There is a chart for:
Highest Map Played (percentage of players)
Which probably is a more accurate representation of exactly how far most people have gotten. As mentioned in other comments this includes people still playing through, but my hunch is those numbers aren't going to go up a whole lot. I wonder how other forms of entertainment where leaving is easy suffer from it? Say television movies? Or TV series with high continuity?
No, Apple is not a convicted monopolist. This is a crucial difference between the Microsoft situation and others than people frequently ignore. When Apple gets big enough to have a monopoly to leverage, they would fall under the same standard of scrutiny.
The marketing hype was the fact that the kernel developers would do this sort of development anyway. This isn't a special program of any kind, it's standard procedure and they were promoting it somewhat like other people promote special "one time offers" and such. So yes marketing hype, and yes they do in fact do that. The helpful part is they have actual hardware samples and/or specs to work with, so it's a real win all around.
http://www.baen.com/library/
The Baen Free library provides free scifi works which are also published by Baen books.
Some of these are entire works, some are as you suggest the first book (or two or three) of multi-part works. The majority of authors who decided to participate and give thier works away tended to see a segnificant improvement of sales of thier books.
I don't believe NASA, or most Americans would have much trouble with any other nation stepping up and keeping the progress going on the space station while NASA works on internal issues. Other nations don't realy have a say, if you mean in forcing NASA to single-handedly continue development of the space station.
The people at the fair-tax website advocate a much simpler method. I recomend reading the FAQs if you have doubts about the idea. Like it or hate it, it is an interesting proposition.
The EFF calls it Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing.
It has many similarities to what is described in the article, and I think it is a solution that is best for everyone. Lawrence Lessig, in Free Culture (a great, freely downloadable book on related subjects), calls it a chimera. It is wrong to rob the artists, but it is also wrong for the RIAA to treat their fans as criminals. The solution is in the middle, and I think the collective licensing idea is it.
Probably for the same reason that they tend to show EULAs in small fonts, in tiny un-resizeable text boxes. It makes them harder to read. I forget what the percentage reduction is, but you cannot read words in all capital letters as quickly as standard type, because you don't have as many reference letters such as t,j,q, that hang above and below the line, and possibly for other reasons.
I honestly wouldn't say that it would count as a dumb idea, because the basic concept isn't too bad when it comes down to it.
I dissagree, as disccussed in the presentation:
The basic concept with DRM is standard encryption. To securely communicate between A and B without E overhearing it. In DRM, B and E are the same person. In that way it is fundamentally flawed. The crypto is right infront of the user, decrypting things, which means it will always be weak. And then there is the analog gap. Not to mention it's very much something the consumer doesn't want.
For those reasons, I do count it as a dumb idea. The talk I linked too was very illuminating along these lines.
That nice list, and they didn't include Digital Rights Management? The link is to a Cory Doctorow talk that explains and argues these points (it was for a talk he gave to microsoft)
That DRM systems don't work
That DRM systems are bad for society
That DRM systems are bad for business
That DRM systems are bad for artists
That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT
A very good read if you are in the position of explaining this to someone in a position to mandate DRM.
Perhaps the confirmation only pops up for real emergency broadcasts, and not the weekly test? The article was unclear on this point. If it is indeed for all of them, a confirmation is useless. But if you can catch the less likely conditions only, I can see that working. And I think the overhead is worth it if it works, because false alarms really diminish the systems value.
But you are probably right, and they are probably going make the classic 'confirm everything' mistake, making it esentially confirm nothing, as they had before.
A comparison with the much faster STL sort should be interesting.
It would be interesting, but please bear in mind the STL algorithms value *predictable* speed, vs raw average speed. They would ditch an algorithm that was 1/2 the average run time of another , but had ocasional quadrupal time runs.
So even someone useing the raw C++ evironment could write a sort that was faster than STL on average without too much work.
project have done some marvelous work. Its in progress right now, but I had quite a bit of fun with the (free) prequel campaign. It is one of the few space fighter sims that seems to understand that momentum is conserved. They have both 'controlled' flight, where the corrections are made for you, and 'free' flight where you can gather enormous speeds.
