If you RTFA, you'd see that while America's Army was a recruiting and marketing tool, this MMO is an actual training tool for internal use. It's very different; the reason why this MMO is actually worth mentioning is because it's meant to be used to TRAIN people, whereby America's Army is meant to show 13 year-old how cool war is. It's NOT training in any way, shape or form.
Hey. I said the TOP was covered by ice and snow; where the solar panel is supposed to be. I didn't say they were buried. And if you count first snowfall in November and snow melting in April... That's 5 months right there.
That's a very good point, actually. I have no idea how they expect them to work when they'll be covered in 10 inches of snow and ice. Just looking at the traditional parking meters in Montreal, and in all fairness, they spend 5 months with their tops buried in a layer of snow.
Japan and China are almost total opposites in terms of consideration for others. I'm sure what you say about Japan is true... But I'm also certain that Shanghai is 10 times as annoying as your first week of bus commutes.
Now that I understand basic mandarin, I can't believe the number of times I hear somebody yelling on their cellphone while on the subway, 'I'm in the subway right now! Yeah, coming back from work! I'll be home in 5 minutes! See you then!'
Well; you're right. It's not about the cellphones, it's about the fact that for Chinese, talking in a movie theater is perfectly fine. It used to be worse, as the Chinese mentality holds that chatting during a movie or a concert is a show that you appreciate it, as you're relaxed enough to have a chat during it.
Shanghai is also the place where you see people having a normal conversation while yelling at the top of their lungs. So yeah, it's not the cellphone itself, but also the perception of what is or isn't an annoyance.
Having lived for nearly a year in Shanghai, I'm all but immune to cellphones. As a matter of fact, I've been one of those people who not only leave their cellphone on in the theater, but actually take the time to answer if it rings. I kid you not, this is normal behavior here.
And why not? In China, as well as most parts of Asia, cellphones are not an annoyance in any way. They're just a part of life. I think in the West, cellphones were initially thought to be annoying because they were an obnoxious show of money, and this has carried on to this day. In China and South Korea, having a cellphone is part of life and is not considered as annoying.
Methink the people surveyed here thought a cellphone conversation was more annoying than a face-to-face conversation simply because it's, well, a cellphone conversation. We still tiptoe around cellphones in the West. For all I can see, this annoyance is purely cultural.
(Earlier today, I saw a perfect picture of modern-day Shanghai: in a sea of bicycles, a man riding, and a woman seated in the Chinese way in equilibrium on the back of the bike with both her legs on one side... And as the man pedals his old rusted bike, the girl behind her is merrily thumb-keying SMS messages to her friends.)
"Mr. Gates, check out this article... A founder of Slashdot says that Linux products don't sell, and not because Linux users are cheap bastards, which they are, but because the products usually suck."
This is a plea to Hollywood, in particular the mor... the gentlemen behind the 1998 Godzilla:
PLEASE make another American Godzilla.
Back in 1996, Toho killed Godzilla in Godzilla vs Destroyah, and "Minilla" (aka Baby Godzilla aka Son of Godzilla aka NOT THAT FUCKING MUPPET AGAIN) took over as the "new Godzilla". This was Toho's way of saying, 'We will not make Godzilla movies anymore.'
Then the WONDERFUL Godzilla 1998 arrived... And the Japanese were so OUTRAGED that they demanded a new Japanese Godzilla.
So we got the kick-ass Godzilla 2000, and the following very entertaining Kaiju flicks. You guys gave us 5 more years of "Godzilla borrowed time".
So PLEASE MAKE GODZILLA 2 and repeat the magic!!
P.S.: If you like Japanese SF, check out "Returner", also from Toho. Nice special effects, derivative but highly enjoyable story.
Videoconferencing was all the rage 3 years ago, which is probably why this got started in the first place. In 2001, all you could hear was 'Travel is over because of terrorism, it's time for videoconferencing!'
