Even people with no car need a government issued photo ID to do just about anything anymore. In Virginia (don't know about Philly), you can get a non-drivers license ID if you don't drive. Guess where you get it: the DMV. I wouldn't be surprised if Philly is the same, and they give you the same votor registration form no matter what kind of ID you're getting.
I know people here who still use their old Sony Viao Picturebooks (the ones that had the half high screen that you had to scroll up and down. They're fabulous for traveling with unlike my Dell C series which is more of a luggable. They were really expensive new though, especially considering what you had to give up--only one PC-CARD slot in a time before everything was integrated into the mainboard, crummy battery life (although the extended battery helped), a pointing stick (I prefer the touchpads), the fact that you have to scroll the screen up and down constantly, etc...
It really depends what you're doing with your laptop. If you're writing documents on a train, I don't think I'd like a subnotebook (they're just too hard to use for an extended period), but if I'm on site and need to look up information or do some light work in between walking to various locations then they're perfect.
Alright, now a whole new generation can get frustrated and give up on this game before making it a tenth of the way through. Seriously, this was probably the most annoying Infocom game ever published, and I doubt I would have ever made it through without a guide I found on the net years later. There were so many ways to kill yourself in this game that you basically had to write out a script of actions that you must follow precisely in order to survive. Later on in the game it does branch out, but it is very easy to overlook a tiny detail and totally screw yourself over later in the game. The whole thing was an exercise in frustration for most players, especially ones who hadn't read the books or heard the radio broadcasts for several years.
If they're really going to redo the game, I hope they rework some of the more obtuse puzzles to make them a little less frustrating to the general populace.
Ah yes, Grave of the Fireflies. I've traumatized several people into never ever watching animation again with that film. It's not the sort of movie I just whip out when people ask what they should see, it's definatly something you need to get mentally prepared for first.
The biggest problem I have with this knife is that it doesn't have a Phillips head screwdriver. The screwdriver is by far the most common tool I use on my knife, although I would absolutely love to have a USB stick built in (I rarely remember to carry my USB key when I absolutely need it, but I always have my knife). The light would be great except that it is the "press and hold" kind, not the toggle switch kind, which makes it far less useful as it only lets you use one hand if you need light.
The default setting for ZoneAlarm is indeed obnoxious, but you can configure it to just allow outbound connections automatically. You need to configure it into "learning" mode. Actaully, I always configure Zome Alarm in learning mode when I give it to someone else, because I've seen that otherwise people get annoyed and frustrated and just turn the thing off. Besides, even if you get a worm it will just pop up the zillionth box stating something like "" is accessing the internet, allow it? Most people have no idea what it is and just click yes anyway.
Anyway, the primary purpose of a firewall it to keep stuff from entering your machine, there's really no need for the obtrusive popups on outgoing data, it just causes people frustration.
If you absolutely must keep your firewall dialogs, I suggest that you preconfigure your games in ZoneAlarm. You can do this by opening up the control box, going to "Program Control->Programs" and using the "Add" button to add your game. Then you just have to click your game's access permissions and set them to checks. No problem.
In the 20th century, this wasn't a problem. If you wanted to share your home movies you just made a copy onto VHS with 100% assurance that it would be playable.
I see you've never tried to play a LP or SLP tape on one of those very old VCRs that only support SP (2 hour mode). Fortunatly for most Slashdotters, they were still in diapers when this was a problem.
So, how much should a person know about every single area of the globe to be considered "knowledgable about geography"? I'm betting there are only a handful of people in the world who can live up to this standard (knowing which area is still pissed about something that happened 100 years ago, etc...). I mean Africa alone is going to be a real mess with all of the disputed lands and warring tribes. I think this is why people make such a big deal about "officially recognising a country", since that means the mapmakers can draw the lines around it without drawing too much heat (unlike Microsoft apparently).
Most of the examples listed were problems that cropped up due to political reasons, not due to a lack of geography knowledge. No matter how you draw a map, where you place Kashmir is going to offend someone. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are going to be contenious no matter where you place them. Microsoft did the only reasonable thing, they drew the maps to the favor of the richer countries (the ones that buy their software). Sorry Pakistan, no disputed territories for you.
