I'm currently residing in Japan where this kind
of silly matter would never come up.
Quick quiz: How many people in Japan commit suicide from working like dogs compared to North Americans? My guess would be a LOT more, from what I've heard. There's even a word for it; I forget what it is but it starts with a "K".
What about the Japanese idea that an employer owes the worker a lifelong job in exchange for loyalty? That seems way more fucked up to me than putting in 9-5 and expecting a cheque. Of course, the job for life deal isn't really panning out that much anymore, and neither are a lot of other feudal Japanese traditions.
I'll tell you one thing AC, I wouldn't want to be in Japan when the time comes for the Japanese way of life to change. History has shown that societal change in Japan is never gradual, subtle, peaceful, or bloodless.
This is what happens when you get science news from CNN. Antares IS NOT 500,000 ly away; it is 600 ly away. Big difference. As well, one cannot say that it is the "next expected supernova". It's a good candidate but so is Betelgeuse for that matter. Eta Carinae is much mre likely to go supernova than either of them.
Is not considering a Mars mission and certainly doesn't have the technology (or the money) for it. I don't know where you heard that from but it's just plain wrong.
If you read to near the end of the article it states that scaling the fun up past a certain degree would indeed cause the end magnets to shatter. The force of two of the magnets coming together is larger than that of one of the little ball bearings hitting one of them. Neodymium magnets will easily shatter if you drop them on the floor as well.
If their BW problems stem from the fact that the rest of the campus has experienced a "mysterious" increase in network traffic, a good start may be to block access on ports used by popular file sharing programs. I'll bet that this is where a lot of the BW demand is coming from since the increase happened at the beginning of a new semester.
After having my Hotmail account for 2 or so years I have finally received my first piece of spam in it. This was quickly followed by another, leading me to guess that it's making the rounds now. In setting up accounts for other people in the past, I've noticed that by far the biggest spam magnets are addresses that have numbered extensions. A numbered extension means that the first part of the address is already in use, therefore it's a simple matter of just putting an x=x+1 function into the mailer once you have found a legitimate address.
Yep, I think you've been listening to too much Art Bell.
Roswell was most likely just a smokescreen to divert attention from the fact that Nazi scientists were working for the US to develop their rocketry program. They probably realized that if they produced "evidence" of a crashed saucer and then quickly backtracked and denied it (substituting a weather balloon for the saucer) that people would think there was a conspiracy to cover up the alien crash. Worked pretty damn good. Meanwhile, no one is even thinking about having the former enemy on the public payroll.
This is going to make radio astronomy more difficult. There are several spectral lines that lie between 3 and 10 GHz (I'm assuming that 10 is somewhere near the upper limit). As if light pollution and Iridium satellites weren't bad enough for visual astronomy, now radio astronomers are going to have to deal with elevated noise levels in a few interesting lines.
It looks like business wins out over the quest for knowledge once again.
Bought it and returned it within 3 days. Not that I wanted to mind you; it was a killer game. I played the demo right through and eagerly went out and bought the retail version, only to have it fully lock up on me almost every game. I tried everything...uninstalling/reinstalling, updating all my drivers, reducing the graphics settings, praying to the gods. I was quite disappointed that I missed out on this game. From what I saw of it and played, it looked like a truly great game.
Is Collateral Damage even worthy of a review? Would anyone going to see it not expect YASBEU(yet another stupid blow-em-up)?
How about a review of a GOOD movie? Katz seems to enjoy putting even the most mindless drivel in a social and political context; how about a review of Kandahar, a widely acclaimed movie that offers some real insight into life under the Taliban? Is Jon afraid that writing a review for an intelligent movie will challenge his ability (or lack thereof) to actually think about more in the theatre than whether or not he should wait until the lineups at the snack bar die down before he buys popcorn?
Come on Katz, I challenge you to write a review for a movie that actually has some substance. Then you can show the world how really lacking in ability you are. (Errm...did I just say that?)
No worries about rain at 20,000 miles (especially considering the earth's atmosphere is only a couple of hundred miles deep). Rain doesn't occur past 2-3 miles or so.
New Atari 2600s were going for close to $350 Canadian when they first came out and the games sold for an average of $60 when they were newly released. Since the US and Canada had equal purchasing parity back then, the prices would have been almost the same there.
As far as I can tell, the price of a new console and games hasn't changed all that much since the 2600.
So back in the 80's the CIA thought it would be a great idea to help finance their terrorist war against the government of Nicaragua by selling guns to the Iranians and opening up drug trafficking routes from South and Central America to the inner cities of the US. Then they help out the "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan with sales of opium. The US government then declares a War on Drugs.
Back in the 90s, the KLA fought a dirty war against the Serbs with money made from drugs with the help of the CIA.
