"some of its players earn more than six figures from the $1 million in prizes given throughout the season"
Either i or the people who wrote the article are not using the phrase "more than six figures" properly. I would think "more than six figures" would be the same as "seven or more figures," however since the total prizes for a season is $1 million only one player could actually earn seven figures (and everyone else would get nothing.)
So presumably by "more than six figures" they mean "more that $100,000"? So if i made $100,001 in a year i would be making more than six figures? That seems rather counter-intuitive to me. I definitely think of myself as "just" a five figures person even though i make considerably more than $10,000 a year.
If i add up the number of achievements i end up significantly under the "total." If count the powers of two then i end up with almost double the "total." Plus in addition to "the maker" i've also got "the tagger," and i'm pretty sure i've never tagged an article...
"Once downloaded, the tool will search your drives for EA games infested with the draconian online DRM system, and help you download their respective individual de-activation tools."
Well it sounded like the DRM was effectively being removed to me (that is until i got home and got the chance to RTFA, which phrases it rather differently) but don't let an honest difference in interpretation stop you from throwing out random insults!
Nope! I was at work so the article itself was blocked be websense (i have no idea why Slashdot itself isn't blocked. I've never asked because they might "fix" it.)
Besides! This is Slashdot! No one ever reads TFA!:)
Too bad it's not as progressive as the blurb made it sound =/ Still at least a step in the right direction though.
One day these greedy fools will realize that they're shooting themselves in the foot with DRM.
They removed the DRM from Sims 3 and just released a tool to retroactively remove DRM from older games. One could make a reasonably cogent argument that that day is today.
(Good thing that day wasn't tomorrow, or no one would have believed them.)
As the first of many people to suggest "Just make better and cheaper games, duh!" i'd just like to respond to you to point out the idea is only a viable solution if we, the consumers, do our part of the bargain and actually _buy_ the better, more innovative games. Capcom released Zack & Wiki, a foray into reviving the adventure genre that got great reviews, but only saw mediocre sales for it. Meanwhile people keep buying the latest version of Mega Man Whatever. What kind of lesson are they supposed to draw from that?
World of Goo is innovative, cheap, and critically acclaimed. 2D Boy, the creators, claim that network traffic shows the majority of the copies of the game being played online aren't legitimate. (Cue discussion about whether their data is reliable, whether pirated copies are lost sales, etc =P)
Valkyria Chronicles, a tactical RPG, is also getting great reviews, but last i heard it was getting really bad sales figures, even for something on the PS3.
The reason companies keep remaking old games with prettier graphics and releasing yet another FPS is because that's what people keep buying, despite there being plenty of better alternatives out there. I wonder if all the people complaining about the lack of quality in the games industry ever bother doing a bare minimum of research to actually find out what the alternatives are.
Sorry, i meant it was easier in the logistical sense once you've gotten the technique figured out. In the same way that once you've developed tools and techniques for iron working it's easier to make iron arrowheads than to knap flint arrowheads. A stone age person who tried banging on a piece of cold iron with a rock would tell you that it was a really hard and stupid way to make arrows, and the result didn't perform as well as flint arrows anyway:)
The English couldn't afford enough bronze to make all their cannons, but they had their own deposits of iron to work, so they put a lot of effort into figuring out the right way to make iron guns. Once they did that they could make guns cheaper and easier and better than other countries were making them out of bronze.
Iron barrels tend to explode randomly if you overload them with powder. This is why the bronze gun was developed.
Bronze cannon were actually developed first. The advantage of iron cannon is that they are cheaper and easier to make. Overcoming the structural limitations of iron for use with cannon was actually one of the big technological advances the British made, and was what allowed them to expand their navy so quickly during that period without reducing the number of cannon each ship carried.
"Samsung is clearly throwing the gauntlet to all phone manufacturers"
I believe there should be a "down" in there. As in "Samsung is clearly throwing the gauntlet down to all phone manufacturers." "Throwing the gauntlet to all phone manufacturers" makes it sound like they're just having a nice relaxing game of gauntlet catch.
Maybe i was too young to remember clearly at the time, but i don't remember the environmentalists getting up in arms about the global cooling stuff. It made the covers of newspapers because it was sensationalist, but there was no crusade behind it like there was with DDT or the ozone layer or such. I'm not sure why you're blaming the environmentalists on that one.
As for DDT, maybe you're not the one making stuff up, but you're swallowing what other people made up, hook line and sinker.
