It's kind of embarrasingly, really. They knew which building it was in for ages, but it took them years to figure out they just had to smash through the big Roman numeral 10 on the floor.
" why hasn't anyone taken the XBOX os and put it on a PC?"
Probably for the following reasons:
- TV's nice to play on.
- Games can potentially be 9 gigs.
- You lose the controller, and ya kinda need it.
- XBOX's are only $150.
- Emulators are fun to tinker with, but it takes a a long time to make one work that is relatively reliable. They don't really get interesting until the system's out of production.
"Plus, you get the added bonus that you got to do something that Microsoft doesn't want, all while MS makes a loss on the XBox. "
This is absolutely the wrong reason to be doing this. Not only does it not reflect well on the community trying to make this work, it also gives other console manufacturers reason to really lock down their machine. Frankly, for this reason alone, butting heads with Microsoft over this should be reconsidered. (Note: A good chunk of my bitterness here has to do with that idiot CEO of Lindows.com putting up a reward to break the system.)
"Taking your work copy of Win2k home and installing it on your own computer is illegal too but how many people here have done that? There is no SS that is going to start breaking into your house and checking to see if you have. "
Perhaps not, but Windows XP calls home and asks for permission to run. Welcome to the connected world, more of this type of stuff will happen. I think the point here is that eventually even the content industry will be able to enforce their own views. Should that happen, we'd want laws protecting us.
"Shocking as it may seem to you, you are not the only person reading slashdot. This means that one or more readers will be inconvenienced by having to register, NYT or otherwise."
And you think I *haven't* been 'inconvenienced' by having to register? You think I'm flashing some sort of VIP pass and getting in sans registration? Is it suddenly more convenient to go searching through comments looking for the 'reg free link' when all you have to do is register once with fake info?
"Far from being communist, this is elementary courtesy, something your parents failed to communicate to you."
NYT's doing the work and Slashdot's leeching off it. Why aren't you proposing that we show NYT the courtesy of doing the simple task they ask in order to get to their content?
"So go upstairs (stomping your feet) and yell at your mom for not teaching you courtesy and consideration for others."
" Imagine your favorite movie that you originally bought on VHS, then bought on DVD, and eventually buy on . You should only have to purchase the content once. "
The content between a VHS and DVD is different. Very few movies don't have extra features. The DVD's got extra pixels etc, too.
I *almost* agree with what you're saying, but that little loophole right there pretty much defeats it. You should, however, be able to personally convert it to whatever format you like, i.e. DivX. (The codec, not the Circuit City player...)
"Nope. IGN publishes almost entirely original content. They don't require me to register to view that content. "
Dig a little deeper, you'll find where they want you to register. In some cases, they want you to pay, too.
" Some of us take our privacy more seriously."
It's being taken to a ridiculous extreme, keep reading.
"And keep in mind... While the NYT (or any reasonably-legit site) may not currently spam or sell your info, it takes only one hacker, or one policy change, to turn their registration DB into a spam mailing list."
I already said this before, NYT doesn't validate your email address. You can put anything you want there and you'll be registerred. Therefore, you can register without personal information, be safe from a 'hacker', and get news without being one of those bitchy moany types.
Bitching about NYT is a complete and total waste of time. This is not the topic to be all righteous about.
"Why, oh why, do people choose to link to a page that requires registration when it's totally unnecessary? "
Because most of us don't give a flying fuck and just registerred with them. Seeing as how they don't send spam etc, it's a small price to pay for a free service.
This crusade against NYT is redudant, lame, and very tiring. More embarrasingly, they don't even check to see if you have a valid email. You want to complain about a site? Go glance around IGN.com. Bet you find at least 5 things to bitch about within the first 5 page loads.
Re:Just 'cuz it hasn't been studied ...
on
More on Global Dimming
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"It's a heck of a lot worse to, say, invade a country on another continent than to attack a neighboring village."
You're measuring human 'dimness' by the acts of a gov't under motivations we don't have all the facts on?
