...McDonalds sues fat customers for eating their food.
"They're, like, totally eating too much!" one frustrated McDonalds manager said. "If they don't stop eating our Big Macs... they'll, you know, explode!"
The Fat Customers Association of America (FCAA) could not be reached for comment.
Forget computers and webcams - way too complicated. Just figure out a way to mount a pair of thin binoculars to a normal pair of glasses (so you can move them out of the way when you don't need them) and you're set. Near-blind grannies with webcams and HUD-LCDs? That's just freaky, man. I don't want my grandma to become a cyborg!
So if it's docked at home, why do you need a cordless? I can understand if you've got your laptop hooked up to a digital TV and you want to type on your bigscreen from your couch, but if you're doing serious typing then a corded keyboard should do the trick. While I'm on the subject, if you *are* trying to use a cordless from your couch, be aware that the max range on some models isn't over a metre or so.
Cordless keyboards/mice are nifty and convenient (I've got an MX700 logitech), but when they don't work (no batteries, periphrial too far away from receiver etc.) they're a bitch. I couldn't imagine a keyboard that skipped letters when I was typing simply because it doesn't have enough battery power or it was too far from the base station or whatver. Hope this helps!
LOL! Looks like somebody else thought of your question and... outsourced it to you:) I have sympathy, tho, as a fellow Canadian uni student... sucks to have to work while you're in school. Anyway. There *are* tape decks out there that allow you to modify the output speed, so maybe if you slowed it down to 70% normal you'd be able to keep up with the speech. There's also a tape playback system which has floor pedals, like a car; press the "gas" and it goes forward, press the "brakes" and it rewinds. It's analog too so it goes slower or faster depending on how hard you push on it. I have absolutely *no* idea how to get one of these, though.
You could definitely give text recognition a shot, but I think you'll be disappointed with the results. When people are sitting in front of their computer trying to use such software, they speak in nice, loud, clear voices; in meetings, people mumble, talk softly, and sometimes are just too far away from the tape recorder for the thing to hear it above a whisper. Tough situation.
What are you going to use the keyboard for? D'ya want a full keyboard or is a compact okay? What's your price range? What specifically do you need in addition to the normal ~104 keys (volume control, navigation, scroll function, etc.)? The keyboard you linked to is actually a great product - it's cheap, has good tactile feedback and gets the job done.
Several hours per tape is acceptable? Well, if you can do one tape in four hours, then two people can do one tape in two hours. In other words, hire a college student at minimum wage for a contract position (I.e. until the tapes are transcribed) and go to it.
It's cost effective, as fast as you need it to be and best of all more accurate than any software solution to date. Most software packages are still at only about 90% accuracy, so that's still 24 minutes per four hour tape that you'll need to correct, and you'll still probably have to listen to the whole thing over again in order to verify the accuracy of any software program.
You say that the owner is trying to get the screener ban lifted (=no dvds sent out), but you also say that DVD screeners are being sent out (=dvds sent out). Which is it?!? Talk about confusion!
The Academy no longer sends out DVD screeners. This entire topic is about some guy busted for getting Oscar-nominated videos and ripping them. The poster of this article talked about the "dvd screener leak"; there *was* no dvd screener leak. This has *nothing* to do before pre-home market distribution DVD screeners.
Let me rephrase: no mention of "DVD screeners," because they no longer exist -- the Academy sends out VHS tapes now to combat piracy, for all the good it did them.
Methinks this isn't going to be regarded too highly in the press. "Now you can scan your head and your friend's head into the game and kill each other!" "They're encouraging murder because they're killing virtual representations of their best friends!" Etc. etc.
As for the "mischevious gamers," I don't even *want* to think of what kinda "heads" they would appropriate in a game of SOCOM!
...scientists are now researching the "five seconds" rule; preliminary reports indicate that food dropped on the ground for five seconds is still edible, and has probably not been contaminated. They warn, however, that dropping food into chemicals such as peroxide or chlorine automatically voids the "five seconds" rule, even if these chemicals are on the ground.
"The results are amazing!" said one scientist on condition of anonymitiy. "Who would have thought there was so much truth in one common expression?"
Heartened by their success, other research labs are exploring whether you can "lead a horse to water but can't make him drink," and whether there is truly "more than one way to skin a cat."
...TADS. Allows him to build the basics of a game without worrying about graphics, and forces him to focus on the STORY, which is bar none the most important aspect of a video game. Very easy to pick up, and is an easy lead into more advanced progamming languages. There's also tonnes of TADS games with source code.
Of course, I might be biased as I used gwbasic to write a text adventure game when I was a kid, but who knows:)
Are we NA gamers missing something here? Is this truly a unique and incredibly interesting concept in Japan, or are we *all* not getting Nintendo here?
