only has access to Shift, Caps Lock, and Tab.
My preferred configuration uses ESDF instead. The bump on the F (on most PC keyboards, anyway) provides immediate tactile feedback so I can tell which keys I'm on. It also gives me an extra finger with access to QAZ plus Shift, Caps Lock, and Tab, and it gives easier access to R and T. The other big benefit is that it keeps your fingers on their accustomed home keys most of the time, thus requiring less relearning to hit RTGVB keys.
It might not be perfect for everyone, and probably isn't a big enough improvement to warrant a change if you're happy with your current setup, but many of the people I know who've tried it have changed over.
I expect it will turn out to be a gaming-oriented cellphone. Granted, it would be a little large, but tying into the cell network would provide some great multiplayer gaming options. Nintendo Live via a worldwide wireless network? Plug it into your GameCube and play on your TV or connect your Cube to the network. Sounds cool to me.
Touch screen? Clamshell case? Stylus? Sounds like a Handspring Treo with an extra screen and game controls to me. Add a camera, and you can see the guy you're playing on the second screen while you kick his butt on the first screen.
The Nokia N-gage may suck right now, but Nintendo can't help but see that sort of device as a potential threat to their handheld gaming dominance. As it is, the console market is moving away from them, with the next generation of consoles almost certainly focused more on media center features instead of only games. Nintendo can't afford to let the handheld market move away from them in a similar way.
Instead of confining yourself to what's available right now, have your contractor run conduit through the walls for all your wiring except electricity. That will make it easier to swap out your cat5 for fiber or pull your POTS line when you go to VOIP.
What better way to encourage old NT/2000 users to upgrade to XP or 2003 than by leaking the source code, then making everyone worry about hackers using it for attacks?
It encourages upgrades that might not have happened otherwise, and it makes open source look bad, since MS can point to any attacks that result and say, "Look what happens when people can see your source code!"
What would be evidence of a creator would be if things did NOT follow what was natural and obvious. If these things did NOT follow the golden ratio and other straight math.. if we could find no explanation for why things had a weird ratio, or weird behavior.. no explanation from the current or possible past enviroment to explain how something evolved.... come to me with that, then we can talk about a creator.
If God had intentionally inserted all these frequently recurring constants and ratios everywhere, then they, like the Babelfish, would be proof of God's existence. That would defy faith, and He would disappear in a poof of logic.
Then, unfortunately, I'm afraid we'd all get hit by a bus....
Although I haven't played it, I think I'd have to recommend something a little more tame (at least to start with) like Links 2004. Golf is a sport in which you're able to play and converse without either activity seriously interferring with the other. Plus, since you're not directly competing (that is, you can't do anything to influence her making or missing a shot) there's less potential for hurt feelings. That's a large part of the reason golf is so popular as a social networking environment in business and politics.
A baseball game, which would also be pretty slow-paced and lend itself to long pauses in play to talk might work, too.
An even better (and cheaper) option might be to get some VOIP software and talk while you both play Bejewelled independently.
Plus the GameCube has a lot more female-friendly games, which is important to me because it's a lot easier for me to score gaming time if my wife wants to play too.
The autoswitching thing is ok, but what I'm really interested in hearing more about is how you got your wife to play games!;-)
Wait, for a second I thought you were talking about Sony. Because I know they didn't "innovate" much with the PS1 gamepad (stolen from SNES), the analog stick? (stolen from N64), CD based games? Turbo-DUO.
By the way, the Ps1 was out before the N64, (ps1 came out december 1994, N64 came out june 1996).
That's correct, but the PS1 analog controllers didn't come out until much later. I'm sure some creative Googling could find exact dates.
Ultima III on the NES handled that pretty well, I thought. I don't know about the original PC version. In the overworld map, you could see little icons for the groups of enemies, with the exact appearance indicating their strength. If you needed experience, you could go hunt them down. If not, you could usually avoid most of them.
Sometimes it wasn't possible, and sometimes they'd appear right next to you and attack, but generally you got to choose when and what to fight. I've always been really surprised that more games haven't used a method like that (MMORPGs and action RPGs not withstanding).
