Actually - I would think/. actually SAVES the economy money by giving us a decent hit of 'stuff that matters' in one go - rather than trawling sites for ages.
If everyone in a train fires up their mobiles at once then yeah, there'll be a measurable increase in microwave radiation. This MIGHT cause health problems. If the train company wants to protect itself from getting sued (a la tobacco companies) down the track (geddit) it should put in shielding to stop phones working in all but one area on each train - so people who want to phone can go there.
This would stop me listening to 'IM ON THE TRAIN, NAH, ITS GOING TO BE LATE, FUCKING RAILTRACK, HOWS NANCY? SHIIIIIT, TELL HER I'LL BE THERE SOON' for 8 hours a day on my way to work!
build your own is fine if you care that much about specs. Personally, I don't. I want a machine thats easy to use, easy to set up, and easy to dick about with. MS falls down on step 3 - the dicking about with. I can set up and use an XP box in about half a minute - but once I've switched off the voice recog I've almost exhausted the possibiliuties so far as dicking about are concerned. So a nameless motherboard running Linux sounds a whole heap more attractive than a posho self build with windows
This is a growing problem. In Europe we're not allowed to pump our livestock full of these chemicals for health reasons. BUT the WTO is backing down to US pressure - and is likely to foce the EU to drop these laws and start accepting US orginated products which are full of hormones.
The fact that you get more virulent and antibiotic resistant forms of Avian Flu developing more quickly with the routine use of anti-biotics should be enough reason to ban their use - but the almighty dollar wins again!
This wetland is a seriously BAD idea for the reasons you outline. Shouldn't/. have a green category for news of this nature - where science and tech is stepping over the line.
It gives me the hope that maybe a company software based or not will come along and make some business decisions that are not bone-headed and knock the Borg off their perch
And then we can start bitching about THEM!
Seriously - we don't want any ONE company to knock them off the perch. We want the hordes to eat the perch! making sure no one else gets up there to crap on us again!
Exactly. You've got a phone with 'a game' now you want one with GAMES. So you get one with Java - so you can play ANY Java game.
Now, allow that phone to talk to other devices and you can write a Java partner game to ANY game on ANY device that can talk to th phone! PC, PS2, GameCube, anything that can talk to the phone.
Useful? I dont know. Could be. Set up a complex SimCity session and take it to work with you on your phone to monitor that all important residential tax rate! Analyse the lap times from last nights session to see where Dan beat you? Some bizarre Yoshi vs Mario thing to let you build up stamina for MarioKart 3000000 while your sitting on the bus?
The possibilities are endless.
Ulimately, this leads to the SAME GAME running on different devices allowing 2 player games on the same game on a PS12 and a PC. Thats probably 10 years away, but having your phone become a gameboy that can talk to your gamecube (in real time) would be coolio!
I think the only time eBooks will become mainstream is when technology allows a full colour screen to play DVD quality video, show static text, and everything else your iPod, PC, TV, Tivo, etc does.
Can't be too far off - just look at the laptop market - 5 years back you were considered cool if you had one at all - now every bastard has at least 2!
Why invest in a single use device? Multi use devices are on the way.
I have to disagree. London has the Tube. It has roads. You travel across london WAY quicker by tube than by car. The average road speed in london has been the exact same since 1900 at just below 9mph. The only exception to this is travel during the day (i.e. not rush) round the M25 (suburb to suburb) when you can probably keep up with the tube / trains.
And Londons system STINKS - but its still faster than by car in 90% of journeys. Doesn;t stop people using the car though - its not like you can turn up at work and have everyone check out your nice new rail pass "looook - its got GPS!!!! you want to shag me now don't you hot PA"
Your also a shitload less likely to be killed on the monorail than by car!
I know MS drones speak some garbage, but the reason they get respect in the boardroom is that they usually speak it with a reaosnable degree of gramatical accuracy.
In the first 100 words of this piece we have the phrase "And we were like: this just ain't right.".
This is not just lame bitching. At least, I don't THINK I'm lamely bitching!
I KNOW this has quotes so can be in 'natural language', and I KNOW the evil Gates says "That would be neat", and I KNOW your President says things like "We're gonna get those folks" but...
If I go into a company to persuade them to use Macs I can quote Jobs, I can point them at a KeyNote where he sounds cool, authoratitive, 'on the ball'. If I go into a company to get them to swallow.NET I can do the same with Gates, or a number of other MS bods.
We STILL, for me, don't have much of a choice with open source. This is cool when I'm talking to a younger generation - but you try to get a 55y.o. PHB to trust "And we were like: this just ain't right.".