The *only* good thing I can think of is the fact that these two screens might be side by side, therefore allowing "widescreen" games - imagine Metroid Fusion with an extra-long playing field, or Final Fantasy Tactics with more playing room. Interesting, yes, but until some actual specs come out I'm not sure that the big N is going to pull this one off.
Maybe they're trying to cross the Virtual Boy with a Game Boy... the DS starter package includes headgear which allows you to mount each of the screens in front of one of each eye:) Whoa, weird. That's all I got.
Hotmail.com is globally recognised; I'm not sure that anybody who's the least bit net-savvy would have a problem with that. For the record, I don't have a hotmail account; I use my own ISP's name without alteration since it's relatively unknown in the global community or I use a throwaway address that's already ridden with junk mail.
As for the "aw"s in the e-mail example: "aw" is the proper way for linguistically spelling the sound represented in "hot" and "com." I didn't do it on purpose, but most English speakers who don't know what hotmail is could phonetically sound out the word and come up with the right domain name.
"Besides, most email entry routines will reject your "address", because even the ones that don't bother with proper validation generally at least make sure there's an @ in there."
True. If it's an entry routine that I care about (such as signing up for a subscription to Pl... Nintendo Power), then I give my real address, of course. If it's one that I don't care about (NY Times), I'm Mr. A B, and my e-mail address is a@b.com. Simple, huh?
Finally, I'm really only interested in communicating with Canadians; the Americans just keep on replying to me! What can I do?:)
Avault has a review here; they pretty much say that the support is useless but the glove itself is pretty sweet for keeping your sweat off the mouse and your wrist from getting rubbed to pieces by your mousepad.
Of course, since I don't have a mousepad, the only reason I'd get one is to wear it and say, "The Steel Gaming Glove... it's so bad!" FP too!
"I think at the under-grad level you really can't trust the students. They're still young, used to an easy ride through highschool and are the most likely to cheat."
Holy shit buddy, way to generalise! So, everybody who gets out of high school is used to an "easy ride" and is therefore going to cheat their way through their early 20's? You must be speaking from personal experience, because I don't know *anybody* who's done that.
I attend University of Regina (final semester) where the class sizes in my major (English) are usually less than 20 students; even my first year English classes had only about 30 students. Maybe the problem in other universities is not "free-riding high school graduates" but administrators who love their $200,000+ paycheques too much to consider hiring another couple professors/instructors for those 100+ student classrooms! Ever think about that? Or how about profs who force undergrads to write 20+ pages per semester per class when the limit is (typically) 12 pages?
People cheat not because it's easy, but because they're under tremendous pressure. Look at the facts - most plagerised essays are turned in near the end of the semester when all the work starts to pile up. A plagerist doesn't say, "Hey, I'm lazy, I'll just download a paper and go play CS", they say, "Oh my god! I've got five essays due by tommorrow! What the hell am I going to do?"
I'm very lucky that my department looks at quality of papers over quantity, and that some of my courses only require 5-10 pages worth of essays in any given course, but in other disciplines (history, philosophy, polisci) it's not uncommon to have to turn in a 20 page paper along with several other smaller assignments. This also leads to incredible amounts of stress, esp. for students who are trying to attend five classes, a part-time or full-time job, friendships and possibly even a SO.
There are other factors as to why students fuck up and ruin their lives - large classes, too many pages to write per term, heck, probably even the legal drinking age. Jack that up to 30 and we'll have much more students getting through uni! The problem is much more complicated than easy-riding" high school students, buddy.
As a closing note, one of my profs gives a very rousing speech in the first few weeks of a class. Basically she says "I'm not allowed to carry a gun, which I believe is really lenient on the dean's part, because if you plagerise I would really, really like to shoot you. So: if you plagerise, I will not rest, not sleep, not eat until I find out where you cheated from, and then I will make it my duty in life to make yours miserable. You will never attend university again. You will never attend college again. You will flip burgers until you are sixty-five and have to retire because you have repetitve stress syndrome in your wrists from working at McDonalds for the past forty years. Are you afraid yet?" This works. I don't think she's had a plagerised essay in ten years or so.
Re:I thought Japan had problems with this...
on
Paranoia
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· Score: 1
"I figure someone could sneak in and take pictures of women in locker rooms and showers"
I assume you know that camera-enabled cellphones are not the only devices that can take pictures of women in locker rooms, right? It's a device that utilises non-digital light rays impacting on light-sensitive shiny paper that captures images of objects in front of its double-refracting glass housing. I can't remember what those durn things are called at the moment, though...
