Acquiring a fortune isn't the same thing as actually accomplishing something. Frequently, it's a matter of being at the right place at the right time. Come to think of it, I know of no fortune that would be possible without that essential bit of luck.
True... but when the moment is there, you have to seize it. Bill Gates and MS did that, a couple of times. And I know of a few good but failed ideas that might have been great had they been launched 5 years earlier or later. I knew a guy, not rich but a regular Joe, who had a knack to always position himself to allow him to reap praise for projects already on the track to success, and get out of failing projects in time. He got plenty of promotions without really accomplishing something, but his success did require that special knack.
Of course, sometimes just being there is enough. Joining a startup that grows into a success despite your best efforts, and suddenly that crappy stock you got in lieu of a decent salary is worth 8 figures...
What clouds do is hugely commoditise infrastructure and (in the case of SaaS) those massive package implementations that customise to death a package that would have worked much better without all that consultancy "help".
I'm not so sure that is a good thing. What the PHBs and their Powerpoints have been very "good" at is exactly that: commoditise infrastructure and deliver software as a service. Only problem is: they have delivered crap. Partly because they sought to avoid customisation of packages, or picked packages that refused to be customised. Sure... "buy, not build", off-the-shelf, 80/20 and all that... but in many cases it is the last 20% that adds the most value and competitive edge.
Yes, I make a living customising software. I also advise on what exactly should be customised, and which package to pick for that; selling solutions based on open source software as "custom solutions made affordable". In the end, it's business value that should drive these decisions. Not featurism, nor cost alone.
And considering that its predecessor, Vista, is still not the corporate standard after almost 3 years.
We are currently in the process in making it our corporate standard. Yes, it is still very much in progress, with many hurdles yet to be taken. No, we are not considering jumping straight to Windows 7 which in it current state already appears to be a superior product. Ok, you can pull that trigger now.
a proprietary OS for 30 bucks deserves 5 points on price.
Not just that, but doesn't Apple offer a nice discount for families upgrading several machines? Windows 7 is not too expensive (especially since I always get an OEM version), but Microsoft's bulk discount is a joke. If you're a family upgrading 4 computers (or a single basement dwelling geek upgrading 4), you'll be paying 4 times the full price.
UPC stinks, I have held off on getting Internet service from them and this now turns out to be a good decision. Here in the Netherlands they are well known for their digital TV cable service, which uses a proprietary protocol (i.e. you have to use their set top box, which eats donkey balls), and which is way too expensive if you want all of their three poxy HD channels. I am praying for the EU to follow through and force competition between cable operators. At this time UPC is the only choice besides getting a dish.
The camera had features to MMS a picture straight after being taken, but also had a feature to upload it to a blog. Even the FM radio had a feature crammed in to encourage the user to use mobile internet connectivity - you could record a clip, upload it to some service and they tell you what the song was.
Did they include these features to line the providers' pockets, or because the user might find these features useful?
The pressure of phone maker's and network's business interests mean that phones don't really get any better in the way customers would like, instead they get more and more money making features, and the devices get hyped to hell as being the fastest and most powerful thing around.
You mean that manufacturers actually engage in nefarious practices such as marketing? I am shocked...
As for the other argument:
- Phone cameras have gone from poor low definition ones, good only for making pictures of notes on whiteboards or perhaps accident scenes, to high definition cameras with decent optics, with which one can actually make reasonable pictures. No need to bring the compact camera along for happy snaps anymore; one less thing to carry.
- Many phones now offer GPS and decent navigation. No need to carry the TomTom around anymore, one less thing to carry.
- PDA functionality on many phones has improved to the point where you can effectively manage your mail and calendar on your phone... often instantly, over that data connection you seem to hate so much. Another device less to carry.
- A number of modern phones (Android, Windows and iPhone for example) let you develop and distribute all manner of useful apps. A few of my favorites for example: display up-to-date traffic info, train schedules and delays, or news readers. So much easier and faster than browsing a website on a mobile phone, this is stuff that definitely makes my life a little easier.
- Phones have gotten a lot smaller. Take a look at the phones you had 5 years ago and compare them against what is on offer today.
So, speaking for myself, phones have gotten better in many ways that I like. And they do not make money for either the manufacturer (other than me selecting their phone) nor the provider; thankfully most of them offer affordable (near-) unlimited data plans now, at least they do over here.
I think many customers want a phone that is cheap to use, has decent battery life, and is designed in such a way that it will last a long time, i.e. waterproof enough that a quick swim in a sink won't kill it, and quite strong.
There are plenty of feature laden phones with a decent battery life. Yes, these are the larger ones. If you prefer a slim stylish package, battery life will suffer. You have a choice. As for waterproofing, I've no idea how hard that actually is. Oh well, I have never drowned a phone yet.
So we don't need features like cameras and MMS, mobile internet, podcast downloading, youtube support.... Or at least things like this not implemented in annoying in-your-face ways.
My advice to you, if these features and poor interface annoy you: stop buying Sony phones. There are plenty of other phones out there that let you remove (or add) features and customise the buttons to your heart's content. But there really isn't a big conspiracy between phone manufacturers and providers.
