I wonder if a hyperinflationary spiral could ever ignited in Second Life? Not necessarily from a bank run, of course. It certainly would be fascinating to watch it spin up...
Yes I would have had a tough time choosing between M.U.L.E. and Star Raiders - both were landmark achievements, IMHO. Being able to play 4 people on the same screen in MULE was fantastic. When we played 3 people and one AI, we would use the collusion feature against the AI - man that was fun!
Well, since I'm a forward-looking person, I think that Office 2007 is already not good enough for me, so I'm going to wait until Office 2011 comes out.
How old (valuable) are the old PCs?
on
Free Geek Robbed
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· Score: 1
I wonder if the thieves made off with really old PCs that have no Windows resale value at all?
I've read from different sources that many people interviewed in line intend to sell the box, not keep it. Thus, waiting outdoors for days in inclement weather for a sizeable payoff makes a certain amount of sense, but of course only to those with a limited ability to make their free time more effective financially.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the very funny SF short story "They're Made Out of Meat" by Terry Bisson. Only 4 pages, and utterly hilarious. You can find it in his collection "Bears Discover Fire."
The spokesperson said, "As part of efforts to restructure the company and focus on our core business, we had to make some cuts..."
Focus on the core business? The core business is supposed to be making Lego brick sets. Talk about a complete failure at the executive level. That would be like one of their factory workers saying "I'm going to focus on arriving on time and doing my job," and he winds up coming in at noon and goofing off.
Except of course, the factory worker gets fired, while the executives get their annual bonuses regardless.
I agree with you. I'm quite happy with my 24" flat screen TV and non-progressive scan DVD player. By the same token, XP works great for my needs. Why should I spend lots of $$$ for an HD TV set, or for Vista hardware and OS, for just incremental gains? The change from VCR to DVD and from Win98 to XP was an order-of-magnitude change and well worth it.
Very interesting. Are you referring to Warlpiri and its sign language? I love what you said about "I have to wave my hands and point to convey the same information in English." That reminds me of the opening of Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude, where "the world was so young that many things did not have names, and in order to talk about them you had to point to them."
I'll echo a previous poster's comment about Computerworld's fear-mongering aimed at clueless executives. All the measures in the article will just interfere with efficiency and other necessary work. The best way to avoid a project like this is to tell the execs "We'll all have to memorize a few more passwords, and if we forget them then we're locked out of the email system forever." That will bring them to their senses.
In related news, the Washington Post reported a few days ago that only 33 out 12,000 FBI agents had "some" proficiency in Arabic, i.e. not even fluency but just some ability.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/10/10/AR2006101001388.html
So much for the Administration's foreign language initiative, which I knew would go nowhere. I think this points to a basic weakness in the conservative mindset (not just conservative American, but conservative Western or perhaps conservative in any culture) - distaste for or inability to learn from other languages or cultures.
When I hear the loud voices here in the States saying, "If you can't speak English, go back to where you came from," I wonder what they would think of the reply "If our soldiers can't speak Arabic, they should go back to where they came from..."
Check out the BBC DVD series "Life in the Undergrowth", with the incomparable David Attenborough. The biggest problem with the series is that, at 5 episodes, it's far too short.
It is what it isn't. The bottom line is, when we've drawn a line in the sand and the sand has blown away and the line isn't there more, and the situation on the ground is about the same as the situation suspended 300 feet in the air, well, at the end of the day we should all go home.
Well their face-to-face customer support may be great (depending on the store location or the item), but their online resources for older machines -- i.e. anything more than 9 months old -- are by far the worst of any major vendor. If you don't have a serial number, they give you no way to identify the model of your machine. They make it worse because they don't assign series names or numbers to any of their products, and they introduce so many tweaks and variations in a particular manufacturing run that you have to go to a 3rd party site to figure out things.
I've always liked Apple despite (or because of) 15 years in a Wintel career, but, man, their weak tech support resources just infuriate me.
We'll all lose out if Jobs sells Pixar to Disney. Here's one reason:
I heard Albert Brooks talking about his new movie "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" on the radio. Sony was his original distributor, but they wanted him to avoid using the word "Muslim" in the title, probably because they didn't want to offend any potential buyers of their cameras, TVs, AV Gear, etc. So he took his film to another distributor, one who didn't have to worry about TV/camera sales etc.
