I just read the article, and the people are getting charged HUGE bills for watching TV that they didnt pay for, live, while it was being broadcast.
Hey they watched pay per veiw, a service that has been around a while and been accepted as being viable, and they are being told to pay for it. They dont even have ground to complain, it would be like getting robbed by a drug dealer who gave you bad drugs!
"well officer, I was trying to by some cocaine, and i found out that it was 50% sugar!"
I just find it funny some people are complaining about about being "cheated" by the product.
Ill will tell you something, before 2001 I did not listen to ANY music, and I mean that, if I did not hear it at work, I did not listen to it.
Why? I am not a fan of music, at all, I find most of whats put out offensive and degrading to someone or the other. It always hit me how right on a black comic I was watching was when he said "you can call a women a fat skanky bitch to her face, and she will probably sue you, but you put it in a song (then he began tapping a rap beat) and sing (sings here) 'your a fat skanky bitch' they just eat it right on up"
for me, thats how most music is, and it is not worth any of my money to buy a CD for the one song that I can enjoy. I have NEVER bought music, but having been introduced to Kaaza I now "listen" to music sometimes, for me filesharing has enriched my life, because it has gotten me at least "marginally" involved in listening to music.
I think it was Edward Bellamy's Utopian dream where he outlined that in every persons home there would be access to music, and for me I have maybe 30 songs on my hard drive, mostly Jazz and 80's music, this is music i would not otherwise have if it wasnt for the internet.
Trust me, no one has lost any money becasue I have pirated, but I have been enriched, and the biggest possibility is that the Recording Inudstries method of distribution is outdated, lots of people lost their jobs when car industry moved over to robots for manufacture, and maybe the recording inustry is too big for its own good, or doing things in an outdated way, because filesharing is not wrong, remember ethically just because something is illegal does not necessarrily make it wrong.
Designing a 3d interface
on
Opencroquet
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I know this is a bit off, but myself and a friend of mine really sat down and tried to explore what would make a "good" 3d interface. IE why would it be "better" to go 3d over 2d. The real answer we came to is... there is no good reason to switch to 3d space...
What you say!
The biggest question you have to ask yourself is "How does the 3rd dimension help, and how can it be used to enrich the interface experience, and save time" the problem is we could not answer that question satisfactorily!
Take a look at what Croquet here shows us. We have system with 3d images in 2d space. We already have that, its called a computer monitor, it is in 3d space, this is already done. Making the monitor its own 3d space does not help the issue of interface, and making a BETTER interface.
When you take a look at the croquet PDF file, you see basically a 3d translated world, translated to 2d. You have depth, the difference is you can "rotate" around objects, but they are still basically 2d functions, you dont actually gain any kind of usability by rotating around the picture, except to possibly confuse the user when he tries to retrieve the picture.
Also, they do fall back to the nav bar concept, where there is a 2d navigation bar at the bottom, now this isnt bad in of itself, but it accomplishes NOTHING from the usability standpoint. Again the question is "How does the 3rd dimension help, and how can it be used to enrich the interface experience, and save time" this interface does not enrich the graphical user space in any REAL fasion, it moves a 2d plain into a 3d plain, without taking any real benefit from the fact that there is a 3d plain existing.
The usability benefits of the group function, where mutliple users can get into each others space and "look" around into others space, and meet with each other, is really in of itself not a value adding attribute of the program. This can be done, and done effectively, with video confrencing, each user does not have to "look" at another user, they can represent all users on a 2d space just as easily, or incoporate some psuedo 3d elements such as bring forward or push back (IE just scaling the size) and this can be easily done in the 2d arena, its a simple matter of scaling a picture and overlaying another over or placing it behind the picture.
I think it is a great endeavor, but it still hasnt answered the question of what the 3rd dimention can be used for that isnt already adequately done.
3d is good for games, because in games you want to "move around" in the environment, and by moving around you learn things about how the environment is shaped.
