Its not so much the budget or the time, having spent years missing deadlines I can perfectly understand that. What it is, is stupid ideas, stupid projects that don't address the real problems. It seems like the people in charge of dishing out these projects don't want to listen to the people who actually have to use them. And then there's the rip-off prices of these things that make no sense, suddenly a simple machine will cost £100,000 when you absolutely know that all the parts can be bought at retail price for a fraction of that and the whole thing is going to be mass produced anyway and the development costs could be covered in one unit! Things are managed so badly its insane and not on. I want the government to be chock full of experts in all fields like it used to be, I want these projects to have _exactly_ the funding they need, no more, no less and I want them to be managed with integrity and decency without cutting corners and with good solid workmanship. Tax money should not be something to be given to anyone it should be wisely spent on the things we need and quite frankly fuck peoples selfish profit margins - what happened to doing things for your country instead of ripping it off? its not like people are being asked to do things for free.
Im pretty embarrassed for my country right now. How the fuck did we go from technological pioneers to this? And its only the tip of the iceberg, what with Ken Livingstone's numerous stupid ideas, David Blunkett's insanity and the incompetence of 100's of 'IT' projects (hint: if its called an IT project it means its run by incompetent MCSEs and it will fail catastrophically leaving millions of people without a service or having planes crashing into the ground, time and time again) with tax money falling out of their pockets, fuck them! Why do these idiots get the contracts? What happened to all the competent people??
If you parked it sideways on a San Fransisco hill, surely it would fall over, or atleast be very easily pushed over by a small child? I heard they were pretty dangerous on motorways because of the falling over risk, my cousin has one and says it feels like a big car inside but i still can't see myself with one. On the plus side though, driving in London for example will cut you down to about 3mph so no risk there;)
How does the game industry (who makes games) have anything to do with the retail industry (who isn't supposed to be selling these games to minors) or the parental industry (who are ultimately responsible for controlling their kids)? Its not their problem, they have no control over what happens to that CD after it leaves the factory, as long as they stick the right rating label on it they should be able to do what ever the hell they like, just like any other industry - guns, chemicals, drugs etc. Now im not happy that Monsanto gets to spill all their crap in the air but thats the law and until for example gun manufacturers are forced to make their guns 'less' powerful, why should games manufacturers be forced to make their games 'less' violent?
I'd disagree, if its a vital system (eg the London Underground) then i'd rather know that every penny of my overpriced ticket and taxes went into either the wages of someone who actually did a useful job there or just back into the system. Why would I want anyone making a profit off of that when the government could do it without paying for someones yacht? Why would a private company be able to do any better? if the government is doing a crap job its because they have crap people managing the system: fire them and get someone who has a clue. Plus who is more likely to cut corners so they can get more money? a) someone who owns the private company and only has to answer to a few government quotas or b) someone who has been apointed by the government and gets a fixed salary to get the bloody system working and doesnt get to keep the profit. I really don't understand what a private company can do to any system that the government, with properly apointed people can't?
Not dead, but only has one use now..
on
The VHS is Dead
·
· Score: 1
Other day was waiting in line at the supermarket and saw someone doing their weekly shopping - next to washing up liquid, vegtables, and milk was a DVD player, the market is saturated with cheap players that you have to re-buy every year. Its a pitty DVD recorders havn't caught on much, its like living in the dark ages where cheap VHS players couldnt record! When cheap recorders come around then i'll say VHS is dead.
They're just going to privatise the air traffic control spectrum, police, emergency services, trains and military because 'private companies' are much more efficient at handling it dont you know? what could possibly go wrong?
Can anyone explain what the CD key cheat actually does? is it a key gen or is it some way of cheating or does it let you play without a CD or something? If its a key gen, why would someone buy the product and then use that? if its to stop CD checking then can't you just mount the CD on a virtual drive? If its for cheating and you've broken the EULA by cheating then you should have read the EULA (although i think thats bullshit and tricking people into 'signing' agreements that no-one reads is dishonest, its still law in most countries).
'It is despicable,' said a spokesman for Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, the late president's brother.
Hes probably right, im gonna bet the graphics will be pretty bad and will still need decent hardware, the game play won't be up to much either, its despicable the way games are going, what happend to good gameplay?
The upshot is that if you visited the Register yesterday morning and use IE as your browser.
A few years ago I would have laughed at anyone who said something like that and just ignored it as paranoia by someone who didnt really know much about computers and security or who had been watching too many hacker films. Of course you can't get a virus from visiting a web page thats just stupid, who would allow such insane breaches of security? But Microsoft saw a market: they realised that since most people believed you could get a virus that way, why not match their products with peoples expectations? Next slashdot poll should be who uses IE and why...
