The games sold data is relative to US only, so figures are lower than worldwide totals, and that's why the list doesn't contain other hit games that sold more copies than those millions (and millions).
Still, I happen to own 9 out of the 10 games mentioned there (Kingdom Hearts isn't my cup of tea), while living around 10'000 Km (10 Mm?) from US soil, and having bought ~20 titles since 2001, when I bought my PS2.
Reality check: the freeway here is forbidden to pedestrians, and actually protected with tall metal and plastic fences - it'd be VERY hard to cross them and go onto the asphalt to be hit by the 1-2 tons of steel, even if you wanted.
o) Forbidden to pedestrians. Actually, with very tall (2+ mt) metal and plastic fences. You'd have a very bad time trying to materially cross the road.
o) Forbidden to cyclists/light bikes and scooters (under 150 cc).
o) No perpendicular crossroads, only smooth joins and exit ramps.
o) No traffic lights whatsoever.
o) At least two wide lanes + emergency lane.
And yes, the actual road is within, say, 30 mt of my condo outer wall. Noise CAN be a problem, but the benefit for the whole city far outweighs the inconvenience of inhabitants, who KNEW about the freeway when they bought their homes. NIMBYes don't belong here.
Have you considered that the sign is there directly for your benfit? Or would you rather have the traffic noise from a freeway full of cars doing 120km/h???
Never thought about it even for a split second, for two reasons:
1) When the traffic is jammed, I don't care that the cars are going there at 2 km/h. The limit is absurd.
2) When the traffic is free flowing, cars are ALREADY going pretty fast. 120 km/h is not the case here, because I'm next to a ramp to a bridge, but this stretch of road can be negotiated EASILY, and more importantly SAFELY, at 100 km/h. The limit is absurd.
And I don't mind traffic noise - or else I wouldn't have bought an apartment in front of this freeway. NIMBYes tick me off in the wrong way. I like the freeway here, besides pollution and noise, it's an useful resource to reach places in the city. It's a tradeoff, and I purchased this home fully aware of the drawbacks.
There are far more car crashes in the back of my building, where two "harmless" streets meet and people park near the crossroad, limiting visibility for drivers coming from two of the four ways, than in the freeway, where everyone is speeding in the same direction, at the same speed.
Speed limits are there for a reason, so stick to them! Traffic tickets should be depending on income/wealth instead of being fixed like they are now.
Karma to burn, so I bite the bullet.
You suggest that speed limits are there for a reason, then provide the reason: quick cash for the municipalities.
Some limits are ridiculous low in some cases: I have a 30 km/h sign right in front of my window - and my condo is in front of a freeway! Often they are just a trick to further tax car owners, without resorting to the politically unpopular word "tax".
Here (Italy) there's a huge scandal about similar behavior by the police enforcers, and one that is quickly making some heads roll.
At some specific, usually not dangerous crossroads, the traffic lights have been reprogrammed to have a very short "yellow" time - around two seconds. It has been documented in a broadcast inquire on TV, with actual videos and SMPTE'd times. With two seconds from green to red, it's materially impossible to slow down and stop at the crossroad, even sticking to the very low speed limit.
So you WILL cross the crossroad with a red. And of course, that crossroad has this new CCTV system to recognize plates and automatically issue tickets in case of crossing with red. There was an outburst of enraged citizens against this practice: in a two weeks period, they received in excess of 13'000 tickets, all at the same crossroad. In a town with around 50'000 people, not a major city either...
Speed limits and absurd, often intentional, road laws are demonstrably used to sanate local administrations' budgets and balances. Disguised as "think of the children" policies, they are just another way to transfer resources from citizens to public administrators.
Now Linus is being the epytome of evil proprietary software defenders?
I mean, the Linux kernel is *STILL* released under GPL V2, or during my trip to Mars something changed, and now it has a Microsoft EULA attached?
Until last (boreal) spring, GPL V2 wasn't the best, "freest" license around, according to RMS and FSF themselves? Now that they have to push another product, all of sudden, the past version has become non free?
You should sound like an pathetic old brat, if you accuse your peers of using the same tool you touted as earthsaver only six months before, instead of blindly jumping on the ideology bandwagon you're at the helm of.
You're restricting your horizon to engineering wonders.
The original wonders, actually, were compiled as a list of "must see" sites. Not necessarily because it was hard to build them. The statue of Zeus, for example, was a 12mt tall statue that was not by any means difficult to build. By the time it was built, there were many more taller statues. But it was something to see, as awe-inspiring was the Father of the Gods for the ancient greeks.
I'd call the original seven wonders exactly the same "tourist scam" as other slashdotters are pulling their hairs in shock.