The other 3d interfaces that use file folders as "rooms" and each room as a size based on its file size, doesnt actually "help" in the sense of a user interface perspective, since it just re-represents size, you dont gain any real perspective into any NEW information that could not be gleaned from a sorting algorithim. IE if I wanted to locate on my machine what parts of the disk were "larger" than another part of the disk, I would not need to represent it in a 3d space, just instead sort by the size in whatever byte measuremenat im using, and easily determine which is holding more space by where it sits in the sorted list, and can even use 2d visual cues such as bars, and colors to make distinctions.
So the real question, is can you find a good use for the extra dimention when it comes to user interface with the computer? one that would make it worth persueing? Or can you explain to me why croquet is using the 3rd dimention i a way that cannot be adequeately, and more easily done in a 2d space already?
Just on that note, i know its a bit off topic, but i had that feeling while playing through Serious Sam. I am a very good FPS player, and I had serious sam on hard, and was awed at the graphics (couple years ago) and was having a lot of fun playing it through.
Well I let my Dad play through it, and he told me he beat it in an afternoon or so.
and i hadnt beat it yet (i let him borrow it) and he showed me some of the later stuff (to show off his puter) and I was like "how the hell you get here so fast" then i noticed he was in "tourist" mode, and i couldnt even play the damn thing after that.
Almost all "good" encryption uses prime numbers. If someone can figure out how to factor prime numbers, or find a quick way to determine a prime number, then all the fancy encryption in the world wont help because someone can just crack it in real time.
Right now public encryption works because it would take so long to break the encryption, even with say... 300k computers (distrubted.net) that when the encryption was broken (5-10 years later) the info would be old and it would not matter.
If someone could figure out some way to factor primes (which is along the lines of riemans sums) then they could possibly break even our stronger prime based encryption, which would make a great many people have to go back to teh drawing board on encrypting their data.
patent a method with which to sell tupperware on-line that would make it similar to a meeting in which the people get together and discuss tupperware.
would be completely valid, except they wouldnt use the word tupperware, they would use "a product" so that they could sue anyone getting together to discuss the buying and selling of tupperware. And they could patent it so it could not be used as a business practice, IE someone could not make a site that allows peopel to get together to talk about a product in a chat room for example.
But right now I am documenting this idea, and I am giving it out FOR FREE to whoever wants to use it, so now if someone trys to patent my idea (the idea of method of discussing a product by getting together on the web) will now have this post as prior art!
I thought of this idea completely on my own, with reference to the post above, which is just as good as thinking of it on my own cause everyone else does it that way too right?
every mail over 100 per day through a server outside of the inteernal network (you know to the internet) would cost 1 cent a peice.
IE you could send 1000 internal e-mails over your own network and pay nothing.
You send 1000 e-mails to people "outside" of your inernal network in a day you pay 900 cents, or for those of you with math mad skillz thats 9 bucks.
So a spammer trying not to pay a lot of money would have to send only 100 e-mails a day for free.
if he sent 5000000 e-mails in a day thats 5000000-100, 4999900 pennys, or for those of you in the math "know" its 49,999 dollars.
Now im sure that if a spammer were to have to pay 49999 dollars to send E-MAIL, their business would become less than profitable.
Most users dont send 100 e-mails a day, even when i was getting 70 e-mails a day i didnt reply to all 70.
auto responce mails could be ignored.
large companies might get a "bulk" rate on e-mail, or move there services to online methods of checking (IE they dont have to flood mail servers with 'gamespy announces it got cooler') kind of e-mails.
anyway the idea has some merits, though even now I can tink of a great many problems with it.
The issue for me, is if they beleive that nothing can be done about it, maybe they have not thought of the clever solution to fix the problem.
Yes you will frighten the populice, yes the world may increase in suicides etc. The thing is, if you had undeniable proof that an asteroid WOULD hit the earth, and it WAS BIG ENOUGH to destroy it in a very convincing, end of the dinasours way, you could drive any arbitrary amount of money into finding a solution. Who is to say that with the combined ability of every nation on earth that there wouldnt be a way to put enough explosion on target to move such an object?