There were also MANY feats that were either broken or just not implemented, though the game would happily let you spend your feat points on them. I did 3 respecs with my ranger before giving up on it, because every time I found that I'd wasted 5-15 points on broken feats. That's pretty damn gamebreaking to me.
I suppose it depends on what you are looking for from the game. I for one enjoyed exploring the game and levelling my ranger and tempest of Set immensely.
Does it still have problems? What's the game like now?
From a technical point of view (i.e. client and game stability), the game has vastly improved since last year's summer. For those who weren't there, the game at launch was ok-ish, there were some issues but nothing really game-breaking. But subsequent patches and updates made matters much worse, to the point that the client would almost invariably crash after a hour of playing or sooner, with frequent disconnects and clients freezing when loading a new zone. People left the game in droves, not because AoC was a bad or boring game but because it was rather unplayable at the time.
Those problems are mostly gone. There are some very minor issues and the occasional crash, but I'd say the game's stability is more than sufficient, if not quite on par with the industry standard. They've also added some content in free updates since then... If you liked the game itself back then, it's well worth taking another look (though I think you've just missed the recent 2 week free trial offer)
Of course. Some hydro stations are arguably bad ("bad" meaning having a sizable impact) for the environment in the immediate area around the dammed river. But that is not why they are protesting them.
Hydro power is too easy. It is not horribly expensive and delivers clean energy in abundance. In other words, it does not ask us to make any sacrifices, and that means that it holds no appeal for environmentalists who (and I don't have any nicer way to put this) get a hard-on from telling us how to live.
Watch for the day when large-scale solar, wind or tidal power becomes practical and economical. That is the day the environmentalists will find fault with these types of energy generators. "Solar panels screw up the desert ecosystem". "Birds fly into the rotors". "Changing tides mess up the clam colonies". Like true Calvinists they think that everything should carry either guilt or sacrifice.
What good is a phone that cant connect to anything thanks to AT&T?
Fair enough... in Europe we are somewhat luckier. The official iPhone provider in the Netherlands is T-mobile, not a bad provider, but if I want a different one I can buy an iPhone in Belgium or Italy, where simlocking is forbidden by law. Mine came from a Dutch store that imported the phones from one of those countries, and I can stick any sim-card in there to make it work. The provider I selected even sponsored part of the phone in exchange for me signing a 1-year contract.
That's a bit harsh... but I do agree that it's somewhat strange that this "news" is making headlines all over tech blogs and news sites. It's not new software or a new phone... but since it is about the iPhone, it is news all of a sudden. A port to whatever OS runs on the latest Nokia's wouldn't draw nearly as many comments.
As for the price... I am a little surprised by the hefty price tag TomTom put on its iPhone product, but it has little to do with shiny Apple logos. I paid 50 euro for the equally good Navigon software with US maps for the iPhone. The European maps were 70 euro IIRC, and that includes Eastern European countries. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable price for software like that.
Never mind that the first 2 iPhones didn't even have a GPS chip.
Oh, don't get me started on the earlier Blackberry models. Dear god...
Apple got something right with the iPhone. Before, I thought that ease of use and responsiveness of the UI were nice-to-haves on a cell phone. Then I got the iPhone... and ever since I wouldn't want to go back to Blackberries or Windows Mobile devices, ever. And I am not a fanboi either, besides an iPod I do not own any Apple devices.
But yes, I would have bitched at the front counter asking them when it would get fixed. That at least would have called some attention to it.
Indeed... that is why the ones that you really have to watch for aren't complete fake machines, but little recording devices placed in front of the real machine. You put your card in, enter the code, get your cash... and 5 minutes later some criminal in Eastern Europe runs off a copy of your card and cleans out your account.
A nice example of such a skim job is this one. The page is in Dutch but the pics are interesting... the guy happened to notice the false front was just a tad too clean, and on closer inspection noticed a recording head just behind the card slot. He ripped the thing from the machine and made a few pictures of it before turning it in to the police. The guy might have been observant, but thousands of people already had put their card through the machine without a second glance. I probably would not have noticed this myself either.
These criminals are getting more sophisticated now that people watch for false fronts, and machines are being altered to make it impossible to add them. These days they simple break into stores, open up card readers at the checkout counters, and add devices that record PINs and magnetic strips. One week later they break in again to retrieve their devices... some even use WiFi to read the data remotely from a nearby van, reducing the chances of getting caught.
Thankfully the banks here refund any skimmed funds as a rule.
What I meant is that the phrase is rather meaningless in the context of dating ads, since:
1) Many people ask for it so it ceases to be a distinguishing factor
2) "Having a sense of humor" means different things to different people
3) How many respondents will or even can be honest about this? "Sure I have a sense of humor!".
Men being selected for those things is already very much the case, I think. Just check the classifieds... many women specifically ask for a "tall man", or for men having "a sense of humor" even though the latter is a pretty meaningless phrase, or at best it's rather non-selective. I can understand women being put off by things like beer bellies or even glasses (In Dutch there even is a common abbreviation for it: g.b.b.s, or "no beard, glasses or moustache"), but I found it surprising that those two things are often specifically requested.
