It's plain stupid. Now he has no choice but to stare at people behind him all day long. How uncomfortable is that. I think he'll end up removing it permanently at some point, or wearing a beanie cap to cover it until times when he "needs" it.
Publishers are running scared because they know the future is in digital distribution, and precedent is being set, while they're still on the fence twiddling their thumbs, for $1 games being the norm. This is problematic as $1 is a suboptimal price for many games, especially high-quality games with a massive advertising budget.
There are plenty of games available for digital download - look at the PS3 or XBox 360 online marketplaces. More will follow. Mind you, not everyone likes digital downloads. You can't sell them when you're done with them, for one thing.
But digital download does not necessarily mean $1 games. You can still fetch $30 or $40 for a downloaded title. I think people are sick of paying top dollar (you know, $60, $70) for a crappy game. That's a lot of money to waste on entertainment that doesn't entertain. With the small titles, you only risk $1 or maybe even $4 but if the game sucks, it's not a huge loss. Also, many games are published as a demo or 'lite' version so you can try it out before buying. How can you go wrong with that?
So to my mind, you need to give people a free option that lets them try a game out, or lower the risk to some trivial dollar amount. For big titles that can't sell for $1, enable a pay-as-you-go option for $1 a day or whatever. That doesn't have to be consecutive days, either. Maybe I play the game every Friday night - so $1 per Friday. I don't think many would balk at that price.
People are getting lazy in their word choices, preferring to invent new words instead of finding the right combination of existing words to express themselves.
What I like about The Matrix 1: - innovative cinematography (not just bullet-time, but the fish-eye lens look in the interrogation room, the roof chase scene) - how the story started tightly packed and unraveled as it went, with mind-blowing revelations along the way - how they continually illustrated, in a sort of build-up, the power of the agents - it made you think about the real world and how plausible the matrix could be - Keanu's "whoa", surfer-dude personality really fit the character as his eyes were opened to the truth - Morpheus and Agent Smith's manner of speaking - the first scene with the Oracle (vase breaking, etc.)
It was just an awesome movie... I hadn't felt that way watching a movie since watching Terminator 2 for the first time.
Matrix 2 and 3 were just okay for me. I'm optimistic about 4 and 5, but I hope they really try and innovate again, take the story in new directions (some of the comments on this thread sound really interesting).
Off-the-wall theory: most dupes are on purpose. The second time around, people have had more time to think about (and maybe even read!) the article and initial responses, provoking more thoughtful replies. Probably not, though.:)
Yes, I remember in the docs for the Duke Nuke'em map editor it said something like: do not place a mirror opposite another mirror - bad things will happen! I never did try it, actually.
I keep all my digital photos and video in a Perforce revision control repository. The free version of Perforce is enough for my needs (it limits the number of user accounts and client specs you can create).
Perforce handles large files with ease (I've added a fair number of 1 or 2 GB files) on commodity hardware. It allows me to check out a portion of the photos/video on a given computer so it's nice when a client is constrained in hard disk space. Since it's all version controlled, I can tell my wife and kids to edit or delete to their heart's content and I never have to worry about losing an original copy. And because of Perforce's support for lazy copies, I can move files around all I want without requiring more hard disk space.
Backups are a simple p4d stop, rsync to an external drive, p4d start. Do what you wish with the external drive, like store it in a safe or somewhere off-site.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Perforce, I just like their product and haven't found anything free that will do what it does (SVN is close, but no cigar).
In one sense safety is improved but in another, worsened: people who are accustomed to the computer driver and rarely drive themselves will be less practiced and therefore more likely to cause an accident.
I hope IBM nails this and makes it into something regular folk can use to find stuff on the web. The honeymoon is over - I'm tired of searching for things the "old fashioned way". I want Star Trek style technology where you ask a question and you get a succinct answer. No more trawling through pages of text trying to find nuggets of information. Keyword searches can only get you so far. Am I being lazy? Maybe. But after many thousands of web searches it gets a bit old. I really just want the answer!