I mean, we have TONS of nuclear weapons, and possibly even the ability to create even more horrendous things that can explode quite violently, who is to say that a 100 year or so effort to put that much firepower into space to avert such an object wouldnt come to not? I mean imagine if you had the entire planet set forth to figuring out a solution, instead of a small relatively smallg roup going "welp sucks to be us lets not tell anyone that our kids or grandkids are going to explode in a fireball"
even if it was going to come within a few years, at least SOMETHING might be done, some way to preserve what as humanity are. I know it sounds a bit star trek, but having something aroudn to say "we were here" would be just as important as doing nothing.
Oh well, probably a lot more info in the article, but hey, can't just ignore it, especially if it won't go away.
Actually the most recent starbridge cult was destroyed along with rubra in the uprising of the undead on the habitat vasilisk.
(reality dysfunction kinda obscure)
Sci-Fi needs to tell a story, period. Many times you read a sci fi novel and the author is obviously in love with how clever he can be. Sci-Fi is about expanding ideas, not how clever an author can be. An author needs to suspend disbeleif, this can almost be as easy as Orson Scott Card (enders game) when he assumes technology exists, because then we can see how it affects the characters and devise how we beleive it works. Or an author can take the road of Peter F. Hamilton (reality dysfunction) and completely describe every minute detail about how things interact and function.
Both authors achieve a suspension of disbeleif about things that are scientifically fictional, and they mix it with the good elements of a story, that are not sci fi at all.
The blending of sci-fi concepts and ideas and a good solid story seemlessly make a good science fiction novel.
One of the weird things is, maybe they didnt "want" you to know how much damage things did, and not from a balance standpoint either.
I have created modifications for the game medal of honor, allied assault spearhead. and I do not want people to know all the exact values i have set for my weapons. to those who are curious and know what they are doing it is a relatively simple matter, but i feel it takes away some of my intent for everyone to know that the smg does 45 damage or such.
imbalance is not a practically "bad" thing, even in a mmorpg. No you wouldnt know your singing steel boots or whatever didnt work well until you wore them for a long time, and realized that they arent purhaps as strong as your lambent whatevers. But that would be part of the interesting part of it. When you get into finding out direct stats you get to having players that are, sadly, like me. who will statisically approach the game, and quite possibly ruining the intent of the creators of the game and how the game is played. I am not decrying the fact that many things have been fixed because of SEQ, not at all, I am just saying that if it had not been around the game would be entirely different, the only way you would know things is from relative tested heresay. which might even be more interesting.
SEriously, its awsome;-)
That and I can log in remotely to perfectly good linux boxes at the University when I need to run something on linux, or compile it on linux.
There arent any desktop programs on linux that there is not a better, or equivilant program on windows that can be had for a little bit of searching.
One of the great things about Orson Scott Cards books is their religious overtones, if you read many of his books, they do not necessarrilly always point to "god is the way" but they do reinforce his beleifs, I mean he did do missionary work, and that reflects in his writing. If you read the speaker for the dead through xenocide, Card doesnt simply mimic portuguese, he knows it. When you read a book by card you understand the characters, you know what they are thinking, and you know what drives them.
Simply because the views do not correspond with your view on life, does not necessarily mean that the writing, or story is somehow less worthy to be read.
Not reading a book because you have religious objections to it (and dont say that because your an athiest you cant have religious objections, everyone beleives in some reason for living) doesnt make the book any less worthwhile to read.
An author that writes a good character is a GOOD author, if you read Pastwatch: A Redemption of Christopher Columbus, you will find a book where none of the ideas of creationism are supported, but ideals of humanity, and the good of humanity are, you get to know EVERY character like you could walk up and talk to them, and know what they were thinking, and its all mixed in with some very sci-fi ideas, but never truly science fiction in the way that there are big battling robots in the sky (though i do like those too).
