I bet the actual percentages of such things and the percentage of female players in general are very different for each game and it's genre. A recent article on some large media organisation's website (I really can't remeber which one) stated that for most online puzzle games (thoose annoying Java based ones on various websites) were predominantly played by woman....for example my girlfriend is currently (and has been for atleast 5 hours now ) playing some stupid tetris-style game on some website.
While Broadband (or "Ultraband" as would probably be required to recieve most modern games as a service) is increasing, it is still no where near universal and for a variety of reasons we all already know about (e.g. distance to telephone exchange problems, stingy parents etc.) it will not be universal amongst customers for a long, long time yet.
Are game publishers and others going to sacrifice all these potential customers simply in order to prevent piracy; something which hasn't been proven to have that big an impact on sales anyway.
The only time I think most of these products will be provided as services is so that otherwise impossible on-the-fly type features can be included (and charged for).
Too often, Linux suffers from great applications and features being available to those willing to spend 5 hours trawling every project hosting website then spend several hours getting the 101 dependancy issues sorted out and then go make dinner while the whole thing compiles....all to find out the software/feature is so immature or buggy even the most basic features requires a host of newly learnt commands and techniques.
The bueaty of the KDE enviroment (and gnome for that matter) is the way so much stuff just works as expected without requiring the user to learn a range of commands & techniques which should have been left back in the 1970's. Sure, Webcam support on Linux may not be a totally new thing to us "nerds" that frequent Slashdot, but as someone who has spent days getting a Webcam to partly work (within Kopete and elsewhere), I would have to agree that with the new Kopete in KDE 3.5 it will be the first time Linux is able to realisticly claim to support Webcams.
"The Internet lives to innovate for another day," - U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce Michael Gallagher
Does this guy work for Microsoft? I absolutly hate this term, it is so meaningless. What ever happened to good old development of new products while improving existing ones?
Such an approach actually has tangible objectives and is far better than 'innovation' which seems to acheive little apart from increased commercialization as R&D funds are diverted to "how can we take more money off our customers" issues, rather than development of the actual product. (e.g.: Much of the new Windows 'innovative' features center around getting customers to buy more products (Media Player, MSN Messenger etc.), not actually making Windows any better).
I think such a statement from the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce shows what the US government (and its corporate sponsors) have in store for the internet, unfortuantly.
"The Internet lives to innovate for another day," - U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce Michael Gallagher
Does this guy work for Microsoft? I absolutly hate this term, it is so meaningless. What ever happened to good old development of new products while improving existing ones?
Such an approach actually has tangible objectives and is far better than 'innovation' which seems to acheive little apart from increased commercialization as R&D funds are diverted to "how can we take more money off our customers" issues rather than actual product development.
I think such a statement from the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce shows what the US government (and its corporate sponsors) have in store for the internet, unfortuantly.
Not that of what you've said actually makes any sense. Your theories ignore basically all of the human rights laws (both British and European), political fairness laws, and data protection laws.
Also: Your spouse can "petition" the state all she wants but this ain't the USA and no amount of money is going to get around the data protection act.
I Don't understand what exactly you mean by "one thing leads to another" but if a rape was committed I'd hope the guy does get caught, if not how exactly is he going to get it to stand up in court? and why would "a important MP" (sic) have access to confidential police information anyway, this ain't Zimbabwe!
"the extention to detention without trial (even to 28 days is longer than most common law countries"
The USA's indefinate detention of suspected terrorists is a lot longer than 28 or 90 days. Also, most other European countries deport suspected foreign terrorists back to countries where they are likely to spend god knows how long in jail with or without trial.
A large part is about sending MORE humans into space.
Is there anything wrong with that? Personally I would like to go to space someday, preferably without the current expense and risks associated with the activity.
Hopefully one day however it will be a lot cheaper, safer and generally more efficient. When that day comes I'm sure the ISS will have played a leading role in delivering that day.
Imagine if noone had invested in the first Aeroplanes. They probably didn't have that much commercial use at the time (also being extremely costly and unreliable) but thanks to 100 years or so of progress air travel is available to everyone (everyone in the western world anyway).