So much for "synergy" - just shows the bigger you are, the *less* you can do, 'cause you're always worried about how one subsidiary's actions will affect the biz of all the other subsidiaries.
That's what's going to happen to Pixar if Disney englobs it. "Toe the line and cover all of our sizeable asses!"
If I'm gonna install open source software, it requires less powerful hardware than WinBloat, right? So why buy the overpowered e510 when I can get a 2400, wipe out the Windows, and get acceptable performance from Linux?
Very true, and, here in Washington DC, the air conditioning is unbelievably cold in the summer. I always wear long pants to the theater now and my female friends all bring jackets and sweaters, which is pretty damn ridiculous when the outside temp is 90 degrees at 7 pm.
said high-ranking studio executives as they continued to hit themselves with hammers.
*They* are the ones who signed off on this summer's glut of crappy movies, and they are the ones who will sign off on *next* summer's glut of crappy movies.
Let's see if they truly take responsibility for their own poor decisions and understanding of the market.
Yes. I thought at first that he had spent 748 days in space *away* from fellow Russian Sergei Avdeyev, then I re-read the sentence and I see that "taken away the record from" was the intended meaning.
Let's see which shuttle picks the cosmonaut up from the ISS. Err, I mean picks up the cosmonaut from the ISS.
I was very disappointed in March of Penguins - blatant anthropomorphization and tugging at the heartstrings, and an overbearing soundtrack.
I've been watching Attenborough's "The Life of Birds" series (1998) and I think this is far superior to the Penguins film - informative, beautifully filmed, tasteful use of slow-motion and music, and filled with wonder at birds and behavior that is truly different from and inexplicable to humans.
More public interest for Moon instead of ISS?
on
Back to Moon in 2015?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I think the average person would be more supportive of a moon base (once it was there) compared to the ISS simple because the moon base is located in a physical, identifiable, and visible location. Everyone can see the Moon and think about it and wonder about it.
The ISS, on the other hand, is literally in nowhere. Also, the residents seem to be basically stuck in a can. With a Moon base, one can go out for walk and go exploring. I think subconsciously there's a greater appeal to that idea than for that of the ISS.
Slashdot Mirror
I think their first priority should be rebuilding the email protocols. We are all wasting too much time, money and bandwidth dealing with spam.
I wonder if a hyperinflationary spiral could ever ignited in Second Life? Not necessarily from a bank run, of course. It certainly would be fascinating to watch it spin up ...
Yes I would have had a tough time choosing between M.U.L.E. and Star Raiders - both were landmark achievements, IMHO. Being able to play 4 people on the same screen in MULE was fantastic. When we played 3 people and one AI, we would use the collusion feature against the AI - man that was fun!
Well, since I'm a forward-looking person, I think that Office 2007 is already not good enough for me, so I'm going to wait until Office 2011 comes out.
I wonder if the thieves made off with really old PCs that have no Windows resale value at all?
I've read from different sources that many people interviewed in line intend to sell the box, not keep it. Thus, waiting outdoors for days in inclement weather for a sizeable payoff makes a certain amount of sense, but of course only to those with a limited ability to make their free time more effective financially.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the very funny SF short story "They're Made Out of Meat" by Terry Bisson. Only 4 pages, and utterly hilarious. You can find it in his collection "Bears Discover Fire."
The spokesperson said, "As part of efforts to restructure the company and focus on our core business, we had to make some cuts ..."
Focus on the core business? The core business is supposed to be making Lego brick sets. Talk about a complete failure at the executive level. That would be like one of their factory workers saying "I'm going to focus on arriving on time and doing my job," and he winds up coming in at noon and goofing off.
Except of course, the factory worker gets fired, while the executives get their annual bonuses regardless.
I agree with you. I'm quite happy with my 24" flat screen TV and non-progressive scan DVD player. By the same token, XP works great for my needs. Why should I spend lots of $$$ for an HD TV set, or for Vista hardware and OS, for just incremental gains? The change from VCR to DVD and from Win98 to XP was an order-of-magnitude change and well worth it.
Very interesting. Are you referring to Warlpiri and its sign language? I love what you said about "I have to wave my hands and point to convey the same information in English." That reminds me of the opening of Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude, where "the world was so young that many things did not have names, and in order to talk about them you had to point to them."