Card writes from the peoples perspective, and that is who you get to know in his books. He has a range of characters, and not all of them may share a common religious beleif, yes mostly people that hold the basic christian ethic triumph, but they do in a great many books anyway, if it depreciates the book then thats from a personal readers perspective. All the books I read from card center less around the sci fi, but more around the interactions with the world in which the characters live in, a world that may or may not have huge sci-fi aspects.
Think about the worthing saga for example, card went into a world where people could psuedo live forever, must have had huge spaceships with unimaginable technology, and people with psychic powers.
Yet did he go the general sci fi route, and show how cool the ships were, describe the 100 gun super buzz cool leet destroyer of doom? No he went in about the interactions of people, and reactions of people of a planet that had none of the cool, l33t technology of sci fi.
If that isnt your cup of tea... then it isnt, but it is no reason to bash the author for how he writes his stories.
I dont bash Willy Dietz because he focuses on the other end of the objective, i read it because its good military sci fi, I do not critisize the book because it seems to make religion pointless, or guarentees an almost mortality while ignoring the ethical problems of the actions taken. I still enjoy the book, because IN CONTEXT it is good;-)
I completely disagree about average joe cheater being able to know how to change his MAC address. I spent 6 years so far in online gameing community, and the average joe cheater is an idiot, generally not very savvy. Of course there is the smart Joe cheater that will eventually release a program that will change the mac address for you, but thats niether here nor there nor central to the argument.
Also the big thing this will do will stop a lot of college cheating (perhaps a lot is a strong set of words), because a lot of college students cant get on the network if they have a mac address otehr than the one they signed up with.
I know at the university of kansas if you want to get on the network with a diffrent computer (despite the fact that you paied for blanket access or so you think) you have to sign up for a new account (which is another 120 dollars) and getting your account switched over to a new computer is a headache beyond imagining, it involves multiple calls to our network administration offices, and a personal visit.
I think the MAC address, possibly couple with a hardware ID type system might be very plausible.
it didnt actually cover life density of the battery, thats what my issue was. they said about smaller, but how does its density in this case make it better. It still relies on the fluid. Are you saying that because the anode and cathode are smaller that the density of conducting fluid will be higher?
Thats the issue i meant, are they as effecient in density, or is it just a matter of size.
Thats pretty neat stuff, but what form will it have to take? We know the battery life in the nano, and micro world is neat, but does it help solve problems when it comes to cell phones? I know the article says it would be helpfull in cell phones, but will it merely be a smaller battery, or will the life of the battery be longer? I dont think it explained well how the actual life span of the batteries would be longer, except for one issue of how they would have less area to diffuse over. Could someone explain to me how this makes it last longer in a practicle sense, IE how would a cell phone use it?
actually, hacked e-book stuff is easy as shit to find on the internet, if you know where to look. I actually tried my hand in it, the thing is, i bought the paper version, simply because i cant read off my screen. its too hard. I still cant get past the need for a paper bound book. I think thats whats protecting books. I went out to try to find an e-book, but they are so hard to find. I actually want an e-book i can put notes onto (i have lots of online notes) and since MITpress has been putting up free versions of school books , i have really been jonesing for an e-book.
right now e-books are protected simply becauseof how difficult it is to read them on a compiuter screen.
music is not limited by that, but the assertion there isnt an e-book trading community is simply false, the thing is it costs more in ink to reproduce them on paper, and its usually a lot worse quality and harder reading than a standard book anyway.
I find it a bit slower on the outset then regular IRC, but completely painless to run. Only a little more time to tell if it crashes because of the./ effect.
They also have a chanserve, nickserve named "Trent" if you are wondering, I havent tried to create a channel yet, but we shall see how it works.
Slashdot Mirror
it is nice to see humour on slashdot.
I just read the article, and the people are getting charged HUGE bills for watching TV that they didnt pay for, live, while it was being broadcast.
Hey they watched pay per veiw, a service that has been around a while and been accepted as being viable, and they are being told to pay for it. They dont even have ground to complain, it would be like getting robbed by a drug dealer who gave you bad drugs!
