Gamers are some of the most homophobic people out there. Using "gay" to mean "stupid" or "cheap" is clear homophobia, I don't care what kind of way people try to construe it.
You're wrong. I've met many people (IRL and online) who use the word and who are not homophobic. But since you don't care for what other people say, there's no point in talking to you, is there.
Why? When I read the post, I first wondered if he was describing the situation in Germany, which though not exactly that way is similar in many regards. Then I saw the author was Alan Cox - oops.
Anyway, a prominent example of this being done in Germany is the area around Berlin, where they have in fact performed a mandatory switch to digital, hundreds of thousands of analogue receivers notwithstanding. The public was not amused, but I guess they resigned to fate and got their decoders - those who weren't already using cable or sat, that is.
It's not just Berlin, though, Berlin and the surrounding area is just the only case where analogue has been turned off. There's service in most areas of Germany, especially the populated ones - I'm fairly certain I could get DVB-T if we weren't already on Sat. Incidently, if DVB-T (digital video broadcasting - terrestrial, I assume) had arrived a couple of years earlier, we probably wouldn't have gotten sat. (Note that you don't need a subscription for DVB-T around here - it's free, or rather, paid for by taxes.)
Technically, this is fairly cool, from what I hear. I distinctly recall receiving only 5 channels, two of them very badly and the actual shock of seeing them in brilliant quality (as far as TV goes, anyway) on sat for the first time. With DVB-T we'd get all the channels we're interested in, at the same quality. On the other hand, I'm sure people using this have their own horror tales to tell.
Actually, there are ways to find out the position of a cell phone with a fairly small margin of error - tens or hundreds of meters, depending on the density of cell towers. Location-based services depend on it, as do emergency services.
Also, one way of getting the cell phone to communicate without the user doing anything or even noticing it is using service SMS. These are routinely being used to transmit maintenance info to the cell phone. The German police has tracked people this way, and have gotten intro trouble for doing so because they should only be allowed to track the signal if the cell phone if the user sends text messages or calls someone.
I am not a cell phone engineer, though, this is really bits and pieces I picked up reading the usual tech outlets.
No clue. I don't even use Debian, personally, at least not at the moment. Glancing at the Debian project pages one learns that the installer will be part of Debian release "sarge" (probably Debian 3.1), which does not have a release date, though.
Maybe some Debian user has a more specific guess as to when 3.1 will be released, though.
The original Pirates: Gold! had some of the best music I've ever heard in a computer game. I still have the old DOS executable with the General Midi update, although it doesn't work very well in Windows. There were pieces by Bach and Mozart played when meeting the governor as well as folk tunes ("What shall we do...") played in the bar, but there were also brilliant tunes composed by the developer including the title theme and the best of them all, the tune played when your career was over.
In fact, they could just re-use the original music, maybe played by live musicians instead of my sound cards ominous on-board ones.
I still think 8 million is a bit on the steep side. I mean, maybe I'm not representative cause I'm a poor student and all, but I certainly wouldn't spend more than say one million for a ticket. Maybe they've got education rebates or something, though.
1 Toshiba e750 Wifi PocketPC (Curently runing that crappy Microsoft os. I'm going to put linux on here as soon as I get my hands on a 4 gig microdrive)
You are? Is there a decent Linux port for the e750 these days? Last time I looked, there was some support, but it was extremely experimental, meaning basically someone got the kernel to display something. Nothing like the support for the iPaqs.
Make Slashdot obfusciate the email address, the option's in the user page somewhere. I've never read anything about its efficiency at keeping bots from harvesting them, but I'd guess it's fairly good at it.
This is Slashdot Games, on a story that didn't make in to the front page. I'm fairly certain there are near to no newbies here. Most people, especially the ones reading this specific story will have at least 50 to 100 hours of FPS gaming - most people will have significantly more, I'd wager. (Not that that is something to be especially proud of.) So there's really no need to get on such a high horse.