I disagree with this. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to learn to program and getting compile/runtime errors from a command line.
It also teaches valuable troubleshooting skills. Having to hunt through code for an elusive error is something they will have to do sooner or later, IDE or no. Best if they don't have the IDE babysit them right from the start.
My main beef with IDEs though is that they hide a lot of the internals, some of them do anyway. I remember going through a tutorial in MS Visual Studio, completing a simple Windows program, and thinking at the end of it "it works, but what the hell did I just do?" If you give them an IDE, help them understand what goes on under the hood as well.
First, learn assembly, it teaches you how the machine works. (You should probably also learn electronics and digital logic)
I think you want to pick a first language with which the kids can get some fun results fairly quickly, and keep their interest. Assembly is not ideal for this. With that said, by all means teach them how a computer works, right from the start.
My dad taught us programming, back in the days when building a computer meant heating up the old soldering iron. He started with explaining what a computer does, the components (registers, memory, i/o) and the instructions you could use to tell the computer what to do. So he taught us about assembly without actually teaching the language, but even so it proved valuable to know more or less what goes on inside a computer at the lowest level. He then got us started off on Basic (which was pretty much the only option), taught loops, conditional statements, functions / subroutines etc.
Any modern langauge can teach these basics, and I think they are still a good fundament. From there you can move on to object orientation and using mroe complex libraries and APIs to access the higher functions of the machine. I actually like the idea of starting with C (or just program C-style in C++), then adding object orientation on top of that by moving on to C++. Java might be good but I have no experience there.
Another option is PHP. It is a lot less finicky; of course the OO aspects are rather poor but one should ask if they are teaching their kids programming fun, or preparing them for a career. PHP (or a similar language) is nice because it is a language well suited for building simple, active web sites. With any luck, your kids will quickly find a few ideas for websites that he can then implement himself... and nothing is better for keeping someone interested in learning to program is having their own project to complete. Once their first efforts go on-line, teach them about structure, web design, and security. Yes, by al means do code reviews, but keep it fun... show them how they can do things better.
Whatever language you pick, I'd start kids off by keeping them away from IDEs and letting them code in Notepad (do not make them use vi; be mindful of child abuse laws)and a command line compiler (where applicable), just to teach them what goes on under the hood. Once they get to a level where they will want to use more complex libraries, GUIs etc, get them an IDE.
As an afterthought, do introduce them to the whole open source thing. Nothing stimulates more than a thriving scene of fellow developers.
Are you implying your right to live as you please is more important than the continued survival of the global ecosystem, and the human race depending on it?
I hate to break this to you, but Greenpeace isn't interested much in the continued survival of the global ecosystem (over and beyond what any normal human being would have, out of self-preservation). That is merely their bandwagon; Greenpeace is in the business of influence and publicity, not to save the planet but to sell themselves. They are an evil megacorp just like any other... with well meaning and concerned individuals working for them, but ultimately self-serving as an institution.
In the case of Franken, with which I am not too familiar as I am not a USian, the difference was just 225 votes. Yes, I can see that with such a small difference, influening just a single polling station (or fixing a few recounts) would make a big difference. Then again, with such a small difference, does it really matter that much? (Meaning does it matter who wins; I am not talking about him committing fraud).
What I was talking about is mass fraud, such as seems to be the case with these Honduras voting computers. Mass fraud seems to be easier to commit using voting computers as opposed to paper ballots, and will be a hell of a lot harder to detect.
All you need is the right kind of printer to produce a few creates of fraudulent votes in a paper-voting system.
Sure. And how are you going to introduce those fake votes into the count? Go vote and dump 500 ballots in the box along with your own? The guys watching the box will see you. Or do it before the polling station opens? The box is inspected by several people, then locked and sealed. And even if you got a bunch of fake ballots into the box, the number of ballots will not match the tally of voters on the check sheet.
In a secure electronic system, with a proper security protocol, you would need access to a network of supercomputers to crack the encryption algorithm. The latter is significantly harder.
Or maybe all it takes is a guy with a USB stick. Or perhaps a fraudulent programmer at Diebold? Do we really know what it takes? No. And we cannot tell simply by watching the machines. That is the whole point I was trying to make.
I have actually counted ballots and tampering with them is not at all hard. The fact is that I live in a country that wouldn't stand for this. If there was a government behind it though, fraud is quite easy.
No.
First of all: how many ballots could you have tampered with anyway? What if you had 20 friends helping in other polling stations? Enough to sway the outcome? I find that very hard to believe. And if there is large-scale tampering going on by government agents, how likely is it that they are caught out by representatives from other political parties manning the polling stations? Especially if someone suspects tampering and demands a recount.
Our country wouldn't stand for tampering with ballots. But it certainly shouldn't stand for any ballot count done by one institution, without any oversight. And that is effectively what you have with computerised voting. Any half-wit can visually observe paper voting and certify that nothing untoward is going on. But with computer voting, even experts might be hard-pressed that no nefarious bit of code slipped past the overseers.
Even so, this line struck me as all too familiar: "The fact of the matter is that the service provider took over the running of the test system, so it also has to warrant its continuous operation. How it fulfills this obligation is its own responsibility."