There has never been a worldwide ban on the use of DDT for vector control, and many of the people most involved in controlling malaria are glad that its use as an agricultural pesticide has been banned because it slows the rate at which insects are developing a resistance to it. Currently 4000-5000 tons of it are used every year for vector control. Although in many places they've switched to alternative chemicals, again because of fears of (or the actuality of) resistance.
I'm not going to claim that the environmentalists response didn't have any negative impact, but the anti-environmentalists habitually either misrepresent the facts or outright lie in their criticisms of them and exaggerate the consequences for shock value. I used to be a staunch supporter of the hardcore environmentalists, but then i learned a little of the truth and got disillusioned. Then i learned even more of the truth and got disillusioned with the anti-environmentalists and their own version of scaremongering. Each side has some combination of philosophical fanaticism and economic agenda to push, and are willing to bend or even shatter the truth to accomplish it.
If you're actually concerned with the truth, stop spreading the anti-environmentalists lies and starting looking for the truth in between. If you're an active anti-environmentalist, well clearly nothing i say is going to convince you otherwise, but spreading such obvious lies (once you actually think to look into them) is only going to hurt your cause in the end. If you want to _really_ criticize the environmentalists, criticize them for things that are actually 100% true, like their opposition to nuclear power (although when you do that remember that at least some environmental groups have wised up and changed their tune recently.)
"I dunno man. The hardcore environmentalist movement is kind of running out of new material. The overpopulation scare turned out to be stupid scaremongering. The Global Cooling crisis also turned out to be more stupid scaremongering. I think they tried something about a "silent spring" a little before that, but all that did was cause first-world nations to stop selling effective pesticides to the third-world nations who still needed them, which has caused the death of tens of millions of people. So maybe that was kind of a "half-win" for real hardcore environmentalists, who view humankind as a sort of plague anyways."
Do you even read the links you post? Directly from the beginning of the Global Cooling article, "This hypothesis never had significant scientific support, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of press reports that did not accurately reflect the scientific understanding of ice age cycles, and a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s."
Furthermore, the response to "Silent Spring" did not stop the sale of DDT to third-world nations, it just (mostly) stopped its use in agriculture. DDT is still widely used to control disease vectors, enough so that they're currently having problems with mosquitoes developing a resistance to it. So there are no "tens of millions of humans who died of preventable malaria infections." That claim is made up by businesses with a vested interest in the production and use of DDT as part of a smear campaign. Good job in helping spread the lies.
The "hardcore environmentalist movement" has done enough stupid things that you don't need to make stuff up. Misrepresenting what actually happened to support your criticism about them misrepresenting things would be, i don't know... part of an "epidemic of Global Hypocrisy" perhaps?
Was it just me or were all the Pepsi commercials atrocious? Telling everyone that regular diet drinks are too "wussy" for a guy to drink isn't exactly going to endear yourself with guys who are already drinking diet drinks, and how many guys really want to drink diet drinks but are so wrapped up in their identity as a macho guy that they're afraid to? (And how many of those are going to be convinced that it's okay to make an exception for Pepsi because of the commercial?)
I haven't actually seen the SNL skit for comparison, but the Pepsi MacGyver spoof just seemed stupid. It wasn't even the kind of "poking fun at oneself" parody that will endear itself to fans of the show.
"U.S. Government announces it will layoff 50% of its staff and use the excess money to payoff the national debt & eventually lower income taxes."
Haven't you been paying attention? Everyone's been saying that the problem at places like IBM is that they have too many managers, and if they want to save money those are the people they should be letting go if they want to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
So does the United States _really_ need 300 million managers? We could probably afford to let a lot of those go...
It was due to an Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator, which did indeed cause an Earth-shattering kaboom although the final results weren't quite what the Martians had in mind at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
No! No! NO!
That is NOT what i meant when i said i wanted "Orbiting Laser Platforms!!!" The PLATFORMS should be in orbit! Not the LASERS!
"some of its players earn more than six figures from the $1 million in prizes given throughout the season"
Either i or the people who wrote the article are not using the phrase "more than six figures" properly. I would think "more than six figures" would be the same as "seven or more figures," however since the total prizes for a season is $1 million only one player could actually earn seven figures (and everyone else would get nothing.)
So presumably by "more than six figures" they mean "more that $100,000"? So if i made $100,001 in a year i would be making more than six figures? That seems rather counter-intuitive to me. I definitely think of myself as "just" a five figures person even though i make considerably more than $10,000 a year.
Why? What's the existing depth record? :)
OMG! I totally didn't realize! Thank you for saving us all! Here, have a piece of cake!