"well officer, I was trying to by some cocaine, and i found out that it was 50% sugar!"
I just find it funny some people are complaining about about being "cheated" by the product.
no im not the bubble boy, i just didnt listen to music, but im not an anonymous coward either, so i guess that says something for me.
Ill will tell you something, before 2001 I did not listen to ANY music, and I mean that, if I did not hear it at work, I did not listen to it.
Why? I am not a fan of music, at all, I find most of whats put out offensive and degrading to someone or the other. It always hit me how right on a black comic I was watching was when he said "you can call a women a fat skanky bitch to her face, and she will probably sue you, but you put it in a song (then he began tapping a rap beat) and sing (sings here) 'your a fat skanky bitch' they just eat it right on up"
for me, thats how most music is, and it is not worth any of my money to buy a CD for the one song that I can enjoy. I have NEVER bought music, but having been introduced to Kaaza I now "listen" to music sometimes, for me filesharing has enriched my life, because it has gotten me at least "marginally" involved in listening to music.
I think it was Edward Bellamy's Utopian dream where he outlined that in every persons home there would be access to music, and for me I have maybe 30 songs on my hard drive, mostly Jazz and 80's music, this is music i would not otherwise have if it wasnt for the internet.
Trust me, no one has lost any money becasue I have pirated, but I have been enriched, and the biggest possibility is that the Recording Inudstries method of distribution is outdated, lots of people lost their jobs when car industry moved over to robots for manufacture, and maybe the recording inustry is too big for its own good, or doing things in an outdated way, because filesharing is not wrong, remember ethically just because something is illegal does not necessarrily make it wrong.
I know this is a bit off, but myself and a friend of mine really sat down and tried to explore what would make a "good" 3d interface. IE why would it be "better" to go 3d over 2d. The real answer we came to is... there is no good reason to switch to 3d space...
What you say!
The biggest question you have to ask yourself is "How does the 3rd dimension help, and how can it be used to enrich the interface experience, and save time" the problem is we could not answer that question satisfactorily!
Take a look at what Croquet here shows us. We have system with 3d images in 2d space. We already have that, its called a computer monitor, it is in 3d space, this is already done. Making the monitor its own 3d space does not help the issue of interface, and making a BETTER interface.
When you take a look at the croquet PDF file, you see basically a 3d translated world, translated to 2d. You have depth, the difference is you can "rotate" around objects, but they are still basically 2d functions, you dont actually gain any kind of usability by rotating around the picture, except to possibly confuse the user when he tries to retrieve the picture.
Also, they do fall back to the nav bar concept, where there is a 2d navigation bar at the bottom, now this isnt bad in of itself, but it accomplishes NOTHING from the usability standpoint. Again the question is "How does the 3rd dimension help, and how can it be used to enrich the interface experience, and save time" this interface does not enrich the graphical user space in any REAL fasion, it moves a 2d plain into a 3d plain, without taking any real benefit from the fact that there is a 3d plain existing.
The usability benefits of the group function, where mutliple users can get into each others space and "look" around into others space, and meet with each other, is really in of itself not a value adding attribute of the program. This can be done, and done effectively, with video confrencing, each user does not have to "look" at another user, they can represent all users on a 2d space just as easily, or incoporate some psuedo 3d elements such as bring forward or push back (IE just scaling the size) and this can be easily done in the 2d arena, its a simple matter of scaling a picture and overlaying another over or placing it behind the picture.
I think it is a great endeavor, but it still hasnt answered the question of what the 3rd dimention can be used for that isnt already adequately done.
3d is good for games, because in games you want to "move around" in the environment, and by moving around you learn things about how the environment is shaped.