This is why managers (especially the MBA types) love outsourcing of everything. It is also in part because numbers and KPIs are so much more easy to manage than actual people. But mainly, by outsourcing a function you also get to outsource the responsibility for that particular function. If things go tits up, the worst you'll be blamed for is picking the wrong service provider, or perhaps not monitoring a particular KPI properly. Minor stuff.
I've seen plenty of managers like that, and I have heard a variation of that one line all too often.
Honestly, while I think these 'feel-good' devices are a fantastic way for their creators and their well-heeled supporters to feel like 'they're making a difference', ultimately they're pretty much worthless in general practice.
I used to feel the same way when reading about the proliferation of cell phones in rural areas in African countries. The last thing they need is those bloody expensive luxury items, right? But, as it turns out, cell phones provide a similar and highly useful type of service, and allows people in out of the way areas to get information on farming and diseases, food and crop prices at various markets. Already this is changing the way food is grown and sold.
And what is so bad about finding out about train schedules? Who wants to waste 3 days waiting after missing a train? People moving crops or who are otherwise working hard to feed a family can't afford to waste those three days, probably less so than you or me. Personal loans? Unlike loans in the West, these will probably not go towards a down payment on an SUV or a swimming pool, but more likely will be spent on essential farming tools, or perhaps as seed capital for a small business. That's what this microcredit stuff is all about... I think it's great if a tool like this makes such efforts available to a wider audience.
Providing tools and seeds rarely helps and often destroys local markets. That is the real "feel good" stuff. There are many of such fancy and widely applauded aid programmes... please go see what became of similar programmes that were implemented 10 years ago. Broken pumps, broken tractors that cannot be repaired locally, once immaculate white school buildings, still waiting for those first teachers and those first books, pencils and blackboards to arrive. That's what you will find.
Real aid is helping people to help themselves. Access to information might seem unimportant to developing nations but it has already been proven to be a game changer right down to local villagers. Don't expect them to ask only earth-shatteringly insightful questions through this thing either, and certainly do not berate them for using it for entertainment purposes as well. These are people like you and me, not some hunger-crazed wretches scratching in the dirt for food with no time for anything else. Moyo said it best when she said: "If you see an African on TV, it's either a fly-ridden victim of famine or war, or.... it's Nelson Mandela". That is the image that we need to lose... sadly it is precisely that image which fuels the industry called "aid"
Since the average person probably isn't sharing copyrighted material, he probably won't have anything to fear from the RIAA.
Maybe not from the RIAA as such, but there's something else to consider.
Up until recently, the RIAA and its member corporations had much to fear from pirates. They did not only compete on price, but also on quality of the product itself: in many cases pirate sites offer a superior product that has not been encumbered with DRM. And the industry has taken note and is responding, with legal download sites for music, soon perhaps even movies, and by removing DRM in some cases like the songs sold on the iTunes store.
Now imagine that the RIAA and MPAA actually win against pirates, in a way that makes it almost impossible for John Q Public to find and download pirated works. They would no longer have an incentive to offer a competitive product at a competitive price. DRM would return in a big way, I expect. Plans for legal movie downloads would likely be shelved.
What does that mean for the man in the street? The return of DRM is the most notable effect, one that will have an ever increasing impact. DRM didn't matter much for upstanding citizens when it was just a region code on DVDs. But with many people downloading music from legal sources, proliferation of "media tanks" (why are they called that anyway?), more and more gadgets being capable of playing audio or video, and more of these gadgets being internet-capable, DRM and online verification of licenses will potentially have a great impact on consumers. DRM does not affect you? Hmm... Want to buy a movie abroad, one perhaps that is not even sold in your own country? Sorry, wrong region. Want to rip your Bluray to a central hard disk so you can stream it to any TV in the house? Not possible... and under the DMCA, potentially a crime. Play a movie on the go on your iPhone? You can't, unless you buy a separate copy for that phone. Borrow a CD from a friend? It won't play since the license for it has been tied to his equipment. Oh, and those movies you purchased online a while ago, they are not playing anymore, how odd. Oh yes, the company that sold them went out of business and the certificate servers are offline. Oh, and if your iPod breaks and you decide to get something else instead of an Apple product, you may have to buy all of your songs all over again. That is potentially the future of DRM, and is what gives every honest-to-goodness media exec a hard-on just by thinking about it.
I am all for paying for whatever I get. But when I pay for it, I want to own it in perpetuity, be able to sell or lend it, be able to play it on any compatible device, and be allowed to convert it to suit other devices. A Dutch parliamentary commission recently recommended something along these lines, and I think it is something wonderful (for once) that the EU could accomplish: set down what our fair use rights are (more or less the above), and then forbid the sale of equipment that actively prevents the exercise of those rights, i.e. any DRM or copy protection. If we have our fair-use rights, the RIAA can have their fair-sue rights, and be as tough on pirates as they want.
