I'm no hardcore gamer but to me the value of a demo has always been to decide whether or not I want to spend money. Am I showing my age or something? Because what is called monetising in the summary I call money grubbing. If EA are counting on this I think they'll likely implode. If they're not, well done on one of the best jokes I've heard in a long time. Bonus points if you can convince your developers that coding is a game, and get them to pay you for working 18 hour days 7 days a week.
This is a country where most citizens have ready access to real militarily useful guns, and the training to use them. And they're worried about Doom?
Some one mod this guy up!!! Common sense has gone to the dogs. If your citizens are so well armed and can't separate fantasy from reality or are liable to become violent playing computer games you have a MASSIVE problem and banning games ain't gonna solve it!!!
99% of the employees have 10-30 yellow stickys stuck all over their desk for reminders. People seem somehow amazed and awestruck by my clean and streamlined desk
How else do you let the boss know you have 10-30 important things that you MUST get done? He probably thinks you do no work. You're probably about to lose your job, all because you don't have sticky notes!!! Quick man, get a sticky note pad!
Why for example does Windows Explorer decide to freeze ALL network connections when a single URN isn't quickly resolved? Why is it that when my USB drive wakes up, all explorer windows freeze? If you are trying to tell me there's no way using the current abstractions to implement this I say you're mad. For that matter when a copy or move fails in Explorer, why can't I simply resume it once I've fixed whatever the problem is. You're left piecing together what has and hasn't been moved. File requests make up a good deal of what we're waiting for. It's not the bus or the drives that are usually the limitation. It's the shitty coding. I can live with a hit at startup. I can live with delays if I have to eat into swap. But I'm sick and tired of basic functionality being missing or broken.
The main problem is that you either have to provide students with power outlets, or the batteries have to be able to perform in the real world for around 8-12 hours.
I would have loved to have had such an option when I was in Uni. You had two choices. Either carry the textbook as you were told in which case you'd better have a good hiking backpack and like being a social outcast, or don't carry them and do your homework/reading at home. Most students chose the later.
I did my Masters online and never had to carry a book. It was a much better experience in that respect.
Your skills of extrapolation are broken. Of the lay people I've met, who number 90%+ of the population, very few claimed to hate.
This guy says that of those who claimed to hate, 1 or 2 had a real reason to do so.
20% of users would be of ALL users.
What the parent is saying is that HE personally accepted 1 or 2 reasons. But he was clearly implying that this extrapolation held in general for the wider user community. So I haven't failed at math. You've failed at human interaction. Either that or you're just being dishonest. I see you shoot weddings for a living so I'd say that the odds are 50-50 as to which.
Windows 7 is the best product MS has released in years. While this may be considered a pyrrhic victory (ME, anyone?), the fact remains that Windows 7 is a solid product. And, I daresay, a reasonably priced one. Do we have to continue this tired process of Microsoft bashing? It's gotten rather tiresome.
It is BECAUSE Windows 7 is the only decent product MS has released in years and because of all the pain that the rest of the software they released in all those years that you will continue to see some well deserved MS bashing for some time to come. They took a lot of money for sub-standard product, have engaged in some very shady behaviour, and a lot of people aren't happy with them. If you're tired of it and don't want to know, you're very welcome to quit reading the comments.
Except Vista was fine. For every 10 users who claimed to "hate" Vista, you could find 1 or 2 who had a real reason to do so,
First of all 20% failure rate is not "fine". Not by a long shot. Secondly I knew plenty of people who had multiple legitimate reasons to complain. I myself counted at least 4 and I barely use Vista because the first thing I did was set up dual boot on the only machine I used Vista with. (I actually have a "free" Vista->XP upgrade I paid $20 for that I never used for my desktop purely based on how lousy Vista was on the laptop) . In the three or four dozen times I've booted it I had:
1) Strange sound card issues where the sound card would make a very loud buzzing noise resuming from Hibernate. Sound card drivers also removed functionality
2) Copies to and from network taking a very long time
3) Failed windows backup that would have required a total reinstall had I not been able to use XP and VirtualPC to mount the partition and do some complicated black magic to restore. This was inexcusable. It would remove existing partitions and then immediately fail to restore the backup leaving you with a hosed machine.