I'll echo a previous poster's comment about Computerworld's fear-mongering aimed at clueless executives. All the measures in the article will just interfere with efficiency and other necessary work. The best way to avoid a project like this is to tell the execs "We'll all have to memorize a few more passwords, and if we forget them then we're locked out of the email system forever." That will bring them to their senses.
In related news, the Washington Post reported a few days ago that only 33 out 12,000 FBI agents had "some" proficiency in Arabic, i.e. not even fluency but just some ability. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/10/10/AR2006101001388.html
So much for the Administration's foreign language initiative, which I knew would go nowhere. I think this points to a basic weakness in the conservative mindset (not just conservative American, but conservative Western or perhaps conservative in any culture) - distaste for or inability to learn from other languages or cultures.
When I hear the loud voices here in the States saying, "If you can't speak English, go back to where you came from," I wonder what they would think of the reply "If our soldiers can't speak Arabic, they should go back to where they came from ..."
Yes it's available for rental on netflix or purchase at amazon.com
Check out the BBC DVD series "Life in the Undergrowth", with the incomparable David Attenborough. The biggest problem with the series is that, at 5 episodes, it's far too short.
It is what it isn't. The bottom line is, when we've drawn a line in the sand and the sand has blown away and the line isn't there more, and the situation on the ground is about the same as the situation suspended 300 feet in the air, well, at the end of the day we should all go home.
Well their face-to-face customer support may be great (depending on the store location or the item), but their online resources for older machines -- i.e. anything more than 9 months old -- are by far the worst of any major vendor. If you don't have a serial number, they give you no way to identify the model of your machine. They make it worse because they don't assign series names or numbers to any of their products, and they introduce so many tweaks and variations in a particular manufacturing run that you have to go to a 3rd party site to figure out things.
I've always liked Apple despite (or because of) 15 years in a Wintel career, but, man, their weak tech support resources just infuriate me.
We'll all lose out if Jobs sells Pixar to Disney. Here's one reason: I heard Albert Brooks talking about his new movie "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" on the radio. Sony was his original distributor, but they wanted him to avoid using the word "Muslim" in the title, probably because they didn't want to offend any potential buyers of their cameras, TVs, AV Gear, etc. So he took his film to another distributor, one who didn't have to worry about TV/camera sales etc. So much for "synergy" - just shows the bigger you are, the *less* you can do, 'cause you're always worried about how one subsidiary's actions will affect the biz of all the other subsidiaries. That's what's going to happen to Pixar if Disney englobs it. "Toe the line and cover all of our sizeable asses!"
If I'm gonna install open source software, it requires less powerful hardware than WinBloat, right? So why buy the overpowered e510 when I can get a 2400, wipe out the Windows, and get acceptable performance from Linux?
Very true, and, here in Washington DC, the air conditioning is unbelievably cold in the summer. I always wear long pants to the theater now and my female friends all bring jackets and sweaters, which is pretty damn ridiculous when the outside temp is 90 degrees at 7 pm.
*They* are the ones who signed off on this summer's glut of crappy movies, and they are the ones who will sign off on *next* summer's glut of crappy movies.
Let's see if they truly take responsibility for their own poor decisions and understanding of the market.
Yes. I thought at first that he had spent 748 days in space *away* from fellow Russian Sergei Avdeyev, then I re-read the sentence and I see that "taken away the record from" was the intended meaning.
Let's see which shuttle picks the cosmonaut up from the ISS. Err, I mean picks up the cosmonaut from the ISS.
I was very disappointed in March of Penguins - blatant anthropomorphization and tugging at the heartstrings, and an overbearing soundtrack. I've been watching Attenborough's "The Life of Birds" series (1998) and I think this is far superior to the Penguins film - informative, beautifully filmed, tasteful use of slow-motion and music, and filled with wonder at birds and behavior that is truly different from and inexplicable to humans.
I think the average person would be more supportive of a moon base (once it was there) compared to the ISS simple because the moon base is located in a physical, identifiable, and visible location. Everyone can see the Moon and think about it and wonder about it. The ISS, on the other hand, is literally in nowhere. Also, the residents seem to be basically stuck in a can. With a Moon base, one can go out for walk and go exploring. I think subconsciously there's a greater appeal to that idea than for that of the ISS.
how many people are constantly checking their email as an escape from their tedious or stressful job environments.
As an American, it's the European *train services* that I would like to have in the States.