That would basically involve the retailer opening up the boxes for every computer in the store and patching the system every time a new exploit is discovered. This is not going to happen (do you want to pick up a box that's been opened and closed again 100 times? Rather, I would like to see retailers hand the customer a CD at the checkout with all of the latest patches and tell them to insert the CD before they connect to the internet. The CD would autoboot the patcher and get everything ready to go when the computer got on the internet. Unfortunatly, many users would probably forget/ignore this step, or would assume that the one patching session was enough to keep their computer secure forever (this could be alleviated somewhat by making sure Windows Update is there and telling them about new patches).
Try asking your local Mac weenie how much he misses his floppy drive. 80% of the time you're going to get "not at all, I'm glad to see that POS technology finally die off", but the other 20% of the time you're going to get "Worst decision ever! I had to buy a USB floppy drive because Apple was too cheap to put one on there!"
Most PC makers don't seem to be willing to lose that 20%. Well, that an no Mac hardware ships with the drivers on a floppy anymore, unlike many many cheap PC parts[1] (especially ones with crappy websites that don't supply the driver).
[1] NICs in particular are bad about shipping the drivers on a floppy, although some of this may be due to their desire to use boxes so small that a CD wouldn't fit, and NICs are one of the few pieces of hardware where you have an excuse not to just download the driver off of the internet.
Well, the UK swimming team tried to give you a show, but it seems that their plans were thwarted at the last minute. It's a shame too, they could have easily been the fan favorites.
If you're creating a manual, the filesize doesn't matter much. What matters is when you're taking screenshots for the web.
About Raster games, try taking a screenshot of Starcraft or Kohan sometime. Both are sprite based raster games, but both give you 800k PNGs or 100k JPEGs. It's all about choosing the right technology for the job.
It really depends what you are taking a screenshot of. A game screen (probably the most common screenshot type in existance) is going to be horrible with PNG unless you're taking screenshots of Pong. Even desktops are bad unless you unset that nifty photographic background and or pictures on a webbrowser etc...
The point is, once the complexity of the image goes above "very simple" JPEG is going to give you a smaller file nearly every time. There are precious few images worth saving as a file that are "very simple". Worse, PNG ramps up in size very quickly as the complexity increases, which is what the original poster was talking about.
Isn't this kind of like saying: We should give up all of our road maintence/construction budget and spend it all on the development of flying cars? Most people I talk to don't think a space elevator will be practical for decades (if ever). People need to do science now, not 50 years in the future.
You could stick regular VHS tapes into an S-V deck and play them too, and yet almost nobody in the home market bought into S-Video. I'm imagining 2 Blu-Ray players sitting next to a whole shelf of regular DVD players at Wal*Mart, with the Blu-Ray players priced at $200-$500 and the DVD players priced at $50-$100. Joe Schmoe walks in and reads about how he needs a new TV if he wants to make the expensive player worthwhile. Then he'll look on the shelves and see that all of the movies are available as regular DVDs, with a few "high end" blu-ray versions of some movies. I don't think Joe is going to go for the fancy blu-ray player.
Unless HDTV really starts to take off like we've been promised for years (I'm not holding my breath), I think blu-ray is going to be stillborn.
It's not just me that doesn't have a high end home theatre setup, it's 95% of the people in the US. That's one reason SVHS failed in the home market, even though the players could play regular VHS disks there was no advantage for people who did not have S-Video inputs on their TV (most everybody back then). Add in the fact that S-V decks were expensive and you have a technology that never really went anywhere. This is what I fear will happen to Blu-ray, the decks will be expensive and the consumers won't really latch on to them (meaning the decks _remain_ expensive as there is not enough volume to bring the production costs down) and we'll have yet another 'high end' format littering the side of the movie distribution highway, sitting next to S-V and Laserdisk.
Unless you get the average consumer on board, you will never be able to get more than a few token movies on your new fancy format. How many Laserdisks do you own? Or S-Video tapes?
I may be alone in this, but I'm just not hyped up about Blu-ray technology. For me it seems like the SVHS of the DVD era. Since you need a HDTV and a high end home theatre setup to really enjoy it, I can't see the average consumer jumping all over this, especially since everybody already has their regular DVDs. I think it will be good for games that want to cram a lot of FMV on a disc, but for movies I'm just not sold.
Even back in Tom Baker's day, the outstanding episodes - "The Ark In Space", "Terror of the Zygons" (if you can overlook the bad effects for a certain monster)
Wow, I've never seen that episode, but when someone says it has bad F/X for Dr. Who, well, now I'm just intrigued. What is it? A cardboard box shot through a shotglass or something?