"Having characters called things like Slartibartfast and Zloat kind of makes me think he was taking stabs in the dark at writing a having a huge joke over on his readers/consumers. "
I thought the joke was that aliens always have silly names.
"...After what I've heard about Disney having the script re-written after Adams' death, I'm not exactly looking forward to this _travesty_ with his name on it. "
On the plus side, we'll be able to get Peril Sensitive Sunglasses in our next Happy Meal. They insist the Mice are a tie-in as well.
"You won't believe this, I know, but it's still a fact that I know a guy who - after couple of guesses - knows what you typed on your keyboard just by listening to your keyboard clicks."
"I like how at every E3, the Date Fairy suddenly dumps her (his?) magical bag of special date dust over everyone's game. In fact, E3 is just one huge calendar orgy."
I initially misinterpreted what you meant by 'date fairy' at E3. You don't wanna know what I imagined. NEED COFFEE.
Ask the people that protested the Iraq war. The country was pretty darned divided about that. (To the point that I was stranded in downtown while the protestors inconsiderately closed off all the streets.)
" the US government, does move in the direction that most Americans want it to move."
No, it does what it thinks is right, and the people either like it or they don't. Additionally, the gov't doesn't give us all the info they have, it's more about Public Approval than Public Opinion.
"Why is the US now shocked by pictures coming out out Iraq?"
Are you comparing Afghanistan to Iraq? If not, then could you clarify? If so, the answer is: Not everybody in Iraq was considered an enemy, however a good chunk of Afghanistan was. Granted, nobody wanted civillian casualties in either case (lotsa protesting about that, too) but the country basically gave us the raspberry when we demanded Osama. So, the difference? Context. Please don't argue with me if it's logical or not, I'm not making that case. Just giving you my impression of what happened.
"My impression is that most Americans are poorly educated about the world outside their borders. Most Americans seem to believe that whatever America does is right, that blood washes off the shining armour."
I understand how you've arrived at this view, but it is inaccurate. What the rest of the world has a VERY difficult time understanding is just how large the USA is. Worse, our neighbors don't give us trouble. We all love Canada. We all love Mexico. We don't hear a whole lot from south of Mex so it's not really on our radar. The stuff going on the other side of the world really doesn't affect us directly a whole lot. It may seem inconsiderate, but understand that there is a barrage of things to learn just about this country, let alone what's going on outside of it. The geography of this country alone is quite diverse. Visitors to our country typically speak English so knowing something like Spanish is only mildly helpful. So we seem a little ignorant. Justifiably so, however it is inaccurate to assume we choose to be that way. I don't mean to imply that you've stated that, but I have heard it a few times. Nobody seems to understand that we can't just hop into a car, drive for half a day, and be in another country.
So do we believe that whatever America does is right? Man if you were here you wouldn't believe that. The country is pretty well divided about Iraq. If I shout "Bush is an idiot!" a buncha ppl will come over and try to talk some sense into me. If I shout "Bush is great!" I'll get a bunch of people trying to tell me how wrong I am. Heh. Does this mean we just believe whatever we're fed? Actually, no, I don't think so. Nobody really knows who's right, but if the country's so divided, it means people are assymilating different information and forming an opinion. Unfortunately, the media's biased, so it's hard to tell from watching the news that the country's so divided. To put it another way, whatever view you support, you'll find a significant number of people here will agree with you.
So if you couple the media's bias with the assumption that we're so self centered and ignorant, it's easy for people to believe that the gov't does represent us. Is it fair? Not really. It also isn't fair that a lot of us think all British people have bad teeth. Undeserved insulting stereotypes suck, don't they?
I'm in a bit of a hurry here, so if I wasn't too clear at times, please accept my apologies.
"Every OS is vulernable to the ultimate virus: Stupidity.Virus.a Only one release was needed. "
Now you understand why us Windows users roll our eyes every time we're urged to switch OS's over security. The problem doesn't go away. There is some benefit of being kept on your toes constantly.
Is that so surprising? Who wants to fill out forms etc just to get a beta to tinker with? (Note: NFI if they really ask you to fill out anything or not, but I can tell you I'd try on P2P first just because of annoyance that they mihgt.)