Except this trend never really took off. GnomeMeeting would have had an impact with businesses considering Linux 3 years ago, but now it's merely a 'catchup' product to a market that has already moved on.
Yeah, I just got back from teaching in China. It's a lot closer to Fascism than Communism right now. People are separating into classes, and the notion seems to be 'exploit labor to accumulate capital so that we can buy machines and weapons, and so the political brass can get their BMWs.'
My god... I can't believe you lived in China and you call what you saw Fascism.
The profound changes you saw in China iwhere I live as an expat, btw) are the effects of rampant Capitalism, not Fascism. The classes divide, the poor are insanely poor, and the rich drive around in Ferraris. Freedom of speech spreads, free entrepreneurship takes root, and people turn from the collectivity to think for themselves.
Take a hard look at America, and you'll see it's not Fascism that the Chinese are emulating.
This is not especially surprising, considering the number of large businesses that lobby and otherwise bride their way through government.
At least Microsoft is not getting their buddies elected or, say, preventing security standards from cutting their operation costs at the detriment of their employees and customers' safety.
Swinging one way or the other on a data exchange standard seems pretty harmless to me. But I guess this is the 'excuse du jour' for some quality MS-bashing...
China is Train Country... I think if anything, they want the maglev to replace the train, not the airplanes.
Shanghai-Beijing by train is nice, and much cheaper than doing it by plane. However, it takes 14h... If a maglev did the run, I'm SURE a lot of people would take it as a good compromise.
I just expected the train to cost less than a 1-hour taxi ride, is the thing... It sounds more like a question of prestige, especially since the Pudong terminus is so far out of the way (in the east of Pudong.) It's nowhere near as practical as taking a cab, which would be ok if it were cheaper.
If you want to get a fair dose of 'choo-choo! chugga-chugga', there's always the 24h Shanghai-Guangzhou train ride. Believe me, you'll be sick of choo-choos after that.:)
This thing looks amazing, but I think it was only built for rich businessmen wanting to feel important as they zip from their luxury hotel suite in Pudong to the airport.
I had friends over for Christmas in Shanghai, and we all planed to ride the maglev when they left. Thing is, the cost is not only prohibitive for locals - it's also ridiculous to charge 75 RMB per person, when you consider a taxi ride from Puxi is approximately 180 RMB. Cram 4 people in a taxi, and you get there for half the price. (And considering how the taxis drive in SH, thrice the excitement!)
I also heard you can get 'luxury' tickets for 150 RMB/person. Why you wouldn't endure an 'economy' ticket considering the ride takes 20 minutes and is bumpless, is, well, not entirely beyond me considering how people will pay for such useless nonsense.
In the end, we took a cab to the airport, and as the driver was driving down the highway at 120 km/h, we saw the maglev zip by us as if we were immobile. It looked like something out of Star Trek... Damn impressive... from the outside.
But when I got to the Warp website, the price was $10. No way. Vinyl cost $5 when I was growing up, and there's no good reason music should cost any more than that now.
I guess you slept in class the day your highschool Economics teacher explained 'inflation'.
Ya know, I love Tolkien's work and I like to keep informed of domain squatting issues, but how is an article about domain squatting of Tolkien's name supposed to interest me?
As an other example, I love computers and I really dig Buffy, but I really don't care to know what CPU Sarah Michelle Gellar is writing her email with.
Would this have been news if it were www.pamelaanderson.com that got overruled?
Slashdot Mirror
If you RTFA, you'd see that while America's Army was a recruiting and marketing tool, this MMO is an actual training tool for internal use. It's very different; the reason why this MMO is actually worth mentioning is because it's meant to be used to TRAIN people, whereby America's Army is meant to show 13 year-old how cool war is. It's NOT training in any way, shape or form.
Hey. I said the TOP was covered by ice and snow; where the solar panel is supposed to be. I didn't say they were buried. And if you count first snowfall in November and snow melting in April... That's 5 months right there.