Now, in 2002, Americans have to pay over $3 million to watch ads linking drugs with terrorism. Well no shit...people have been saying that all along.
Check out a great short film that just won an award at the Sundance Film Festival called "Crack the CIA" produced by the Guerilla News Network. Quite revealing, featuring some footage from the Iran-Contra Congress hearings and a public confrontation between a former LAPD officer and the then Director of the CIA, John Deutch.
I signed up for beta testing many months ago in hopes of trying it out. I wasn't accepted into any of the pools but still held out hope of a public beta.
A couple of months back I received an email from the beta mailing list stating that they were going public with a "commercial beta test". This test would entail everyone paying in $10 to help test the ability of their servers to handle the financial transactions. This sounded quite contrary to their statements that there would be no need to put any money into the system. Here's a copy of the email:
Dear Sir/ Madam
You have previously registered your interest to be a Beta tester for Project
Entropia. MindArk is now preparing to start the commercial trial phase. An
expanded panel of users will be selected to participate in the trials. Those
are in the addition to the users that are already in the Beta phase II.
The commercial trial phase will include many of the planned features of the
finished product. One of which is the financial system that has been
creating ripple effects far beyond the MMORPG market. This financial system
will be designed around real money exchanged into a virtual currency. Giving
users a chance of actually make real money while inside the Project Entropia
Virtual Universe.
Project Entropia will be free to obtain and use, only your connection fee to
the Internet will cost you anything, there will be no monthly fees payable
to MindArk.
The fact that real money will be an issue in Project Entropia requires us to
test this system to its full extent. This is why we are searching for users
who are willing to insert small amounts of money in exchange for the chance
to make much more.
In addition to the funds inserted into Project Entropia, MindArk will add
funds to the Virtual World; an excess of 100.000 USD will be available for
users to claim inside Project Entropia. This is a first in history; you can
actually make a small fortune and at the same time be one of the first to
explore Project Entropia.
The transfers are necessary for testing mass transaction flows through the
system servers. And will help us track funds through the entire system, this
is necessary to ensure that the system is fully functional when we head into
the open phase. To achieve this, we elect to create a system where an avid
user stands a fairly good chance of making a small fortune by testing this
product.
Note that the transfer requirements does not constitute a change of the
original specifications, Project Entropia will be free to obtain and use,
according to everything that has been stated previously, nothing has changed
on that point. This fee is only imposed to test the systems handling real
money transactions. Without these tests we would have no chance of providing
the service of real money transfers safely.
If you are interested in participating in these trials, you have to follow
the link below. You will not be required to pay anything at this point. You
only have to agree to the rules stated for a commercial trial participation.
http://www.project-entropia.com/phase3/firstpage.a sp
Kind Regards.
Erik Johnels
Mindark AB
Note that they state in the email that they aren't going back on their word; this deposit is merely part of a test to see if their servers can handle the transactions.
After getting my hopes dashed by another MMORPG in the making (DAWN, which turned out to be complete vaporware) I was sceptical about the reality of Project Entropia...more so after they asked for money to participate in a beta. I went to their IRC channel to see if I could find anything out about previous betas, but all beta testers must abide by a strict non-disclosure policy which even prohibits them from saying they're in the beta (sounds a little too convenient). A lot of the talk in IRC was people planning their Project Entropia pyramid schemes.
Something tells me that this is simply a petty scam.
Firstly, I did not claim there was a monopoly and entertainment and media though, as someone has pointed out, the term oligopoly could apply.
As well, cars are a very narrow market segment compared to mass media, entertainment, and publishing. Perhaps you might care to read the link I supplied.
Nowhere did I state or imply that 6 companies were a monopoly. I was just answering the question of "How many media companies are there?" Dcgaber was under the impression that there were a very large amount when in fact there aren't.
Considering the incredible detail that the authors went into and the length of the article, I think that PC games would best be left to another feature.
My guess (from a marketing perspective) is that since consoles are so hot right now it makes sense for a gaming site to run a feature on them. Advertisers love stuff like this.
PC games OTOH...well, as far as I can see there's just not a hell of a lot going on there right now. What was the last big-buzz must-have PC game? For me it was Civ3, which turned out to be quite the stinker. Ditto for Black and White. Lately, the console market has been delivering on its hype, whereas PC games haven't. Gamespot has to go where the money is.
What? You thought they published articles as a public service?;)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm currently residing in Japan where this kind of silly matter would never come up.
Quick quiz: How many people in Japan commit suicide from working like dogs compared to North Americans? My guess would be a LOT more, from what I've heard. There's even a word for it; I forget what it is but it starts with a "K".