I had this happen to me also when I installed Firefox on my work machine some time ago. I was called into the M.D.'s office to explain why I had committed a 'serious breach of office protocol' in installing a program I think the computer guy had told him was some sort of internet game!
I stated how I simply prefered the cleanliness of tabbed browsing and alerted hime about the constant security threats associated with Internet Explorer and within a week the whole company had Firefox installed on their computers!
Browser based security threats may not be the biggest issue for a small company but it certainly seems to make your typcial clueless manager listen.
This is sick. Why the hell are religous schools (and other organisations) allowed to get away with such blatent infringments of rights on the ground that they are a religous organisation, why does it make them any different from any other organisation, commerical, non-profit or charitable?
You say that the law/program had "best of intentions". I'm not sure it did though, noone has been able to explain to me any realistic way the Patriot act would help convict terrorists or prvent terrorist attacks in a way that couldn't have already been done under previously existing laws.
Thankfully, here in Britian the numbers are a slight bit better.
Still only about 1/5 - 1/4 females on most university courses (according to UCAS, the university (or is it college in America, not sure) admissions people), intereastingly, the percentage of woman seems to generally increase the better the university.
As a guy, I feel sorry for anyone studying on a 99% male course, it must be bad for both guys and girls being in such a totally male-dominated enviroment (not to mention just a bit stinky).
Maybe if they got more woman doing Computer Science (in particular open source projects) then things like Linux and Pearl wouldn't be so insanely and unnecessarily over-cryptic.
Right, so how exactly would China redirect.tw traffic if the U.S. did not agree to do so?
And how exactly is an internet "split" not a technically realistic scenario? China (soon to have more internet users than anyone else) and many middle-eastern countries already block many western sites.
well duh, its the international standards and definitions and the contents of that all important 'text file' that everyone is talking about when they refer to the DNS servers.
The whole U.S. - Iraq thing is quite small pants for the U.N.
Sure it receives a lot of english-speaking media attention (just like everything to do with the U.S., take hurricane Wilma which has just destroyed parts of Mexico yet the media focus is on its approaching Florida!) but it is really just another case of a bigger country picking on a smaller country which sure, the U.N. doesn't really do a good job at, but such is quite an impossible task.
If it were a conflict between Superpowers like the U.S. and China or Russia now that would be a war the U.N. would be expected to prevent, and over the past 60 years it has done so qutie well I think.
This is the very point, they don't need permission! But if countries like China setup their own systems without the "permission" of the U.S. it is unlikely that the competing systems will interact the way they do now. With the example above of.tw domains, it would be bad for taiwan and the entire world if half the internet (i.e. the west) see one set of.tw domains and the other (the middle and far east for example) see another set.
"How does handing control over to the U.N. prevent this problem?"
It may not be a failsafe, utopian solution but the U.N. has maintained peace among the world's most powerful nations/unions for 60 years now. Historically that is pretty much unheard of. The U.N. has for decades been dealing with far more contentious issues than root server control and so should be quite equipped for the task of overlooking ICANN.
Actually the latest data predicts that 2005 is on track to beat 1998 and be the hottest year ever recorded, or at the very minimum be the 2nd or 3rd hottest.
Most major news organisations have run a story on the various reports, e.g.: The Washington Post Reuters
The whole issue seems a bit pointlessly theoretical now, however it would be naive to think the issue won't arise in the distant future (i.e. sometime over the next 50 years). Particularly in the case of emerging superpower like China and the EU.
I think the U.S. lawmakers are missing the point of the technology and of international politics entirely. There is nothing the U.S. can do to stop these Countries/Unions just using there own alternate servers/protocols which would in the long run be bad for everyone.
Such fragmentation is in a sense the one flaw with the internet which could destroy it as the international network we currently know. Just like other international treaties, internet control should therefor be handed to the U.N. so that no country can shout 'Foul play' at the U.S. and try and split the internet up which is surely the most likely scenario (over the distant future) with the current setup.
Slashdot Mirror
Studies show a lot of things.
...for example my girlfriend is currently (and has been for atleast 5 hours now ) playing some stupid tetris-style game on some website.
I bet the actual percentages of such things and the percentage of female players in general are very different for each game and it's genre. A recent article on some large media organisation's website (I really can't remeber which one) stated that for most online puzzle games (thoose annoying Java based ones on various websites) were predominantly played by woman.