That's a very good point, actually. I have no idea how they expect them to work when they'll be covered in 10 inches of snow and ice. Just looking at the traditional parking meters in Montreal, and in all fairness, they spend 5 months with their tops buried in a layer of snow.
Japan and China are almost total opposites in terms of consideration for others. I'm sure what you say about Japan is true... But I'm also certain that Shanghai is 10 times as annoying as your first week of bus commutes.
Now that I understand basic mandarin, I can't believe the number of times I hear somebody yelling on their cellphone while on the subway, 'I'm in the subway right now! Yeah, coming back from work! I'll be home in 5 minutes! See you then!'
It's tough to say 'Asian culture'. The way you describe Asia applies more to Japan; I see little consideration for others in China.
And trust me, I see people in China using their cellphones everywhere. And in dangerous situations, for sure.
Well; you're right. It's not about the cellphones, it's about the fact that for Chinese, talking in a movie theater is perfectly fine. It used to be worse, as the Chinese mentality holds that chatting during a movie or a concert is a show that you appreciate it, as you're relaxed enough to have a chat during it.
Shanghai is also the place where you see people having a normal conversation while yelling at the top of their lungs. So yeah, it's not the cellphone itself, but also the perception of what is or isn't an annoyance.
Having lived for nearly a year in Shanghai, I'm all but immune to cellphones. As a matter of fact, I've been one of those people who not only leave their cellphone on in the theater, but actually take the time to answer if it rings. I kid you not, this is normal behavior here.
And why not? In China, as well as most parts of Asia, cellphones are not an annoyance in any way. They're just a part of life. I think in the West, cellphones were initially thought to be annoying because they were an obnoxious show of money, and this has carried on to this day. In China and South Korea, having a cellphone is part of life and is not considered as annoying.
Methink the people surveyed here thought a cellphone conversation was more annoying than a face-to-face conversation simply because it's, well, a cellphone conversation. We still tiptoe around cellphones in the West. For all I can see, this annoyance is purely cultural.
(Earlier today, I saw a perfect picture of modern-day Shanghai: in a sea of bicycles, a man riding, and a woman seated in the Chinese way in equilibrium on the back of the bike with both her legs on one side... And as the man pedals his old rusted bike, the girl behind her is merrily thumb-keying SMS messages to her friends.)
+1, Funny yet subtle enough to fool a moderator on crack.
"...rockets along like a hijacked airliner heading straight at you..." Bwahahaha!
"Mr. Gates, check out this article... A founder of Slashdot says that Linux products don't sell, and not because Linux users are cheap bastards, which they are, but because the products usually suck."
I said 'nice' special effect. I didn't say 'gorgeous' special effects. Try 'nice girl' and 'gorgeous girl' to have an idea of the difference.
This is a plea to Hollywood, in particular the mor... the gentlemen behind the 1998 Godzilla:
PLEASE make another American Godzilla.
Back in 1996, Toho killed Godzilla in Godzilla vs Destroyah, and "Minilla" (aka Baby Godzilla aka Son of Godzilla aka NOT THAT FUCKING MUPPET AGAIN) took over as the "new Godzilla". This was Toho's way of saying, 'We will not make Godzilla movies anymore.'
Then the WONDERFUL Godzilla 1998 arrived... And the Japanese were so OUTRAGED that they demanded a new Japanese Godzilla.
So we got the kick-ass Godzilla 2000, and the following very entertaining Kaiju flicks. You guys gave us 5 more years of "Godzilla borrowed time".
So PLEASE MAKE GODZILLA 2 and repeat the magic!!
P.S.: If you like Japanese SF, check out "Returner", also from Toho. Nice special effects, derivative but highly enjoyable story.
Videoconferencing was all the rage 3 years ago, which is probably why this got started in the first place. In 2001, all you could hear was 'Travel is over because of terrorism, it's time for videoconferencing!'