Would that be the mainstream press that's owned by Time-Warner, the mainstream press that's owned by Viacom, the mainstream press that's owned by Disney, or the mainstream press that's now owned by Vivendi-Universal?
The same nice lady is just hanging up on people now. Hopefully they will need to change their number by the end of the week. Let's see, Congress and 50 million Americans VS. a pack of rude bastards with speed dialers and a clueless and/or corrupt judge. I think this needs to change.
I hope you see the irony in that by calling the judge's offices, and encouraging hundreds or thousands of others to do so, you've now effectively become part of a pack of rude bastards with speed dialers.
The truth is that we do not want judges to be easily swayed by public opinion. Public opinion supported slavery and segregation, too. The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are designed to limit the power of unrestrained public opinion, and the judiciary is our last line of defense in that regard.
Yes, I disagree with the result of the ruling, but I'm glad the judge had the courage to make what he had to know would be an unpopular decision. That's really not something we ought to discourage.
The main problem with games based on Biblical stories is the same problem faced by any games based on well-known stories: the interactivity and freedom are necessarily curtailed somewhat in order to stay true to the story. Except in this case, that problem is compounded by the fact that deviating even slightly from the story could be highly offensive to a large portion of the target audience (mainly Christians and Jews).
While a good RTS or Civ-style game based on the post-Exodus conquest of Canaan might be pretty cool, there's not really much room for variations in most of the stories. Imagine a game where the player controlled Christ, and the in-game choices determined whether He would be a good messiah or an evil messiah. That's pretty blasphemous on multiple levels. The tempest stirred up by The Last Temptation of Christ would look like a mild April shower in comparison!
There could be (and maybe have been?) some cool games based on wars between angels and demons, but even in those cases, the mere possibility that the powers of good could be defeated (especially if the player were controlling the forces of evil) could be pretty offensive.
However, I hear from friends who have played them that the Xenosaga games stray off into some blasphemy and heresy, and there hasn't been any great backlash that I know of.
The core problem remains the same, though. While the characters are exciting and complex, and the stories have been compelling for thousands of years, and they've been the basis for countless plays, books, and movies, those traits don't necessarily make for good games. Either they're sacrificed in favor of player control and flexibility, or they lead to a game that's more like interactive fiction than a true game.
This kind of concern for moral choices and consequences is something new in the universe of video gaming, where trigger-happy contestants are traditionally rewarded for shooting first and never asking questions.
Spammers don't send out millions of emails as a fun and educational hobby. People and companies pay money to advertise this way. They should be the targets of action against spam.
We can filter by IPs or keywords or addresses or whatever, but they one thing they can never disguise is their message: it has to be available or they're just sending static.
Part of that message has to be some way to contact the company, or else there's no way for you to order their penis enlargement cream or online marketing guide.
What we really need is an anti-spam program that searches identified spam for URLs, then scrapes those pages for forms and email addresses so that it can fill out the forms with junk and send a few hundred copies of their spam to the email addresses. That would effectively lower the signal-to-noise ratio in their order system to the point that it would be nearly useless.
Granted, though, such a system really would be the spam equivalent of WWIII. Right now half of all email traffic is spam, and with widespread use of the "Doomsday Filter" we'd probably have one third of traffic being spam and another third being anti-spam mail.
Obviously that wouldn't be good, so this is just meant as a theoretical counter-offensive. The important idea is that passive measures have been proven insufficient, and the only way to stop spam is going to be to cut off the demand for it. One way to do that is to direct the counterstrike at the message sender itself, rather than just the messenger. If your breast enhancement company's spammer gets shut down, you'll just hire another one. If the spam you're having sent results in tangible and direct problems for your business, you'll find other ways to advertise.
Aside from the fact that this seems to be a ridiculous patent, what is it really for? He didn't build a prototype. He didn't write any software. He's not even patenting a business process!
All he did was describe a system for behaving ethically based on some psychological theories. Does it sound like a good system? I suppose, but that's not the point. The point is that this is nothing.
"It enables a computer to reason and speak in an ethical fashion. Nobody has made an application like this.... The patent shows someone who has knowledge of the A.I. field how to make the invention."
Well, no kidding. Anyone with a knowledge of AI knows how we all want computers to act: We want them to act like really nice people. Determining how nice people act is the easy part! Getting computers to do that is freakin' hard! Maybe the reason nobody has done it yet is that it's an incredibly hard problem.