Im still waiting for a backlit keyboard that looks like something out of a cockpit, that would rock.. or i could save my eyesight, money and timne and just get a life..
looks good, when can we see it? (even an unstable version would be cool). Gimp does so many things better than photoshop its a pitty this isnt in there..
I looked in the feature list but i couldnt find this feature, its been aching to be in there for years and its one of the only major reasons i dont use GIMP: Non-destructive filters, i.e being able to apply a filter and then later go back and edit the parameters of that filter or take it away, much like photoshops adjustment layers and effects panel. Theres no excuse for not putting this in because it could fit in the existing structure and filters. As my final year project im writing something similar to that idea but a kind of hybrid with connectable blocks. I really wish they would put this in, they could easily do it better than photoshop and make GIMP serious competition. If they already have someone let me know?
Except that most people barely have time to build a spice rack, thats why we have people that sell us things ready made. These people have to answer to us (the customers) in the end though, so if you get all the customers to band together and damand certain things from manufacturers and the government you'll get them...
Im guessing it also has a front-view camera, otherwise that would just be stupid.. so anyone have the front video? - Did he actually make it out alive?
Does it make it illigal to leave the room or mute the sound during commercials? what about if you record a program (on your old VCR) and pause recording during breaks? There has to be some sort of legal limit here, does anyone know what it is? Same goes for P2P, what if you build up a social network through email or instant messaging - I message my friend saying "have you got xyz.mp3?" and if not he will message someone else and ask for me. Where do you draw the line with that? Writing laws is almost the same as writing software, but even Microsoft can write better software than most law-makers can write laws. Law is like a giant software product, some of it is 100 years old and has no use but bloats the rest, market research has been mostly ignored, allot of it is so crap you wouldnt be able to pay peope to use it and the rest is so full of holes that an _entire_ profession has grown up around exploiting it.
Obviously the problem here is not pornography, but these 'naturally occurring opioids'! if you want to solve the problem, you're going to have to ban them - obviously that means banning orgasms! Because what this is suggesting is that not only can society not handle artificial drugs, but we can't handle the natural drugs in our own body! The whole issue of censorship here is completely screwed up, someone can be pretty arousing when they are fully clothed, in fact often more so than when they're totally naked - so censorship is not only draconian, its useless! People learn to combat addictions, and those who don't, well lets just say evolution trims off the crud.
Learning to live in society is like being pushed out of the birds nest, if you don't learn how to deal with a reasonable amount of issues early on then you are totally fucked for life. Go look at the Taliban or Saudi Arabia, their philosophy is light-years ahead of the Christian-right, cover all women and no-one will think about sex. It doesn't work and even worse is that when someone who has been pampered into this 'zero-porn' environment leaves they have major issues. Just imagine how a child would turn out if they were waited on hand and foot from birth, never allowed to so much as cross the road or plug something in on their own because it was too dangerous, imagine they had everything handled for them and everything in their life was sugar coated; would they be able to deal with the outside world? The opposite end of that scenario is if the kid had been allowed to do anything and go anywhere from birth, nature suggests that they would probably get hit by the first car they saw.
There's a balance - people should grow up in an environment as free as possible but with enough restrictions to keep them safe enough to live and not get trauma for life. There are some things that people have to deal with and learn from or else they are going to be weaklings, deal with porn, its not going to kill you.
For anyone who missed something (ie me) can someone explain basically whats fake and whats real? I mean, Chernobyl is real, no-one is disputing that, the pictures of empty buildings and landscapes are real (unless they are empty buildings somewhere else). The big Lenin slogans on walls are real? the checkpoints? which bits were faked? If she didnt ride there alone on a bike then who and how did she get there? anyone?
Yes Mr Blunkett, that is because unlike you, most supermarkets actually have a spine, and the big fucking keyword here is OPTIONAL loyalty cards. I know that if i sign up for one of these cards and the company screws with me then i can have them. Im not going to put up with the one decent law in this country being fucked around with. The Data Protection Act is one of the most perfect laws i have ever seen, im even happy for the police to have their clause for holding data from you if it would endanger a current investigation, obviously you don't want mr gangster or terrorist to be able to just call up and demand to know if their cell or crime family has been cracked and is under watch (yeah i know that can be abused but he wants to walk right through it). At the moment this law is just brilliant, i can get any information any organisation holds on me, be it the police, my school, the shop that has me on their CCTV tape, or as Mark Thomas put it - the military base who have been writing internal memos about how much of a menacing journalist i am. Blunkett can go fuck himself im not having my law messed with and he's not getting another job in politics.