Oh well... Sometimes I am inclined to think we should not direct all that blind hate against people in posession of kiddie porn. Why? Not because I like such people or the stuff they enjoy, but because this witch hunt against anything having to do with kiddie porn scares me rather a lot. It's like the global warming bandwagon... the problem might be real, but the reason everybody jumps on is to push their own agenda. Over here, the police recently investigated some (extremish) right-wing politician, and announced for some reason that they found kiddie porn on his computer. It was odd that they announced it since it was not the object of their investigation, and as it turned out it was something like 2 images in a sizable pr0n-pile of otherwise vanilla erotica. But... if they wanted to eliminate this guy's political career, the move suddenly makes sense, since everyone branded as a child pornographer, however tenuously, is basically branded an outcast for life in today's society.
And what has been predicted is now becoming reality, in Germany at least: child pornography is being used as the excuse to institute state censorship on the Internet. It's already been mentioned as a reason why citizens shouldn't be allowed cryptography or anynomity on the Net. They might take away those liberties to prevent kiddie porn with everyone cheering them on, since in the fight for that cause, anything goes at the moment. But it will not stop there.
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Acquiring a fortune isn't the same thing as actually accomplishing something. Frequently, it's a matter of being at the right place at the right time. Come to think of it, I know of no fortune that would be possible without that essential bit of luck.
True... but when the moment is there, you have to seize it. Bill Gates and MS did that, a couple of times. And I know of a few good but failed ideas that might have been great had they been launched 5 years earlier or later. I knew a guy, not rich but a regular Joe, who had a knack to always position himself to allow him to reap praise for projects already on the track to success, and get out of failing projects in time. He got plenty of promotions without really accomplishing something, but his success did require that special knack.
Of course, sometimes just being there is enough. Joining a startup that grows into a success despite your best efforts, and suddenly that crappy stock you got in lieu of a decent salary is worth 8 figures...
I'm not so sure that is a good thing. What the PHBs and their Powerpoints have been very "good" at is exactly that: commoditise infrastructure and deliver software as a service. Only problem is: they have delivered crap. Partly because they sought to avoid customisation of packages, or picked packages that refused to be customised. Sure... "buy, not build", off-the-shelf, 80/20 and all that... but in many cases it is the last 20% that adds the most value and competitive edge.
Yes, I make a living customising software. I also advise on what exactly should be customised, and which package to pick for that; selling solutions based on open source software as "custom solutions made affordable". In the end, it's business value that should drive these decisions. Not featurism, nor cost alone.
And considering that its predecessor, Vista, is still not the corporate standard after almost 3 years.
We are currently in the process in making it our corporate standard. Yes, it is still very much in progress, with many hurdles yet to be taken. No, we are not considering jumping straight to Windows 7 which in it current state already appears to be a superior product. Ok, you can pull that trigger now.
Not just that, but doesn't Apple offer a nice discount for families upgrading several machines? Windows 7 is not too expensive (especially since I always get an OEM version), but Microsoft's bulk discount is a joke. If you're a family upgrading 4 computers (or a single basement dwelling geek upgrading 4), you'll be paying 4 times the full price.
UPC stinks, I have held off on getting Internet service from them and this now turns out to be a good decision. Here in the Netherlands they are well known for their digital TV cable service, which uses a proprietary protocol (i.e. you have to use their set top box, which eats donkey balls), and which is way too expensive if you want all of their three poxy HD channels. I am praying for the EU to follow through and force competition between cable operators. At this time UPC is the only choice besides getting a dish.
Did they include these features to line the providers' pockets, or because the user might find these features useful?
You mean that manufacturers actually engage in nefarious practices such as marketing? I am shocked...
As for the other argument:
- Phone cameras have gone from poor low definition ones, good only for making pictures of notes on whiteboards or perhaps accident scenes, to high definition cameras with decent optics, with which one can actually make reasonable pictures. No need to bring the compact camera along for happy snaps anymore; one less thing to carry.
- Many phones now offer GPS and decent navigation. No need to carry the TomTom around anymore, one less thing to carry.
- PDA functionality on many phones has improved to the point where you can effectively manage your mail and calendar on your phone... often instantly, over that data connection you seem to hate so much. Another device less to carry.
- A number of modern phones (Android, Windows and iPhone for example) let you develop and distribute all manner of useful apps. A few of my favorites for example: display up-to-date traffic info, train schedules and delays, or news readers. So much easier and faster than browsing a website on a mobile phone, this is stuff that definitely makes my life a little easier.
- Phones have gotten a lot smaller. Take a look at the phones you had 5 years ago and compare them against what is on offer today.
So, speaking for myself, phones have gotten better in many ways that I like. And they do not make money for either the manufacturer (other than me selecting their phone) nor the provider; thankfully most of them offer affordable (near-) unlimited data plans now, at least they do over here.
There are plenty of feature laden phones with a decent battery life. Yes, these are the larger ones. If you prefer a slim stylish package, battery life will suffer. You have a choice. As for waterproofing, I've no idea how hard that actually is. Oh well, I have never drowned a phone yet.
My advice to you, if these features and poor interface annoy you: stop buying Sony phones. There are plenty of other phones out there that let you remove (or add) features and customise the buttons to your heart's content. But there really isn't a big conspiracy between phone manufacturers and providers.