Out of curiosity, am I the only one that's started on P2P to find legit software? That's where I got Mandrake. No particular reason other than I hate sifting through Google searches to find a download link.
"By being condescending, you are making your point personal."
I apologize. The intention wasn't to be condescending, though I see after walking away from a bit how it can be interpreted that way. The thought was more like "let's keep this away from unrealistic extremes."
"The fact is though, that while some force is authorized, a beating isn't. And having seen protests where the guy trying to leave peacefully gets his teeth knocked out, I'd say there's an ugly side too."
My argument to that is simply: It's not goverment mandated by any stretch of the imagination. It's up to the individuals at that point. It's hard to label the gov't as oppressive over the acts of individuals. The other consideration is though a 'peaceful guy getting his teeth knocked out' situation can and does occur, we know nothing of the danger the officer felt by the rest of the people being there. I'll say again, I have witnessed this first hand. Protestors, as a group of people are shitheads. It's sad that an innocent person can get what he doesn't deserve out of it, but the group as a whole often causes that situation in the first place.
"Hopefully somebody will label you deservedly as flamebait. "
That would be disappointing. Flamebait because I disagree with you? Troll because I have a differing view? Give me a little credit, it's not like I put you down here. Plus, I'm taking the time to back up my views here. Whether I'm right or wrong, I'm not challenging you because of something personal. I'm certainly not doing this simply to cause an argument.
Slashdot Mirror
It's kind of embarrasingly, really. They knew which building it was in for ages, but it took them years to figure out they just had to smash through the big Roman numeral 10 on the floor.
" why hasn't anyone taken the XBOX os and put it on a PC?"
Probably for the following reasons:
- TV's nice to play on.
- Games can potentially be 9 gigs.
- You lose the controller, and ya kinda need it.
- XBOX's are only $150.
- Emulators are fun to tinker with, but it takes a a long time to make one work that is relatively reliable. They don't really get interesting until the system's out of production.
"Plus, you get the added bonus that you got to do something that Microsoft doesn't want, all while MS makes a loss on the XBox. "
This is absolutely the wrong reason to be doing this. Not only does it not reflect well on the community trying to make this work, it also gives other console manufacturers reason to really lock down their machine. Frankly, for this reason alone, butting heads with Microsoft over this should be reconsidered. (Note: A good chunk of my bitterness here has to do with that idiot CEO of Lindows.com putting up a reward to break the system.)
"Name one closed source interface that isn't blatently stolen from xerox or a relic that looks like 1985?"
Can anybody name an Open Source one? That's less of a challenge and more of a point of genuine curiosity.
"Taking your work copy of Win2k home and installing it on your own computer is illegal too but how many people here have done that? There is no SS that is going to start breaking into your house and checking to see if you have. "
Perhaps not, but Windows XP calls home and asks for permission to run. Welcome to the connected world, more of this type of stuff will happen. I think the point here is that eventually even the content industry will be able to enforce their own views. Should that happen, we'd want laws protecting us.
"Shocking as it may seem to you, you are not the only person reading slashdot. This means that one or more readers will be inconvenienced by having to register, NYT or otherwise."
And you think I *haven't* been 'inconvenienced' by having to register? You think I'm flashing some sort of VIP pass and getting in sans registration? Is it suddenly more convenient to go searching through comments looking for the 'reg free link' when all you have to do is register once with fake info?
"Far from being communist, this is elementary courtesy, something your parents failed to communicate to you."
NYT's doing the work and Slashdot's leeching off it. Why aren't you proposing that we show NYT the courtesy of doing the simple task they ask in order to get to their content?
"So go upstairs (stomping your feet) and yell at your mom for not teaching you courtesy and consideration for others."
Hypocrite.
"Future not so bright, shades no longer required. "
My bad, I had my Peril SensitiveTM Sunglasses on. Is there an asteroid or something headed our way?
" Imagine your favorite movie that you originally bought on VHS, then bought on DVD, and eventually buy on . You should only have to purchase the content once. "
The content between a VHS and DVD is different. Very few movies don't have extra features. The DVD's got extra pixels etc, too.