This is a patent acquired my someone who lacks a fundamental understanding of what the really difficult problems are in AI and computer science, that offers a very thorough solution to the easy problems that most researchers aren't terribly concerned about.
Should this patent have been granted? No. Will it ever make him any money? No, because by the time AI advances to the point where descriptors of ethical behavior at such a high level are needed, it will have expired.
Besides, it really is a very specific description. Creating your own categorical description of ethical behavior would be trivial if you've solved all the technical problems.
I'd better hurry up and submit my patent for my new computer language, Z++. It's very simple, with only a few keywords. Every program looks like this:
...everyone knows the best way to race office chairs is backwards! You'll go so much faster it's unbelievable, and not being able to see where you're going adds plenty of extra excitement!
Actually, done properly, cursive is easier than printing, since most of the strokes flow smoothly and the pen seldom has to leave the paper, unlike printing, which is rather herky-jerky.
Additionally, it's much better for people with wrist problems, since ideally the wrist is held straight and all the movement comes from the elbow and upper arm.
Or at least that's what my grandfather learned from his schoolmaster, who used to whack his arm with a ruler whenever he bent his wrist. I only use cursive for my signature, and that's mostly illegible.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I could get an iLoo if they were for real, but I don't think my wife would think one of those parked in the backyard was be a big improvement over a stack of month-old magazines on the back of the toilet.
I've probably shared quite enough now....
My preferred configuration uses ESDF instead. The bump on the F (on most PC keyboards, anyway) provides immediate tactile feedback so I can tell which keys I'm on. It also gives me an extra finger with access to QAZ plus Shift, Caps Lock, and Tab, and it gives easier access to R and T. The other big benefit is that it keeps your fingers on their accustomed home keys most of the time, thus requiring less relearning to hit RTGVB keys.
It might not be perfect for everyone, and probably isn't a big enough improvement to warrant a change if you're happy with your current setup, but many of the people I know who've tried it have changed over.
...before we're forced to relinquish any last vestiges of hope that something can be salvaged from the smoldering wreckage that Star Wars has become.
Touch screen? Clamshell case? Stylus? Sounds like a Handspring Treo with an extra screen and game controls to me. Add a camera, and you can see the guy you're playing on the second screen while you kick his butt on the first screen.
The Nokia N-gage may suck right now, but Nintendo can't help but see that sort of device as a potential threat to their handheld gaming dominance. As it is, the console market is moving away from them, with the next generation of consoles almost certainly focused more on media center features instead of only games. Nintendo can't afford to let the handheld market move away from them in a similar way.
All just wild speculation, but plausible....
Use smurf tube!
Instead of confining yourself to what's available right now, have your contractor run conduit through the walls for all your wiring except electricity. That will make it easier to swap out your cat5 for fiber or pull your POTS line when you go to VOIP.
It encourages upgrades that might not have happened otherwise, and it makes open source look bad, since MS can point to any attacks that result and say, "Look what happens when people can see your source code!"
Does it count as copyright/patent infringement if you look at how MS coded something, then do the exact opposite?
If God had intentionally inserted all these frequently recurring constants and ratios everywhere, then they, like the Babelfish, would be proof of God's existence. That would defy faith, and He would disappear in a poof of logic.
Then, unfortunately, I'm afraid we'd all get hit by a bus....
A baseball game, which would also be pretty slow-paced and lend itself to long pauses in play to talk might work, too.
An even better (and cheaper) option might be to get some VOIP software and talk while you both play Bejewelled independently.
Ultima III on the NES handled that pretty well, I thought. I don't know about the original PC version. In the overworld map, you could see little icons for the groups of enemies, with the exact appearance indicating their strength. If you needed experience, you could go hunt them down. If not, you could usually avoid most of them.
Sometimes it wasn't possible, and sometimes they'd appear right next to you and attack, but generally you got to choose when and what to fight. I've always been really surprised that more games haven't used a method like that (MMORPGs and action RPGs not withstanding).
Would that be the mainstream press that's owned by Time-Warner, the mainstream press that's owned by Viacom, the mainstream press that's owned by Disney, or the mainstream press that's now owned by Vivendi-Universal?
