All comments on whether this is a good/bad thing aside, they clearly have the right algorithms. At a presentation by county officials, I saw a survey done of youth who were brought to the juvenile detention center in Hennepin County, Minnesota (Minneapolis and surrounds). Nearly half had seen a friend or relative murdered. Forget age limits on buying GTA4, we need to find a way to shield kids from real life murder.
Actually, the optical scan machines can prevent the "voting for two candidates" problem. In Minnesota, the machines will reject a ballot that has a mis-vote, notifying the voter BEFORE they leave the polling place and allowing them to correct the error on a new ballot. There may be other security issues to fix with optical scan machines, but they have the advantages of paper trail, electronic tabulation, and verification before the vote is cast.
I did not RTFA, but Grist Magazine recently published a comprehensive guide on How To Talk to a Climate Change Skeptic, which includes a debunking of many of the most common arguments against the climate change consensus. It also amusingly categorizes arguments by scientific veracity as well as "levels of sophistication" (including silly, naive, and specious).
TiVo should be wary of this decision, for three reasons:
1) The ad service will be opt-in, but how much do they plan on nagging customers to do so? And who wants to be nagged about having ads, anyway, especially if you bought the thing to avoid them?
2) Targeted ads are certainly more effective, as Google has shown, but it's still advertising in a space buyers have come to expect no ads or ad-skipping.
3) TiVo built the entire model of PVR around the ability to skip ads and record shows more simply than on a VCR. They could do serious damage to their brand image if they embrace advertising after professing to help people avoid it.
While I'm glad they plan to make it opt-in and targeted, I'm still skeptical that they'll find profit at the end of the advertising rainbow by alienating their customers.
Although I applaud the idea of being able to record programs via a Yahoo! web program, what if someone else gets access to your TiVo? What kinds of precautions will be in place to keep someone else from signing you up for every rerun of Will and Grace or General Hospital? *shudders*
I'd be happy with solid gameplay if I could save
on
Review: Black and White 2
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Despite some gameplay frustrations, Black and White 2 is a solid experience.
Let's try a parallel: "Despite some graphic design frustrations, Adobe Photoshop is a solid experience."
Excuse me?
If gameplay is a problem, then this game is not ready to go gold, especially given the frustrations over the first version. Additionally, Zonk describes being a "good" god as completely boring and the AI as predictably dumb in war. For a game the promised open-ended choices, it's pretty sad to see that it's one sided in practice. I'd call that a major flaw more than a "gameplay frustration."
Personally, I enjoyed the original immensely and found the gameplay just fine, so hopefully Zonk just has a different perspective. My problem with Black & White 1 was the bug that crashed the game every time you tried to save. I didn't have the time or patience to try to play through Black and White "savage."
This law specifically addresses issues such as company employees putting beta programs or films on the net prior to their commercial release. Sharing it was already wrong and the potential damage is substantially more than the cost of a movie ticket, since there is no commercial alternative.
It's one thing to make your l33t protest about poor commercial models by pirating music and movies. It's another thing to pirate something before the company even has a chance to provide a commercial alternative.
I'm no fan of Bush, ridiculously long copyrights, or the commercially available music and movie distribution system, but I think the punishment here actually fits the crime.
Natural means that the chemical or substance used is derived from a pre-existing thing (i.e. extracted, ground up, etc). Artificial means that the substance is entirely synthesized from composite chemicals. There's a neat section of the book Fast Food Nation that looks at this phenomenon in food. Apparently, "natural flavors" can often be sketchier than artificial flavors, because the chemical extracts can be poisonous whereas the artificial compounds are rather harmless.
For the curious, some information on PRT from the University of Washington. It includes design ideas, prototypes, and places where PRT is being built. Enjoy!
Actually, this practice would be more analagous to advertising near a copier in a public library. While there is room for fair and legal use, I'm sure some (or even many) people copy more than the law allows.
I think you'd be hard pressed, however, to find someone who sees advertising near the copier to be a serious problem.
I think that Democrats are friendlier with the actors and artists than the movie and music distributors. Laws supporting the entertainment "industry" are either pork barrel from the California delegation (bipartisan) or corporate-friendly (Republican). Laws favoring corporate copyright and lawsuits are conservative territory.
Except for laws supporting trial lawyers; those litigious bastards are all Democrats:-)
Let me clarify. I'm fine with violet light as long as I know when it's being utilized. I'm not such a big fan when someone else is wielding it beyond my control. That's why Google Desktop is a great tool for a single-user, home computer and a privacy concern on multi-user, public computers.
When Google first announced this, the Google-fanboy in me said, "sweet, another computer thing improved by Google!" But I read a couple of the detractor's articles and realized that there are some things on a PC I just wouldn't want to share with others. While this is fine on my personal, one-man home computer, I wouldn't want to use a public computer with the Google Desktop installed.
What really gets me is the Slashdot response. If Microsoft had released similar search feature, it would be one more nail in the coffin of poor security, no matter what user advisories they had given. When Google does it, we all jump to say that Google expressly warned against using this on a multi-user box.