And it was DOG slow. This is of course AFTER I'd turned off insane garbage like UAC.
Vista was pure JUNK and those who deny it were either very lucky or very dishonest.
This is not unlike payola, where a record label pays a radio station to promote sales of music. Except without the payment. Maybe I need a car analogy...
So many made up words, so little meaning. The term 'fraud' has been around since the dawn of the English language.
Seriously, there is only one kind of threat the home user faces, and that's software attacks, none of which are aimed specifically at him, and all of which are acquired either through his web browser or through infected executables given to him by his friends. If he runs NoScript, disables javascript in email, and gets executables only from reputable sources, there is simply no way he can get infected.
If your web browser has an exploit that hasn't been patched, it may not require Javascript. The measures you mention are good but they are not a guarantee.
One big one, particularly for home users, is inaccurate discounting of costs that are either in the future, uncertain, or both. An $80 external HDD can substantially reduce your risk of losing files to disk failure. A shockingly small number of people, even people with actual money, who have data that are valuable or at least sentimental. The risks just aren't in their face; but the price tag is, so they don't do it.
Bad example. The main reason people don't sync their data is that it's not trivial. Finding software that will do it well is a pain. Dealing with problems properly means keeping checksums on the files. Meanwhile software alters the working copy of your data (eg. music library updated from the net or photos where metadata is added). Keeping track of which copy is good is non-trivial. Doing it properly means a 3rd off site copy is a good idea.
I should know - I have over 250,000 photos in my library over around 10 years and I haven't lost one that made it to the computer yet.
Now I can tell my boss and co-workers that I have to have a porn orgasm ringtone because it's therapautic!!! Too bad they'll see through this and fire me just as quickly but at least I can say I left my last job on medical grounds.
There was a time when it as illegal to teach a black person to read. A law which some of the better churches happily disregarded, because it offended their religious sensibilities. I'm advocating for that sort of exception. Your whole system depends on government being the ultimate arbitrator of right and wrong. I think (and history backs me up) that government really sucks at that.
Hold on. This is the same church that separated children from their "savage" parents (read up on Australia's "stolen generation" some time for a nice long lived example). The government may have its failings as moral arbiter, but the church has faired no better.
The fact is that good people who have formed their own opinions on what's moral and just will disregard bad rules regardless of whether they are set by church or state.
You really are very biased and that is one hell of a twisted world view!!!
My first choice for career was theology, and I have a Ph.D. in New Testament. So I've given this a bit of thought.
...and you're extremely biased.
The problem is that, without these exceptions, you end up setting the disastrous precedent of the state defining what is an acceptable religious belief to hold.
Nope. Bzzt. Wrong. We are talking about exceptions to the law that everyone else must abide by due to your religion. We are not talking about being told what you may or may not believe.
However, allowing freedom of religion--allowing religious groups the freedom to have mixed services, or women in the pulpit, or roller-skating as a religious service, or damned near anything so long as you can make some sort of argument that it serves a religious function--becomes the place where unpopular viewpoints can be expressed.
You certainly don't need religion to express unpopular views or beliefs. I don't think your argument is terribly logical.
It's worth remembering that all the humanist values that you hold dear... the rights of man, civil liberty, universal suffrage, the civil rights movement... were first nurtured in churches, at a time when these views were very unpopular.
Now you're being dishonest. Religion in general and churches in particular are responsible for setting science back centuries or even millennia. If you held an unpopular view as defined by the state religion you could be excommunicated, tortured, killed. The Galileo incident is the standard one brought up but it is tip of the iceberg and had other political components (You don't call those in power simpletons!!!)
So, my point is that granting special privileges to religious belief serves a useful social purpose. Yes, it's good for religious people (although I might argue how good it really is... religions tend to thrive on persecution.) But it's also good for society as a whole. Simply put, kill religious freedom is like eating your seed-corn.
No it doesn't. It grants groups special privileges based on irrational views. You haven't demonstrated your point AT ALL.
Don't you guys get attacked by terrorists every single day then? Because over here in the US if you don't identify everyone based on their IP address we're gonna have 9/11 -EVERY DAY-!