I've perceived an improvement in overall commentary quality in the past 1/2 year or so. The quality is much, much better than other sites, IMO. Want to see what I mean - go visit reddit or digg.
The solution, the scientists in the film agreed, was to prepare several nuclear bombs which could be transported to the edge of the core (below the mantle) and detonated, thus restarting the spinning core.
Sounds fantastic... anybody have back-of-the-napkin numbers as to how much energy it might take to restart the core spinning? I'm surprised that only a few nukes would do it.
how long is it going to take the us to get over trying to enforce puritanical beliefs about intoxicants and find a better way to work with basic human/animal nature
I've been doing some thinking along these lines myself lately. There's got to be a pie chart for each person that describes their basic need for certain stimulations: sex, power, love, reflection, etc... and obviously each slice of the pie would differ in size uniquely per person. I believe each of those needs has to have an outlet, or it will bubble over like a pot on the stove if it isn't tended to. This imagery also lends itself to a cyclical view of people's emotions - we all go through our ups and downs - that's just life. If you live a lifestyle that satisfies those needs (in a healthy way) instead of surpressing them, I think those ups and downs can be smoothed out. Sometimes when I'm sad, I think, why be upset about being sad? Embrace the sadness and fulfill that need, that slice of the pie. The trick is to find healthy ways to fulfill the needs. Obviously, that's not always easy. But I think a key is to recognize the needs and the cyclical nature and to be mindful when those needs bubble up to the surface. A person who ignores their basic needs can get by for awhile all-smiles, but eventually things will break down. Better to have a balance.
I think the word "friend" as it is used on Facebook should really be something else. Maybe "associate" or "interesting person" would fit the bill. If instead of "friending" someone you "linked" to them, or "subscribed" to their updates, I could see the dynamics changing. Same functionality, different mindset and expectations. Perhaps even less stress and offence taken when "unfriending" - these would become "unsubscribe", "unlink" - something less personal. I'm sure someone could whip up a browser addon that changes Facebook's terminology fairly easily.
On the topic of Facebook, I'd like to see ways to group friends better, like have a "closeness" rating that I can set when I friend someone.. or just one or more tags that I could filter by when publishing to my wall. eg. "show this link to all friends I've tagged as techies".
so, what drives the desire to hold a belief in front of so much evidence to the contrary?
Well, I go to church regularly and I'll readily admit I'm not completely convinced of all of this stuff being true. However, the people at my baptist church really do care about others and I do, too. They've really touched my heart. I know every church is different and some (probably many, especially catholic) really turn me off with the condescending, "you're a sinner since birth" brain washing) so YMMV.
If you find a good church like I did and put your heart into it, suspending your scepticism (it's not easy), you just may feel the power of faith. It's an amazing feeling, a power I can't deny washing over me. Maybe you guys can think of a scientific name for it. But for now I am content in attending church, "rebooting" my soul every week and casting off doubts, hatred, etc... The people at my church really believe what they are preaching. They don't beg people for money... they pray about it. They pray about everything they need as a ministry. They pray for others in need. It's really refreshing.
If I am wrong about these beliefs, then I will one day die and go into the soil and nothing more will happen. If I am right, I will have eternal life in heaven. And while I am living, my life is enriched by being with people who care about one another - about me - and put their 100% out there every time I see them. That's more than I can say for a hell of a lot of people. So as you can see, I have nothing to lose by believing.
As far as evolution goes, I think a God that doesn't take into account changing environmental conditions isn't a very smart God. So evolution and creationism can coexist, at least in my view. I mean, think about it, everything had to originate from something, right? God, or whatever you want to visualize, has to ultimately create all this, in some dimension/multiverse/etc... Who created time? Imagining there's some power higher than us just seems obvious.
Is there any reason to believe the Internet isn't part of the military-industrial complex we've all been warned about?