There were also MANY feats that were either broken or just not implemented, though the game would happily let you spend your feat points on them. I did 3 respecs with my ranger before giving up on it, because every time I found that I'd wasted 5-15 points on broken feats. That's pretty damn gamebreaking to me.
I suppose it depends on what you are looking for from the game. I for one enjoyed exploring the game and levelling my ranger and tempest of Set immensely.
From a technical point of view (i.e. client and game stability), the game has vastly improved since last year's summer. For those who weren't there, the game at launch was ok-ish, there were some issues but nothing really game-breaking. But subsequent patches and updates made matters much worse, to the point that the client would almost invariably crash after a hour of playing or sooner, with frequent disconnects and clients freezing when loading a new zone. People left the game in droves, not because AoC was a bad or boring game but because it was rather unplayable at the time.
Those problems are mostly gone. There are some very minor issues and the occasional crash, but I'd say the game's stability is more than sufficient, if not quite on par with the industry standard. They've also added some content in free updates since then... If you liked the game itself back then, it's well worth taking another look (though I think you've just missed the recent 2 week free trial offer)
They already do.
Of course. Some hydro stations are arguably bad ("bad" meaning having a sizable impact) for the environment in the immediate area around the dammed river. But that is not why they are protesting them.
Hydro power is too easy. It is not horribly expensive and delivers clean energy in abundance. In other words, it does not ask us to make any sacrifices, and that means that it holds no appeal for environmentalists who (and I don't have any nicer way to put this) get a hard-on from telling us how to live.
Watch for the day when large-scale solar, wind or tidal power becomes practical and economical. That is the day the environmentalists will find fault with these types of energy generators. "Solar panels screw up the desert ecosystem". "Birds fly into the rotors". "Changing tides mess up the clam colonies". Like true Calvinists they think that everything should carry either guilt or sacrifice.
Fair enough... in Europe we are somewhat luckier. The official iPhone provider in the Netherlands is T-mobile, not a bad provider, but if I want a different one I can buy an iPhone in Belgium or Italy, where simlocking is forbidden by law. Mine came from a Dutch store that imported the phones from one of those countries, and I can stick any sim-card in there to make it work. The provider I selected even sponsored part of the phone in exchange for me signing a 1-year contract.
As for the price... I am a little surprised by the hefty price tag TomTom put on its iPhone product, but it has little to do with shiny Apple logos. I paid 50 euro for the equally good Navigon software with US maps for the iPhone. The European maps were 70 euro IIRC, and that includes Eastern European countries. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable price for software like that.
Oh, don't get me started on the earlier Blackberry models. Dear god...
Apple got something right with the iPhone. Before, I thought that ease of use and responsiveness of the UI were nice-to-haves on a cell phone. Then I got the iPhone... and ever since I wouldn't want to go back to Blackberries or Windows Mobile devices, ever. And I am not a fanboi either, besides an iPod I do not own any Apple devices.
Indeed... that is why the ones that you really have to watch for aren't complete fake machines, but little recording devices placed in front of the real machine. You put your card in, enter the code, get your cash... and 5 minutes later some criminal in Eastern Europe runs off a copy of your card and cleans out your account.
A nice example of such a skim job is this one. The page is in Dutch but the pics are interesting... the guy happened to notice the false front was just a tad too clean, and on closer inspection noticed a recording head just behind the card slot. He ripped the thing from the machine and made a few pictures of it before turning it in to the police. The guy might have been observant, but thousands of people already had put their card through the machine without a second glance. I probably would not have noticed this myself either.
These criminals are getting more sophisticated now that people watch for false fronts, and machines are being altered to make it impossible to add them. These days they simple break into stores, open up card readers at the checkout counters, and add devices that record PINs and magnetic strips. One week later they break in again to retrieve their devices... some even use WiFi to read the data remotely from a nearby van, reducing the chances of getting caught.
Thankfully the banks here refund any skimmed funds as a rule.
Soon it'll run circles around Linux, when it begins to write its own software, gains consciousness, and declares Linus is dead.
I'd think it would send itself back to the past and nail Linus *before* he gets around to writing Linux. Hmm... that might make a good film.
What I meant is that the phrase is rather meaningless in the context of dating ads, since:
1) Many people ask for it so it ceases to be a distinguishing factor
2) "Having a sense of humor" means different things to different people
3) How many respondents will or even can be honest about this? "Sure I have a sense of humor!".
Men being selected for those things is already very much the case, I think. Just check the classifieds... many women specifically ask for a "tall man", or for men having "a sense of humor" even though the latter is a pretty meaningless phrase, or at best it's rather non-selective. I can understand women being put off by things like beer bellies or even glasses (In Dutch there even is a common abbreviation for it: g.b.b.s, or "no beard, glasses or moustache"), but I found it surprising that those two things are often specifically requested.
It also teaches valuable troubleshooting skills. Having to hunt through code for an elusive error is something they will have to do sooner or later, IDE or no. Best if they don't have the IDE babysit them right from the start.
My main beef with IDEs though is that they hide a lot of the internals, some of them do anyway. I remember going through a tutorial in MS Visual Studio, completing a simple Windows program, and thinking at the end of it "it works, but what the hell did I just do?" If you give them an IDE, help them understand what goes on under the hood as well.