I propose we start an open source speech writing fund. Every one chip in a couple of dollars and we'll get someone to give these guys a makeover, and write some good keynotes for them. We'll record them and show them to boards of management.
So - do Neutrinos have mass now or not? Seems that every time I pick up New Scientist theres a new experiment to find the answer.
I suspect they DO, which is a pain in the ass as I bet a million pounds in 1995 that they would be proven to be massless by 2005. Jesus! The stuff that seems important when you're at University!
Agreed. Although, if we're honest, if it were a good book and we got first sniff of it we'd be kinda happy.
Its just that the guy is a penis, and is generally accepted to write pish, so we feel 'sold at' rather than 'updated'.
Seriously. Most 'good' journalists end up writing a book or 5. Whenever this happens (certainly in the UK broadsheets) you tend to get a big spread, often in the Sunday edition, about the book. Usually accompanied by a "OUR JOURNO WRITES BOOK" headline.
When its a new investigation into corruption in Brussels by a Europe correspondant, or a book about W by 'our man in Washington' it IS of interest to the readership. It gives the loyal reader first look. It keeps the bond alive as he moves from paper to book.
When its 'our man in Vegas writes a bonk-buster' or 'globalism dude writes about puppies' then who gives a fuck!
Does anyone else have a toy budget - surely the/. crew do?
We have a CD budget at work - idea being that we all listen to CDs all the time and if anyone takes on in it gets assimilated into the office collection so we ended up buying replacements all the time.
By having a 'CD a week' thing anyone can order up a new CD on the Amazon account whenever they like. Beats being able to take money out of petty cash for milk!
Costs what - 50 x £20 a year and keeps us happier than a bunch of pigs in poop!
Yeah- and get the bastards licence plate aswell so we can go round and slash his tyres!
Seriously. This is one of the difficulties of any online community - you either have a total secret society or a totally open one. You can see who I am when I reply, but not when I mod, or when I AC.
There is no fluffy mid ground. Some fluffy mid ground would be good. I like this suggestion. Maybe it could be opt-in - let people chose to be an anon modder?
But then you get into the realms of the anon meta-modder! dear me. Think I'll just go down the pub!
I mean, what fun is it, if I have to think about my budget for the whole month when buying a game? I don't want my game buying decision to be a well-thought, rational financial decision, but instead I just want to think whether this game will be entertaining me enough in order to justify the amount of money I'm giving away for it.
Absoblimminlutely!
I've bypassed the last couple of generations of consoles because I seriously grudge paying £70 for a game. Even £40 or 50 is too high. My Gameboy (original, big grey brick style) has a stack of about 40 games built up mainly over a couple of years when it was new. Thats about £1000 worth of games for a bloody handheld. Why did I spend that - because if I fancied a game I'd spend 25 quid on it and if I got a couple of weeks of fun out of it I was happy.
But popping into the games shop you don't just splash £70 on a SINGLE game. I can score a decent amount of charlie for that!
make games £20 again and I'm right back in the market!
This brings to mind a recent article on the radio here in the UK about encouraging families to discuss 'deep shit' over supper, while on holidays, and at every conceivable opportunity.
Apparently relatively few people have any form of deep thought during the average week. For instance - with all the middle east conflict at the moment the majority response is along the lines of "I wish they'd just stop" rather than "I can understand why a Jewish state is an important thing post-holocaust, but there has to be something wrong with bombing the palestinians in the 21st Century - or ever".
Or at easter. "OOOhhhh Chocolate" rather than "How am I supposed to accespt that the baby Jeesus was resurected"
Question: How often, and how deeply, do/.ers ponder these issues? Are we more likely to delve deeper where it matters - not just when legislation threatens the wares trade. A poll??
Yeah. Broadband is a luxury - and I don't know too much about the situation in the US. But here in Scotland I jus upgraded from a 1/2 Meg ADSL to a 2 Meg ADSL connection for MINUS £30!
Thats right. I found the half was restrictive, phoned the telco, asked for a quote for a 2 Meg upgrade and was told it would SAVE me £30 a month.
Bitches!
This had been correct for about 6 months. Thats £180 they shafted me for! THATS what makes it seem expensive. People dont know what it costs, and have nasties (or nicies - which people still perceive as nasties) jumping out at them.
I consider my line good value- actually, I consider it cheap. Thats because I NEED it to work through. If I NEEDED it to play games on I'd think it was fucking expensive. Needs must!
People never complain about the price of water - only the price of beer.