So, you're correct when you say "it should still produce real shock and awe hundreds or thousands of years later [...] and should inspire wonder in the majority of people, without regard to culture or nationality". That's exactly what the present list (tries and) does.
The Cristo Redentor? Yes, a basic 38mt concrete statue. But built upon an almost vertical, 700m tall granite dome, reachable only with a twisting trail, or a tiny railroad, that overlooks a 10 million inhabitants city. Building the statue was trivial, even in 1930. Building the statue THERE was an engineering nightmare. Remember: there were NO helicopters in 1930. But the value of that piece of concrete is not the difficulty to build it. Is the image of a big guy "hugging" every citizen in the city from his tall pedestal. The statue can be seen from almost any part of the huge city, and the sense of "he's protecting me" is the awe you were referring to. Not just the trivial block of soapstone.
The Colosseum? Well, a stadium, give or take. Big as you want, but still just a fancy arena. The only engineering feat you can find there is the mechanic devices (mostly pulleys and leverages) that allowed access to the battlefield from the dungeon below. The picture changes a lot if you consider that - during the "technical life" of the Colosseum - an estimated 400'000 people died there. Check which entire metropolitanean area contain 400'000 people in US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States _metropolitan_statistical_areas_by_population Want to wipe Reno, Pensacola or Flint? Throw them in the Colosseum! Colosseum is the single place where most people died in the history of humanity. And mostly, for games!!! Aren't you impressed at the mere idea? How fucked up our human race is, with its blood thirst and desire to see the destruction of its own kin? Much more than by staring at the ruined marble block, I'm sure.
Oh, and Antipater wrote about such list in 140BC. The colosseum was built in 80AC. Unless Antipater was able to see 220 years in the future, I don't understand how he could have added it to the list.;)
Ok, all nice and cute......But ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN pages to describe CPU coolers?
I mean, WTF? Next time, just put one word per page, alongside 29763410974 banners/links/ads and be done with it. This kind of... err... "journalism" is spiraling down. Quickly.
I know I will miss some incredibly useful piece of vital information by avoiding to read all 119 pages. But I also know there are more creative ways to offend my own intelligence.
To whoever thinks that 65 years is a bit too much:
Think about time.
Think about the time you spend/spent 1) deleting spam, 2) writing rules to filter spam, 3) learning, writing, installing, configuring bayesian apps.
Add to that the time spent by your POP/IMAP/SMTP/Exchange server to receive spam and forward it to you the one that passed thru the aforementioned filters.
Think about the total time you spent dealing with spam, in one form or another.
Then multiply that time for all the people on Earth that face the same problem as you do - from simple users to ISP admins - and have to think and implement solutions - from "ignore and delete" to complex auto-training systems.
65 years suddenly appear a shard of a split second, compared to the total wasted time.
Even if I *am* a Gentoo zealot myself, couldn't help but laugh reading your "translation" message. It's so damn true!:)
OTOH, you typed a 3K chars message as first post. Why I have the distinct feeling you already had it ready somewhere, to copy and paste it at the first chance, when anything gentooish reached front page?
Ah, I counted the chars with my ultra-optimized, distcc-recompiled "wc"! Zowie, I'm 1337!:D
What does banning altered consoles have to do with keeping online play 'fair and level'? I thought that copies are identical to the originals.
One might say that using a modified XBox could mean hacked console firmware to gain unfair advantages, like visual aids, gfx drivers clip hacks, aimbots, tricks with skins, etc.
Another one might say that this is FUD applied to online gaming. After all, we're talking about Microsoft.
Could you hear the whining from AV companies? "It's unfair! They have access to the OS, so they will put us out of business".
Which they will do, obviously: it's just matter of time. But in the meanwhile, the AV corps could still sell some copy of their rig crippling tools^W^W^Wsecurity enhancement programs.
Amazingly enough, it seems only the hard-core *nix users are incapable of correctly running and administering Windows PC. Oh, we can. Even remotely! We call them "botnets".:)
There are some dirt poor countries that would recognize you as the Emperor of Mars, if you ask them nicely (i.e. with the correct grease help - as stated by the GP).
Slashdot Mirror
I guess in the end, corporations play the game they bought.
There, fixed the sentence for you.
...As if millions of fanboys suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
The games sold data is relative to US only, so figures are lower than worldwide totals, and that's why the list doesn't contain other hit games that sold more copies than those millions (and millions).
Still, I happen to own 9 out of the 10 games mentioned there (Kingdom Hearts isn't my cup of tea), while living around 10'000 Km (10 Mm?) from US soil, and having bought ~20 titles since 2001, when I bought my PS2.