I *almost* agree with what you're saying, but that little loophole right there pretty much defeats it. You should, however, be able to personally convert it to whatever format you like, i.e. DivX. (The codec, not the Circuit City player...)
"Nope. IGN publishes almost entirely original content. They don't require me to register to view that content. "
Dig a little deeper, you'll find where they want you to register. In some cases, they want you to pay, too.
" Some of us take our privacy more seriously."
It's being taken to a ridiculous extreme, keep reading.
"And keep in mind... While the NYT (or any reasonably-legit site) may not currently spam or sell your info, it takes only one hacker, or one policy change, to turn their registration DB into a spam mailing list."
I already said this before, NYT doesn't validate your email address. You can put anything you want there and you'll be registerred. Therefore, you can register without personal information, be safe from a 'hacker', and get news without being one of those bitchy moany types.
Bitching about NYT is a complete and total waste of time. This is not the topic to be all righteous about.
"Measuring fractions of changes on a global scale is like stating that my Linux server crashed because of the price of tea in China yesterday!"
I wish I could find that damn butterfly that keeps causing all those unforseen outages.
"Why, oh why, do people choose to link to a page that requires registration when it's totally unnecessary? "
Because most of us don't give a flying fuck and just registerred with them. Seeing as how they don't send spam etc, it's a small price to pay for a free service.
This crusade against NYT is redudant, lame, and very tiring. More embarrasingly, they don't even check to see if you have a valid email. You want to complain about a site? Go glance around IGN.com. Bet you find at least 5 things to bitch about within the first 5 page loads.
"It's a heck of a lot worse to, say, invade a country on another continent than to attack a neighboring village."
You're measuring human 'dimness' by the acts of a gov't under motivations we don't have all the facts on?
"Having characters called things like Slartibartfast and Zloat kind of makes me think he was taking stabs in the dark at writing a having a huge joke over on his readers/consumers. "
I thought the joke was that aliens always have silly names.
"...After what I've heard about Disney having the script re-written after Adams' death, I'm not exactly looking forward to this _travesty_ with his name on it. "
On the plus side, we'll be able to get Peril Sensitive Sunglasses in our next Happy Meal. They insist the Mice are a tie-in as well.
"Ha! I figured out Anonymous Coward's password!"
Ha! I forgot to hit Post Anonymously, thus shooting my joke in the foot! Oh well, at least you all can have a laugh at my incompetence.
"You won't believe this, I know, but it's still a fact that I know a guy who - after couple of guesses - knows what you typed on your keyboard just by listening to your keyboard clicks."
Ha! I figured out Anonymous Coward's password!
NG
"Now we just need some covering noise while logging in. Time for a kernel patch? "
Are you trying to tell me I won't be secure until I get sound working in KDE? Crap.
"I like how at every E3, the Date Fairy suddenly dumps her (his?) magical bag of special date dust over everyone's game. In fact, E3 is just one huge calendar orgy."
I initially misinterpreted what you meant by 'date fairy' at E3. You don't wanna know what I imagined. NEED COFFEE.
"Since you can't use SP2, why not try a different SP? "
Sure, lemme just give up my library of games and climb a steep learning curve to make the switch.
"Isn't your government representing you?"
Ask the people that protested the Iraq war. The country was pretty darned divided about that. (To the point that I was stranded in downtown while the protestors inconsiderately closed off all the streets.)
" the US government, does move in the direction that most Americans want it to move."
No, it does what it thinks is right, and the people either like it or they don't. Additionally, the gov't doesn't give us all the info they have, it's more about Public Approval than Public Opinion.
"Why is the US now shocked by pictures coming out out Iraq?"
Are you comparing Afghanistan to Iraq? If not, then could you clarify? If so, the answer is: Not everybody in Iraq was considered an enemy, however a good chunk of Afghanistan was. Granted, nobody wanted civillian casualties in either case (lotsa protesting about that, too) but the country basically gave us the raspberry when we demanded Osama. So, the difference? Context. Please don't argue with me if it's logical or not, I'm not making that case. Just giving you my impression of what happened.