But has Netcraft confirmed it? ...oh, wait, nevermind.
Is that with or without a jump to conclusions mat?
Google just announced the ability to see the web in 3D using Chrome! :)
The ATMs spewing 100 krona notes is being reported in multiple places, and if one element of the story is true i suspect the others are too.
If i add up the number of achievements i end up significantly under the "total." If count the powers of two then i end up with almost double the "total." Plus in addition to "the maker" i've also got "the tagger," and i'm pretty sure i've never tagged an article...
"Once downloaded, the tool will search your drives for EA games infested with the draconian online DRM system, and help you download their respective individual de-activation tools."
Well it sounded like the DRM was effectively being removed to me (that is until i got home and got the chance to RTFA, which phrases it rather differently) but don't let an honest difference in interpretation stop you from throwing out random insults!
Nope! I was at work so the article itself was blocked be websense (i have no idea why Slashdot itself isn't blocked. I've never asked because they might "fix" it.)
:)
Besides! This is Slashdot! No one ever reads TFA!
Too bad it's not as progressive as the blurb made it sound =/ Still at least a step in the right direction though.
One day these greedy fools will realize that they're shooting themselves in the foot with DRM.
They removed the DRM from Sims 3 and just released a tool to retroactively remove DRM from older games. One could make a reasonably cogent argument that that day is today.
(Good thing that day wasn't tomorrow, or no one would have believed them.)
As the first of many people to suggest "Just make better and cheaper games, duh!" i'd just like to respond to you to point out the idea is only a viable solution if we, the consumers, do our part of the bargain and actually _buy_ the better, more innovative games. Capcom released Zack & Wiki, a foray into reviving the adventure genre that got great reviews, but only saw mediocre sales for it. Meanwhile people keep buying the latest version of Mega Man Whatever. What kind of lesson are they supposed to draw from that?
World of Goo is innovative, cheap, and critically acclaimed. 2D Boy, the creators, claim that network traffic shows the majority of the copies of the game being played online aren't legitimate. (Cue discussion about whether their data is reliable, whether pirated copies are lost sales, etc =P)
Valkyria Chronicles, a tactical RPG, is also getting great reviews, but last i heard it was getting really bad sales figures, even for something on the PS3.
The reason companies keep remaking old games with prettier graphics and releasing yet another FPS is because that's what people keep buying, despite there being plenty of better alternatives out there. I wonder if all the people complaining about the lack of quality in the games industry ever bother doing a bare minimum of research to actually find out what the alternatives are.
I'm pretty confident nobody on the Internet really cares what you, personally, have bought and why.
You must be new here.
Sorry, i meant it was easier in the logistical sense once you've gotten the technique figured out. In the same way that once you've developed tools and techniques for iron working it's easier to make iron arrowheads than to knap flint arrowheads. A stone age person who tried banging on a piece of cold iron with a rock would tell you that it was a really hard and stupid way to make arrows, and the result didn't perform as well as flint arrows anyway :)
The English couldn't afford enough bronze to make all their cannons, but they had their own deposits of iron to work, so they put a lot of effort into figuring out the right way to make iron guns. Once they did that they could make guns cheaper and easier and better than other countries were making them out of bronze.
I missed out on all of it because i spent the night playing euro board games.
Online
With some friends from work.
And my girlfriend.
Crap! I should have stopped one line sooner if i wanted maximum geek cred! (And besides, no one will believe me now anyways.)
Iron barrels tend to explode randomly if you overload them with powder. This is why the bronze gun was developed.
Bronze cannon were actually developed first. The advantage of iron cannon is that they are cheaper and easier to make. Overcoming the structural limitations of iron for use with cannon was actually one of the big technological advances the British made, and was what allowed them to expand their navy so quickly during that period without reducing the number of cannon each ship carried.
A random google search turned up a very relevant link: "The Alderney Elizabethan Wreck: Bronze to Iron"
I hope they sell them at Wal-mart. A Wal-mart Wall-Wart would be cool!
Imagine a beowolf cluster of OW!! OW!! STOP HITTING ME!!!
It works even better if you say it in the right accent. "Imagine a weowulf cluster of wall-mart wall-warts!"
"Samsung is clearly throwing the gauntlet to all phone manufacturers"
I believe there should be a "down" in there. As in "Samsung is clearly throwing the gauntlet down to all phone manufacturers." "Throwing the gauntlet to all phone manufacturers" makes it sound like they're just having a nice relaxing game of gauntlet catch.