The ability to communicate to one another instantaneously over the Internet and cell phone networks relies almost entirely on monopolies. With the Internet now being used increasingly in warfare, I find it worrying that someday we might all lose access to these communication channels.
Time to think about fallback plans? Neighbourhood Area Networks, anyone?
I sometimes marvel at the size of a single road intersection: some of them are many times larger than an average person's yard! Imagine how much land could be saved if we didn't have to dedicate so much of it to roads. I'm not sure that's what they're claiming but the thought is tantalizing.
FTA: “The gridlock we face now is going to get worse,” Seeley stated, citing research into congestion on the world’s roads. “This is a form of insanity... We need to travel in 3D.”
Wishing more jobs offered work-at-home options! That would certainly help.
This practice of letting people go right before Christmas is just despicable. Besides the obvious human cost, it also reflects VERY poorly on their company. Having worked for a company that did the same thing in the past, I know morale will be very low.
A friend on an IT coop asked for my help when a student repoted that the paper they had been writing all semester long was corrupt (stored on a floppy disk and no backup copy, of course). Needless to say, the student was very upset.
I wrote a quick little program (in Pascal I believe) to read as much of the document file as possible and output just the printable characters. Told the student they'd have to reformat the text and double-check it but essentially it was all there. It felt good to help.
That was before I played with Linux or the 'strings' command.;)
No. The OP said nothing like that. Democrats said nothing like that. Nobody but you said anything like that. Claiming people who disagree with you are burning kittens and hate freedom is not an argument.
Point made, someone ironically, given that the PP said nothing about burning kittens or hating freedom.
Another phrasing is "Getting one bit wrong is generally indistinguishable from randomizing all of memory".
Not necessarily. It depends on where the one bit went wrong - if it's in a system that has redundancy, the system could recover from the error. If it's in a piece of text, it could result in a spelling error. If it's in a kernel module, it could freeze the system. An application could crash, etc...
Yes, I agree. I like our happy, maple-syrup-loving face but there's plenty of back-room politics going on here, too. Our current government has plenty of problems. Canadian border security can be pretty arsey, too.
Slashdot Mirror
It's plain stupid. Now he has no choice but to stare at people behind him all day long. How uncomfortable is that. I think he'll end up removing it permanently at some point, or wearing a beanie cap to cover it until times when he "needs" it.
There are plenty of games available for digital download - look at the PS3 or XBox 360 online marketplaces. More will follow.
Mind you, not everyone likes digital downloads. You can't sell them when you're done with them, for one thing.
But digital download does not necessarily mean $1 games. You can still fetch $30 or $40 for a downloaded title. I think people are sick of paying top dollar (you know, $60, $70) for a crappy game. That's a lot of money to waste on entertainment that doesn't entertain. With the small titles, you only risk $1 or maybe even $4 but if the game sucks, it's not a huge loss. Also, many games are published as a demo or 'lite' version so you can try it out before buying. How can you go wrong with that?
So to my mind, you need to give people a free option that lets them try a game out, or lower the risk to some trivial dollar amount. For big titles that can't sell for $1, enable a pay-as-you-go option for $1 a day or whatever. That doesn't have to be consecutive days, either. Maybe I play the game every Friday night - so $1 per Friday. I don't think many would balk at that price.
You also have to remember the rate at which men were dying in battle. Just fucking staggering. :(
People are getting lazy in their word choices, preferring to invent new words instead of finding the right combination of existing words to express themselves.
What I like about The Matrix 1:
- innovative cinematography (not just bullet-time, but the fish-eye lens look in the interrogation room, the roof chase scene)
- how the story started tightly packed and unraveled as it went, with mind-blowing revelations along the way
- how they continually illustrated, in a sort of build-up, the power of the agents
- it made you think about the real world and how plausible the matrix could be
- Keanu's "whoa", surfer-dude personality really fit the character as his eyes were opened to the truth
- Morpheus and Agent Smith's manner of speaking
- the first scene with the Oracle (vase breaking, etc.)
