A foreign nation becoming involved, one breach of security, this doesn't look good on paper, why the hell would it look any better in real life? Opps that was a military laptop with illegal mp3s... oh crap..
What fucking good is disk mirroring, raid 5, 6, or raid 5 gazillion when the fucking building burns down?! Hey the raid control failed and wrote Calvin and Hobbes quotes all across the array! Once again the apple of common sense has fell so far from the tree that we need to explain this kind of stuff. We are in a shit load of trouble.
"The apple of common sense has fallen so far from the tree that we now have to, so to speak, explain what an apple is..."
1 Wood stove will do you just fine for keeping things warm from a survivability stand point. Several exotic solutions are also radiant heat setups with the woodstove as part of the fluid line (in short rather then using electricity to heat the radiant heat the wood stove does.) I've seen that setup in several garages in the floors (some very nice crude ones too in the middle of nowhere for storage sheds.) Usually there is a sterling engine style pump that is integrated to help move the fluid.
In a long term emergency go into the garage and get your camping tent. Set up the tent in basement of the house (use soup cans or other weights instead of spikes. I use bungie cords to some unfinished studs.(most homes freeze top-down fyi) Place 3-4 blankets and towels down as a floor in the tent. Grab some scrap 2x4s and nail up a pair of V shaped legs with a beam connecting them and build a small mini-tent inside the tent. Place blankets on top of that so you have a mini-tent inside for sleeping. Place any pets inside the main tent. This should keep the air temperature comfortable (sometimes even hot) in weather up to -20 degrees (your house is a big wind barrier.) turn off the water to the house and drain pipes. Wait for help.
Pipes freezing you should shut em off and bleed em empty if possible. A single wood stove in most homes will keep the ambient temp above freezing with little problem.
I've been working with computers for over 22 years now and when I was young I had a dishwasher safe mouse and keyboard. I never knew the manufacturer of it and since the house fire back then I have never found one since.
They were heavy and all you did was pop the bottom off (two thumb screws on the sides unlocked it) and you put the upper part in the top shelf of the dishwasher. Same with the keyboard and mouse.
Now with that new marine waterproofing stuff can we PLEASE GET A DISHWASHER SAFE KEYBOARD AND MOUSE COMBO!? I mean seriously I am more grossed out by keyboards and mice then I am toilets and Lysol is expensive.
The problem is "The Law of Unintended Consequences" is accellerated with human mobility.
A virus for example:
If 1 in 100,000,000,000 viruses mutates and 1 in 100,000,000,000 of those are dangerous and 1 in 100,000,000,000 of those dangerous results is infectious\communicable and 1 in 100,000,000,000 of those can thrive long enough to infect
Then every 14 seconds on Earth a new way to die emerges (This is an old quote from a text book I had back in highschool). The fact it can't get anywhere usually means it dies out nearly immediately. That's nature. Now we add in human tinkering and the issue emerges that quickly an accident can get into the highly mobile human population.
I wonder how many scoffed at Bill Gates 10 years ago when he mentioned that Software as a Service was the way of the future. Now we have Games (Software) as a service rather then a product.
REMEMBER YOU DO NOT BUY GAMES, YOU LICENSE THEM! BIG DIFFERENCE! HUGE! I MEAN WE'RE TALKING MOTHER F#(*&$ DEATH STAR HUGE DIFFERENCE!
MMOs are the prefect example. It's not a product, it's a service. You license the software to use the service. The irony is that they'll back themselves into a corner sooner then later because the rules of law concerning SERVICES is greatly different then the rules of law concerning PRODUCT. (IANALBDOBBNIAMTAPLI, I am not a lawyer but I dated one briefly, but now I am married to a paralegal instead)
It won't matter, once consumers are comfortable with digital distribution then any up-and-coming studio can deliver games without having to worry about what Walmart thinks. Gaming as an art my flourish and we get some real story telling without some uninvolved fruit loop sales manager telling a software developer that they won't sell their game on their shelves because there aren't enough female roles in the game (which would more then likely be a chess game and there is only 1 queen in it.)
Don't think that ever happened? No Target and Walmart never had a problem with selling certain games that had swastikas on the boxes and asked that in order to sell the product they had to change the box art. And it never happened that product was pull because stores didn't like the box art with two burning towers on it right? Yeah... too many cooks. Digital distribution is a blessing in disguise because without brick and mortar the distribution costs will tank and all it will take is someone to step up and make an INDIE ONLY distribution network... Problem solved. Want "Super Baby Punting Bros 4" or "Smack The Crack Addict 2" or want "Bloody Blood Bath Bloodicide Butcher Blast Bomber Hooker Exploiter City 9" just $9.99 and a 320mb download. How about some real realism in games that censors would never allow but indies would dare take a risk at?! I like where this is going, I think the big content folks don't realize how self defeating this will be!
Sounds good to me. Why should someone who bought a $100,000 home in 1942 have to pay $300,000 a year in property taxes because two millionaire build a pair of 4 million dollar homes on each side and build a golf course across the street?
Home owners should pay property taxes based on the value of the home at the time of purchase and should never pay more then twice what they originally had. I've seen my property taxes triple over the last 2 years. I'm paying over 10% of the value of my home now in property taxes alone.