"My impression is that most Americans are poorly educated about the world outside their borders. Most Americans seem to believe that whatever America does is right, that blood washes off the shining armour."
I understand how you've arrived at this view, but it is inaccurate. What the rest of the world has a VERY difficult time understanding is just how large the USA is. Worse, our neighbors don't give us trouble. We all love Canada. We all love Mexico. We don't hear a whole lot from south of Mex so it's not really on our radar. The stuff going on the other side of the world really doesn't affect us directly a whole lot. It may seem inconsiderate, but understand that there is a barrage of things to learn just about this country, let alone what's going on outside of it. The geography of this country alone is quite diverse. Visitors to our country typically speak English so knowing something like Spanish is only mildly helpful. So we seem a little ignorant. Justifiably so, however it is inaccurate to assume we choose to be that way. I don't mean to imply that you've stated that, but I have heard it a few times. Nobody seems to understand that we can't just hop into a car, drive for half a day, and be in another country.
So do we believe that whatever America does is right? Man if you were here you wouldn't believe that. The country is pretty well divided about Iraq. If I shout "Bush is an idiot!" a buncha ppl will come over and try to talk some sense into me. If I shout "Bush is great!" I'll get a bunch of people trying to tell me how wrong I am. Heh. Does this mean we just believe whatever we're fed? Actually, no, I don't think so. Nobody really knows who's right, but if the country's so divided, it means people are assymilating different information and forming an opinion. Unfortunately, the media's biased, so it's hard to tell from watching the news that the country's so divided. To put it another way, whatever view you support, you'll find a significant number of people here will agree with you.
So if you couple the media's bias with the assumption that we're so self centered and ignorant, it's easy for people to believe that the gov't does represent us. Is it fair? Not really. It also isn't fair that a lot of us think all British people have bad teeth. Undeserved insulting stereotypes suck, don't they?
I'm in a bit of a hurry here, so if I wasn't too clear at times, please accept my apologies.
"Microsoft is a monopoly. Apple is not."
So Gates isn't allowed to donate to 3rd world countries because two of his products is a de-facto monopoly that the market decided it likes?
"Every OS is vulernable to the ultimate virus: Stupidity.Virus.a Only one release was needed. "
Now you understand why us Windows users roll our eyes every time we're urged to switch OS's over security. The problem doesn't go away. There is some benefit of being kept on your toes constantly.
"On Limewire?"
Is that so surprising? Who wants to fill out forms etc just to get a beta to tinker with? (Note: NFI if they really ask you to fill out anything or not, but I can tell you I'd try on P2P first just because of annoyance that they mihgt.)
Out of curiosity, am I the only one that's started on P2P to find legit software? That's where I got Mandrake. No particular reason other than I hate sifting through Google searches to find a download link.
"By being condescending, you are making your point personal."
I apologize. The intention wasn't to be condescending, though I see after walking away from a bit how it can be interpreted that way. The thought was more like "let's keep this away from unrealistic extremes."
"The fact is though, that while some force is authorized, a beating isn't. And having seen protests where the guy trying to leave peacefully gets his teeth knocked out, I'd say there's an ugly side too."
My argument to that is simply: It's not goverment mandated by any stretch of the imagination. It's up to the individuals at that point. It's hard to label the gov't as oppressive over the acts of individuals. The other consideration is though a 'peaceful guy getting his teeth knocked out' situation can and does occur, we know nothing of the danger the officer felt by the rest of the people being there. I'll say again, I have witnessed this first hand. Protestors, as a group of people are shitheads. It's sad that an innocent person can get what he doesn't deserve out of it, but the group as a whole often causes that situation in the first place.
"Hopefully somebody will label you deservedly as flamebait. "
That would be disappointing. Flamebait because I disagree with you? Troll because I have a differing view? Give me a little credit, it's not like I put you down here. Plus, I'm taking the time to back up my views here. Whether I'm right or wrong, I'm not challenging you because of something personal. I'm certainly not doing this simply to cause an argument.