I'm a Linux newbie (or was, until recently), and the man page system was an incredible help for me. And if you read the articles, the newbies he talks about are very happy with it, too. I'm not saying it's all good, and can't be improved, but it is not as bad as you make it look. Apropos as part of the man system is also great, although I guess not many newbiews know about it (my boss certainly didn't).
Yes, you can, but I never have. So for me, the metaphor works. As long as you use it like you would, you mostly get what you'd expect from spatial navigation. I realize it's not one-hundred percent the same - and I said so in my original post.
Incidently, I've used Windows (all versions from 95 to XP) this way because prior to Win95, I was more or less brought up on Apple System 7. Having one window display all folders was very weird and hard to use.
Just out of curiosity, are you making this up as you go (no offense) or do you have any background/references that confirm what you say?:)
I haven't performed the experiment you suggest, but note that if it proves anything, then it's not entirely the same as what we were talking about (you didn't say it was, of course). Differences at a medium to low volume do not necessarily imply differences (of the same magnitude) at the high volumes I was referring to, ie. the guys whose bass makes the whole car jump.
In fact I agree that when wearing headphones and listening to music that does not appear to be very loud, I have trouble talking to other people (which is why I never do that - not to mention that it's extremely impolite). On the other hand, my perception may be wrong, since I typically use headphones on the train ride to the uni, where the overall background noise level (due to the train, mostly) is already so high, you often can't talk to other people without raising your voice. And now that I think about it, my (in-ear) headphones do a fairly good job at canceling outside noise, so it's not surprising that I don't understand people talking to me very well.
While looking to find out whether listening to music over headphones on a bike is illegal here in Germany, I found an interesting, if poorly designed page discussing, or maybe rather opining, why the legality is arguable since headphones on a bike are (allegedly) less problematic than car radio speakers. Of course the page is of little use to people unfamiliar with the language.
It's true that different people have different appetites for social interaction, but you can never be truly human if you decide to block out everything.
Of course one could argue that either a) your definition of what is human and what is not is sheer arrogance and simply wrong or b) that it is correct and being human in accordance with your definition is just not something everybody would aspire to.
For instance, I might say that you can never be truly human unless you understand vector calculus, but my s.o. would either disagree - or shrug and admit to not even wanting to be human if that is what it takes. For another example, I can very well imagine some religious persons claiming that religion is a defining characteristic of our species (history and society tend to agree) and say that you can never be truly human if you decide to block out God. To both of that my reply above stands.
Not that I necessarily disagree with what you say, but I think it's a fairly subjective point, and a fairly weak one in a discussion. Cheers, anyway.;)
Unless he is using modern headphones which seal off the ear from everything but the music, it probably doesn't make that much of a difference compared to those morons whose car speakers are always run loud enough to entertain a whole traffic jam.
In fact, Windows can easily be made to have something akin to spatial navigation. Use single-pane windows (ie. not the classic Explorer look with a folder list on the left) and set folders to open in a new window. As far as I know, those folder windows retain their size and position over multiple sessions - in accordance with the spatial navigation ideas. Get rid of the "superflous" tool bars and you end with something looking a lot like what the Ars article describes. Including, actually, the optional browser the author proposes, which is just what the classic Explorer is on Windows.
Um, dude, if you want your linebreaks to show up without HTML code then just tell Slashdot you're not writing HTML formatted text. Use Plain Old Text instead. Note that HTML codes like hyperlinks and italics still work.
My music collection is of the same size, but I just don't share your all or nothing perspective - I don't mind returning to the PC to change what's on the iPod once in a while. 4 GB, or even 2 GB, would give me enough space to enjoy a fairly huge diversity of music on the go. As long as the process is painless enough, I've got no problem re-arranging the music on the iPod once in a while, writing my current favorite album on it and so on - especially considering that the device like the iPod mini aren't that well suited to managing music collections beyond a certain limit.