Consitiutional Amendments "No governement agency at the federal, state, or local level shall spend in excess of the previous 3 years average of income from taxes and fees collected except through a voter approved bonding" (Prevent Overspending)
"No person shall have their property tax increased beyond 3% in any calendar year, nor increased greater then 100% since the time of purchase or transfer of ownership of their primary residence by any goverment agency." (Prevent trying to steal and redistributed land through taxing people out of their homes)
"A person shall be secure in their private property and eminent domain shall be restricted for use solely for the appropriation for government owned and operated use and may not be transfered to private ownership." (Clean up 'public use' for land stealing)
"No company shall be tax on profits in excess of 5% of net revenue by the federal government and taxed no more then 15% when combined with local and state taxes." (Limit corporate income tax, so states at most can tax corporate income at 10%)
"The pay of corporate officers of a publically traded company shall be a scale of the median salary paid by the company to it's employees and contractors and may not exceed 10 times the median salary of the company in salary and no more then 20 times the median salary in stock compensation at the time of aquisition of those stock options." (If the typical employee makes $40,000 a year then the CEO can never make more then $400,000 in a salary and cannot receive more then $800,000 is stock in a year. If they want a raise, most employees must get a raise also)
"The term of any senate or house member shall be limited to 2 terms"
Because it's a common activity. Nearly 30% of all email has an attachment according the documentation I have. If you can attach a document to an email it's pretty safe to assume you can attach a picture, mp3, video clip, etc.
Most people do three things:
Send Email Surf the Web Use a word processor
Those are three activities to test. You write and attach the memo to kill two tests at the same time. You don't get all day for these kind of tests so you have to compact you test cases down to a slim as possible.
Ethel, install this operating system by following it's instructions. When you are done open a word processor and write a letter to some one and save it. Go into the email program and set it up using the following settings.... Attach the document you made earlier to the email. Don't forget to use the help if you need to. Once you are done take a picture using this camera. Connect it to your computer and save the picture from the camera to your computer. Print that picture you just took. Go to http://blah/ blah blah/ and check and make sure the date displayed is today's date.
That's what I give them almost verbatim. They are actually printed on those notecard you used in high school and college. Then the observers measure how easy it is for the user, how many times they check the help, ask questions, etc. To pass the user has to do all tasks within 2 hours NOT counting the OS install time. The OS must be installed to the local system, no cheating with Live CDs.
Linux has always failed. First and worse stumbling block, to this day is the Time Zone selection. They get confused looking at a map of cities. Why not just show the F'ing time zones to start? Seriosuly they all know they are in Central Time, why the hell would people in Minnesota pick Chicago (their words not mine.)
Next, Windows XP provides actual tutorials and a decent help system. Telling a 75 year old women to read the MAN pages or she's a moron doesn't get you a passing grade either.
With all the Linux fanboys and MS haters, they need a reality check that not everyone can write BASH scripts, use VIM\EMACS, and program in PERL. Linux suffers from a bad case of denial in the INTUITIVE department. Until you start using reason rather then hate the Linux crowd isn't going to get far in an actual discussion about why it keeps stumbling in the user department. It's sad and telling on how humans now communicate. Obama Sucks. MCCain sucks. Linux Sucks. MS Sucks.
Welcome to Idiocracy apparently. No no, no reason needed, just leave that whole reason stuff outside with the smokers.
to test how accessable a word processor is. One of the most common activities at work is attaching a file to an email so we just create a document to attach. Feel free to switch it to a spreadsheet but last time I checked most grandmas know what a letter is more so then a spreadsheet.
How can I take a statistical guide seriously set in a world where pricking your finger results in 1.2435466356356+10E gallons of blood spewing out that apparently was under at least 400.76432 PSI pressure spraying half of mall food court while 3 plucky teenagers are transformed into spandex wearing super ninja after finding a fossilized piece of dinosaur dung fighting demon tenticle rapists all while trying to balance a career working at a karoke bar, swooning an obviously undependable and questionable love interest that provides the reader with the only conclusion that the protagonist has some seriously questionable tastes in men\women\furniture\tenticles?
I don't think there is enough beer on Earth to make me accept this AND the fact that the anime Guy actually got a sequel! Now if you will excuse me, OH GOD PAPER CUT! DUCK AND COVER! MUST.... COMMIT.... TO... 40 MORE SECONDS OF DIALOG.... BEFORE UNLEASHING MY TRUE POWER....
1 Blank Computer 1 Distro Install CD 1 Elderly female ages 60 and up with grandchildren.
Grandma must install it and do a simple series of tasks
1)Install the OS (this now includes connecting to the wireless network with WPA security) 2)Write a Letter to the Grand Kids in Word or PDF format (This includes setting up the default email client) 3)Email said letter as an attachment 4)Take a digital picture on the camera and save it to the computer 5)Print said picture 6) Turn the computer OFF (not sleep, hibernate, or standby)
That's all I ask. XP passes. OSX Passes. Vista passes.
Linux has never passed this test. (You cannot use a grandma more then once FYI. So I am running out of elderly people. Please someone else pick up the torch for the grandma test.)
It's hope that keeps them going. False hope, but hope none the less. I've see people just start at the door, hoping that some family member will come walking in. I've met a few "basement" dwellers, oddballs, and rejects. I've met some people working for a web dating service (customers) that have been trying for YEARS just to meet someone. They're too fat, too bald, no clumsy, to ugly, too... something and just won't find anyone. I've seen adults with various mental defects. They'll never marry, date, have kids, nothing... Worse that I remember was a mentally retarded guy who lived with his mom all his life. Worked in the mail room. His mom died and about 3 weeks later he just gave up and died too. I went to his funeral. There were 6 of us there. 4 co-workers, his state provided guardian, and a distant 3rd cousin that came out.
What a fucking way to die... I mean... damn... If a robot could make someone like that happy, shit here's $20 for the cause. No one deserves to die alone. No one. No crook, not Gein, Hitler, not even the devil himself. No one deserves to die alone. Here's an extra $200 if the robot actually cared if he died.
The worst thing is there are soo many people out there crying themselves to sleep alone. It's just sad.. so sad...