Producers are on to the fact that people are willing to pay more for outtakes, missing scenes, etc...
Personally, a movie is a movie. If something didn't make it into the film then who needs it. If I trust the director enough to donate some cash and an evening of my time to his control - who am I to say I need the power to add extra scenes and stuff.
And whats the best way to make the DVD sell more? "The scenes that couldn't make it into the theatre! All the chicks get NAKED!". So when your filming you just make sure that some crappy little scene thats a million miles from the plot has the leading lady flashing her ass. Cut it from the theatre release, 'leak' some crappy stills to some fan sites to hype up expectation, release the DVD without it, then release the widescreen or directors cut DVD which costs 40% more than the first version and has a bit of 'collectable' cardboard inside. Instantly you sell an additional 50%!
The fact is that most TV is essentially crap - so this will probably be crap aswell. However. The basic puzzly elements present in Myst are there in a series like "24" which is on episode 5 or 6 in the UK justnow. From episode to episode you get a bit further through the wider plot with little mini puzzles "whats the senator not telling his wife? who kidnapped tha daughter". Its reasonably compelling stuff.
Puzzles are where its at. This COMES FROM puzzles. This SHOULD be good.
Pure capitalism doesn't need trademark laws. Nor patents. Pure competitive advantage based companies can survive and prosper without such ancient constructs!
It's not the corporations that grant these monopolistic situations - its the STATE! Corps just make best use of available laws because if they don't someone else will and they'll lose competitive advantage.
Take away the laws and the corps can't use 'em. Leave them and they HAVE TO or they cease to exist - just to be replaced by ones that DO because we all want to buy stuff.
Can't have an economy without corps! Can't have your shiny 4 disc LOTR DVD without corps!
Slashdot Mirror
Mummies were used for fuel in the USA a hundred years ago.
Wha?
How?
Where?
When?
Who?
Actually - I would think /. actually SAVES the economy money by giving us a decent hit of 'stuff that matters' in one go - rather than trawling sites for ages.
/. should get tax breaks!
SO!
If everyone in a train fires up their mobiles at once then yeah, there'll be a measurable increase in microwave radiation. This MIGHT cause health problems. If the train company wants to protect itself from getting sued (a la tobacco companies) down the track (geddit) it should put in shielding to stop phones working in all but one area on each train - so people who want to phone can go there.
This would stop me listening to 'IM ON THE TRAIN, NAH, ITS GOING TO BE LATE, FUCKING RAILTRACK, HOWS NANCY? SHIIIIIT, TELL HER I'LL BE THERE SOON' for 8 hours a day on my way to work!
build your own is fine if you care that much about specs. Personally, I don't.
I want a machine thats easy to use, easy to set up, and easy to dick about with.
MS falls down on step 3 - the dicking about with. I can set up and use an XP box in about half a minute - but once I've switched off the voice recog I've almost exhausted the possibiliuties so far as dicking about are concerned.
So a nameless motherboard running Linux sounds a whole heap more attractive than a posho self build with windows
This is a growing problem. In Europe we're not allowed to pump our livestock full of these chemicals for health reasons. BUT the WTO is backing down to US pressure - and is likely to foce the EU to drop these laws and start accepting US orginated products which are full of hormones.
/. have a green category for news of this nature - where science and tech is stepping over the line.
The fact that you get more virulent and antibiotic resistant forms of Avian Flu developing more quickly with the routine use of anti-biotics should be enough reason to ban their use - but the almighty dollar wins again!
This wetland is a seriously BAD idea for the reasons you outline. Shouldn't
I know why. Because every time they try we bitch about them until we bleed!
Behind the times, old hat, not enough this, not enought that, wheres the detail, too much detail, where were the penguins!
Thats why. Who wants to set themselves up for that when people are ever more grateful for sprts and pr0n?
It gives me the hope that maybe a company software based or not will come along and make some business decisions that are not bone-headed and knock the Borg off their perch
And then we can start bitching about THEM!
Seriously - we don't want any ONE company to knock them off the perch. We want the hordes to eat the perch! making sure no one else gets up there to crap on us again!
I'm eyeing up the new ericcson with java
Exactly. You've got a phone with 'a game' now you want one with GAMES. So you get one with Java - so you can play ANY Java game.
Now, allow that phone to talk to other devices and you can write a Java partner game to ANY game on ANY device that can talk to th phone! PC, PS2, GameCube, anything that can talk to the phone.
Useful? I dont know. Could be. Set up a complex SimCity session and take it to work with you on your phone to monitor that all important residential tax rate! Analyse the lap times from last nights session to see where Dan beat you? Some bizarre Yoshi vs Mario thing to let you build up stamina for MarioKart 3000000 while your sitting on the bus?