The other 3d interfaces that use file folders as "rooms" and each room as a size based on its file size, doesnt actually "help" in the sense of a user interface perspective, since it just re-represents size, you dont gain any real perspective into any NEW information that could not be gleaned from a sorting algorithim. IE if I wanted to locate on my machine what parts of the disk were "larger" than another part of the disk, I would not need to represent it in a 3d space, just instead sort by the size in whatever byte measuremenat im using, and easily determine which is holding more space by where it sits in the sorted list, and can even use 2d visual cues such as bars, and colors to make distinctions.
So the real question, is can you find a good use for the extra dimention when it comes to user interface with the computer? one that would make it worth persueing? Or can you explain to me why croquet is using the 3rd dimention i a way that cannot be adequeately, and more easily done in a 2d space already?
Just on that note, i know its a bit off topic, but i had that feeling while playing through Serious Sam. I am a very good FPS player, and I had serious sam on hard, and was awed at the graphics (couple years ago) and was having a lot of fun playing it through.
Well I let my Dad play through it, and he told me he beat it in an afternoon or so.
and i hadnt beat it yet (i let him borrow it) and he showed me some of the later stuff (to show off his puter) and I was like "how the hell you get here so fast" then i noticed he was in "tourist" mode, and i couldnt even play the damn thing after that.
Why its important.
Almost all "good" encryption uses prime numbers. If someone can figure out how to factor prime numbers, or find a quick way to determine a prime number, then all the fancy encryption in the world wont help because someone can just crack it in real time.
Right now public encryption works because it would take so long to break the encryption, even with say... 300k computers (distrubted.net) that when the encryption was broken (5-10 years later) the info would be old and it would not matter.
If someone could figure out some way to factor primes (which is along the lines of riemans sums) then they could possibly break even our stronger prime based encryption, which would make a great many people have to go back to teh drawing board on encrypting their data.
they could patent On-LINE tupperware meetings.
IE trying to sell tupperware ON-LINE
IE
patent a method with which to sell tupperware on-line that would make it similar to a meeting in which the people get together and discuss tupperware.
would be completely valid, except they wouldnt use the word tupperware, they would use "a product" so that they could sue anyone getting together to discuss the buying and selling of tupperware. And they could patent it so it could not be used as a business practice, IE someone could not make a site that allows peopel to get together to talk about a product in a chat room for example.
But right now I am documenting this idea, and I am giving it out FOR FREE to whoever wants to use it, so now if someone trys to patent my idea (the idea of method of discussing a product by getting together on the web) will now have this post as prior art!
I thought of this idea completely on my own, with reference to the post above, which is just as good as thinking of it on my own cause everyone else does it that way too right?
Buzz OUT
every mail over 100 per day through a server outside of the inteernal network (you know to the internet) would cost 1 cent a peice.
IE you could send 1000 internal e-mails over your own network and pay nothing.
You send 1000 e-mails to people "outside" of your inernal network in a day you pay 900 cents, or for those of you with math mad skillz thats 9 bucks.
So a spammer trying not to pay a lot of money would have to send only 100 e-mails a day for free.
if he sent 5000000 e-mails in a day thats 5000000-100, 4999900 pennys, or for those of you in the math "know" its 49,999 dollars.
Now im sure that if a spammer were to have to pay 49999 dollars to send E-MAIL, their business would become less than profitable.
Most users dont send 100 e-mails a day, even when i was getting 70 e-mails a day i didnt reply to all 70.
auto responce mails could be ignored.
large companies might get a "bulk" rate on e-mail, or move there services to online methods of checking (IE they dont have to flood mail servers with 'gamespy announces it got cooler') kind of e-mails.
anyway the idea has some merits, though even now I can tink of a great many problems with it.
anyway just a little teaser idea.
The issue for me, is if they beleive that nothing can be done about it, maybe they have not thought of the clever solution to fix the problem.
Yes you will frighten the populice, yes the world may increase in suicides etc. The thing is, if you had undeniable proof that an asteroid WOULD hit the earth, and it WAS BIG ENOUGH to destroy it in a very convincing, end of the dinasours way, you could drive any arbitrary amount of money into finding a solution. Who is to say that with the combined ability of every nation on earth that there wouldnt be a way to put enough explosion on target to move such an object?