I looked up irrelevant in the dictionary: -adjective: 1. not relevant; not applicable or pertinent: His lectures often stray to interesting but irrelevant subjects. 2. Law. (of evidence) having no probative value upon any issue in the case. -Synonyms: 1. (Linux Distributions), Slackware: His new release has totally gone Slackware on us.
Years ago I would havve mocked this. But the older I get I realize there are many people out there that just don't find someone. There are people that are "hopeless"
They end up crazy cat or dog people but I now can see that a robot wouldn't be any different then a cat or dog that a person bonds with.
I doubt many people would be lining up for the sex upgrade. I've meet some very lonely people (hospic for instance) and it's just the idea that there is someone there, be it a dog, or cat, or I suppose a robot. There are people that truely love their pets and bond with them. From cats, dogs, rats, bats, snakes, horses, goats, ferrits, birds of all sorts, and even fish. I suppose a robot would be no different really.
There are some people that aren't going to find companionship in life. I see quite a few mentally handicapped people in thier 70 and 80 (those that survive some rather barbaric eugenics movements) who never have been on a date. If a robot could have provided them some companionship, so be it.
Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age... but I just can seem to find the energy to mock this stuff anymore. I've seen too many lonley people suffering quietly who could use someone that fits some of the holes in their hearts. And sometimes you just need to hear someone speak to you. Some gaps, no pet can fill.
Oddly Perl might be a good choice if you run linux. I use perl almost exclusively for quick scripting and has enough "clutter" to help them bridge a gap between straight basic and a more comprehensive language like Java, C++, or C#. PHP is a great learning ground also for generating web pages and working with a database like mysql and learning how to pass information around.
I would like to state when I learned programming I went in this order:
LOGO -> BASIC -> x86 ASSEMBLY (yep) -> Pascal -> C -> C++ and then my hands gave out ending any ideas of becoming a programmer for a living.
Later on in life I picked up (in this order): BASH -> PERL -> SQL (ok not so much a programming language per se but you get the idea) -> PHP -> Ruby -> Java -> Java Script -> C#.
I CANNOT STRESS HOW IMPORTANT LEARNING ASEMBLY IS! Yes it's verbose but the process of learning it really helps someone understand how the computer works and gives a solid foundation to understand the higher level languages. More importantly they can drop down to the assembly level when needed to really optimize certain sections of code. If it wasn't for my ASM classes I would never had known the difference between a COM and EXE file;)
More importantly no network admin to date apparently has ever bothered to lock out DEBUG for writing quick and dirty ASM programs. Thanks MS for forgetting about that;)
A: Never will happen on a large scale. Too easy to "Steal" power when transmitted openly. I dare you to try and tap a power line without permission and see what happens (Provided you don't end up bacon). Hell you can go to jail for using an open wireless access point without permission, imagine you LED lights at Christmas accidentally tapping some transmitted power. Remember the whole static electricity debate? Remember one of the biggest arguments was how to bill for it?
B: Over-the-air transmission of damn near anything tends to fall into the FCC's court. Yeah like we really want them running a power grid. Their too busy trying to start a revenue stream via fines.
C: Until they can 'protect' that energy from being used by unauthorized sources it will never get any investment capital to get it up and running on a large scale. All that it would take is some miscreant to walk into the transmission field, drop a grounder of some sort and kill the power. Just wait till a kid with two forks and ADHD somehow creates a 10k degree plasma arc and burns himself. Hell I've seen office building getting sued for static discharge injuries now. The building next to me sprays the carpet every night as a result of 'an injury'.
D: The next duck that flys in the wrong direction will no longer be blamed on TVs, Radio, Microwaves, Cell Phones, Pornograph, HARP, or day time programming but rather power transmissions screwing up mother nature's compass. Environmentalists will find some wayward owl to block this. Perhaps a misguided 3 toed sloth navigating across an ocean due to power transmission. Hell how often do we hear about crap happening to people who live under power lines. This strikes me as a dead end.
I wish all these egg-heads would focus on practical, immediate, and needed science. Yes! we can confirm there is a black hole in the center of the galaxy! Yes! we found the Higgs Boson. Great! can you feed the homeless guy tonight with that info? No? Grow food in a desert? Ahh. Ohh CO2 on a planet a long ways away, do anything with all the grant money that can help us here on Earth? Though so. I'd rather spend a billion dollars getting to Mars. At the very least if there's no life there we could mine the hell out of it and store our nuke waste in a very deep hole there... Perhaps put a nice UMAX prison there for lifers. No chance of escape when you think about it...
I'm all for theoretical research and research for the sake of learning, but right now we have some serious fucking issues to tackle here on Earth now in the 21st century. 70+ year old power transmission ideaology that is easily killed in the court of commerce seems like a waste right now. I'd rather see brilliant minds doing brilliant things to help people here and now that can't be stymed by 4 simple examples above.
Billions to find a sub-atomic particle and only millions to feed people. Can we swap that M and B please? Even geeks need to eat.
Most Canadians speak English, not Canadian. People in Mexico largely speak Spanish, not Mexican. We teach English in our schools, not American. We teach English as a second language to many that come to the U.S. not American. In our schools, tests, and requirements we have English. Trying to state that American is supposedly a dialect of English is a lousy argument, that same school teaches English to immigrant hispanics. If there was any legitimacy to an American dialect, wouldn't they teach American rather then English? And why in the other 49 states of the union is English the correct answer but ONLY IN TEXAS, SPECIFICALLY THE DALLAS SCHOOL DISTRICT, is American somehow a correct answer on a standardized test?
Nonesense. You statement amounts to "Mexicans speak Mexican not Spanish..."
get out of your mom's basement. You live in reality. MMOs are entertainment, not an alternate universe or second life (pardon the pun.) You statement scares the hell out of me. Too many of you are trying to escape reality by fleeing into a game where you think everyone is on an even playing field. Get a crack pipe or some drugs, no different when it comes to trying to escape reality.