"No, actually you are not, you are just a little biased (but who isnt this days?), Nintendo is counting on the Price tag of the PSP to turn off a lot posible PSP buyers specially kids and parents and they (and you) are right, but Sony is counting to dominate the 12-25 handheld market (specially in Japan) and considering who they are they probably will. Whatever is the case, Im prepared to buy a PSP as soon as its available and a nice library of games is around.;) but thats just me."
How can you tell I'm primarily a computer gamer:) The market in Japan is obviously different from the market in NA, you're absolutely right. 12-25 year olds would be drooling over this sucker too, true. If you're right, in that most titles will be T and M, as well as the price tag, it's obvious that Sony will be marketing the PSP to older kids and young adults, and as such they'll probably succeed. Look at Microsoft - the XBox isn't that terrific and yet, because of Microsoft's unbelieveable $$$ backing, it not only still exists but it's #2 or #3 (depending on who you believe).
"and in Japan gamers are even older [18-30]..."
I find this statement to be VERY interesting, and if this is the case, then the PSP will probably do fantastically well in Japan. Veeeery interesting; I do believe that this will be the first portable console that's marketed to adults instead of kids!
Anyway, thanks for your comments! Gave me a LOT to think about!:)
Slashdot Mirror
"They're, like, totally eating too much!" one frustrated McDonalds manager said. "If they don't stop eating our Big Macs... they'll, you know, explode!"
The Fat Customers Association of America (FCAA) could not be reached for comment.
Forget computers and webcams - way too complicated. Just figure out a way to mount a pair of thin binoculars to a normal pair of glasses (so you can move them out of the way when you don't need them) and you're set. Near-blind grannies with webcams and HUD-LCDs? That's just freaky, man. I don't want my grandma to become a cyborg!
Cordless keyboards/mice are nifty and convenient (I've got an MX700 logitech), but when they don't work (no batteries, periphrial too far away from receiver etc.) they're a bitch. I couldn't imagine a keyboard that skipped letters when I was typing simply because it doesn't have enough battery power or it was too far from the base station or whatver. Hope this helps!
You could definitely give text recognition a shot, but I think you'll be disappointed with the results. When people are sitting in front of their computer trying to use such software, they speak in nice, loud, clear voices; in meetings, people mumble, talk softly, and sometimes are just too far away from the tape recorder for the thing to hear it above a whisper. Tough situation.
What are you going to use the keyboard for? D'ya want a full keyboard or is a compact okay? What's your price range? What specifically do you need in addition to the normal ~104 keys (volume control, navigation, scroll function, etc.)? The keyboard you linked to is actually a great product - it's cheap, has good tactile feedback and gets the job done.
It's cost effective, as fast as you need it to be and best of all more accurate than any software solution to date. Most software packages are still at only about 90% accuracy, so that's still 24 minutes per four hour tape that you'll need to correct, and you'll still probably have to listen to the whole thing over again in order to verify the accuracy of any software program.
There's still a screener ban! Therefore no dvds are being sent out! Therefore DVD screeners are not being sent to Academy members! True or false?
You say that the owner is trying to get the screener ban lifted (=no dvds sent out), but you also say that DVD screeners are being sent out (=dvds sent out). Which is it?!? Talk about confusion!
The Academy no longer sends out DVD screeners. This entire topic is about some guy busted for getting Oscar-nominated videos and ripping them. The poster of this article talked about the "dvd screener leak"; there *was* no dvd screener leak. This has *nothing* to do before pre-home market distribution DVD screeners.
Let me rephrase: no mention of "DVD screeners," because they no longer exist -- the Academy sends out VHS tapes now to combat piracy, for all the good it did them.
As for the "mischevious gamers," I don't even *want* to think of what kinda "heads" they would appropriate in a game of SOCOM!
...but I can't find any mention of DVDs in the article. Wasn't this guy being charged with ripping VHS tapes?
"The results are amazing!" said one scientist on condition of anonymitiy. "Who would have thought there was so much truth in one common expression?"
Heartened by their success, other research labs are exploring whether you can "lead a horse to water but can't make him drink," and whether there is truly "more than one way to skin a cat."
Of course, I might be biased as I used gwbasic to write a text adventure game when I was a kid, but who knows :)
The *only* good thing I can think of is the fact that these two screens might be side by side, therefore allowing "widescreen" games - imagine Metroid Fusion with an extra-long playing field, or Final Fantasy Tactics with more playing room. Interesting, yes, but until some actual specs come out I'm not sure that the big N is going to pull this one off.
Maybe they're trying to cross the Virtual Boy with a Game Boy... the DS starter package includes headgear which allows you to mount each of the screens in front of one of each eye :) Whoa, weird. That's all I got.