The possibilities are endless.
Ulimately, this leads to the SAME GAME running on different devices allowing 2 player games on the same game on a PS12 and a PC. Thats probably 10 years away, but having your phone become a gameboy that can talk to your gamecube (in real time) would be coolio!
I think the only time eBooks will become mainstream is when technology allows a full colour screen to play DVD quality video, show static text, and everything else your iPod, PC, TV, Tivo, etc does.
Can't be too far off - just look at the laptop market - 5 years back you were considered cool if you had one at all - now every bastard has at least 2!
Why invest in a single use device? Multi use devices are on the way.
I have to disagree. London has the Tube. It has roads. You travel across london WAY quicker by tube than by car. The average road speed in london has been the exact same since 1900 at just below 9mph. The only exception to this is travel during the day (i.e. not rush) round the M25 (suburb to suburb) when you can probably keep up with the tube / trains.
And Londons system STINKS - but its still faster than by car in 90% of journeys. Doesn;t stop people using the car though - its not like you can turn up at work and have everyone check out your nice new rail pass "looook - its got GPS!!!! you want to shag me now don't you hot PA"
Your also a shitload less likely to be killed on the monorail than by car!
I know MS drones speak some garbage, but the reason they get respect in the boardroom is that they usually speak it with a reaosnable degree of gramatical accuracy.
.NET I can do the same with Gates, or a number of other MS bods.
In the first 100 words of this piece we have the phrase "And we were like: this just ain't right.".
This is not just lame bitching. At least, I don't THINK I'm lamely bitching!
I KNOW this has quotes so can be in 'natural language', and I KNOW the evil Gates says "That would be neat", and I KNOW your President says things like "We're gonna get those folks" but...
If I go into a company to persuade them to use Macs I can quote Jobs, I can point them at a KeyNote where he sounds cool, authoratitive, 'on the ball'.
If I go into a company to get them to swallow
We STILL, for me, don't have much of a choice with open source. This is cool when I'm talking to a younger generation - but you try to get a 55y.o. PHB to trust "And we were like: this just ain't right.".
I propose we start an open source speech writing fund. Every one chip in a couple of dollars and we'll get someone to give these guys a makeover, and write some good keynotes for them. We'll record them and show them to boards of management.
Watch adoption soar!
So - do Neutrinos have mass now or not? Seems that every time I pick up New Scientist theres a new experiment to find the answer.
I suspect they DO, which is a pain in the ass as I bet a million pounds in 1995 that they would be proven to be massless by 2005. Jesus! The stuff that seems important when you're at University!
Better start saving!
classless
Agreed. Although, if we're honest, if it were a good book and we got first sniff of it we'd be kinda happy.
Its just that the guy is a penis, and is generally accepted to write pish, so we feel 'sold at' rather than 'updated'.
Seriously. Most 'good' journalists end up writing a book or 5. Whenever this happens (certainly in the UK broadsheets) you tend to get a big spread, often in the Sunday edition, about the book. Usually accompanied by a "OUR JOURNO WRITES BOOK" headline.
When its a new investigation into corruption in Brussels by a Europe correspondant, or a book about W by 'our man in Washington' it IS of interest to the readership. It gives the loyal reader first look. It keeps the bond alive as he moves from paper to book.
When its 'our man in Vegas writes a bonk-buster' or 'globalism dude writes about puppies' then who gives a fuck!
Does anyone else have a toy budget - surely the /. crew do?
We have a CD budget at work - idea being that we all listen to CDs all the time and if anyone takes on in it gets assimilated into the office collection so we ended up buying replacements all the time.
By having a 'CD a week' thing anyone can order up a new CD on the Amazon account whenever they like. Beats being able to take money out of petty cash for milk!
Costs what - 50 x £20 a year and keeps us happier than a bunch of pigs in poop!
Yeah- and get the bastards licence plate aswell so we can go round and slash his tyres!
Seriously. This is one of the difficulties of any online community - you either have a total secret society or a totally open one. You can see who I am when I reply, but not when I mod, or when I AC.
There is no fluffy mid ground. Some fluffy mid ground would be good. I like this suggestion. Maybe it could be opt-in - let people chose to be an anon modder?
But then you get into the realms of the anon meta-modder! dear me. Think I'll just go down the pub!
charlie: http://www.crew2000.co.uk/a-z_of_drugs/cocaine.htm l.