I've heard authentic toss around in this discussion... wtf? Street cred in an MMO? It's GLORIFIED CHUTES AND LADDERS! My God people these are games, you know, Monopoly, Candy Land, Scrabble, Upwords. You know, GAMES. Metal Gear 4 = Jenga people! Games! Have you all gone insaine? A nation that no longer sees a difference between fantasy and reality... we are in trouble...
The United State's only real export anymore is intellectual property. As manufacturing, real estate, and raw material exports decline export more and even violent protection of Intellectual Property.
The real chiller is so few can control intellectual property that you'll see a new patent-holding aristocracy who's knights and private armies wear suits and wage war in courts...
Q: What is the most common language is spoken in the United States?
6 students wrote "American" as an answer. My friend, a temp teacher there marked the answers wrong. The Dallas school district's answer is AMERICAN is a language. In that state, the level of stupid is beyond reasonable. I worked for a hearing aid company and we closed all of our corporate stores in Texas due to... well... stupidity and an inability to find qualified staff. I remember looking through resumes with HR and 1/3rd of them we threw in the trash, the submitter didn't bother to include an email, phone, address, or any know method beyond astral projection to contact them. Now based on this teacher I can see why. It isn't stupid people, it's stupid teachers teaching stupid to others.
Perhaps we need to quarintine Texas until we can determine if stupid is contagious and what possible cures and treatments are available.
Nope just flat surface. He just wasn't paying attention to the fact that there was oncoming cross-traffic. The corner is blind but has a sidewalk. He just drifted out into traffic. Apparently he never even looked up from on-lookers' statements. It's not like he took a dive after trying to ride down a handrail or a steep hill, just drifted to his death. The big red DON'T WALK apparently didn't register. A driver going 35 wouldn't never have a chance in that circumstance (those marble flat retaining walls that are about 4 fet high with a sidewalk then the street.) Plain fact that in an altered state all bets are off on reaction times, perception of reality, fundamental comprehension. Pot belongs either in a regulated location of some sort or in a living room, but out and about baked is just a bad idea.
So I give this less then a year before something from a video game is now implicated.
Violence towards children too right? How many RPGs have plucky minors doing battle against the forces of evil? Oh sorry that robot hit the protagonist of the game. Child abuse.
Lets not forget that Frank Herberts DUNE, Little House on the Praire, are both considered in several school as examples of C.P.
Paul was roughly 15 in the story and Laura Ingles Wilder was married as a "minor" by today's standards.
The rise of the "Thought Police" right before our eyes. It's good to see the Pre-Crime units taking care of obviously crime-inducing material before it results in a crime...
Lets not forget that last I heard 50% of possession charges in the US still stem from Traci Lords.
Great...
Now animated content eh? Little Mermaid? Too revealing? Will all animated characters have to have disclaimer signs?
And technically Bart isn't a child. Hell he's at least 20 years old now. But if it is the appearance of youth that makes that determination I have a feeling the whole wife\girlfriend\mistress dressing up as a cheerleader is right out now...
The world is going crazy and I blame too many electronic gadgets. Liek geese getting confused when migrating we're going collectively nuts as a results of too much man-made 'noise'in the world....
Drug A will get you high for only so long. Then you progress to a more potent drug, B.
This cycle continues as tolerances develop.
Bacteria does it to antibiotics.
Moderation is tempered by accessability.
Eventually in the arms race we had to start signing non-poliferation acts to slow the arms race.
Often those treaties are abandoned after a time.
Prohibition was effectively an attempt to stop a growing problem. It's success and failure cannot be measured effectively as we do not have an alternate universe where it never happened to look at.
We CAN see other countries and the issues they have with many of the drugs ranging from Opium, Cocaine, and relaxed standards for "soft" drugs.
Legalization, prohibition, do not address the root issue of drug use: why people turn to them in the first place.
The truth is hard to swallow. Most people can drink responsibly. Most people when they drink do not beat their spouse. Most people can handle booze just fine and have a good time.
Of course most people can be trusted. The problem is the small % of those who cannot handle drugs (or weapons, television script writing, etc.) can inflict MASSIVE damage to not only themselves but also those who don't even use drugs.
A pot smoker skateboarding may not pay attention and accidentally skate into an intersection and get hit by a car (Happened in St. Paul back in the 90s when I was in High School). The kid was killed and if that was it I'd be ok with legal bud. But the driver wasn't smoking. And now that driver lives the rest of his life with the fact he killed that kid. It wasn't his fault but the damage is done.
It is never a clear and easy decision on how to deal with drugs, legal or other wise but not only does the harm to the user have to be factored in, but the risks to everyone else that a person in an altered state poses.
The most acceptable solution I ever heard was the "Xanadu Pleasure Dome" solution. A center where a person can go to get lit like an xmas tree where they cannot leave until they "land" back on the ground. Only in the pleasure dome can you "alter" yourself with a drug for recreational purposes. With a staff and team trained to deal with and issues that may arise. Also with a record they know what you can and can't handle. Those that have "negative" reactions (violent, depressed, etc.) would then be further restricted.
More importantly the whole idea then was to record your session so your sober self can see the results. I quit getting blitzed after seeing myself sign Doctor Feelgood at a karoke bar. After seeing that I gave up getting that shit faced and also stopped listening to 80's hair bands...
Slashdot Mirror
This will not end well because of one word:
Espionage.
A foreign nation becoming involved, one breach of security, this doesn't look good on paper, why the hell would it look any better in real life? Opps that was a military laptop with illegal mp3s... oh crap..
Jebus Punting Mary Jane Rice Almighty!!