Re:4GB Compact Flash for $200?
on
iPod Mini Sells Out
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· Score: 2, Informative
(Nowadays) CompactFlash is an interface standard, it doesn't entail solid state memory or anything, even though the Google directory positioning might suggest otherwise. There are CompactFlash devices that don't "store" anything at all, like modems or NIC.
Re:Slashdotters==Curmudgeons?
on
iPod Mini Sells Out
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Well, size and weight isn't everything, but the iPod mini does seem to have a fairly nice balance. I'd rather settle for half the storage if it allow a 20% decrease in size, but it's still a lot better than the traditional HD players while retaining mostly all their pro's.
After all, wiki has the structure of yahoo with the benefits of quality content.
Wiki has all the structure its users give it, including none at all. Wikis can be great, but they can also be worse than useless, including but not limited to faults such as outdated, derelict information, extremely confusing structure, layout and organisation, misinformation, and so on and so on. This is not a criticism of the Wiki idea as such, I'm just saying it's not a cure for everything. With good administration and maintenance, not to mention users bringing in quality content, a wiki is cool.
In fact, I'd argue that with an increasing number of Wikis, good search engines increase their value a great deal - the Wikis have the content, hopefully in a correct and up-to-date state, the search engine helps getting to the specific content you're interested in without having to care about the organisation of any Wiki.
I've just been into linuxquestions's wiki page and browsed into X11 configuration... It tells me that mouse is the hardest thing to get going. Rubbish. Absolutely rubbish.
It certainly was true for me on both X11 installs (manual ones - first Debian then Gentoo). Getting the USB mouse recognized by the kernel in the first place was confusing, but it took me even longer to make X11 look for a USB mouse with 3 buttons and a wheel - not that the wheel worked in all apps even when the X11 configuration seemed/was right. I think the reason why the mouse was the most difficult thing for me, and remains the top issue for many people, is that other configuration parts are handled somewhat automagically, by the configuration tools or whatever. IIRC, the mouse wheel was the only thing I really had to work with the config files themselves to get it to work.
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Gamers are some of the most homophobic people out there. Using "gay" to mean "stupid" or "cheap" is clear homophobia, I don't care what kind of way people try to construe it.
You're wrong. I've met many people (IRL and online) who use the word and who are not homophobic. But since you don't care for what other people say, there's no point in talking to you, is there.
Why? When I read the post, I first wondered if he was describing the situation in Germany, which though not exactly that way is similar in many regards. Then I saw the author was Alan Cox - oops.
Anyway, a prominent example of this being done in Germany is the area around Berlin, where they have in fact performed a mandatory switch to digital, hundreds of thousands of analogue receivers notwithstanding. The public was not amused, but I guess they resigned to fate and got their decoders - those who weren't already using cable or sat, that is.
It's not just Berlin, though, Berlin and the surrounding area is just the only case where analogue has been turned off. There's service in most areas of Germany, especially the populated ones - I'm fairly certain I could get DVB-T if we weren't already on Sat. Incidently, if DVB-T (digital video broadcasting - terrestrial, I assume) had arrived a couple of years earlier, we probably wouldn't have gotten sat. (Note that you don't need a subscription for DVB-T around here - it's free, or rather, paid for by taxes.)
Technically, this is fairly cool, from what I hear. I distinctly recall receiving only 5 channels, two of them very badly and the actual shock of seeing them in brilliant quality (as far as TV goes, anyway) on sat for the first time. With DVB-T we'd get all the channels we're interested in, at the same quality. On the other hand, I'm sure people using this have their own horror tales to tell.
Actually, there are ways to find out the position of a cell phone with a fairly small margin of error - tens or hundreds of meters, depending on the density of cell towers. Location-based services depend on it, as do emergency services.
Also, one way of getting the cell phone to communicate without the user doing anything or even noticing it is using service SMS. These are routinely being used to transmit maintenance info to the cell phone. The German police has tracked people this way, and have gotten intro trouble for doing so because they should only be allowed to track the signal if the cell phone if the user sends text messages or calls someone.