As for the "aw"s in the e-mail example: "aw" is the proper way for linguistically spelling the sound represented in "hot" and "com." I didn't do it on purpose, but most English speakers who don't know what hotmail is could phonetically sound out the word and come up with the right domain name.
"Besides, most email entry routines will reject your "address", because even the ones that don't bother with proper validation generally at least make sure there's an @ in there."
True. If it's an entry routine that I care about (such as signing up for a subscription to Pl... Nintendo Power), then I give my real address, of course. If it's one that I don't care about (NY Times), I'm Mr. A B, and my e-mail address is a@b.com. Simple, huh?
Finally, I'm really only interested in communicating with Canadians; the Americans just keep on replying to me! What can I do? :)
Even better: tape three pieces of black paper together and keep on sending the sucker to several news outlets - like, oh, say, Forbes?
Of course, since I don't have a mousepad, the only reason I'd get one is to wear it and say, "The Steel Gaming Glove... it's so bad!" FP too!
kajohnson@hotmail.com BECOMES_ letter_second_word_letter_switchfifthandthird_word _getridof_of_restofaddress_is_phoenetic)
kay_a_sonofjohn_atuh_hawtmayled0tcawm_(first_word
Sure, it's brutal to decipher, but there's no way a machine can poke through that mess. Fun for the receiver to figure out too :)
Kills 90% of the stores out there. Then remove the terms once you're looking to buy again.
# internet users / total country's population = percentage. You're welcome.
As long as it wasn't haiku, my condolences.
Holy shit buddy, way to generalise! So, everybody who gets out of high school is used to an "easy ride" and is therefore going to cheat their way through their early 20's? You must be speaking from personal experience, because I don't know *anybody* who's done that.
I attend University of Regina (final semester) where the class sizes in my major (English) are usually less than 20 students; even my first year English classes had only about 30 students. Maybe the problem in other universities is not "free-riding high school graduates" but administrators who love their $200,000+ paycheques too much to consider hiring another couple professors/instructors for those 100+ student classrooms! Ever think about that? Or how about profs who force undergrads to write 20+ pages per semester per class when the limit is (typically) 12 pages?
People cheat not because it's easy, but because they're under tremendous pressure. Look at the facts - most plagerised essays are turned in near the end of the semester when all the work starts to pile up. A plagerist doesn't say, "Hey, I'm lazy, I'll just download a paper and go play CS", they say, "Oh my god! I've got five essays due by tommorrow! What the hell am I going to do?"
I'm very lucky that my department looks at quality of papers over quantity, and that some of my courses only require 5-10 pages worth of essays in any given course, but in other disciplines (history, philosophy, polisci) it's not uncommon to have to turn in a 20 page paper along with several other smaller assignments. This also leads to incredible amounts of stress, esp. for students who are trying to attend five classes, a part-time or full-time job, friendships and possibly even a SO.
There are other factors as to why students fuck up and ruin their lives - large classes, too many pages to write per term, heck, probably even the legal drinking age. Jack that up to 30 and we'll have much more students getting through uni! The problem is much more complicated than easy-riding" high school students, buddy.
As a closing note, one of my profs gives a very rousing speech in the first few weeks of a class. Basically she says "I'm not allowed to carry a gun, which I believe is really lenient on the dean's part, because if you plagerise I would really, really like to shoot you. So: if you plagerise, I will not rest, not sleep, not eat until I find out where you cheated from, and then I will make it my duty in life to make yours miserable. You will never attend university again. You will never attend college again. You will flip burgers until you are sixty-five and have to retire because you have repetitve stress syndrome in your wrists from working at McDonalds for the past forty years. Are you afraid yet?" This works. I don't think she's had a plagerised essay in ten years or so.
I assume you know that camera-enabled cellphones are not the only devices that can take pictures of women in locker rooms, right? It's a device that utilises non-digital light rays impacting on light-sensitive shiny paper that captures images of objects in front of its double-refracting glass housing. I can't remember what those durn things are called at the moment, though...
How can you tell I'm primarily a computer gamer :) The market in Japan is obviously different from the market in NA, you're absolutely right. 12-25 year olds would be drooling over this sucker too, true. If you're right, in that most titles will be T and M, as well as the price tag, it's obvious that Sony will be marketing the PSP to older kids and young adults, and as such they'll probably succeed. Look at Microsoft - the XBox isn't that terrific and yet, because of Microsoft's unbelieveable $$$ backing, it not only still exists but it's #2 or #3 (depending on who you believe).
"and in Japan gamers are even older [18-30]..."
I find this statement to be VERY interesting, and if this is the case, then the PSP will probably do fantastically well in Japan. Veeeery interesting; I do believe that this will be the first portable console that's marketed to adults instead of kids!
Anyway, thanks for your comments! Gave me a LOT to think about! :)