What fucking good is disk mirroring, raid 5, 6, or raid 5 gazillion when the fucking building burns down?! Hey the raid control failed and wrote Calvin and Hobbes quotes all across the array! Once again the apple of common sense has fell so far from the tree that we need to explain this kind of stuff. We are in a shit load of trouble.
"The apple of common sense has fallen so far from the tree that we now have to, so to speak, explain what an apple is..."
1 Wood stove will do you just fine for keeping things warm from a survivability stand point. Several exotic solutions are also radiant heat setups with the woodstove as part of the fluid line (in short rather then using electricity to heat the radiant heat the wood stove does.) I've seen that setup in several garages in the floors (some very nice crude ones too in the middle of nowhere for storage sheds.) Usually there is a sterling engine style pump that is integrated to help move the fluid.
In a long term emergency go into the garage and get your camping tent. Set up the tent in basement of the house (use soup cans or other weights instead of spikes. I use bungie cords to some unfinished studs.(most homes freeze top-down fyi) Place 3-4 blankets and towels down as a floor in the tent. Grab some scrap 2x4s and nail up a pair of V shaped legs with a beam connecting them and build a small mini-tent inside the tent. Place blankets on top of that so you have a mini-tent inside for sleeping. Place any pets inside the main tent. This should keep the air temperature comfortable (sometimes even hot) in weather up to -20 degrees (your house is a big wind barrier.) turn off the water to the house and drain pipes. Wait for help.
Pipes freezing you should shut em off and bleed em empty if possible. A single wood stove in most homes will keep the ambient temp above freezing with little problem.
I've been working with computers for over 22 years now and when I was young I had a dishwasher safe mouse and keyboard. I never knew the manufacturer of it and since the house fire back then I have never found one since.
They were heavy and all you did was pop the bottom off (two thumb screws on the sides unlocked it) and you put the upper part in the top shelf of the dishwasher. Same with the keyboard and mouse.
Now with that new marine waterproofing stuff can we PLEASE GET A DISHWASHER SAFE KEYBOARD AND MOUSE COMBO!? I mean seriously I am more grossed out by keyboards and mice then I am toilets and Lysol is expensive.
The problem is "The Law of Unintended Consequences" is accellerated with human mobility.
A virus for example:
If 1 in 100,000,000,000 viruses mutates
and 1 in 100,000,000,000 of those are dangerous
and 1 in 100,000,000,000 of those dangerous results is infectious\communicable
and 1 in 100,000,000,000 of those can thrive long enough to infect
Then every 14 seconds on Earth a new way to die emerges (This is an old quote from a text book I had back in highschool). The fact it can't get anywhere usually means it dies out nearly immediately. That's nature. Now we add in human tinkering and the issue emerges that quickly an accident can get into the highly mobile human population.
Epp...
I wonder how many scoffed at Bill Gates 10 years ago when he mentioned that Software as a Service was the way of the future. Now we have Games (Software) as a service rather then a product.
REMEMBER YOU DO NOT BUY GAMES, YOU LICENSE THEM! BIG DIFFERENCE! HUGE! I MEAN WE'RE TALKING MOTHER F#(*&$ DEATH STAR HUGE DIFFERENCE!
MMOs are the prefect example. It's not a product, it's a service. You license the software to use the service. The irony is that they'll back themselves into a corner sooner then later because the rules of law concerning SERVICES is greatly different then the rules of law concerning PRODUCT. (IANALBDOBBNIAMTAPLI, I am not a lawyer but I dated one briefly, but now I am married to a paralegal instead)
It won't matter, once consumers are comfortable with digital distribution then any up-and-coming studio can deliver games without having to worry about what Walmart thinks. Gaming as an art my flourish and we get some real story telling without some uninvolved fruit loop sales manager telling a software developer that they won't sell their game on their shelves because there aren't enough female roles in the game (which would more then likely be a chess game and there is only 1 queen in it.)
Don't think that ever happened? No Target and Walmart never had a problem with selling certain games that had swastikas on the boxes and asked that in order to sell the product they had to change the box art. And it never happened that product was pull because stores didn't like the box art with two burning towers on it right? Yeah... too many cooks. Digital distribution is a blessing in disguise because without brick and mortar the distribution costs will tank and all it will take is someone to step up and make an INDIE ONLY distribution network... Problem solved. Want "Super Baby Punting Bros 4" or "Smack The Crack Addict 2" or want "Bloody Blood Bath Bloodicide Butcher Blast Bomber Hooker Exploiter City 9" just $9.99 and a 320mb download. How about some real realism in games that censors would never allow but indies would dare take a risk at?! I like where this is going, I think the big content folks don't realize how self defeating this will be!
GO FOR IT!
Simple.
Cheap.
Easy to Use.
Unlimited Replay Value.
No level grinding.
No exp tread mill.
Limitless creativity.
Sounds good to me. Why should someone who bought a $100,000 home in 1942 have to pay $300,000 a year in property taxes because two millionaire build a pair of 4 million dollar homes on each side and build a golf course across the street?
Home owners should pay property taxes based on the value of the home at the time of purchase and should never pay more then twice what they originally had. I've seen my property taxes triple over the last 2 years. I'm paying over 10% of the value of my home now in property taxes alone.
Consitiutional Amendments
"No governement agency at the federal, state, or local level shall spend in excess of the previous 3 years average of income from taxes and fees collected except through a voter approved bonding" (Prevent Overspending)
"No person shall have their property tax increased beyond 3% in any calendar year, nor increased greater then 100% since the time of purchase or transfer of ownership of their primary residence by any goverment agency." (Prevent trying to steal and redistributed land through taxing people out of their homes)
"A person shall be secure in their private property and eminent domain shall be restricted for use solely for the appropriation for government owned and operated use and may not be transfered to private ownership."