I am not a cell phone engineer, though, this is really bits and pieces I picked up reading the usual tech outlets.
No clue. I don't even use Debian, personally, at least not at the moment. Glancing at the Debian project pages one learns that the installer will be part of Debian release "sarge" (probably Debian 3.1), which does not have a release date, though.
Maybe some Debian user has a more specific guess as to when 3.1 will be released, though.
They will - once the new installer goes out of beta.
The original Pirates: Gold! had some of the best music I've ever heard in a computer game. I still have the old DOS executable with the General Midi update, although it doesn't work very well in Windows. There were pieces by Bach and Mozart played when meeting the governor as well as folk tunes ("What shall we do...") played in the bar, but there were also brilliant tunes composed by the developer including the title theme and the best of them all, the tune played when your career was over.
In fact, they could just re-use the original music, maybe played by live musicians instead of my sound cards ominous on-board ones.
I still think 8 million is a bit on the steep side. I mean, maybe I'm not representative cause I'm a poor student and all, but I certainly wouldn't spend more than say one million for a ticket. Maybe they've got education rebates or something, though.
We haven't yet abolished elections so that isn't ever happening.
Neither has Russia. At least Russia has a lower limit on the turnout.
1 Toshiba e750 Wifi PocketPC (Curently runing that crappy Microsoft os. I'm going to put linux on here as soon as I get my hands on a 4 gig microdrive)
You are? Is there a decent Linux port for the e750 these days? Last time I looked, there was some support, but it was extremely experimental, meaning basically someone got the kernel to display something. Nothing like the support for the iPaqs.
Make Slashdot obfusciate the email address, the option's in the user page somewhere. I've never read anything about its efficiency at keeping bots from harvesting them, but I'd guess it's fairly good at it.
This is Slashdot Games, on a story that didn't make in to the front page. I'm fairly certain there are near to no newbies here. Most people, especially the ones reading this specific story will have at least 50 to 100 hours of FPS gaming - most people will have significantly more, I'd wager. (Not that that is something to be especially proud of.) So there's really no need to get on such a high horse.
I'm a Linux newbie (or was, until recently), and the man page system was an incredible help for me. And if you read the articles, the newbies he talks about are very happy with it, too. I'm not saying it's all good, and can't be improved, but it is not as bad as you make it look. Apropos as part of the man system is also great, although I guess not many newbiews know about it (my boss certainly didn't).
Yes, you can, but I never have. So for me, the metaphor works. As long as you use it like you would, you mostly get what you'd expect from spatial navigation. I realize it's not one-hundred percent the same - and I said so in my original post.
Incidently, I've used Windows (all versions from 95 to XP) this way because prior to Win95, I was more or less brought up on Apple System 7. Having one window display all folders was very weird and hard to use.
Just out of curiosity, are you making this up as you go (no offense) or do you have any background/references that confirm what you say? :)
I haven't performed the experiment you suggest, but note that if it proves anything, then it's not entirely the same as what we were talking about (you didn't say it was, of course). Differences at a medium to low volume do not necessarily imply differences (of the same magnitude) at the high volumes I was referring to, ie. the guys whose bass makes the whole car jump.
In fact I agree that when wearing headphones and listening to music that does not appear to be very loud, I have trouble talking to other people (which is why I never do that - not to mention that it's extremely impolite). On the other hand, my perception may be wrong, since I typically use headphones on the train ride to the uni, where the overall background noise level (due to the train, mostly) is already so high, you often can't talk to other people without raising your voice. And now that I think about it, my (in-ear) headphones do a fairly good job at canceling outside noise, so it's not surprising that I don't understand people talking to me very well.
While looking to find out whether listening to music over headphones on a bike is illegal here in Germany, I found an interesting, if poorly designed page discussing, or maybe rather opining, why the legality is arguable since headphones on a bike are (allegedly) less problematic than car radio speakers. Of course the page is of little use to people unfamiliar with the language.
It's true that different people have different appetites for social interaction, but you can never be truly human if you decide to block out everything.