Slashdot Mirror
Its not so much the budget or the time, having spent years missing deadlines I can perfectly understand that. What it is, is stupid ideas, stupid projects that don't address the real problems. It seems like the people in charge of dishing out these projects don't want to listen to the people who actually have to use them. And then there's the rip-off prices of these things that make no sense, suddenly a simple machine will cost £100,000 when you absolutely know that all the parts can be bought at retail price for a fraction of that and the whole thing is going to be mass produced anyway and the development costs could be covered in one unit! Things are managed so badly its insane and not on. I want the government to be chock full of experts in all fields like it used to be, I want these projects to have _exactly_ the funding they need, no more, no less and I want them to be managed with integrity and decency without cutting corners and with good solid workmanship. Tax money should not be something to be given to anyone it should be wisely spent on the things we need and quite frankly fuck peoples selfish profit margins - what happened to doing things for your country instead of ripping it off? its not like people are being asked to do things for free.
Brilliant! hopefully we can sue these people and recover some of the money they wasted then put it into a project that actually has a clue?
Im pretty embarrassed for my country right now. How the fuck did we go from technological pioneers to this? And its only the tip of the iceberg, what with Ken Livingstone's numerous stupid ideas, David Blunkett's insanity and the incompetence of 100's of 'IT' projects (hint: if its called an IT project it means its run by incompetent MCSEs and it will fail catastrophically leaving millions of people without a service or having planes crashing into the ground, time and time again) with tax money falling out of their pockets, fuck them! Why do these idiots get the contracts? What happened to all the competent people??
If you parked it sideways on a San Fransisco hill, surely it would fall over, or atleast be very easily pushed over by a small child? I heard they were pretty dangerous on motorways because of the falling over risk, my cousin has one and says it feels like a big car inside but i still can't see myself with one. On the plus side though, driving in London for example will cut you down to about 3mph so no risk there;)
How does the game industry (who makes games) have anything to do with the retail industry (who isn't supposed to be selling these games to minors) or the parental industry (who are ultimately responsible for controlling their kids)? Its not their problem, they have no control over what happens to that CD after it leaves the factory, as long as they stick the right rating label on it they should be able to do what ever the hell they like, just like any other industry - guns, chemicals, drugs etc. Now im not happy that Monsanto gets to spill all their crap in the air but thats the law and until for example gun manufacturers are forced to make their guns 'less' powerful, why should games manufacturers be forced to make their games 'less' violent?
I'd disagree, if its a vital system (eg the London Underground) then i'd rather know that every penny of my overpriced ticket and taxes went into either the wages of someone who actually did a useful job there or just back into the system. Why would I want anyone making a profit off of that when the government could do it without paying for someones yacht? Why would a private company be able to do any better? if the government is doing a crap job its because they have crap people managing the system: fire them and get someone who has a clue. Plus who is more likely to cut corners so they can get more money? a) someone who owns the private company and only has to answer to a few government quotas or b) someone who has been apointed by the government and gets a fixed salary to get the bloody system working and doesnt get to keep the profit. I really don't understand what a private company can do to any system that the government, with properly apointed people can't?
Other day was waiting in line at the supermarket and saw someone doing their weekly shopping - next to washing up liquid, vegtables, and milk was a DVD player, the market is saturated with cheap players that you have to re-buy every year. Its a pitty DVD recorders havn't caught on much, its like living in the dark ages where cheap VHS players couldnt record! When cheap recorders come around then i'll say VHS is dead.
Pitty it doesnt work for trains...
They're just going to privatise the air traffic control spectrum, police, emergency services, trains and military because 'private companies' are much more efficient at handling it dont you know? what could possibly go wrong?
Can anyone explain what the CD key cheat actually does? is it a key gen or is it some way of cheating or does it let you play without a CD or something? If its a key gen, why would someone buy the product and then use that? if its to stop CD checking then can't you just mount the CD on a virtual drive? If its for cheating and you've broken the EULA by cheating then you should have read the EULA (although i think thats bullshit and tricking people into 'signing' agreements that no-one reads is dishonest, its still law in most countries).
'It is despicable,' said a spokesman for Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, the late president's brother.
Hes probably right, im gonna bet the graphics will be pretty bad and will still need decent hardware, the game play won't be up to much either, its despicable the way games are going, what happend to good gameplay?
duh! they mean the area that the light shines on, like your yard.
The upshot is that if you visited the Register yesterday morning and use IE as your browser.
A few years ago I would have laughed at anyone who said something like that and just ignored it as paranoia by someone who didnt really know much about computers and security or who had been watching too many hacker films. Of course you can't get a virus from visiting a web page thats just stupid, who would allow such insane breaches of security? But Microsoft saw a market: they realised that since most people believed you could get a virus that way, why not match their products with peoples expectations? Next slashdot poll should be who uses IE and why...