(Clean up 'public use' for land stealing)
"No company shall be tax on profits in excess of 5% of net revenue by the federal government and taxed no more then 15% when combined with local and state taxes." (Limit corporate income tax, so states at most can tax corporate income at 10%)
"The pay of corporate officers of a publically traded company shall be a scale of the median salary paid by the company to it's employees and contractors and may not exceed 10 times the median salary of the company in salary and no more then 20 times the median salary in stock compensation at the time of aquisition of those stock options." (If the typical employee makes $40,000 a year then the CEO can never make more then $400,000 in a salary and cannot receive more then $800,000 is stock in a year. If they want a raise, most employees must get a raise also)
"The term of any senate or house member shall be limited to 2 terms"
Those would go a long way.
Because it's a common activity. Nearly 30% of all email has an attachment according the documentation I have. If you can attach a document to an email it's pretty safe to assume you can attach a picture, mp3, video clip, etc.
Most people do three things:
Send Email
Surf the Web
Use a word processor
Those are three activities to test. You write and attach the memo to kill two tests at the same time. You don't get all day for these kind of tests so you have to compact you test cases down to a slim as possible.
Ethel, install this operating system by following it's instructions. ....
When you are done open a word processor and write a letter to some one and save it.
Go into the email program and set it up using the following settings
Attach the document you made earlier to the email. Don't forget to use the help if you need to.
Once you are done take a picture using this camera.
Connect it to your computer and save the picture from the camera to your computer.
Print that picture you just took.
Go to http://blah/ blah blah/ and check and make sure the date displayed is today's date.
That's what I give them almost verbatim. They are actually printed on those notecard you used in high school and college. Then the observers measure how easy it is for the user, how many times they check the help, ask questions, etc. To pass the user has to do all tasks within 2 hours NOT counting the OS install time. The OS must be installed to the local system, no cheating with Live CDs.
Linux has always failed. First and worse stumbling block, to this day is the Time Zone selection. They get confused looking at a map of cities. Why not just show the F'ing time zones to start? Seriosuly they all know they are in Central Time, why the hell would people in Minnesota pick Chicago (their words not mine.)
Next, Windows XP provides actual tutorials and a decent help system. Telling a 75 year old women to read the MAN pages or she's a moron doesn't get you a passing grade either.
With all the Linux fanboys and MS haters, they need a reality check that not everyone can write BASH scripts, use VIM\EMACS, and program in PERL. Linux suffers from a bad case of denial in the INTUITIVE department. Until you start using reason rather then hate the Linux crowd isn't going to get far in an actual discussion about why it keeps stumbling in the user department. It's sad and telling on how humans now communicate. Obama Sucks. MCCain sucks. Linux Sucks. MS Sucks.
Welcome to Idiocracy apparently. No no, no reason needed, just leave that whole reason stuff outside with the smokers.
It's just sad..
to test how accessable a word processor is. One of the most common activities at work is attaching a file to an email so we just create a document to attach. Feel free to switch it to a spreadsheet but last time I checked most grandmas know what a letter is more so then a spreadsheet.
How can I take a statistical guide seriously set in a world where pricking your finger results in 1.2435466356356+10E gallons of blood spewing out that apparently was under at least 400.76432 PSI pressure spraying half of mall food court while 3 plucky teenagers are transformed into spandex wearing super ninja after finding a fossilized piece of dinosaur dung fighting demon tenticle rapists all while trying to balance a career working at a karoke bar, swooning an obviously undependable and questionable love interest that provides the reader with the only conclusion that the protagonist has some seriously questionable tastes in men\women\furniture\tenticles?
I don't think there is enough beer on Earth to make me accept this AND the fact that the anime Guy actually got a sequel! Now if you will excuse me, OH GOD PAPER CUT! DUCK AND COVER! MUST.... COMMIT.... TO ... 40 MORE SECONDS OF DIALOG.... BEFORE UNLEASHING MY TRUE POWER....
Sorry this distro is still broken.
Once again it failed the grandma test.
Very simple test.
1 Blank Computer
1 Distro Install CD
1 Elderly female ages 60 and up with grandchildren.
Grandma must install it and do a simple series of tasks
1)Install the OS (this now includes connecting to the wireless network with WPA security)
2)Write a Letter to the Grand Kids in Word or PDF format (This includes setting up the default email client)
3)Email said letter as an attachment
4)Take a digital picture on the camera and save it to the computer
5)Print said picture
6) Turn the computer OFF (not sleep, hibernate, or standby)
That's all I ask. XP passes. OSX Passes. Vista passes.
Linux has never passed this test. (You cannot use a grandma more then once FYI. So I am running out of elderly people. Please someone else pick up the torch for the grandma test.)
It's hope that keeps them going. False hope, but hope none the less. I've see people just start at the door, hoping that some family member will come walking in. I've met a few "basement" dwellers, oddballs, and rejects. I've met some people working for a web dating service (customers) that have been trying for YEARS just to meet someone. They're too fat, too bald, no clumsy, to ugly, too ... something and just won't find anyone. I've seen adults with various mental defects. They'll never marry, date, have kids, nothing... Worse that I remember was a mentally retarded guy who lived with his mom all his life. Worked in the mail room. His mom died and about 3 weeks later he just gave up and died too. I went to his funeral. There were 6 of us there. 4 co-workers, his state provided guardian, and a distant 3rd cousin that came out.
What a fucking way to die... I mean... damn... If a robot could make someone like that happy, shit here's $20 for the cause. No one deserves to die alone. No one. No crook, not Gein, Hitler, not even the devil himself. No one deserves to die alone. Here's an extra $200 if the robot actually cared if he died.