Except this trend never really took off. GnomeMeeting would have had an impact with businesses considering Linux 3 years ago, but now it's merely a 'catchup' product to a market that has already moved on.
Yeah, I just got back from teaching in China. It's a lot closer to Fascism than Communism right now. People are separating into classes, and the notion seems to be 'exploit labor to accumulate capital so that we can buy machines and weapons, and so the political brass can get their BMWs.'
My god... I can't believe you lived in China and you call what you saw Fascism.
The profound changes you saw in China iwhere I live as an expat, btw) are the effects of rampant Capitalism, not Fascism. The classes divide, the poor are insanely poor, and the rich drive around in Ferraris. Freedom of speech spreads, free entrepreneurship takes root, and people turn from the collectivity to think for themselves.
Take a hard look at America, and you'll see it's not Fascism that the Chinese are emulating.
This is not especially surprising, considering the number of large businesses that lobby and otherwise bride their way through government.
At least Microsoft is not getting their buddies elected or, say, preventing security standards from cutting their operation costs at the detriment of their employees and customers' safety.
Swinging one way or the other on a data exchange standard seems pretty harmless to me. But I guess this is the 'excuse du jour' for some quality MS-bashing...
You misunderstood the whole point of posting this to Slashdot.
The point is not the red laptop. The point is a hardware reviewer embarassing himself by gushing over a red mouse and an annoying WAV file.
In THAT regard, it was hilarious.
China is Train Country... I think if anything, they want the maglev to replace the train, not the airplanes.
Shanghai-Beijing by train is nice, and much cheaper than doing it by plane. However, it takes 14h... If a maglev did the run, I'm SURE a lot of people would take it as a good compromise.
I just expected the train to cost less than a 1-hour taxi ride, is the thing... It sounds more like a question of prestige, especially since the Pudong terminus is so far out of the way (in the east of Pudong.) It's nowhere near as practical as taking a cab, which would be ok if it were cheaper.
If you want to get a fair dose of 'choo-choo! chugga-chugga', there's always the 24h Shanghai-Guangzhou train ride. Believe me, you'll be sick of choo-choos after that. :)
This thing looks amazing, but I think it was only built for rich businessmen wanting to feel important as they zip from their luxury hotel suite in Pudong to the airport.
I had friends over for Christmas in Shanghai, and we all planed to ride the maglev when they left. Thing is, the cost is not only prohibitive for locals - it's also ridiculous to charge 75 RMB per person, when you consider a taxi ride from Puxi is approximately 180 RMB. Cram 4 people in a taxi, and you get there for half the price. (And considering how the taxis drive in SH, thrice the excitement!)
I also heard you can get 'luxury' tickets for 150 RMB/person. Why you wouldn't endure an 'economy' ticket considering the ride takes 20 minutes and is bumpless, is, well, not entirely beyond me considering how people will pay for such useless nonsense.
In the end, we took a cab to the airport, and as the driver was driving down the highway at 120 km/h, we saw the maglev zip by us as if we were immobile. It looked like something out of Star Trek... Damn impressive... from the outside.
But when I got to the Warp website, the price was $10. No way. Vinyl cost $5 when I was growing up, and there's no good reason music should cost any more than that now.
I guess you slept in class the day your highschool Economics teacher explained 'inflation'.
Damn... Too bad I can't mod THAT up!
Ya know, I love Tolkien's work and I like to keep informed of domain squatting issues, but how is an article about domain squatting of Tolkien's name supposed to interest me?
As an other example, I love computers and I really dig Buffy, but I really don't care to know what CPU Sarah Michelle Gellar is writing her email with.
Would this have been news if it were www.pamelaanderson.com that got overruled?
...any news yet whether North Korea and Syria have plans to adopt free software?
Damn! And here I thought I had to upgrade my printer for a 'folding' one... Download, print, fold. Instead I gotta do it all myself?
I live there, and I can still read your dumb comments on Slashdot.