The Ultimate boot cd for windows is a system built on Bart PE, with a lot of helpful utilities on it for just this kind of thing. It had adaware, hijack-this and a few other anti-spyware applications bundled, as well as antivir antivirus.
I highly recomend it for removing malware.
Its grabbing random memory garbage, right? So it stands to reason that some certain pattern or amount of memory displayed is causing a crash bug. perhaps there is some html in there that is confusing the engine, or some other random garbage string. I didn't hit a crash myself in a few clicks, but It would also depend on what sorts of things you have been doing.
If they can display it in a form like that, they could submit that information in a hidden form window on a stie where you typically expect to submit info (a login page for example). Javascript can talk to a website back end as well I think.
Also from the article: "A vulnerability has been discovered in various Mozilla products, which can be exploited by malicious people to gain knowledge of potentially sensitive information."
So yeah, this is a bit more dangerous than the old load the root folder in an iframe trick.
Slashdot Mirror
the researchers drew nanofibers out of sugar
Ladies and gentlemen, this is an unparalleled breakthrough in cotton candy technology.
Looking at the other stats page:
http://steamgames.com/status/ep2/ep2_stats.php
There is a chart for:
Highest Map Played (percentage of players)
Which probably is a more accurate representation of exactly how far most people have gotten. As mentioned in other comments this includes people still playing through, but my hunch is those numbers aren't going to go up a whole lot. I wonder how other forms of entertainment where leaving is easy suffer from it? Say television movies? Or TV series with high continuity?
No, Apple is not a convicted monopolist. This is a crucial difference between the Microsoft situation and others than people frequently ignore. When Apple gets big enough to have a monopoly to leverage, they would fall under the same standard of scrutiny.
The marketing hype was the fact that the kernel developers would do this sort of development anyway. This isn't a special program of any kind, it's standard procedure and they were promoting it somewhat like other people promote special "one time offers" and such. So yes marketing hype, and yes they do in fact do that. The helpful part is they have actual hardware samples and/or specs to work with, so it's a real win all around.
Quite a few it turns out.
http://www.baen.com/library/
The Baen Free library provides free scifi works which are also published by Baen books.
Some of these are entire works, some are as you suggest the first book (or two or three) of multi-part works. The majority of authors who decided to participate and give thier works away tended to see a segnificant improvement of sales of thier books.
Read the rest on the site for more information.
I don't believe NASA, or most Americans would have much trouble with any other nation stepping up and keeping the progress going on the space station while NASA works on internal issues. Other nations don't realy have a say, if you mean in forcing NASA to single-handedly continue development of the space station.
Cheers!
Two wonderful articles on why micropayments are a bad idea:
The Case Against Micropayments
Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content
The general theme is they don't really take users into account.
http://www.fairtax.org/
The people at the fair-tax website advocate a much simpler method. I recomend reading the FAQs if you have doubts about the idea. Like it or hate it, it is an interesting proposition.
The EFF calls it Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing.
It has many similarities to what is described in the article, and I think it is a solution that is best for everyone. Lawrence Lessig, in Free Culture (a great, freely downloadable book on related subjects), calls it a chimera. It is wrong to rob the artists, but it is also wrong for the RIAA to treat their fans as criminals. The solution is in the middle, and I think the collective licensing idea is it.
Now, all we need to do is prove it's affecting evolution, and we've proven that His Noodleyness exists.
Or is that effecting evolution?
By the touch of His Noodly Appendage, this sentence could potentially use either affecting or effecting correctly! It truly is a miracle!
Grammar and Spelling Nazis tremble in the face of His Noodily Might!
Network Operations Control Center
I believe.
Probably for the same reason that they tend to show EULAs in small fonts, in tiny un-resizeable text boxes. It makes them harder to read. I forget what the percentage reduction is, but you cannot read words in all capital letters as quickly as standard type, because you don't have as many reference letters such as t,j,q, that hang above and below the line, and possibly for other reasons.