The worst thing is there are soo many people out there crying themselves to sleep alone. It's just sad.. so sad...
I looked up irrelevant in the dictionary:
-adjective:
1. not relevant; not applicable or pertinent: His lectures often stray to interesting but irrelevant subjects.
2. Law. (of evidence) having no probative value upon any issue in the case.
-Synonyms:
1. (Linux Distributions), Slackware: His new release has totally gone Slackware on us.
Years ago I would havve mocked this. But the older I get I realize there are many people out there that just don't find someone. There are people that are "hopeless"
They end up crazy cat or dog people but I now can see that a robot wouldn't be any different then a cat or dog that a person bonds with.
I doubt many people would be lining up for the sex upgrade. I've meet some very lonely people (hospic for instance) and it's just the idea that there is someone there, be it a dog, or cat, or I suppose a robot. There are people that truely love their pets and bond with them. From cats, dogs, rats, bats, snakes, horses, goats, ferrits, birds of all sorts, and even fish. I suppose a robot would be no different really.
There are some people that aren't going to find companionship in life. I see quite a few mentally handicapped people in thier 70 and 80 (those that survive some rather barbaric eugenics movements) who never have been on a date. If a robot could have provided them some companionship, so be it.
Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age... but I just can seem to find the energy to mock this stuff anymore. I've seen too many lonley people suffering quietly who could use someone that fits some of the holes in their hearts. And sometimes you just need to hear someone speak to you. Some gaps, no pet can fill.
Oddly Perl might be a good choice if you run linux. I use perl almost exclusively for quick scripting and has enough "clutter" to help them bridge a gap between straight basic and a more comprehensive language like Java, C++, or C#. PHP is a great learning ground also for generating web pages and working with a database like mysql and learning how to pass information around.
I would like to state when I learned programming I went in this order:
LOGO -> BASIC -> x86 ASSEMBLY (yep) -> Pascal -> C -> C++ and then my hands gave out ending any ideas of becoming a programmer for a living.
Later on in life I picked up (in this order):
BASH -> PERL -> SQL (ok not so much a programming language per se but you get the idea) -> PHP -> Ruby -> Java -> Java Script -> C#.
I CANNOT STRESS HOW IMPORTANT LEARNING ASEMBLY IS! Yes it's verbose but the process of learning it really helps someone understand how the computer works and gives a solid foundation to understand the higher level languages. More importantly they can drop down to the assembly level when needed to really optimize certain sections of code. If it wasn't for my ASM classes I would never had known the difference between a COM and EXE file ;)
More importantly no network admin to date apparently has ever bothered to lock out DEBUG for writing quick and dirty ASM programs. Thanks MS for forgetting about that ;)
A: Never will happen on a large scale. Too easy to "Steal" power when transmitted openly. I dare you to try and tap a power line without permission and see what happens (Provided you don't end up bacon). Hell you can go to jail for using an open wireless access point without permission, imagine you LED lights at Christmas accidentally tapping some transmitted power. Remember the whole static electricity debate? Remember one of the biggest arguments was how to bill for it?
B: Over-the-air transmission of damn near anything tends to fall into the FCC's court. Yeah like we really want them running a power grid. Their too busy trying to start a revenue stream via fines.
C: Until they can 'protect' that energy from being used by unauthorized sources it will never get any investment capital to get it up and running on a large scale. All that it would take is some miscreant to walk into the transmission field, drop a grounder of some sort and kill the power. Just wait till a kid with two forks and ADHD somehow creates a 10k degree plasma arc and burns himself. Hell I've seen office building getting sued for static discharge injuries now. The building next to me sprays the carpet every night as a result of 'an injury'.
D: The next duck that flys in the wrong direction will no longer be blamed on TVs, Radio, Microwaves, Cell Phones, Pornograph, HARP, or day time programming but rather power transmissions screwing up mother nature's compass. Environmentalists will find some wayward owl to block this. Perhaps a misguided 3 toed sloth navigating across an ocean due to power transmission. Hell how often do we hear about crap happening to people who live under power lines. This strikes me as a dead end.
I wish all these egg-heads would focus on practical, immediate, and needed science. Yes! we can confirm there is a black hole in the center of the galaxy! Yes! we found the Higgs Boson. Great! can you feed the homeless guy tonight with that info? No? Grow food in a desert? Ahh. Ohh CO2 on a planet a long ways away, do anything with all the grant money that can help us here on Earth? Though so. I'd rather spend a billion dollars getting to Mars. At the very least if there's no life there we could mine the hell out of it and store our nuke waste in a very deep hole there... Perhaps put a nice UMAX prison there for lifers. No chance of escape when you think about it...
I'm all for theoretical research and research for the sake of learning, but right now we have some serious fucking issues to tackle here on Earth now in the 21st century. 70+ year old power transmission ideaology that is easily killed in the court of commerce seems like a waste right now. I'd rather see brilliant minds doing brilliant things to help people here and now that can't be stymed by 4 simple examples above.
Billions to find a sub-atomic particle and only millions to feed people. Can we swap that M and B please? Even geeks need to eat.
Most Canadians speak English, not Canadian. People in Mexico largely speak Spanish, not Mexican. We teach English in our schools, not American. We teach English as a second language to many that come to the U.S. not American. In our schools, tests, and requirements we have English. Trying to state that American is supposedly a dialect of English is a lousy argument, that same school teaches English to immigrant hispanics. If there was any legitimacy to an American dialect, wouldn't they teach American rather then English? And why in the other 49 states of the union is English the correct answer but ONLY IN TEXAS, SPECIFICALLY THE DALLAS SCHOOL DISTRICT, is American somehow a correct answer on a standardized test?