Don't you guys get attacked by terrorists every single day then? Because over here in the US if you don't identify everyone based on their IP address we're gonna have 9/11 -EVERY DAY-!
That attack was pioneered by Bill Murray and is referred to as the Groundhog Day attack.
Hey now, we cannot have it both ways. If we want to push community support, that means that we have to be ready to answer the same novice questions over and over again
We do answer again and again. We've got it down to a fine art. A single answer: RTFM!
Unfortunately your advice doesn't extend to your good self it would seem.
I'm hardly surprised by your response; nobody enjoys being shown up as a hypocrite. I couldn't have anticipated the puerility of your response though - thanks for the giggle!
Showed me up as a hypocrite? Pardon me, but you didn't even address my response. You simply picked out one line, took it out of context, and said that you refused to read further. To top it off, you simultaneously have the tenacity to accuse me of being childish, and wonder why my response might be aimed at someone with a child's intellect. Yet you say it gave you a "giggle". Small things, eh?
If that's what you call a convincing counter-argument or adult behaviour, I simply pity you. You're busy accusing me of hypocrisy on the shakiest ground and can't even see the irony.
+ Serious real world scalable language used in both business and science + Freely available on a wide variety of hardware -> gives access to any child with any kind of computer + Learn OO from day 1 + Java collections give students access to data structures and algorithms without having to get bogged down in writing them at a low level - Never learn to implement those low level data structures in algorithms (but don't forget you have just 2 months!) - Slower than C - Not as close to the hardware as C
Do we then start sending troops into nation X for downloading Disney movies?
Can you start by arresting my wife? She has legal DVDs not downloads or illegal copies, but those Disney flicks drive me insane and should be illegal!!!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm no hardcore gamer but to me the value of a demo has always been to decide whether or not I want to spend money. Am I showing my age or something? Because what is called monetising in the summary I call money grubbing. If EA are counting on this I think they'll likely implode. If they're not, well done on one of the best jokes I've heard in a long time. Bonus points if you can convince your developers that coding is a game, and get them to pay you for working 18 hour days 7 days a week.
Next you'll tell me Monster cables aren't worth it!
This is a country where most citizens have ready access to real militarily useful guns, and the training to use them. And they're worried about Doom?
Some one mod this guy up!!! Common sense has gone to the dogs. If your citizens are so well armed and can't separate fantasy from reality or are liable to become violent playing computer games you have a MASSIVE problem and banning games ain't gonna solve it!!!
99% of the employees have 10-30 yellow stickys stuck all over their desk for reminders. People seem somehow amazed and awestruck by my clean and streamlined desk
How else do you let the boss know you have 10-30 important things that you MUST get done? He probably thinks you do no work. You're probably about to lose your job, all because you don't have sticky notes!!! Quick man, get a sticky note pad!
Quote: There are still people.. lots of them.. who will print out emails to read them. No technology will fix this.
Did you send them a memo to stop doing it? ;-)
...the implementation sucks.
Why for example does Windows Explorer decide to freeze ALL network connections when a single URN isn't quickly resolved? Why is it that when my USB drive wakes up, all explorer windows freeze? If you are trying to tell me there's no way using the current abstractions to implement this I say you're mad. For that matter when a copy or move fails in Explorer, why can't I simply resume it once I've fixed whatever the problem is. You're left piecing together what has and hasn't been moved. File requests make up a good deal of what we're waiting for. It's not the bus or the drives that are usually the limitation. It's the shitty coding. I can live with a hit at startup. I can live with delays if I have to eat into swap. But I'm sick and tired of basic functionality being missing or broken.
The main problem is that you either have to provide students with power outlets, or the batteries have to be able to perform in the real world for around 8-12 hours.
I would have loved to have had such an option when I was in Uni. You had two choices. Either carry the textbook as you were told in which case you'd better have a good hiking backpack and like being a social outcast, or don't carry them and do your homework/reading at home. Most students chose the later.
I did my Masters online and never had to carry a book. It was a much better experience in that respect.
Your skills of extrapolation are broken. Of the lay people I've met, who number 90%+ of the population, very few claimed to hate.