I mean, we have TONS of nuclear weapons, and possibly even the ability to create even more horrendous things that can explode quite violently, who is to say that a 100 year or so effort to put that much firepower into space to avert such an object wouldnt come to not? I mean imagine if you had the entire planet set forth to figuring out a solution, instead of a small relatively smallg roup going "welp sucks to be us lets not tell anyone that our kids or grandkids are going to explode in a fireball"
even if it was going to come within a few years, at least SOMETHING might be done, some way to preserve what as humanity are. I know it sounds a bit star trek, but having something aroudn to say "we were here" would be just as important as doing nothing.
Oh well, probably a lot more info in the article, but hey, can't just ignore it, especially if it won't go away.
Actually the most recent starbridge cult was destroyed along with rubra in the uprising of the undead on the habitat vasilisk. (reality dysfunction kinda obscure)
Actually Homeland Defence was used by hitler, so its not new either.
Its called the X-Box, it denies me service all the time. wtf
Its a reference to the book enders game, if you have never read the book, go ahead and buy it. I wouldnt want to spoil it for you in any way.
Sci-Fi needs to tell a story, period. Many times you read a sci fi novel and the author is obviously in love with how clever he can be. Sci-Fi is about expanding ideas, not how clever an author can be. An author needs to suspend disbeleif, this can almost be as easy as Orson Scott Card (enders game) when he assumes technology exists, because then we can see how it affects the characters and devise how we beleive it works. Or an author can take the road of Peter F. Hamilton (reality dysfunction) and completely describe every minute detail about how things interact and function. Both authors achieve a suspension of disbeleif about things that are scientifically fictional, and they mix it with the good elements of a story, that are not sci fi at all. The blending of sci-fi concepts and ideas and a good solid story seemlessly make a good science fiction novel.
One of the weird things is, maybe they didnt "want" you to know how much damage things did, and not from a balance standpoint either. I have created modifications for the game medal of honor, allied assault spearhead. and I do not want people to know all the exact values i have set for my weapons. to those who are curious and know what they are doing it is a relatively simple matter, but i feel it takes away some of my intent for everyone to know that the smg does 45 damage or such. imbalance is not a practically "bad" thing, even in a mmorpg. No you wouldnt know your singing steel boots or whatever didnt work well until you wore them for a long time, and realized that they arent purhaps as strong as your lambent whatevers. But that would be part of the interesting part of it. When you get into finding out direct stats you get to having players that are, sadly, like me. who will statisically approach the game, and quite possibly ruining the intent of the creators of the game and how the game is played. I am not decrying the fact that many things have been fixed because of SEQ, not at all, I am just saying that if it had not been around the game would be entirely different, the only way you would know things is from relative tested heresay. which might even be more interesting.
SEriously, its awsome ;-)
That and I can log in remotely to perfectly good linux boxes at the University when I need to run something on linux, or compile it on linux.
There arent any desktop programs on linux that there is not a better, or equivilant program on windows that can be had for a little bit of searching.
panamanias have heavily invested in trying to stop global warming.
sadly shadowpuppets is the worst
One of the great things about Orson Scott Cards books is their religious overtones, if you read many of his books, they do not necessarrilly always point to "god is the way" but they do reinforce his beleifs, I mean he did do missionary work, and that reflects in his writing. If you read the speaker for the dead through xenocide, Card doesnt simply mimic portuguese, he knows it. When you read a book by card you understand the characters, you know what they are thinking, and you know what drives them.
;-)
Simply because the views do not correspond with your view on life, does not necessarily mean that the writing, or story is somehow less worthy to be read.
Not reading a book because you have religious objections to it (and dont say that because your an athiest you cant have religious objections, everyone beleives in some reason for living) doesnt make the book any less worthwhile to read.