Nonesense. You statement amounts to "Mexicans speak Mexican not Spanish..."
get out of your mom's basement. You live in reality. MMOs are entertainment, not an alternate universe or second life (pardon the pun.) You statement scares the hell out of me. Too many of you are trying to escape reality by fleeing into a game where you think everyone is on an even playing field. Get a crack pipe or some drugs, no different when it comes to trying to escape reality.
I've heard authentic toss around in this discussion... wtf? Street cred in an MMO? It's GLORIFIED CHUTES AND LADDERS! My God people these are games, you know, Monopoly, Candy Land, Scrabble, Upwords. You know, GAMES. Metal Gear 4 = Jenga people! Games! Have you all gone insaine? A nation that no longer sees a difference between fantasy and reality... we are in trouble...
The United State's only real export anymore is intellectual property. As manufacturing, real estate, and raw material exports decline export more and even violent protection of Intellectual Property.
The real chiller is so few can control intellectual property that you'll see a new patent-holding aristocracy who's knights and private armies wear suits and wage war in courts...
aww shit too late...
In a state where this happens I am not suprised:
Q: What is the most common language is spoken in the United States?
6 students wrote "American" as an answer. My friend, a temp teacher there marked the answers wrong. The Dallas school district's answer is AMERICAN is a language. In that state, the level of stupid is beyond reasonable. I worked for a hearing aid company and we closed all of our corporate stores in Texas due to ... well... stupidity and an inability to find qualified staff. I remember looking through resumes with HR and 1/3rd of them we threw in the trash, the submitter didn't bother to include an email, phone, address, or any know method beyond astral projection to contact them. Now based on this teacher I can see why. It isn't stupid people, it's stupid teachers teaching stupid to others.
Perhaps we need to quarintine Texas until we can determine if stupid is contagious and what possible cures and treatments are available.
Nope just flat surface. He just wasn't paying attention to the fact that there was oncoming cross-traffic. The corner is blind but has a sidewalk. He just drifted out into traffic. Apparently he never even looked up from on-lookers' statements. It's not like he took a dive after trying to ride down a handrail or a steep hill, just drifted to his death. The big red DON'T WALK apparently didn't register. A driver going 35 wouldn't never have a chance in that circumstance (those marble flat retaining walls that are about 4 fet high with a sidewalk then the street.) Plain fact that in an altered state all bets are off on reaction times, perception of reality, fundamental comprehension. Pot belongs either in a regulated location of some sort or in a living room, but out and about baked is just a bad idea.
So I give this less then a year before something from a video game is now implicated.
Violence towards children too right? How many RPGs have plucky minors doing battle against the forces of evil? Oh sorry that robot hit the protagonist of the game. Child abuse.
Lets not forget that Frank Herberts DUNE, Little House on the Praire, are both considered in several school as examples of C.P.
Paul was roughly 15 in the story and Laura Ingles Wilder was married as a "minor" by today's standards.
The rise of the "Thought Police" right before our eyes. It's good to see the Pre-Crime units taking care of obviously crime-inducing material before it results in a crime...
Lets not forget that last I heard 50% of possession charges in the US still stem from Traci Lords.
Great...
Now animated content eh? Little Mermaid? Too revealing? Will all animated characters have to have disclaimer signs?
And technically Bart isn't a child. Hell he's at least 20 years old now. But if it is the appearance of youth that makes that determination I have a feeling the whole wife\girlfriend\mistress dressing up as a cheerleader is right out now...
The world is going crazy and I blame too many electronic gadgets. Liek geese getting confused when migrating we're going collectively nuts as a results of too much man-made 'noise'in the world....
Drug abuse is an arms race.
Drug A will get you high for only so long.
Then you progress to a more potent drug, B.
This cycle continues as tolerances develop.
Bacteria does it to antibiotics.
Moderation is tempered by accessability.
Eventually in the arms race we had to start signing non-poliferation acts to slow the arms race.
Often those treaties are abandoned after a time.
Prohibition was effectively an attempt to stop a growing problem. It's success and failure cannot be measured effectively as we do not have an alternate universe where it never happened to look at.
We CAN see other countries and the issues they have with many of the drugs ranging from Opium, Cocaine, and relaxed standards for "soft" drugs.
Legalization, prohibition, do not address the root issue of drug use: why people turn to them in the first place.
The truth is hard to swallow. Most people can drink responsibly. Most people when they drink do not beat their spouse. Most people can handle booze just fine and have a good time.
Of course most people can be trusted. The problem is the small % of those who cannot handle drugs (or weapons, television script writing, etc.) can inflict MASSIVE damage to not only themselves but also those who don't even use drugs.
A pot smoker skateboarding may not pay attention and accidentally skate into an intersection and get hit by a car (Happened in St. Paul back in the 90s when I was in High School). The kid was killed and if that was it I'd be ok with legal bud. But the driver wasn't smoking. And now that driver lives the rest of his life with the fact he killed that kid. It wasn't his fault but the damage is done.
It is never a clear and easy decision on how to deal with drugs, legal or other wise but not only does the harm to the user have to be factored in, but the risks to everyone else that a person in an altered state poses.
The most acceptable solution I ever heard was the "Xanadu Pleasure Dome" solution. A center where a person can go to get lit like an xmas tree where they cannot leave until they "land" back on the ground. Only in the pleasure dome can you "alter" yourself with a drug for recreational purposes. With a staff and team trained to deal with and issues that may arise. Also with a record they know what you can and can't handle. Those that have "negative" reactions (violent, depressed, etc.) would then be further restricted.
More importantly the whole idea then was to record your session so your sober self can see the results. I quit getting blitzed after seeing myself sign Doctor Feelgood at a karoke bar. After seeing that I gave up getting that shit faced and also stopped listening to 80's hair bands...