I think you want to pick a first language with which the kids can get some fun results fairly quickly, and keep their interest. Assembly is not ideal for this. With that said, by all means teach them how a computer works, right from the start.
My dad taught us programming, back in the days when building a computer meant heating up the old soldering iron. He started with explaining what a computer does, the components (registers, memory, i/o) and the instructions you could use to tell the computer what to do. So he taught us about assembly without actually teaching the language, but even so it proved valuable to know more or less what goes on inside a computer at the lowest level. He then got us started off on Basic (which was pretty much the only option), taught loops, conditional statements, functions / subroutines etc.
Any modern langauge can teach these basics, and I think they are still a good fundament. From there you can move on to object orientation and using mroe complex libraries and APIs to access the higher functions of the machine. I actually like the idea of starting with C (or just program C-style in C++), then adding object orientation on top of that by moving on to C++. Java might be good but I have no experience there.
Another option is PHP. It is a lot less finicky; of course the OO aspects are rather poor but one should ask if they are teaching their kids programming fun, or preparing them for a career. PHP (or a similar language) is nice because it is a language well suited for building simple, active web sites. With any luck, your kids will quickly find a few ideas for websites that he can then implement himself... and nothing is better for keeping someone interested in learning to program is having their own project to complete. Once their first efforts go on-line, teach them about structure, web design, and security. Yes, by al means do code reviews, but keep it fun... show them how they can do things better.
Whatever language you pick, I'd start kids off by keeping them away from IDEs and letting them code in Notepad (do not make them use vi; be mindful of child abuse laws)and a command line compiler (where applicable), just to teach them what goes on under the hood. Once they get to a level where they will want to use more complex libraries, GUIs etc, get them an IDE.
As an afterthought, do introduce them to the whole open source thing. Nothing stimulates more than a thriving scene of fellow developers.
I hate to break this to you, but Greenpeace isn't interested much in the continued survival of the global ecosystem (over and beyond what any normal human being would have, out of self-preservation). That is merely their bandwagon; Greenpeace is in the business of influence and publicity, not to save the planet but to sell themselves. They are an evil megacorp just like any other... with well meaning and concerned individuals working for them, but ultimately self-serving as an institution.
In the case of Franken, with which I am not too familiar as I am not a USian, the difference was just 225 votes. Yes, I can see that with such a small difference, influening just a single polling station (or fixing a few recounts) would make a big difference. Then again, with such a small difference, does it really matter that much? (Meaning does it matter who wins; I am not talking about him committing fraud).
What I was talking about is mass fraud, such as seems to be the case with these Honduras voting computers. Mass fraud seems to be easier to commit using voting computers as opposed to paper ballots, and will be a hell of a lot harder to detect.
All you need is the right kind of printer to produce a few creates of fraudulent votes in a paper-voting system.
Sure. And how are you going to introduce those fake votes into the count? Go vote and dump 500 ballots in the box along with your own? The guys watching the box will see you. Or do it before the polling station opens? The box is inspected by several people, then locked and sealed. And even if you got a bunch of fake ballots into the box, the number of ballots will not match the tally of voters on the check sheet.
In a secure electronic system, with a proper security protocol, you would need access to a network of supercomputers to crack the encryption algorithm. The latter is significantly harder.
Or maybe all it takes is a guy with a USB stick. Or perhaps a fraudulent programmer at Diebold? Do we really know what it takes? No. And we cannot tell simply by watching the machines. That is the whole point I was trying to make.
I have actually counted ballots and tampering with them is not at all hard. The fact is that I live in a country that wouldn't stand for this. If there was a government behind it though, fraud is quite easy.
No.
First of all: how many ballots could you have tampered with anyway? What if you had 20 friends helping in other polling stations? Enough to sway the outcome? I find that very hard to believe.
And if there is large-scale tampering going on by government agents, how likely is it that they are caught out by representatives from other political parties manning the polling stations? Especially if someone suspects tampering and demands a recount.
Our country wouldn't stand for tampering with ballots. But it certainly shouldn't stand for any ballot count done by one institution, without any oversight. And that is effectively what you have with computerised voting. Any half-wit can visually observe paper voting and certify that nothing untoward is going on. But with computer voting, even experts might be hard-pressed that no nefarious bit of code slipped past the overseers.
Even so, this line struck me as all too familiar: "The fact of the matter is that the service provider took over the running of the test system, so it also has to warrant its continuous operation. How it fulfills this obligation is its own responsibility."
This is why managers (especially the MBA types) love outsourcing of everything. It is also in part because numbers and KPIs are so much more easy to manage than actual people. But mainly, by outsourcing a function you also get to outsource the responsibility for that particular function. If things go tits up, the worst you'll be blamed for is picking the wrong service provider, or perhaps not monitoring a particular KPI properly. Minor stuff.
I've seen plenty of managers like that, and I have heard a variation of that one line all too often.