While Broadband (or "Ultraband" as would probably be required to recieve most modern games as a service) is increasing, it is still no where near universal and for a variety of reasons we all already know about (e.g. distance to telephone exchange problems, stingy parents etc.) it will not be universal amongst customers for a long, long time yet.
Are game publishers and others going to sacrifice all these potential customers simply in order to prevent piracy; something which hasn't been proven to have that big an impact on sales anyway.
The only time I think most of these products will be provided as services is so that otherwise impossible on-the-fly type features can be included (and charged for).
The "included as standard" is important.
...all to find out the software/feature is so immature or buggy even the most basic features requires a host of newly learnt commands and techniques.
Too often, Linux suffers from great applications and features being available to those willing to spend 5 hours trawling every project hosting website then spend several hours getting the 101 dependancy issues sorted out and then go make dinner while the whole thing compiles.
The bueaty of the KDE enviroment (and gnome for that matter) is the way so much stuff just works as expected without requiring the user to learn a range of commands & techniques which should have been left back in the 1970's. Sure, Webcam support on Linux may not be a totally new thing to us "nerds" that frequent Slashdot, but as someone who has spent days getting a Webcam to partly work (within Kopete and elsewhere), I would have to agree that with the new Kopete in KDE 3.5 it will be the first time Linux is able to realisticly claim to support Webcams.
1 in a million people flying being a terrorist is a hell of an overestimate.
"The Internet lives to innovate for another day," - U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce Michael Gallagher
Does this guy work for Microsoft? I absolutly hate this term, it is so meaningless. What ever happened to good old development of new products while improving existing ones?
Such an approach actually has tangible objectives and is far better than 'innovation' which seems to acheive little apart from increased commercialization as R&D funds are diverted to "how can we take more money off our customers" issues, rather than development of the actual product. (e.g.: Much of the new Windows 'innovative' features center around getting customers to buy more products (Media Player, MSN Messenger etc.), not actually making Windows any better).
I think such a statement from the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce shows what the US government (and its corporate sponsors) have in store for the internet, unfortuantly.
Guess sometimes having too many tabs open is a bad thing.
Please mod down the parent (which I wrote) as it was meant for another article.
"The Internet lives to innovate for another day," - U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce Michael Gallagher
Does this guy work for Microsoft? I absolutly hate this term, it is so meaningless. What ever happened to good old development of new products while improving existing ones?
Such an approach actually has tangible objectives and is far better than 'innovation' which seems to acheive little apart from increased commercialization as R&D funds are diverted to "how can we take more money off our customers" issues rather than actual product development.
I think such a statement from the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce shows what the US government (and its corporate sponsors) have in store for the internet, unfortuantly.
Not that of what you've said actually makes any sense. Your theories ignore basically all of the human rights laws (both British and European), political fairness laws, and data protection laws.
Also:
Your spouse can "petition" the state all she wants but this ain't the USA and no amount of money is going to get around the data protection act.
I Don't understand what exactly you mean by "one thing leads to another" but if a rape was committed I'd hope the guy does get caught, if not how exactly is he going to get it to stand up in court? and why would "a important MP" (sic) have access to confidential police information anyway, this ain't Zimbabwe!
"the extention to detention without trial (even to 28 days is longer than most common law countries"
The USA's indefinate detention of suspected terrorists is a lot longer than 28 or 90 days. Also, most other European countries deport suspected foreign terrorists back to countries where they are likely to spend god knows how long in jail with or without trial.
Either way, it basically comes down to how much spare cash you've got.
The mechanical bits arn't spinning round all day therefor less wear.
Don't forget the refineries, they often let off a heck of a lot of nasty stuff.
A large part is about sending MORE humans into space.
Is there anything wrong with that? Personally I would like to go to space someday, preferably without the current expense and risks associated with the activity.
Hopefully one day however it will be a lot cheaper, safer and generally more efficient. When that day comes I'm sure the ISS will have played a leading role in delivering that day.
Imagine if noone had invested in the first Aeroplanes. They probably didn't have that much commercial use at the time (also being extremely costly and unreliable) but thanks to 100 years or so of progress air travel is available to everyone (everyone in the western world anyway).