I mean, what fun is it, if I have to think about my budget for the whole month when buying a game? I don't want my game buying decision to be a well-thought, rational financial decision, but instead I just want to think whether this game will be entertaining me enough in order to justify the amount of money I'm giving away for it.
Absoblimminlutely!
I've bypassed the last couple of generations of consoles because I seriously grudge paying £70 for a game. Even £40 or 50 is too high. My Gameboy (original, big grey brick style) has a stack of about 40 games built up mainly over a couple of years when it was new. Thats about £1000 worth of games for a bloody handheld. Why did I spend that - because if I fancied a game I'd spend 25 quid on it and if I got a couple of weeks of fun out of it I was happy.
But popping into the games shop you don't just splash £70 on a SINGLE game. I can score a decent amount of charlie for that!
make games £20 again and I'm right back in the market!
This guy kills a cat every two years! MAN!!
I think he probably forgets to feed the poor things while he arranges his bricks!
This brings to mind a recent article on the radio here in the UK about encouraging families to discuss 'deep shit' over supper, while on holidays, and at every conceivable opportunity.
/.ers ponder these issues? Are we more likely to delve deeper where it matters - not just when legislation threatens the wares trade. A poll??
Apparently relatively few people have any form of deep thought during the average week. For instance - with all the middle east conflict at the moment the majority response is along the lines of "I wish they'd just stop" rather than "I can understand why a Jewish state is an important thing post-holocaust, but there has to be something wrong with bombing the palestinians in the 21st Century - or ever".
Or at easter. "OOOhhhh Chocolate" rather than "How am I supposed to accespt that the baby Jeesus was resurected"
Question: How often, and how deeply, do
Yeah. Broadband is a luxury - and I don't know too much about the situation in the US. But here in Scotland I jus upgraded from a 1/2 Meg ADSL to a 2 Meg ADSL connection for MINUS £30!
Thats right. I found the half was restrictive, phoned the telco, asked for a quote for a 2 Meg upgrade and was told it would SAVE me £30 a month.
Bitches!
This had been correct for about 6 months. Thats £180 they shafted me for! THATS what makes it seem expensive. People dont know what it costs, and have nasties (or nicies - which people still perceive as nasties) jumping out at them.
I consider my line good value- actually, I consider it cheap. Thats because I NEED it to work through. If I NEEDED it to play games on I'd think it was fucking expensive. Needs must!
People never complain about the price of water - only the price of beer.
Producers are on to the fact that people are willing to pay more for outtakes, missing scenes, etc...
Personally, a movie is a movie. If something didn't make it into the film then who needs it. If I trust the director enough to donate some cash and an evening of my time to his control - who am I to say I need the power to add extra scenes and stuff.
And whats the best way to make the DVD sell more? "The scenes that couldn't make it into the theatre! All the chicks get NAKED!". So when your filming you just make sure that some crappy little scene thats a million miles from the plot has the leading lady flashing her ass. Cut it from the theatre release, 'leak' some crappy stills to some fan sites to hype up expectation, release the DVD without it, then release the widescreen or directors cut DVD which costs 40% more than the first version and has a bit of 'collectable' cardboard inside. Instantly you sell an additional 50%!
Wether it would be better to have this thing implanted in my little finger - so making it EASY to steal if anyone ever decides to steal my ID.
OR. To implant it right deep in my guts as a deterent. Or maybe in the roof of my mouth!
Wouldn't fancy losing my little finger - its handy when a little drunk for proclaiming my evilness. But I enjoy my mouth aswell...
But hey - so long as I dont run for president or anything...
The fact is that most TV is essentially crap - so this will probably be crap aswell. However. The basic puzzly elements present in Myst are there in a series like "24" which is on episode 5 or 6 in the UK justnow. From episode to episode you get a bit further through the wider plot with little mini puzzles "whats the senator not telling his wife? who kidnapped tha daughter". Its reasonably compelling stuff.
Puzzles are where its at. This COMES FROM puzzles. This SHOULD be good.
But it would be such a pretty way to go... oooh! look at the SKYYYYY!!!
Pure capitalism doesn't need trademark laws. Nor patents. Pure competitive advantage based companies can survive and prosper without such ancient constructs!
It's not the corporations that grant these monopolistic situations - its the STATE! Corps just make best use of available laws because if they don't someone else will and they'll lose competitive advantage.
Take away the laws and the corps can't use 'em. Leave them and they HAVE TO or they cease to exist - just to be replaced by ones that DO because we all want to buy stuff.
Can't have an economy without corps! Can't have your shiny 4 disc LOTR DVD without corps!