This guy says that of those who claimed to hate, 1 or 2 had a real reason to do so.
20% of users would be of ALL users.
What the parent is saying is that HE personally accepted 1 or 2 reasons. But he was clearly implying that this extrapolation held in general for the wider user community. So I haven't failed at math. You've failed at human interaction. Either that or you're just being dishonest. I see you shoot weddings for a living so I'd say that the odds are 50-50 as to which.
Windows 7 is the best product MS has released in years. While this may be considered a pyrrhic victory (ME, anyone?), the fact remains that Windows 7 is a solid product. And, I daresay, a reasonably priced one. Do we have to continue this tired process of Microsoft bashing? It's gotten rather tiresome.
It is BECAUSE Windows 7 is the only decent product MS has released in years and because of all the pain that the rest of the software they released in all those years that you will continue to see some well deserved MS bashing for some time to come. They took a lot of money for sub-standard product, have engaged in some very shady behaviour, and a lot of people aren't happy with them. If you're tired of it and don't want to know, you're very welcome to quit reading the comments.
Except Vista was fine. For every 10 users who claimed to "hate" Vista, you could find 1 or 2 who had a real reason to do so,
First of all 20% failure rate is not "fine". Not by a long shot. Secondly I knew plenty of people who had multiple legitimate reasons to complain. I myself counted at least 4 and I barely use Vista because the first thing I did was set up dual boot on the only machine I used Vista with. (I actually have a "free" Vista->XP upgrade I paid $20 for that I never used for my desktop purely based on how lousy Vista was on the laptop) . In the three or four dozen times I've booted it I had:
1) Strange sound card issues where the sound card would make a very loud buzzing noise resuming from Hibernate. Sound card drivers also removed functionality
2) Copies to and from network taking a very long time
3) Failed windows backup that would have required a total reinstall had I not been able to use XP and VirtualPC to mount the partition and do some complicated black magic to restore. This was inexcusable. It would remove existing partitions and then immediately fail to restore the backup leaving you with a hosed machine.
And it was DOG slow. This is of course AFTER I'd turned off insane garbage like UAC.
Vista was pure JUNK and those who deny it were either very lucky or very dishonest.
This is not unlike payola, where a record label pays a radio station to promote sales of music. Except without the payment. Maybe I need a car analogy...
So many made up words, so little meaning. The term 'fraud' has been around since the dawn of the English language.
People have criticised the site and the report. I'll agree that nothing is perfect but it's the best I've seen.
http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/summary/summary2009.pdf
http://www.americanscientist.org/science/pub/everything-is-dangerous-a-controversy
Seriously, there is only one kind of threat the home user faces, and that's software attacks, none of which are aimed specifically at him, and all of which are acquired either through his web browser or through infected executables given to him by his friends. If he runs NoScript, disables javascript in email, and gets executables only from reputable sources, there is simply no way he can get infected.
If your web browser has an exploit that hasn't been patched, it may not require Javascript. The measures you mention are good but they are not a guarantee.
One big one, particularly for home users, is inaccurate discounting of costs that are either in the future, uncertain, or both. An $80 external HDD can substantially reduce your risk of losing files to disk failure. A shockingly small number of people, even people with actual money, who have data that are valuable or at least sentimental. The risks just aren't in their face; but the price tag is, so they don't do it.
Bad example. The main reason people don't sync their data is that it's not trivial. Finding software that will do it well is a pain. Dealing with problems properly means keeping checksums on the files. Meanwhile software alters the working copy of your data (eg. music library updated from the net or photos where metadata is added). Keeping track of which copy is good is non-trivial. Doing it properly means a 3rd off site copy is a good idea.
I should know - I have over 250,000 photos in my library over around 10 years and I haven't lost one that made it to the computer yet.
Now I can tell my boss and co-workers that I have to have a porn orgasm ringtone because it's therapautic!!! Too bad they'll see through this and fire me just as quickly but at least I can say I left my last job on medical grounds.
There was a time when it as illegal to teach a black person to read. A law which some of the better churches happily disregarded, because it offended their religious sensibilities. I'm advocating for that sort of exception. Your whole system depends on government being the ultimate arbitrator of right and wrong. I think (and history backs me up) that government really sucks at that.