It was just an awesome movie... I hadn't felt that way watching a movie since watching Terminator 2 for the first time.
Matrix 2 and 3 were just okay for me. I'm optimistic about 4 and 5, but I hope they really try and innovate again, take the story in new directions (some of the comments on this thread sound really interesting).
Off-the-wall theory: most dupes are on purpose. The second time around, people have had more time to think about (and maybe even read!) the article and initial responses, provoking more thoughtful replies. Probably not, though. :)
Yes, I remember in the docs for the Duke Nuke'em map editor it said something like: do not place a mirror opposite another mirror - bad things will happen! I never did try it, actually.
Just using a urinal and having some urine spray on my pants disgusts me. Imagine 15 months worth of just that alone.
I keep all my digital photos and video in a Perforce revision control repository. The free version of Perforce is enough for my needs (it limits the number of user accounts and client specs you can create).
Perforce handles large files with ease (I've added a fair number of 1 or 2 GB files) on commodity hardware. It allows me to check out a portion of the photos/video on a given computer so it's nice when a client is constrained in hard disk space. Since it's all version controlled, I can tell my wife and kids to edit or delete to their heart's content and I never have to worry about losing an original copy. And because of Perforce's support for lazy copies, I can move files around all I want without requiring more hard disk space.
Backups are a simple p4d stop, rsync to an external drive, p4d start. Do what you wish with the external drive, like store it in a safe or somewhere off-site.
Disclaimer: I don't work for Perforce, I just like their product and haven't found anything free that will do what it does (SVN is close, but no cigar).
In one sense safety is improved but in another, worsened: people who are accustomed to the computer driver and rarely drive themselves will be less practiced and therefore more likely to cause an accident.
I hope IBM nails this and makes it into something regular folk can use to find stuff on the web. The honeymoon is over - I'm tired of searching for things the "old fashioned way". I want Star Trek style technology where you ask a question and you get a succinct answer. No more trawling through pages of text trying to find nuggets of information.
Keyword searches can only get you so far.
Am I being lazy? Maybe. But after many thousands of web searches it gets a bit old. I really just want the answer!
I've perceived an improvement in overall commentary quality in the past 1/2 year or so. The quality is much, much better than other sites, IMO. Want to see what I mean - go visit reddit or digg.
Sounds fantastic... anybody have back-of-the-napkin numbers as to how much energy it might take to restart the core spinning? I'm surprised that only a few nukes would do it.
I've been doing some thinking along these lines myself lately. There's got to be a pie chart for each person that describes their basic need for certain stimulations: sex, power, love, reflection, etc... and obviously each slice of the pie would differ in size uniquely per person. I believe each of those needs has to have an outlet, or it will bubble over like a pot on the stove if it isn't tended to. This imagery also lends itself to a cyclical view of people's emotions - we all go through our ups and downs - that's just life. If you live a lifestyle that satisfies those needs (in a healthy way) instead of surpressing them, I think those ups and downs can be smoothed out. Sometimes when I'm sad, I think, why be upset about being sad? Embrace the sadness and fulfill that need, that slice of the pie. The trick is to find healthy ways to fulfill the needs. Obviously, that's not always easy. But I think a key is to recognize the needs and the cyclical nature and to be mindful when those needs bubble up to the surface.
A person who ignores their basic needs can get by for awhile all-smiles, but eventually things will break down. Better to have a balance.
I think the word "friend" as it is used on Facebook should really be something else. Maybe "associate" or "interesting person" would fit the bill. If instead of "friending" someone you "linked" to them, or "subscribed" to their updates, I could see the dynamics changing. Same functionality, different mindset and expectations. Perhaps even less stress and offence taken when "unfriending" - these would become "unsubscribe", "unlink" - something less personal. I'm sure someone could whip up a browser addon that changes Facebook's terminology fairly easily.