What about the Japanese idea that an employer owes the worker a lifelong job in exchange for loyalty? That seems way more fucked up to me than putting in 9-5 and expecting a cheque. Of course, the job for life deal isn't really panning out that much anymore, and neither are a lot of other feudal Japanese traditions.
I'll tell you one thing AC, I wouldn't want to be in Japan when the time comes for the Japanese way of life to change. History has shown that societal change in Japan is never gradual, subtle, peaceful, or bloodless.
This is what happens when you get science news from CNN. Antares IS NOT 500,000 ly away; it is 600 ly away. Big difference. As well, one cannot say that it is the "next expected supernova". It's a good candidate but so is Betelgeuse for that matter. Eta Carinae is much mre likely to go supernova than either of them.
Since the parent was referring to manned missions I assumed that's what you were talking about. Still, I do stand corrected.
Is not considering a Mars mission and certainly doesn't have the technology (or the money) for it. I don't know where you heard that from but it's just plain wrong.
Are you using your old shortcut to launch the client?
That should be "scaling the gun up past a certain degree", although "fun" works too.
The 2 minute posting rule sure does suck.
If you read to near the end of the article it states that scaling the fun up past a certain degree would indeed cause the end magnets to shatter. The force of two of the magnets coming together is larger than that of one of the little ball bearings hitting one of them. Neodymium magnets will easily shatter if you drop them on the floor as well.
I finally got the page loaded but the images are all broken. Archive.org and Google don't seem to have it cached.
If their BW problems stem from the fact that the rest of the campus has experienced a "mysterious" increase in network traffic, a good start may be to block access on ports used by popular file sharing programs. I'll bet that this is where a lot of the BW demand is coming from since the increase happened at the beginning of a new semester.
After having my Hotmail account for 2 or so years I have finally received my first piece of spam in it. This was quickly followed by another, leading me to guess that it's making the rounds now. In setting up accounts for other people in the past, I've noticed that by far the biggest spam magnets are addresses that have numbered extensions. A numbered extension means that the first part of the address is already in use, therefore it's a simple matter of just putting an x=x+1 function into the mailer once you have found a legitimate address.
Yep, I think you've been listening to too much Art Bell.
Roswell was most likely just a smokescreen to divert attention from the fact that Nazi scientists were working for the US to develop their rocketry program. They probably realized that if they produced "evidence" of a crashed saucer and then quickly backtracked and denied it (substituting a weather balloon for the saucer) that people would think there was a conspiracy to cover up the alien crash. Worked pretty damn good. Meanwhile, no one is even thinking about having the former enemy on the public payroll.
That, my friend, is the real conspiracy.
This is going to make radio astronomy more difficult. There are several spectral lines that lie between 3 and 10 GHz (I'm assuming that 10 is somewhere near the upper limit). As if light pollution and Iridium satellites weren't bad enough for visual astronomy, now radio astronomers are going to have to deal with elevated noise levels in a few interesting lines.
It looks like business wins out over the quest for knowledge once again.
Bought it and returned it within 3 days. Not that I wanted to mind you; it was a killer game. I played the demo right through and eagerly went out and bought the retail version, only to have it fully lock up on me almost every game. I tried everything...uninstalling/reinstalling, updating all my drivers, reducing the graphics settings, praying to the gods. I was quite disappointed that I missed out on this game. From what I saw of it and played, it looked like a truly great game.
Is Collateral Damage even worthy of a review? Would anyone going to see it not expect YASBEU(yet another stupid blow-em-up)?
How about a review of a GOOD movie? Katz seems to enjoy putting even the most mindless drivel in a social and political context; how about a review of Kandahar, a widely acclaimed movie that offers some real insight into life under the Taliban? Is Jon afraid that writing a review for an intelligent movie will challenge his ability (or lack thereof) to actually think about more in the theatre than whether or not he should wait until the lineups at the snack bar die down before he buys popcorn?
Come on Katz, I challenge you to write a review for a movie that actually has some substance. Then you can show the world how really lacking in ability you are. (Errm...did I just say that?)
No worries about rain at 20,000 miles (especially considering the earth's atmosphere is only a couple of hundred miles deep). Rain doesn't occur past 2-3 miles or so.
New Atari 2600s were going for close to $350 Canadian when they first came out and the games sold for an average of $60 when they were newly released. Since the US and Canada had equal purchasing parity back then, the prices would have been almost the same there.
As far as I can tell, the price of a new console and games hasn't changed all that much since the 2600.
So back in the 80's the CIA thought it would be a great idea to help finance their terrorist war against the government of Nicaragua by selling guns to the Iranians and opening up drug trafficking routes from South and Central America to the inner cities of the US. Then they help out the "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan with sales of opium. The US government then declares a War on Drugs.
Back in the 90s, the KLA fought a dirty war against the Serbs with money made from drugs with the help of the CIA.