Im still waiting for a backlit keyboard that looks like something out of a cockpit, that would rock.. or i could save my eyesight, money and timne and just get a life..
looks good, when can we see it? (even an unstable version would be cool). Gimp does so many things better than photoshop its a pitty this isnt in there..
I looked in the feature list but i couldnt find this feature, its been aching to be in there for years and its one of the only major reasons i dont use GIMP: Non-destructive filters, i.e being able to apply a filter and then later go back and edit the parameters of that filter or take it away, much like photoshops adjustment layers and effects panel. Theres no excuse for not putting this in because it could fit in the existing structure and filters. As my final year project im writing something similar to that idea but a kind of hybrid with connectable blocks. I really wish they would put this in, they could easily do it better than photoshop and make GIMP serious competition. If they already have someone let me know?
Except that most people barely have time to build a spice rack, thats why we have people that sell us things ready made. These people have to answer to us (the customers) in the end though, so if you get all the customers to band together and damand certain things from manufacturers and the government you'll get them...
Im guessing it also has a front-view camera, otherwise that would just be stupid.. so anyone have the front video? - Did he actually make it out alive?
Richard Branson surrenders?
Does it make it illigal to leave the room or mute the sound during commercials? what about if you record a program (on your old VCR) and pause recording during breaks? There has to be some sort of legal limit here, does anyone know what it is? Same goes for P2P, what if you build up a social network through email or instant messaging - I message my friend saying "have you got xyz.mp3?" and if not he will message someone else and ask for me. Where do you draw the line with that? Writing laws is almost the same as writing software, but even Microsoft can write better software than most law-makers can write laws. Law is like a giant software product, some of it is 100 years old and has no use but bloats the rest, market research has been mostly ignored, allot of it is so crap you wouldnt be able to pay peope to use it and the rest is so full of holes that an _entire_ profession has grown up around exploiting it.
Obviously the problem here is not pornography, but these 'naturally occurring opioids'! if you want to solve the problem, you're going to have to ban them - obviously that means banning orgasms! Because what this is suggesting is that not only can society not handle artificial drugs, but we can't handle the natural drugs in our own body! The whole issue of censorship here is completely screwed up, someone can be pretty arousing when they are fully clothed, in fact often more so than when they're totally naked - so censorship is not only draconian, its useless! People learn to combat addictions, and those who don't, well lets just say evolution trims off the crud.
Learning to live in society is like being pushed out of the birds nest, if you don't learn how to deal with a reasonable amount of issues early on then you are totally fucked for life. Go look at the Taliban or Saudi Arabia, their philosophy is light-years ahead of the Christian-right, cover all women and no-one will think about sex. It doesn't work and even worse is that when someone who has been pampered into this 'zero-porn' environment leaves they have major issues. Just imagine how a child would turn out if they were waited on hand and foot from birth, never allowed to so much as cross the road or plug something in on their own because it was too dangerous, imagine they had everything handled for them and everything in their life was sugar coated; would they be able to deal with the outside world? The opposite end of that scenario is if the kid had been allowed to do anything and go anywhere from birth, nature suggests that they would probably get hit by the first car they saw.
There's a balance - people should grow up in an environment as free as possible but with enough restrictions to keep them safe enough to live and not get trauma for life. There are some things that people have to deal with and learn from or else they are going to be weaklings, deal with porn, its not going to kill you.
For anyone who missed something (ie me) can someone explain basically whats fake and whats real? I mean, Chernobyl is real, no-one is disputing that, the pictures of empty buildings and landscapes are real (unless they are empty buildings somewhere else). The big Lenin slogans on walls are real? the checkpoints? which bits were faked? If she didnt ride there alone on a bike then who and how did she get there? anyone?
I just realised the man from the Simpsons mono-rail episode did a better sales pitch!
seriously, what could possibly go wrong??
Yes Mr Blunkett, that is because unlike you, most supermarkets actually have a spine, and the big fucking keyword here is OPTIONAL loyalty cards. I know that if i sign up for one of these cards and the company screws with me then i can have them. Im not going to put up with the one decent law in this country being fucked around with. The Data Protection Act is one of the most perfect laws i have ever seen, im even happy for the police to have their clause for holding data from you if it would endanger a current investigation, obviously you don't want mr gangster or terrorist to be able to just call up and demand to know if their cell or crime family has been cracked and is under watch (yeah i know that can be abused but he wants to walk right through it). At the moment this law is just brilliant, i can get any information any organisation holds on me, be it the police, my school, the shop that has me on their CCTV tape, or as Mark Thomas put it - the military base who have been writing internal memos about how much of a menacing journalist i am. Blunkett can go fuck himself im not having my law messed with and he's not getting another job in politics.