Slashdot Mirror
Even people with no car need a government issued photo ID to do just about anything anymore. In Virginia (don't know about Philly), you can get a non-drivers license ID if you don't drive. Guess where you get it: the DMV. I wouldn't be surprised if Philly is the same, and they give you the same votor registration form no matter what kind of ID you're getting.
I know people here who still use their old Sony Viao Picturebooks (the ones that had the half high screen that you had to scroll up and down. They're fabulous for traveling with unlike my Dell C series which is more of a luggable. They were really expensive new though, especially considering what you had to give up--only one PC-CARD slot in a time before everything was integrated into the mainboard, crummy battery life (although the extended battery helped), a pointing stick (I prefer the touchpads), the fact that you have to scroll the screen up and down constantly, etc...
It really depends what you're doing with your laptop. If you're writing documents on a train, I don't think I'd like a subnotebook (they're just too hard to use for an extended period), but if I'm on site and need to look up information or do some light work in between walking to various locations then they're perfect.
How do you prepare for that movie? I would suspect it would involve a lot of LSD...
Alright, now a whole new generation can get frustrated and give up on this game before making it a tenth of the way through. Seriously, this was probably the most annoying Infocom game ever published, and I doubt I would have ever made it through without a guide I found on the net years later. There were so many ways to kill yourself in this game that you basically had to write out a script of actions that you must follow precisely in order to survive. Later on in the game it does branch out, but it is very easy to overlook a tiny detail and totally screw yourself over later in the game. The whole thing was an exercise in frustration for most players, especially ones who hadn't read the books or heard the radio broadcasts for several years.
If they're really going to redo the game, I hope they rework some of the more obtuse puzzles to make them a little less frustrating to the general populace.
Ah yes, Grave of the Fireflies. I've traumatized several people into never ever watching animation again with that film. It's not the sort of movie I just whip out when people ask what they should see, it's definatly something you need to get mentally prepared for first.
All I ask for in a knife is:
- A blade
- A large flathead screwdriver/bottle opener
- Small flathead screwdriver/can opener
- Philips head screwdriver
- 256M+ USB stick
- Built in Photon III, preferably in White
- Scissors
That's all I want. Is it really too much to ask for?Yeah, but this guy didn't have to deal with biblical-sounding measurements like cubit-feet.
Yeah, people realized that they liked all of their old applications and the project never really took off.
The default setting for ZoneAlarm is indeed obnoxious, but you can configure it to just allow outbound connections automatically. You need to configure it into "learning" mode. Actaully, I always configure Zome Alarm in learning mode when I give it to someone else, because I've seen that otherwise people get annoyed and frustrated and just turn the thing off. Besides, even if you get a worm it will just pop up the zillionth box stating something like "" is accessing the internet, allow it? Most people have no idea what it is and just click yes anyway.
Anyway, the primary purpose of a firewall it to keep stuff from entering your machine, there's really no need for the obtrusive popups on outgoing data, it just causes people frustration.
If you absolutely must keep your firewall dialogs, I suggest that you preconfigure your games in ZoneAlarm. You can do this by opening up the control box, going to "Program Control->Programs" and using the "Add" button to add your game. Then you just have to click your game's access permissions and set them to checks. No problem.
If you had read the article you would realize that is not always the case.
So, how much should a person know about every single area of the globe to be considered "knowledgable about geography"? I'm betting there are only a handful of people in the world who can live up to this standard (knowing which area is still pissed about something that happened 100 years ago, etc...). I mean Africa alone is going to be a real mess with all of the disputed lands and warring tribes. I think this is why people make such a big deal about "officially recognising a country", since that means the mapmakers can draw the lines around it without drawing too much heat (unlike Microsoft apparently).
Most of the examples listed were problems that cropped up due to political reasons, not due to a lack of geography knowledge. No matter how you draw a map, where you place Kashmir is going to offend someone. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are going to be contenious no matter where you place them. Microsoft did the only reasonable thing, they drew the maps to the favor of the richer countries (the ones that buy their software). Sorry Pakistan, no disputed territories for you.