On the topic of Facebook, I'd like to see ways to group friends better, like have a "closeness" rating that I can set when I friend someone.. or just one or more tags that I could filter by when publishing to my wall. eg. "show this link to all friends I've tagged as techies".
so, what drives the desire to hold a belief in front of so much evidence to the contrary?
Well, I go to church regularly and I'll readily admit I'm not completely convinced of all of this stuff being true. However, the people at my baptist church really do care about others and I do, too. They've really touched my heart. I know every church is different and some (probably many, especially catholic) really turn me off with the condescending, "you're a sinner since birth" brain washing) so YMMV.
If you find a good church like I did and put your heart into it, suspending your scepticism (it's not easy), you just may feel the power of faith. It's an amazing feeling, a power I can't deny washing over me. Maybe you guys can think of a scientific name for it. But for now I am content in attending church, "rebooting" my soul every week and casting off doubts, hatred, etc... The people at my church really believe what they are preaching. They don't beg people for money... they pray about it. They pray about everything they need as a ministry. They pray for others in need. It's really refreshing.
If I am wrong about these beliefs, then I will one day die and go into the soil and nothing more will happen. If I am right, I will have eternal life in heaven. And while I am living, my life is enriched by being with people who care about one another - about me - and put their 100% out there every time I see them. That's more than I can say for a hell of a lot of people. So as you can see, I have nothing to lose by believing.
As far as evolution goes, I think a God that doesn't take into account changing environmental conditions isn't a very smart God. So evolution and creationism can coexist, at least in my view. I mean, think about it, everything had to originate from something, right? God, or whatever you want to visualize, has to ultimately create all this, in some dimension/multiverse/etc... Who created time? Imagining there's some power higher than us just seems obvious.
Is there any reason to believe the Internet isn't part of the military-industrial complex we've all been warned about?
The ability to communicate to one another instantaneously over the Internet and cell phone networks relies almost entirely on monopolies. With the Internet now being used increasingly in warfare, I find it worrying that someday we might all lose access to these communication channels.
Time to think about fallback plans? Neighbourhood Area Networks, anyone?
I sometimes marvel at the size of a single road intersection: some of them are many times larger than an average person's yard!
Imagine how much land could be saved if we didn't have to dedicate so much of it to roads. I'm not sure that's what they're claiming but the thought is tantalizing.
FTA:
“The gridlock we face now is going to get worse,” Seeley stated, citing research into congestion on the world’s roads. “This is a form of insanity... We need to travel in 3D.”
Wishing more jobs offered work-at-home options! That would certainly help.
This practice of letting people go right before Christmas is just despicable. Besides the obvious human cost, it also reflects VERY poorly on their company. Having worked for a company that did the same thing in the past, I know morale will be very low.
Since Wikipedia is a community driven project, put it on community resources: Freenet.
- no ads
- guarantees Wikipedia's wealth of information won't be lost for financial reasons
- helps to further Freenet adoption
Disclaimer: I've never used Freenet.
A friend on an IT coop asked for my help when a student repoted that the paper they had been writing all semester long was corrupt (stored on a floppy disk and no backup copy, of course). Needless to say, the student was very upset.
I wrote a quick little program (in Pascal I believe) to read as much of the document file as possible and output just the printable characters. Told the student they'd have to reformat the text and double-check it but essentially it was all there. It felt good to help.
That was before I played with Linux or the 'strings' command. ;)
Point made, someone ironically, given that the PP said nothing about burning kittens or hating freedom.
I thought the Constitution was something only American citizens talked about these days.
Not necessarily. It depends on where the one bit went wrong - if it's in a system that has redundancy, the system could recover from the error. If it's in a piece of text, it could result in a spelling error. If it's in a kernel module, it could freeze the system. An application could crash, etc...
Yes, I agree. I like our happy, maple-syrup-loving face but there's plenty of back-room politics going on here, too. Our current government has plenty of problems. Canadian border security can be pretty arsey, too.