Maybe i was too young to remember clearly at the time, but i don't remember the environmentalists getting up in arms about the global cooling stuff. It made the covers of newspapers because it was sensationalist, but there was no crusade behind it like there was with DDT or the ozone layer or such. I'm not sure why you're blaming the environmentalists on that one.
As for DDT, maybe you're not the one making stuff up, but you're swallowing what other people made up, hook line and sinker.
In many cases DDT use wasn't discontinued because of pressure from environmentalist groups, but phased out because either the number of cases was so low that it wasn't believed necessary anymore or because insects were actually developing a resistance to it.
There has never been a worldwide ban on the use of DDT for vector control, and many of the people most involved in controlling malaria are glad that its use as an agricultural pesticide has been banned because it slows the rate at which insects are developing a resistance to it. Currently 4000-5000 tons of it are used every year for vector control. Although in many places they've switched to alternative chemicals, again because of fears of (or the actuality of) resistance.
I'm not going to claim that the environmentalists response didn't have any negative impact, but the anti-environmentalists habitually either misrepresent the facts or outright lie in their criticisms of them and exaggerate the consequences for shock value. I used to be a staunch supporter of the hardcore environmentalists, but then i learned a little of the truth and got disillusioned. Then i learned even more of the truth and got disillusioned with the anti-environmentalists and their own version of scaremongering. Each side has some combination of philosophical fanaticism and economic agenda to push, and are willing to bend or even shatter the truth to accomplish it.
If you're actually concerned with the truth, stop spreading the anti-environmentalists lies and starting looking for the truth in between. If you're an active anti-environmentalist, well clearly nothing i say is going to convince you otherwise, but spreading such obvious lies (once you actually think to look into them) is only going to hurt your cause in the end. If you want to _really_ criticize the environmentalists, criticize them for things that are actually 100% true, like their opposition to nuclear power (although when you do that remember that at least some environmental groups have wised up and changed their tune recently.)
"I dunno man. The hardcore environmentalist movement is kind of running out of new material. The overpopulation scare turned out to be stupid scaremongering. The Global Cooling crisis also turned out to be more stupid scaremongering. I think they tried something about a "silent spring" a little before that, but all that did was cause first-world nations to stop selling effective pesticides to the third-world nations who still needed them, which has caused the death of tens of millions of people. So maybe that was kind of a "half-win" for real hardcore environmentalists, who view humankind as a sort of plague anyways."
Do you even read the links you post? Directly from the beginning of the Global Cooling article, "This hypothesis never had significant scientific support, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of press reports that did not accurately reflect the scientific understanding of ice age cycles, and a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s."
Furthermore, the response to "Silent Spring" did not stop the sale of DDT to third-world nations, it just (mostly) stopped its use in agriculture. DDT is still widely used to control disease vectors, enough so that they're currently having problems with mosquitoes developing a resistance to it. So there are no "tens of millions of humans who died of preventable malaria infections." That claim is made up by businesses with a vested interest in the production and use of DDT as part of a smear campaign. Good job in helping spread the lies.
The "hardcore environmentalist movement" has done enough stupid things that you don't need to make stuff up. Misrepresenting what actually happened to support your criticism about them misrepresenting things would be, i don't know... part of an "epidemic of Global Hypocrisy" perhaps?
Was it just me or were all the Pepsi commercials atrocious? Telling everyone that regular diet drinks are too "wussy" for a guy to drink isn't exactly going to endear yourself with guys who are already drinking diet drinks, and how many guys really want to drink diet drinks but are so wrapped up in their identity as a macho guy that they're afraid to? (And how many of those are going to be convinced that it's okay to make an exception for Pepsi because of the commercial?)
I haven't actually seen the SNL skit for comparison, but the Pepsi MacGyver spoof just seemed stupid. It wasn't even the kind of "poking fun at oneself" parody that will endear itself to fans of the show.
"U.S. Government announces it will layoff 50% of its staff and use the excess money to payoff the national debt & eventually lower income taxes."
Haven't you been paying attention? Everyone's been saying that the problem at places like IBM is that they have too many managers, and if they want to save money those are the people they should be letting go if they want to reduce costs and improve efficiency.
So does the United States _really_ need 300 million managers? We could probably afford to let a lot of those go...
"At some point, all that will end. Jobs will eventually leave the company."
Either with his shield or on it?
It was due to an Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator, which did indeed cause an Earth-shattering kaboom although the final results weren't quite what the Martians had in mind at the time.