Reality check: the freeway here is forbidden to pedestrians, and actually protected with tall metal and plastic fences - it'd be VERY hard to cross them and go onto the asphalt to be hit by the 1-2 tons of steel, even if you wanted.
"Freeway" as in:
o) Forbidden to pedestrians. Actually, with very tall (2+ mt) metal and plastic fences. You'd have a very bad time trying to materially cross the road.
o) Forbidden to cyclists/light bikes and scooters (under 150 cc).
o) No perpendicular crossroads, only smooth joins and exit ramps.
o) No traffic lights whatsoever.
o) At least two wide lanes + emergency lane.
And yes, the actual road is within, say, 30 mt of my condo outer wall. Noise CAN be a problem, but the benefit for the whole city far outweighs the inconvenience of inhabitants, who KNEW about the freeway when they bought their homes. NIMBYes don't belong here.
Have you considered that the sign is there directly for your benfit? Or would you rather have the traffic noise from a freeway full of cars doing 120km/h???
Never thought about it even for a split second, for two reasons:
1) When the traffic is jammed, I don't care that the cars are going there at 2 km/h. The limit is absurd.
2) When the traffic is free flowing, cars are ALREADY going pretty fast. 120 km/h is not the case here, because I'm next to a ramp to a bridge, but this stretch of road can be negotiated EASILY, and more importantly SAFELY, at 100 km/h. The limit is absurd.
And I don't mind traffic noise - or else I wouldn't have bought an apartment in front of this freeway. NIMBYes tick me off in the wrong way. I like the freeway here, besides pollution and noise, it's an useful resource to reach places in the city. It's a tradeoff, and I purchased this home fully aware of the drawbacks.
There are far more car crashes in the back of my building, where two "harmless" streets meet and people park near the crossroad, limiting visibility for drivers coming from two of the four ways, than in the freeway, where everyone is speeding in the same direction, at the same speed.
Speed limits are there for a reason, so stick to them! Traffic tickets should be depending on income/wealth instead of being fixed like they are now.
Karma to burn, so I bite the bullet.
You suggest that speed limits are there for a reason, then provide the reason: quick cash for the municipalities.
Some limits are ridiculous low in some cases: I have a 30 km/h sign right in front of my window - and my condo is in front of a freeway! Often they are just a trick to further tax car owners, without resorting to the politically unpopular word "tax".
Here (Italy) there's a huge scandal about similar behavior by the police enforcers, and one that is quickly making some heads roll.
At some specific, usually not dangerous crossroads, the traffic lights have been reprogrammed to have a very short "yellow" time - around two seconds. It has been documented in a broadcast inquire on TV, with actual videos and SMPTE'd times. With two seconds from green to red, it's materially impossible to slow down and stop at the crossroad, even sticking to the very low speed limit.
So you WILL cross the crossroad with a red. And of course, that crossroad has this new CCTV system to recognize plates and automatically issue tickets in case of crossing with red. There was an outburst of enraged citizens against this practice: in a two weeks period, they received in excess of 13'000 tickets, all at the same crossroad. In a town with around 50'000 people, not a major city either...
Speed limits and absurd, often intentional, road laws are demonstrably used to sanate local administrations' budgets and balances. Disguised as "think of the children" policies, they are just another way to transfer resources from citizens to public administrators.
Wait, wait, wait just a damn minute.
Now Linus is being the epytome of evil proprietary software defenders?
I mean, the Linux kernel is *STILL* released under GPL V2, or during my trip to Mars something changed, and now it has a Microsoft EULA attached?
Until last (boreal) spring, GPL V2 wasn't the best, "freest" license around, according to RMS and FSF themselves? Now that they have to push another product, all of sudden, the past version has become non free?
You should sound like an pathetic old brat, if you accuse your peers of using the same tool you touted as earthsaver only six months before, instead of blindly jumping on the ideology bandwagon you're at the helm of.
Title says it all.
And I'm a diehard Sony fanboy.
No, I didn't get one. I will if/when the price drops down to earhtly levels.
You're restricting your horizon to engineering wonders.
s _metropolitan_statistical_areas_by_population Want to wipe Reno, Pensacola or Flint? Throw them in the Colosseum! Colosseum is the single place where most people died in the history of humanity. And mostly, for games!!! Aren't you impressed at the mere idea? How fucked up our human race is, with its blood thirst and desire to see the destruction of its own kin? Much more than by staring at the ruined marble block, I'm sure.
;)
The original wonders, actually, were compiled as a list of "must see" sites. Not necessarily because it was hard to build them. The statue of Zeus, for example, was a 12mt tall statue that was not by any means difficult to build. By the time it was built, there were many more taller statues. But it was something to see, as awe-inspiring was the Father of the Gods for the ancient greeks.