Hold on. This is the same church that separated children from their "savage" parents (read up on Australia's "stolen generation" some time for a nice long lived example). The government may have its failings as moral arbiter, but the church has faired no better.
The fact is that good people who have formed their own opinions on what's moral and just will disregard bad rules regardless of whether they are set by church or state.
You really are very biased and that is one hell of a twisted world view!!!
My first choice for career was theology, and I have a Ph.D. in New Testament. So I've given this a bit of thought.
...and you're extremely biased.
The problem is that, without these exceptions, you end up setting the disastrous precedent of the state defining what is an acceptable religious belief to hold.
Nope. Bzzt. Wrong. We are talking about exceptions to the law that everyone else must abide by due to your religion. We are not talking about being told what you may or may not believe.
However, allowing freedom of religion--allowing religious groups the freedom to have mixed services, or women in the pulpit, or roller-skating as a religious service, or damned near anything so long as you can make some sort of argument that it serves a religious function--becomes the place where unpopular viewpoints can be expressed.
You certainly don't need religion to express unpopular views or beliefs. I don't think your argument is terribly logical.
It's worth remembering that all the humanist values that you hold dear... the rights of man, civil liberty, universal suffrage, the civil rights movement... were first nurtured in churches, at a time when these views were very unpopular.
Now you're being dishonest. Religion in general and churches in particular are responsible for setting science back centuries or even millennia. If you held an unpopular view as defined by the state religion you could be excommunicated, tortured, killed. The Galileo incident is the standard one brought up but it is tip of the iceberg and had other political components (You don't call those in power simpletons!!!)
So, my point is that granting special privileges to religious belief serves a useful social purpose. Yes, it's good for religious people (although I might argue how good it really is... religions tend to thrive on persecution.) But it's also good for society as a whole. Simply put, kill religious freedom is like eating your seed-corn.
No it doesn't. It grants groups special privileges based on irrational views. You haven't demonstrated your point AT ALL.
Don't you guys get attacked by terrorists every single day then? Because over here in the US if you don't identify everyone based on their IP address we're gonna have 9/11 -EVERY DAY-!
Don't you guys get attacked by terrorists every single day then? Because over here in the US if you don't identify everyone based on their IP address we're gonna have 9/11 -EVERY DAY-!
That attack was pioneered by Bill Murray and is referred to as the Groundhog Day attack.
Hey now, we cannot have it both ways. If we want to push community support, that means that we have to be ready to answer the same novice questions over and over again
We do answer again and again. We've got it down to a fine art. A single answer: RTFM!
Unfortunately your advice doesn't extend to your good self it would seem.
I'm hardly surprised by your response; nobody enjoys being shown up as a hypocrite. I couldn't have anticipated the puerility of your response though - thanks for the giggle!
Showed me up as a hypocrite? Pardon me, but you didn't even address my response. You simply picked out one line, took it out of context, and said that you refused to read further. To top it off, you simultaneously have the tenacity to accuse me of being childish, and wonder why my response might be aimed at someone with a child's intellect. Yet you say it gave you a "giggle". Small things, eh?
If that's what you call a convincing counter-argument or adult behaviour, I simply pity you. You're busy accusing me of hypocrisy on the shakiest ground and can't even see the irony.
Have a nice life.
+ Serious real world scalable language used in both business and science
+ Freely available on a wide variety of hardware -> gives access to any child with any kind of computer
+ Learn OO from day 1
+ Java collections give students access to data structures and algorithms without having to get bogged down in writing them at a low level
- Never learn to implement those low level data structures in algorithms (but don't forget you have just 2 months!)
- Slower than C
- Not as close to the hardware as C
Overall a decent compromise.
You seemed unaware that the hardware was quite capable of the task.
Your assumption. I said no such thing. I was saying it's not as simple as an mp3 player with a digital equaliser. I stand by that.
Do we then start sending troops into nation X for downloading Disney movies?
Can you start by arresting my wife? She has legal DVDs not downloads or illegal copies, but those Disney flicks drive me insane and should be illegal!!!
Just kidding honey! Honest (Quick arrest her!)
The man has shown he has no regard for what Australians want.