I used to feel the same way when reading about the proliferation of cell phones in rural areas in African countries. The last thing they need is those bloody expensive luxury items, right? But, as it turns out, cell phones provide a similar and highly useful type of service, and allows people in out of the way areas to get information on farming and diseases, food and crop prices at various markets. Already this is changing the way food is grown and sold.
And what is so bad about finding out about train schedules? Who wants to waste 3 days waiting after missing a train? People moving crops or who are otherwise working hard to feed a family can't afford to waste those three days, probably less so than you or me. Personal loans? Unlike loans in the West, these will probably not go towards a down payment on an SUV or a swimming pool, but more likely will be spent on essential farming tools, or perhaps as seed capital for a small business. That's what this microcredit stuff is all about... I think it's great if a tool like this makes such efforts available to a wider audience.
Providing tools and seeds rarely helps and often destroys local markets. That is the real "feel good" stuff. There are many of such fancy and widely applauded aid programmes... please go see what became of similar programmes that were implemented 10 years ago. Broken pumps, broken tractors that cannot be repaired locally, once immaculate white school buildings, still waiting for those first teachers and those first books, pencils and blackboards to arrive. That's what you will find.
Real aid is helping people to help themselves. Access to information might seem unimportant to developing nations but it has already been proven to be a game changer right down to local villagers. Don't expect them to ask only earth-shatteringly insightful questions through this thing either, and certainly do not berate them for using it for entertainment purposes as well. These are people like you and me, not some hunger-crazed wretches scratching in the dirt for food with no time for anything else. Moyo said it best when she said: "If you see an African on TV, it's either a fly-ridden victim of famine or war, or.... it's Nelson Mandela". That is the image that we need to lose... sadly it is precisely that image which fuels the industry called "aid"
Maybe not from the RIAA as such, but there's something else to consider.
Up until recently, the RIAA and its member corporations had much to fear from pirates. They did not only compete on price, but also on quality of the product itself: in many cases pirate sites offer a superior product that has not been encumbered with DRM. And the industry has taken note and is responding, with legal download sites for music, soon perhaps even movies, and by removing DRM in some cases like the songs sold on the iTunes store.
Now imagine that the RIAA and MPAA actually win against pirates, in a way that makes it almost impossible for John Q Public to find and download pirated works. They would no longer have an incentive to offer a competitive product at a competitive price. DRM would return in a big way, I expect. Plans for legal movie downloads would likely be shelved.
What does that mean for the man in the street? The return of DRM is the most notable effect, one that will have an ever increasing impact. DRM didn't matter much for upstanding citizens when it was just a region code on DVDs. But with many people downloading music from legal sources, proliferation of "media tanks" (why are they called that anyway?), more and more gadgets being capable of playing audio or video, and more of these gadgets being internet-capable, DRM and online verification of licenses will potentially have a great impact on consumers. DRM does not affect you? Hmm... Want to buy a movie abroad, one perhaps that is not even sold in your own country? Sorry, wrong region. Want to rip your Bluray to a central hard disk so you can stream it to any TV in the house? Not possible... and under the DMCA, potentially a crime. Play a movie on the go on your iPhone? You can't, unless you buy a separate copy for that phone. Borrow a CD from a friend? It won't play since the license for it has been tied to his equipment. Oh, and those movies you purchased online a while ago, they are not playing anymore, how odd. Oh yes, the company that sold them went out of business and the certificate servers are offline. Oh, and if your iPod breaks and you decide to get something else instead of an Apple product, you may have to buy all of your songs all over again. That is potentially the future of DRM, and is what gives every honest-to-goodness media exec a hard-on just by thinking about it.
I am all for paying for whatever I get. But when I pay for it, I want to own it in perpetuity, be able to sell or lend it, be able to play it on any compatible device, and be allowed to convert it to suit other devices. A Dutch parliamentary commission recently recommended something along these lines, and I think it is something wonderful (for once) that the EU could accomplish: set down what our fair use rights are (more or less the above), and then forbid the sale of equipment that actively prevents the exercise of those rights, i.e. any DRM or copy protection. If we have our fair-use rights, the RIAA can have their fair-sue rights, and be as tough on pirates as they want.
Oh well... Sometimes I am inclined to think we should not direct all that blind hate against people in posession of kiddie porn. Why? Not because I like such people or the stuff they enjoy, but because this witch hunt against anything having to do with kiddie porn scares me rather a lot. It's like the global warming bandwagon... the problem might be real, but the reason everybody jumps on is to push their own agenda. Over here, the police recently investigated some (extremish) right-wing politician, and announced for some reason that they found kiddie porn on his computer. It was odd that they announced it since it was not the object of their investigation, and as it turned out it was something like 2 images in a sizable pr0n-pile of otherwise vanilla erotica. But... if they wanted to eliminate this guy's political career, the move suddenly makes sense, since everyone branded as a child pornographer, however tenuously, is basically branded an outcast for life in today's society.
And what has been predicted is now becoming reality, in Germany at least: child pornography is being used as the excuse to institute state censorship on the Internet. It's already been mentioned as a reason why citizens shouldn't be allowed cryptography or anynomity on the Net. They might take away those liberties to prevent kiddie porn with everyone cheering them on, since in the fight for that cause, anything goes at the moment. But it will not stop there.