I'd call the original seven wonders exactly the same "tourist scam" as other slashdotters are pulling their hairs in shock.
So, you're correct when you say "it should still produce real shock and awe hundreds or thousands of years later [...] and should inspire wonder in the majority of people, without regard to culture or nationality". That's exactly what the present list (tries and) does.
The Cristo Redentor? Yes, a basic 38mt concrete statue. But built upon an almost vertical, 700m tall granite dome, reachable only with a twisting trail, or a tiny railroad, that overlooks a 10 million inhabitants city. Building the statue was trivial, even in 1930. Building the statue THERE was an engineering nightmare. Remember: there were NO helicopters in 1930. But the value of that piece of concrete is not the difficulty to build it. Is the image of a big guy "hugging" every citizen in the city from his tall pedestal. The statue can be seen from almost any part of the huge city, and the sense of "he's protecting me" is the awe you were referring to. Not just the trivial block of soapstone.
The Colosseum? Well, a stadium, give or take. Big as you want, but still just a fancy arena. The only engineering feat you can find there is the mechanic devices (mostly pulleys and leverages) that allowed access to the battlefield from the dungeon below. The picture changes a lot if you consider that - during the "technical life" of the Colosseum - an estimated 400'000 people died there. Check which entire metropolitanean area contain 400'000 people in US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_State
Oh, and Antipater wrote about such list in 140BC. The colosseum was built in 80AC. Unless Antipater was able to see 220 years in the future, I don't understand how he could have added it to the list.
Well, someone HAD to foot the bill for Steve's pharaonic keynote and hype.
What? You wouldn't ever think it would be the customers? Oh, I see you are sooo shocked!
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Ok, all nice and cute... ...But ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN pages to describe CPU coolers?
I mean, WTF? Next time, just put one word per page, alongside 29763410974 banners/links/ads and be done with it. This kind of... err... "journalism" is spiraling down. Quickly.
I know I will miss some incredibly useful piece of vital information by avoiding to read all 119 pages. But I also know there are more creative ways to offend my own intelligence.
To whoever thinks that 65 years is a bit too much:
Think about time.
Think about the time you spend/spent 1) deleting spam, 2) writing rules to filter spam, 3) learning, writing, installing, configuring bayesian apps.
Add to that the time spent by your POP/IMAP/SMTP/Exchange server to receive spam and forward it to you the one that passed thru the aforementioned filters.
Think about the total time you spent dealing with spam, in one form or another.
Then multiply that time for all the people on Earth that face the same problem as you do - from simple users to ISP admins - and have to think and implement solutions - from "ignore and delete" to complex auto-training systems.
65 years suddenly appear a shard of a split second, compared to the total wasted time.
Ehehe...
:)
:D
Even if I *am* a Gentoo zealot myself, couldn't help but laugh reading your "translation" message. It's so damn true!
OTOH, you typed a 3K chars message as first post. Why I have the distinct feeling you already had it ready somewhere, to copy and paste it at the first chance, when anything gentooish reached front page?
Ah, I counted the chars with my ultra-optimized, distcc-recompiled "wc"! Zowie, I'm 1337!
What does banning altered consoles have to do with keeping online play 'fair and level'?
I thought that copies are identical to the originals.
One might say that using a modified XBox could mean hacked console firmware to gain unfair advantages, like visual aids, gfx drivers clip hacks, aimbots, tricks with skins, etc.
Another one might say that this is FUD applied to online gaming. After all, we're talking about Microsoft.
Imagine what happened if it placed first.
Could you hear the whining from AV companies? "It's unfair! They have access to the OS, so they will put us out of business".
Which they will do, obviously: it's just matter of time. But in the meanwhile, the AV corps could still sell some copy of their rig crippling tools^W^W^Wsecurity enhancement programs.
Just in time.
You need cash for yet another war, and *poof!*, two convenient billion dollars to pay your buddies at the weaponry industries.
How fortunate! Quick, crank out those bombs and tanks!
There are some dirt poor countries that would recognize you as the Emperor of Mars, if you ask them nicely (i.e. with the correct grease help - as stated by the GP).
Is that if I tried this kind of cheating at university, I would have been thrown out of the classroom with a boot-shaped mark on my rear end.
"Discovering" this miraculous new number sounds like winning at the Kobayashi Maru test - by changing the rules of the test itself. Thus, cheating.
The lithium batteries the company is shipping the controllers with should last 'for many years'.
...Or will explode trying.
'Nuff said.
and if the laden is bin, beware!
They ignored us.
:)
They laughed at us.
They fought us.
We're near...