Thats hilarious, almost wet myself!
Any info on what episode it came from? and more importantly is there a sound clip of it on the web?
I had this happen to me also when I installed Firefox on my work machine some time ago. I was called into the M.D.'s office to explain why I had committed a 'serious breach of office protocol' in installing a program I think the computer guy had told him was some sort of internet game!
I stated how I simply prefered the cleanliness of tabbed browsing and alerted hime about the constant security threats associated with Internet Explorer and within a week the whole company had Firefox installed on their computers!
Browser based security threats may not be the biggest issue for a small company but it certainly seems to make your typcial clueless manager listen.
Intereasting, and I always thought George Bush was a brain-dead idiot.
This is sick. Why the hell are religous schools (and other organisations) allowed to get away with such blatent infringments of rights on the ground that they are a religous organisation, why does it make them any different from any other organisation, commerical, non-profit or charitable?
You say that the law/program had "best of intentions". I'm not sure it did though, noone has been able to explain to me any realistic way the Patriot act would help convict terrorists or prvent terrorist attacks in a way that couldn't have already been done under previously existing laws.
Thankfully, here in Britian the numbers are a slight bit better.
Still only about 1/5 - 1/4 females on most university courses (according to UCAS, the university (or is it college in America, not sure) admissions people), intereastingly, the percentage of woman seems to generally increase the better the university.
As a guy, I feel sorry for anyone studying on a 99% male course, it must be bad for both guys and girls being in such a totally male-dominated enviroment (not to mention just a bit stinky).
Maybe if they got more woman doing Computer Science (in particular open source projects) then things like Linux and Pearl wouldn't be so insanely and unnecessarily over-cryptic.
Right, so how exactly would China redirect .tw traffic if the U.S. did not agree to do so?
And how exactly is an internet "split" not a technically realistic scenario? China (soon to have more internet users than anyone else) and many middle-eastern countries already block many western sites.
well duh, its the international standards and definitions and the contents of that all important 'text file' that everyone is talking about when they refer to the DNS servers.
The whole U.S. - Iraq thing is quite small pants for the U.N.
Sure it receives a lot of english-speaking media attention (just like everything to do with the U.S., take hurricane Wilma which has just destroyed parts of Mexico yet the media focus is on its approaching Florida!) but it is really just another case of a bigger country picking on a smaller country which sure, the U.N. doesn't really do a good job at, but such is quite an impossible task.
If it were a conflict between Superpowers like the U.S. and China or Russia now that would be a war the U.N. would be expected to prevent, and over the past 60 years it has done so qutie well I think.
This is the very point, they don't need permission! .tw domains, it would be bad for taiwan and the entire world if half the internet (i.e. the west) see one set of .tw domains and the other (the middle and far east for example) see another set.
But if countries like China setup their own systems without the "permission" of the U.S. it is unlikely that the competing systems will interact the way they do now. With the example above of
"How does handing control over to the U.N. prevent this problem?"
It may not be a failsafe, utopian solution but the U.N. has maintained peace among the world's most powerful nations/unions for 60 years now. Historically that is pretty much unheard of. The U.N. has for decades been dealing with far more contentious issues than root server control and so should be quite equipped for the task of overlooking ICANN.
Actually the latest data predicts that 2005 is on track to beat 1998 and be the hottest year ever recorded, or at the very minimum be the 2nd or 3rd hottest.
Most major news organisations have run a story on the various reports, e.g.:
The Washington Post
Reuters
I agree entirely.
The whole issue seems a bit pointlessly theoretical now, however it would be naive to think the issue won't arise in the distant future (i.e. sometime over the next 50 years). Particularly in the case of emerging superpower like China and the EU.
I think the U.S. lawmakers are missing the point of the technology and of international politics entirely. There is nothing the U.S. can do to stop these Countries/Unions just using there own alternate servers/protocols which would in the long run be bad for everyone.
Such fragmentation is in a sense the one flaw with the internet which could destroy it as the international network we currently know. Just like other international treaties, internet control should therefor be handed to the U.N. so that no country can shout 'Foul play' at the U.S. and try and split the internet up which is surely the most likely scenario (over the distant future) with the current setup.