I'm guilty of it, too, but let's not lose sight of the goal--better privacy and security--just because one company has a better track record.
My guess would be that your story is more likely to be posted with some sort of flip or contentious statement. Who wants just the facts when we can have struggle and controversy?
I think it's a neat kind of promo, but what about the black-loving non-U2 fan? Will the price be higher?
Also, any word on how successful these kinds of exclusive marketing deals are? I've noticed that Best Buy does a number of these exclusive marketing tricks. Any evidence to suggest that they actually work? (i.e. substantially boost sales, brand loyalty, etc)
This guy is pretty insightful in his analysis of the changes. I particularly like that you can download the dialogue changes. I'm bummed about the removal of Luke's ad-lib on Dagobah, "you're lucky you don't taste very good," to R2. I wonder if Lucas was more interested in improving visual than audio (as could also be argued for his choice to change the voice for Boba Fett--lame).
Anyway, I'm still going to be thrilled to have the "original" trilogy on DVD, my VHS copy is wearing out!
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, on second thought, I'll wait to pop the cork until we see the price tag...
All comments on whether this is a good/bad thing aside, they clearly have the right algorithms. At a presentation by county officials, I saw a survey done of youth who were brought to the juvenile detention center in Hennepin County, Minnesota (Minneapolis and surrounds). Nearly half had seen a friend or relative murdered. Forget age limits on buying GTA4, we need to find a way to shield kids from real life murder.
Actually, the optical scan machines can prevent the "voting for two candidates" problem. In Minnesota, the machines will reject a ballot that has a mis-vote, notifying the voter BEFORE they leave the polling place and allowing them to correct the error on a new ballot. There may be other security issues to fix with optical scan machines, but they have the advantages of paper trail, electronic tabulation, and verification before the vote is cast.
I did not RTFA, but Grist Magazine recently published a comprehensive guide on How To Talk to a Climate Change Skeptic, which includes a debunking of many of the most common arguments against the climate change consensus. It also amusingly categorizes arguments by scientific veracity as well as "levels of sophistication" (including silly, naive, and specious).
1) The ad service will be opt-in, but how much do they plan on nagging customers to do so? And who wants to be nagged about having ads, anyway, especially if you bought the thing to avoid them?
2) Targeted ads are certainly more effective, as Google has shown, but it's still advertising in a space buyers have come to expect no ads or ad-skipping.
3) TiVo built the entire model of PVR around the ability to skip ads and record shows more simply than on a VCR. They could do serious damage to their brand image if they embrace advertising after professing to help people avoid it.
While I'm glad they plan to make it opt-in and targeted, I'm still skeptical that they'll find profit at the end of the advertising rainbow by alienating their customers.
-John
Despite some gameplay frustrations, Black and White 2 is a solid experience. Let's try a parallel: "Despite some graphic design frustrations, Adobe Photoshop is a solid experience." Excuse me? If gameplay is a problem, then this game is not ready to go gold, especially given the frustrations over the first version. Additionally, Zonk describes being a "good" god as completely boring and the AI as predictably dumb in war. For a game the promised open-ended choices, it's pretty sad to see that it's one sided in practice. I'd call that a major flaw more than a "gameplay frustration." Personally, I enjoyed the original immensely and found the gameplay just fine, so hopefully Zonk just has a different perspective. My problem with Black & White 1 was the bug that crashed the game every time you tried to save. I didn't have the time or patience to try to play through Black and White "savage."
Post is modded insightful which makes it funny which makes it no longer insightful which makes it considerably less funny...
*eyes cross*
It's one thing to make your l33t protest about poor commercial models by pirating music and movies. It's another thing to pirate something before the company even has a chance to provide a commercial alternative.
I'm no fan of Bush, ridiculously long copyrights, or the commercially available music and movie distribution system, but I think the punishment here actually fits the crime.
The parent poster has obviously never seen breasts.
I mod myself (-1, Redundant - this is Slashdot, after all).
I think you'd be hard pressed, however, to find someone who sees advertising near the copier to be a serious problem.
Except for laws supporting trial lawyers; those litigious bastards are all Democrats :-)
What really gets me is the Slashdot response. If Microsoft had released similar search feature, it would be one more nail in the coffin of poor security, no matter what user advisories they had given. When Google does it, we all jump to say that Google expressly warned against using this on a multi-user box.
I'm guilty of it, too, but let's not lose sight of the goal--better privacy and security--just because one company has a better track record.
...
Yeah, I know, it means over the whole day but not while he's asleep. But it's not as good a story that way.
Also, any word on how successful these kinds of exclusive marketing deals are? I've noticed that Best Buy does a number of these exclusive marketing tricks. Any evidence to suggest that they actually work? (i.e. substantially boost sales, brand loyalty, etc)
Anyway, I'm still going to be thrilled to have the "original" trilogy on DVD, my VHS copy is wearing out!