Now, in 2002, Americans have to pay over $3 million to watch ads linking drugs with terrorism. Well no shit...people have been saying that all along.
Check out a great short film that just won an award at the Sundance Film Festival called "Crack the CIA" produced by the Guerilla News Network. Quite revealing, featuring some footage from the Iran-Contra Congress hearings and a public confrontation between a former LAPD officer and the then Director of the CIA, John Deutch.
Interestingly, this only works if you have the preview pane switched on.
Not true...though you do have to have opened the message (not good enough to have just selected the header).
I signed up for beta testing many months ago in hopes of trying it out. I wasn't accepted into any of the pools but still held out hope of a public beta.
a sp
A couple of months back I received an email from the beta mailing list stating that they were going public with a "commercial beta test". This test would entail everyone paying in $10 to help test the ability of their servers to handle the financial transactions. This sounded quite contrary to their statements that there would be no need to put any money into the system. Here's a copy of the email:
Dear Sir/ Madam You have previously registered your interest to be a Beta tester for Project Entropia. MindArk is now preparing to start the commercial trial phase. An expanded panel of users will be selected to participate in the trials. Those are in the addition to the users that are already in the Beta phase II.
The commercial trial phase will include many of the planned features of the finished product. One of which is the financial system that has been creating ripple effects far beyond the MMORPG market. This financial system will be designed around real money exchanged into a virtual currency. Giving users a chance of actually make real money while inside the Project Entropia Virtual Universe.
Project Entropia will be free to obtain and use, only your connection fee to the Internet will cost you anything, there will be no monthly fees payable to MindArk. The fact that real money will be an issue in Project Entropia requires us to test this system to its full extent. This is why we are searching for users who are willing to insert small amounts of money in exchange for the chance to make much more.
In addition to the funds inserted into Project Entropia, MindArk will add funds to the Virtual World; an excess of 100.000 USD will be available for users to claim inside Project Entropia. This is a first in history; you can actually make a small fortune and at the same time be one of the first to explore Project Entropia.
The transfers are necessary for testing mass transaction flows through the system servers. And will help us track funds through the entire system, this is necessary to ensure that the system is fully functional when we head into the open phase. To achieve this, we elect to create a system where an avid user stands a fairly good chance of making a small fortune by testing this product.
Note that the transfer requirements does not constitute a change of the original specifications, Project Entropia will be free to obtain and use, according to everything that has been stated previously, nothing has changed on that point. This fee is only imposed to test the systems handling real money transactions. Without these tests we would have no chance of providing the service of real money transfers safely.
If you are interested in participating in these trials, you have to follow the link below. You will not be required to pay anything at this point. You only have to agree to the rules stated for a commercial trial participation. http://www.project-entropia.com/phase3/firstpage.
Kind Regards.
Erik Johnels Mindark AB
Note that they state in the email that they aren't going back on their word; this deposit is merely part of a test to see if their servers can handle the transactions.
After getting my hopes dashed by another MMORPG in the making (DAWN, which turned out to be complete vaporware) I was sceptical about the reality of Project Entropia...more so after they asked for money to participate in a beta. I went to their IRC channel to see if I could find anything out about previous betas, but all beta testers must abide by a strict non-disclosure policy which even prohibits them from saying they're in the beta (sounds a little too convenient). A lot of the talk in IRC was people planning their Project Entropia pyramid schemes.
Something tells me that this is simply a petty scam.
comment:
fp
Firstly, I did not claim there was a monopoly and entertainment and media though, as someone has pointed out, the term oligopoly could apply.
As well, cars are a very narrow market segment compared to mass media, entertainment, and publishing. Perhaps you might care to read the link I supplied.
Nowhere did I state or imply that 6 companies were a monopoly. I was just answering the question of "How many media companies are there?" Dcgaber was under the impression that there were a very large amount when in fact there aren't.
[H}ow many viable magazines/cable channels/ISP/Movie Studios etc are there besides AOL TW...hmm, I don't have enough time to count.
The answer to your question is 5.
6 media conglomerates own just about every major media and entertainment product in the US.
Considering the incredible detail that the authors went into and the length of the article, I think that PC games would best be left to another feature.
;)
My guess (from a marketing perspective) is that since consoles are so hot right now it makes sense for a gaming site to run a feature on them. Advertisers love stuff like this.
PC games OTOH...well, as far as I can see there's just not a hell of a lot going on there right now. What was the last big-buzz must-have PC game? For me it was Civ3, which turned out to be quite the stinker. Ditto for Black and White. Lately, the console market has been delivering on its hype, whereas PC games haven't. Gamespot has to go where the money is.
What? You thought they published articles as a public service?
Try reading more carefully before you cut and paste.