The truth is that we do not want judges to be easily swayed by public opinion. Public opinion supported slavery and segregation, too. The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are designed to limit the power of unrestrained public opinion, and the judiciary is our last line of defense in that regard.
Yes, I disagree with the result of the ruling, but I'm glad the judge had the courage to make what he had to know would be an unpopular decision. That's really not something we ought to discourage.
Some of the older models are even powered by the user's own body, so the battery never runs out!!!
While a good RTS or Civ-style game based on the post-Exodus conquest of Canaan might be pretty cool, there's not really much room for variations in most of the stories. Imagine a game where the player controlled Christ, and the in-game choices determined whether He would be a good messiah or an evil messiah. That's pretty blasphemous on multiple levels. The tempest stirred up by The Last Temptation of Christ would look like a mild April shower in comparison!
There could be (and maybe have been?) some cool games based on wars between angels and demons, but even in those cases, the mere possibility that the powers of good could be defeated (especially if the player were controlling the forces of evil) could be pretty offensive.
However, I hear from friends who have played them that the Xenosaga games stray off into some blasphemy and heresy, and there hasn't been any great backlash that I know of.
The core problem remains the same, though. While the characters are exciting and complex, and the stories have been compelling for thousands of years, and they've been the basis for countless plays, books, and movies, those traits don't necessarily make for good games. Either they're sacrificed in favor of player control and flexibility, or they lead to a game that's more like interactive fiction than a true game.
Imagine the condition vehicles must be in!
We can filter by IPs or keywords or addresses or whatever, but they one thing they can never disguise is their message: it has to be available or they're just sending static. Part of that message has to be some way to contact the company, or else there's no way for you to order their penis enlargement cream or online marketing guide.
What we really need is an anti-spam program that searches identified spam for URLs, then scrapes those pages for forms and email addresses so that it can fill out the forms with junk and send a few hundred copies of their spam to the email addresses. That would effectively lower the signal-to-noise ratio in their order system to the point that it would be nearly useless.
Granted, though, such a system really would be the spam equivalent of WWIII. Right now half of all email traffic is spam, and with widespread use of the "Doomsday Filter" we'd probably have one third of traffic being spam and another third being anti-spam mail.
Obviously that wouldn't be good, so this is just meant as a theoretical counter-offensive. The important idea is that passive measures have been proven insufficient, and the only way to stop spam is going to be to cut off the demand for it. One way to do that is to direct the counterstrike at the message sender itself, rather than just the messenger. If your breast enhancement company's spammer gets shut down, you'll just hire another one. If the spam you're having sent results in tangible and direct problems for your business, you'll find other ways to advertise.
All he did was describe a system for behaving ethically based on some psychological theories. Does it sound like a good system? I suppose, but that's not the point. The point is that this is nothing.
Well, no kidding. Anyone with a knowledge of AI knows how we all want computers to act: We want them to act like really nice people. Determining how nice people act is the easy part! Getting computers to do that is freakin' hard! Maybe the reason nobody has done it yet is that it's an incredibly hard problem.This is a patent acquired my someone who lacks a fundamental understanding of what the really difficult problems are in AI and computer science, that offers a very thorough solution to the easy problems that most researchers aren't terribly concerned about.
Should this patent have been granted? No. Will it ever make him any money? No, because by the time AI advances to the point where descriptors of ethical behavior at such a high level are needed, it will have expired.
Besides, it really is a very specific description. Creating your own categorical description of ethical behavior would be trivial if you've solved all the technical problems.
I'd better hurry up and submit my patent for my new computer language, Z++. It's very simple, with only a few keywords. Every program looks like this:
I guess there's no accounting for taste, huh?
Additionally, it's much better for people with wrist problems, since ideally the wrist is held straight and all the movement comes from the elbow and upper arm.
Or at least that's what my grandfather learned from his schoolmaster, who used to whack his arm with a ruler whenever he bent his wrist. I only use cursive for my signature, and that's mostly illegible.
"Omigosh! They're building a nuclear power plant in our town!"
"No, it's a nucular plant."
"Oh, that's alright then. Whew!"
Rebranding works. Right, Philip Morris?