That would basically involve the retailer opening up the boxes for every computer in the store and patching the system every time a new exploit is discovered. This is not going to happen (do you want to pick up a box that's been opened and closed again 100 times? Rather, I would like to see retailers hand the customer a CD at the checkout with all of the latest patches and tell them to insert the CD before they connect to the internet. The CD would autoboot the patcher and get everything ready to go when the computer got on the internet. Unfortunatly, many users would probably forget/ignore this step, or would assume that the one patching session was enough to keep their computer secure forever (this could be alleviated somewhat by making sure Windows Update is there and telling them about new patches).
Try asking your local Mac weenie how much he misses his floppy drive. 80% of the time you're going to get "not at all, I'm glad to see that POS technology finally die off", but the other 20% of the time you're going to get "Worst decision ever! I had to buy a USB floppy drive because Apple was too cheap to put one on there!"
Most PC makers don't seem to be willing to lose that 20%. Well, that an no Mac hardware ships with the drivers on a floppy anymore, unlike many many cheap PC parts[1] (especially ones with crappy websites that don't supply the driver).
[1] NICs in particular are bad about shipping the drivers on a floppy, although some of this may be due to their desire to use boxes so small that a CD wouldn't fit, and NICs are one of the few pieces of hardware where you have an excuse not to just download the driver off of the internet.
Well, the UK swimming team tried to give you a show, but it seems that their plans were thwarted at the last minute. It's a shame too, they could have easily been the fan favorites.
If you're creating a manual, the filesize doesn't matter much. What matters is when you're taking screenshots for the web.
About Raster games, try taking a screenshot of Starcraft or Kohan sometime. Both are sprite based raster games, but both give you 800k PNGs or 100k JPEGs. It's all about choosing the right technology for the job.
Nice try, but Bzzzzt! Wrong answer. That expression was probably just as vulgar as it sounds.
It really depends what you are taking a screenshot of. A game screen (probably the most common screenshot type in existance) is going to be horrible with PNG unless you're taking screenshots of Pong. Even desktops are bad unless you unset that nifty photographic background and or pictures on a webbrowser etc...
The point is, once the complexity of the image goes above "very simple" JPEG is going to give you a smaller file nearly every time. There are precious few images worth saving as a file that are "very simple". Worse, PNG ramps up in size very quickly as the complexity increases, which is what the original poster was talking about.
Isn't this kind of like saying: We should give up all of our road maintence/construction budget and spend it all on the development of flying cars? Most people I talk to don't think a space elevator will be practical for decades (if ever). People need to do science now, not 50 years in the future.
Particularly their own smaller/basic research projects...
You could stick regular VHS tapes into an S-V deck and play them too, and yet almost nobody in the home market bought into S-Video. I'm imagining 2 Blu-Ray players sitting next to a whole shelf of regular DVD players at Wal*Mart, with the Blu-Ray players priced at $200-$500 and the DVD players priced at $50-$100. Joe Schmoe walks in and reads about how he needs a new TV if he wants to make the expensive player worthwhile. Then he'll look on the shelves and see that all of the movies are available as regular DVDs, with a few "high end" blu-ray versions of some movies. I don't think Joe is going to go for the fancy blu-ray player.
Unless HDTV really starts to take off like we've been promised for years (I'm not holding my breath), I think blu-ray is going to be stillborn.
It's not just me that doesn't have a high end home theatre setup, it's 95% of the people in the US. That's one reason SVHS failed in the home market, even though the players could play regular VHS disks there was no advantage for people who did not have S-Video inputs on their TV (most everybody back then). Add in the fact that S-V decks were expensive and you have a technology that never really went anywhere. This is what I fear will happen to Blu-ray, the decks will be expensive and the consumers won't really latch on to them (meaning the decks _remain_ expensive as there is not enough volume to bring the production costs down) and we'll have yet another 'high end' format littering the side of the movie distribution highway, sitting next to S-V and Laserdisk.
Unless you get the average consumer on board, you will never be able to get more than a few token movies on your new fancy format. How many Laserdisks do you own? Or S-Video tapes?
I may be alone in this, but I'm just not hyped up about Blu-ray technology. For me it seems like the SVHS of the DVD era. Since you need a HDTV and a high end home theatre setup to really enjoy it, I can't see the average consumer jumping all over this, especially since everybody already has their regular DVDs. I think it will be good for games that want to cram a lot of FMV on a disc, but for movies I'm just not sold.