An author that writes a good character is a GOOD author, if you read Pastwatch: A Redemption of Christopher Columbus, you will find a book where none of the ideas of creationism are supported, but ideals of humanity, and the good of humanity are, you get to know EVERY character like you could walk up and talk to them, and know what they were thinking, and its all mixed in with some very sci-fi ideas, but never truly science fiction in the way that there are big battling robots in the sky (though i do like those too).
Card writes from the peoples perspective, and that is who you get to know in his books. He has a range of characters, and not all of them may share a common religious beleif, yes mostly people that hold the basic christian ethic triumph, but they do in a great many books anyway, if it depreciates the book then thats from a personal readers perspective. All the books I read from card center less around the sci fi, but more around the interactions with the world in which the characters live in, a world that may or may not have huge sci-fi aspects.
Think about the worthing saga for example, card went into a world where people could psuedo live forever, must have had huge spaceships with unimaginable technology, and people with psychic powers.
Yet did he go the general sci fi route, and show how cool the ships were, describe the 100 gun super buzz cool leet destroyer of doom? No he went in about the interactions of people, and reactions of people of a planet that had none of the cool, l33t technology of sci fi.
If that isnt your cup of tea... then it isnt, but it is no reason to bash the author for how he writes his stories.
I dont bash Willy Dietz because he focuses on the other end of the objective, i read it because its good military sci fi, I do not critisize the book because it seems to make religion pointless, or guarentees an almost mortality while ignoring the ethical problems of the actions taken. I still enjoy the book, because IN CONTEXT it is good
Buzz OUT
I completely disagree about average joe cheater being able to know how to change his MAC address. I spent 6 years so far in online gameing community, and the average joe cheater is an idiot, generally not very savvy. Of course there is the smart Joe cheater that will eventually release a program that will change the mac address for you, but thats niether here nor there nor central to the argument.
Also the big thing this will do will stop a lot of college cheating (perhaps a lot is a strong set of words), because a lot of college students cant get on the network if they have a mac address otehr than the one they signed up with.
I know at the university of kansas if you want to get on the network with a diffrent computer (despite the fact that you paied for blanket access or so you think) you have to sign up for a new account (which is another 120 dollars) and getting your account switched over to a new computer is a headache beyond imagining, it involves multiple calls to our network administration offices, and a personal visit.
I think the MAC address, possibly couple with a hardware ID type system might be very plausible.
it didnt actually cover life density of the battery, thats what my issue was. they said about smaller, but how does its density in this case make it better. It still relies on the fluid. Are you saying that because the anode and cathode are smaller that the density of conducting fluid will be higher? Thats the issue i meant, are they as effecient in density, or is it just a matter of size.
Thats pretty neat stuff, but what form will it have to take? We know the battery life in the nano, and micro world is neat, but does it help solve problems when it comes to cell phones? I know the article says it would be helpfull in cell phones, but will it merely be a smaller battery, or will the life of the battery be longer? I dont think it explained well how the actual life span of the batteries would be longer, except for one issue of how they would have less area to diffuse over. Could someone explain to me how this makes it last longer in a practicle sense, IE how would a cell phone use it?
actually, hacked e-book stuff is easy as shit to find on the internet, if you know where to look. I actually tried my hand in it, the thing is, i bought the paper version, simply because i cant read off my screen. its too hard. I still cant get past the need for a paper bound book. I think thats whats protecting books. I went out to try to find an e-book, but they are so hard to find. I actually want an e-book i can put notes onto (i have lots of online notes) and since MITpress has been putting up free versions of school books , i have really been jonesing for an e-book.
right now e-books are protected simply becauseof how difficult it is to read them on a compiuter screen.
music is not limited by that, but the assertion there isnt an e-book trading community is simply false, the thing is it costs more in ink to reproduce them on paper, and its usually a lot worse quality and harder reading than a standard book anyway.
oh well;
I find it a bit slower on the outset then regular IRC, but completely painless to run. Only a little more time to tell if it crashes because of the ./ effect.
They also have a chanserve, nickserve named "Trent" if you are wondering, I havent tried to create a channel yet, but we shall see how it works.