;)
Of course one could argue that either a) your definition of what is human and what is not is sheer arrogance and simply wrong or b) that it is correct and being human in accordance with your definition is just not something everybody would aspire to.
For instance, I might say that you can never be truly human unless you understand vector calculus, but my s.o. would either disagree - or shrug and admit to not even wanting to be human if that is what it takes. For another example, I can very well imagine some religious persons claiming that religion is a defining characteristic of our species (history and society tend to agree) and say that you can never be truly human if you decide to block out God. To both of that my reply above stands.
Not that I necessarily disagree with what you say, but I think it's a fairly subjective point, and a fairly weak one in a discussion. Cheers, anyway.
Unless he is using modern headphones which seal off the ear from everything but the music, it probably doesn't make that much of a difference compared to those morons whose car speakers are always run loud enough to entertain a whole traffic jam.
In fact, Windows can easily be made to have something akin to spatial navigation. Use single-pane windows (ie. not the classic Explorer look with a folder list on the left) and set folders to open in a new window. As far as I know, those folder windows retain their size and position over multiple sessions - in accordance with the spatial navigation ideas. Get rid of the "superflous" tool bars and you end with something looking a lot like what the Ars article describes. Including, actually, the optional browser the author proposes, which is just what the classic Explorer is on Windows.
Um, dude, if you want your linebreaks to show up without HTML code then just tell Slashdot you're not writing HTML formatted text. Use Plain Old Text instead. Note that HTML codes like hyperlinks and italics still work.
My music collection is of the same size, but I just don't share your all or nothing perspective - I don't mind returning to the PC to change what's on the iPod once in a while. 4 GB, or even 2 GB, would give me enough space to enjoy a fairly huge diversity of music on the go. As long as the process is painless enough, I've got no problem re-arranging the music on the iPod once in a while, writing my current favorite album on it and so on - especially considering that the device like the iPod mini aren't that well suited to managing music collections beyond a certain limit.
(Nowadays) CompactFlash is an interface standard, it doesn't entail solid state memory or anything, even though the Google directory positioning might suggest otherwise. There are CompactFlash devices that don't "store" anything at all, like modems or NIC.
Well, size and weight isn't everything, but the iPod mini does seem to have a fairly nice balance. I'd rather settle for half the storage if it allow a 20% decrease in size, but it's still a lot better than the traditional HD players while retaining mostly all their pro's.
After all, wiki has the structure of yahoo with the benefits of quality content.
Wiki has all the structure its users give it, including none at all. Wikis can be great, but they can also be worse than useless, including but not limited to faults such as outdated, derelict information, extremely confusing structure, layout and organisation, misinformation, and so on and so on. This is not a criticism of the Wiki idea as such, I'm just saying it's not a cure for everything. With good administration and maintenance, not to mention users bringing in quality content, a wiki is cool.
In fact, I'd argue that with an increasing number of Wikis, good search engines increase their value a great deal - the Wikis have the content, hopefully in a correct and up-to-date state, the search engine helps getting to the specific content you're interested in without having to care about the organisation of any Wiki.
You might be joking or not, but you're right in any event - I'm afraid I know that from personal experience. It did help, too. :P
I've just been into linuxquestions's wiki page and browsed into X11 configuration... It tells me that mouse is the hardest thing to get going. Rubbish. Absolutely rubbish.
It certainly was true for me on both X11 installs (manual ones - first Debian then Gentoo). Getting the USB mouse recognized by the kernel in the first place was confusing, but it took me even longer to make X11 look for a USB mouse with 3 buttons and a wheel - not that the wheel worked in all apps even when the X11 configuration seemed/was right. I think the reason why the mouse was the most difficult thing for me, and remains the top issue for many people, is that other configuration parts are handled somewhat automagically, by the configuration tools or whatever. IIRC, the mouse wheel was the only thing I really had to work with the config files themselves to get it to work.
And such things automatically work in certain Linux distributions - or so I hear.