I honestly wouldn't say that it would count as a dumb idea, because the basic concept isn't too bad when it comes down to it.
I dissagree, as disccussed in the presentation:
The basic concept with DRM is standard encryption. To securely communicate between A and B without E overhearing it. In DRM, B and E are the same person. In that way it is fundamentally flawed. The crypto is right infront of the user, decrypting things, which means it will always be weak. And then there is the analog gap. Not to mention it's very much something the consumer doesn't want.
For those reasons, I do count it as a dumb idea. The talk I linked too was very illuminating along these lines.
- That DRM systems don't work
- That DRM systems are bad for society
- That DRM systems are bad for business
- That DRM systems are bad for artists
- That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT
A very good read if you are in the position of explaining this to someone in a position to mandate DRM.Perhaps the confirmation only pops up for real emergency broadcasts, and not the weekly test? The article was unclear on this point. If it is indeed for all of them, a confirmation is useless. But if you can catch the less likely conditions only, I can see that working. And I think the overhead is worth it if it works, because false alarms really diminish the systems value.
But you are probably right, and they are probably going make the classic 'confirm everything' mistake, making it esentially confirm nothing, as they had before.
I went to your link and got the following error: 502 Bad Gateway Coincidence?
A comparison with the much faster STL sort should be interesting.
It would be interesting, but please bear in mind the STL algorithms value *predictable* speed, vs raw average speed. They would ditch an algorithm that was 1/2 the average run time of another , but had ocasional quadrupal time runs. So even someone useing the raw C++ evironment could write a sort that was faster than STL on average without too much work.
http://speeddemosarchive.com/
Bending the rules is pretty much the entire premise behind speed runs. They are very entertaining as well. The origional inspiration for the site was Quake done Quick, a full play-through of the origional Quake in 19:49, which culminated in a 12:23 run through Quake on Nightmare skill. (not that they aren't trying to improve on that time).
At the speed demos archive, you can watch Super Mario Brothers 3 completed in 11:11,Super Metroid in 36 minutes flat and The Legend of Zelda in 35:50. On the PC Game front there is Half-Life in 45:45, Fallout2 in 17:51 and Jedi Knight in 34:03. I find these very entertaining, and sometimes informative. Check out the Game List and see if any of your old favorites are there!
It may not be *massively* multiplayer, but the folks of the
Babylon 5 : I've Found Her
project have done some marvelous work. Its in progress right now, but I had quite a bit of fun with the (free) prequel campaign. It is one of the few space fighter sims that seems to understand that momentum is conserved. They have both 'controlled' flight, where the corrections are made for you, and 'free' flight where you can gather enormous speeds.
There was a classic text based game based on the guide, which is now available online:
n .shtml
:)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game_nola
Enjoy!
The Ultimate boot cd for windows is a system built on Bart PE, with a lot of helpful utilities on it for just this kind of thing. It had adaware, hijack-this and a few other anti-spyware applications bundled, as well as antivir antivirus. I highly recomend it for removing malware.
Why not link to the source at the U of M News Service:
U-M researchers make bendable concrete
Technocrat.net had this article earlier today, and without the extra advertising.
interesting stuff!
"Dust is the No. 1 environmental problem on the moon,"
And here I thought it was the lack of segnificant atmosphere. Silly me.
Although I do think it is great that we are considering other major problems.
Its grabbing random memory garbage, right? So it stands to reason that some certain pattern or amount of memory displayed is causing a crash bug. perhaps there is some html in there that is confusing the engine, or some other random garbage string. I didn't hit a crash myself in a few clicks, but It would also depend on what sorts of things you have been doing.
If they can display it in a form like that, they could submit that information in a hidden form window on a stie where you typically expect to submit info (a login page for example). Javascript can talk to a website back end as well I think.
Also from the article:
"A vulnerability has been discovered in various Mozilla products, which can be exploited by malicious people to gain knowledge of potentially sensitive information."
So yeah, this is a bit more dangerous than the old load the root folder in an iframe trick.