There's an infamous ricochet sound that's appeared in dozens of movies.
According to one of my music/audio professors back at University, the reason for that is that it's very, very difficult to get a real ricochet to happen (I assume this is qualified by "...in a way that's safe for the shooter and audio engineer."). I seem to remember something about the people who recorded it having someone shoot thousands of rounds to get a handful of ricochets on tape.
I would assume that they used them as placeholder early on, which is a very common thing
Why would any developer take that kind of high-risk chance? Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but using crappy "sketch" textures would prevent this kind of huge potential legal issue *and* make it very obvious which textures still needed to be replaced before release.
So where does that leave me? Im sure there are others that feel the same way.
Like me. Online gaming just isn't my thing, and I won't play an offline game that requires online auth to install and/or play because I've been bitten too many times by software whose publisher dropped off the face of the planet. The games I like are the ones with stories I can get attached to, and I can't do that if I know that five or ten years down the line I won't be able to play through it again. Even if it's only once - like when I replayed Wasteland at University back in 1999 or so - the ability to do so is important to me.
It seems that if a small group like ZERT can release a patch in a couple days [isotf.org], a company with purse strings like MS should be able to release a supported patch in less than four months!
There's a difference between a quick hack and a properly-written and -tested patch. Please don't fall victim to the belief that just because white/grey-hat hackers can do something quickly, they are doing it in a way that is robust enough to work in an enterprise-scale deployment, and comprehensively solves the root problem.
Well, the real question in this case isn't "is 4 equal to 4.0?" it's "is 100 equal to 1000000100000000000000000000000?"* and I think that both programmers and mathematicians can agree on the answer to that.
I signed up with Speakeasy several years ago, and was always impressed with their quick and friendly tech support. I also liked supporting a business that had grown from a small local company to something more successful - I remember using the monochrome dumb terminals they had for free lynx usage in their coffeehouse back in the mid-90s.
In December I decided to switch to their OneLink product, because I wasn't using my home phone anymore. It took a month for them to send someone from Covad out and to call the right number when they got there. I ended up taking 3-4 days off of work because (unlike the phone/cable/power companies) Covad can't be bothered to keep keys to locked utility rooms at apartment buildings. However, once it was finally hooked up it worked great, even if I did have to buy yet another DSL modem.
Then, a month after I switched, they sent me a bill with an extra $300 tacked on for "missed appointments" with the Covad techs. I called them up and they would only remove one of them. I figured there was no way out of it and paid it but decided to cancel my service. When I did, they told me that by using it for more than 25 days, I had implicitly agreed to a 12-month contract with a $300 early termination fee. I asked them how it was possible to agree to a contract without signing anything, speaking anything, or even clicking on an "I accept" type button, but they insisted it was true. I'm still disputing that fee.
I suppose they were just gearing up to switch over to the Best Buy model of customer "service". It was especially thoughtful of them to not bill me for the alleged "missed appointments" until I'd already supposedly agreed to their 12-month "contract".
I read an article awhile ago that was about how NASA had actually gotten in touch with the team who designed the prop spacesuits for e.g. Armageddon for that very reason. Looking at the pictures in the article, it seems that that plan didn't really go anywhere.
It's too bad, because I agree with you. Although personally my favourite were the ones in 2001/2010.
Re:My boss told me to look into "Microsoft groove"
on
Alternative to Groove?
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· Score: 1
if rsync was bundled into a browser file-saving interface, chat and web portal tool.
I saw a presentation on Groove a few months ago, and this is actually what I didn't like about it. What's with companies trying to reinvent the wheel? They're never going to build their own chat, messaging, etc tools that are as good as the standalone products. Why don't they focus on making the unique aspects of their product strong?
I did think the P2P file replication thing was a cool idea, although I can't see the company I work for making use of it. In terms of what we do, Groove would basically be a less effective SharePoint.
On top of this, Blackberry and Treos didn't get their patches until late, and you need to do those AFTER the Exchange/Outlook patches.
If you could get the Blackberry patch to work at all, that is.
For whatever reason, RIM thought it would be clever to distribute a "helper" rather than an actual patch. You can push it out from the BES, but all it does is install a little utility on the handhelds which then MUST use internet access to download the real version of the patch that's applicable to that handheld and firmware version.
Once I'd gotten the internet access part working on the backend (which required a huge kludge because of RIM's braindead "everything is done via a single service account instead of using the user's own credentials" model) I discovered that the only handhelds which would correctly install the patch were the Pearls, which allegedly don't need to be patched anyway.
Even if you *do* get the patch to install, it does not correct existing appointments. So you either have to delete and recreate all of them, or wipe and reactivate the handheld. Neither one is practical. What we'd end up with is Blackberry users who had a mix of appointments that were off by an hour or not, with no way of telling which is which. So we're delaying the patch until *after* DST would have switched anyway, so that when it flips in the fall there will have been plenty of time for appointments scheduled in advance to have been created after the patch was applied.
The US government are a bunch of morons for allowing this DST change, but the tech companies providing patches have handled the situation at least as poorly.
I just started using PHP a few months ago for a few utilities on one of my websites. There are a ton of things about the language that seem half-assed. In particular I'm thinking of:
- The entire mysql library, which I have to use right now because mysqli apparently isn't enabled by default in PHP 4 and my current host won't turn it on or upgrade to PHP 5. Why is the default behaviour to force the use of SQL injection-vulnerable code? - There is no equivalent of a "contains" method for the string class, with strpos() being the recommended alternative. strpos() returns 0 if a string doesn't contain the specified substring... or it contains it at position 0. So to do a true "does this string contain some substring?" check requires using both strpos() *and* a separate check between the substring and a new substring made from the original string but chopped off at the length of the substring you're checking for. - Dynamically-typed variables. Worst code/script idea evar. Yes, I realize PHP is not alone in this.
Basically to me it looks like the *ix version of VBScript. In its favour, it does use curly braces instead of MS' stupid "If something Then doSomeOtherThing End If" syntax.
I may be wrong in assuming this, but it seems likely that the security system would detect a brute force attempt pretty quickly.
Even if it doesn't, halfway competent security staff would notice the attempt right away. One of the guys here showed me how their monitoring system works once - any time someone uses an invalid card (whether it's deactivated or just doesn't have access to that door) or the door is held open too long, or anything else out of the ordinary happens, the security cameras take snapshots of the whole area around the door. The events are very visibly highlighted in the monitoring console as well, if no one happens to be paying attention at the time.
Yes, you could also disable the cameras in some way, but my point is that there's no really covert way to do it.
I have tried some modern CFL bulbs quite recently. They suck. I for one welcome our efficient incandencent patent holding overlords.
Which ones did you try? I was really skeptical and said as much the last time there was a CFL-related article here. When I was a kid my mom bought a bunch of the crappy old flickery buzzy kind and I assumed there was no way to make them something I'd tolerate.
A few days later I went out and bought a couple of GE 6500K CFL bulbs - the kind that consume 23 watts but are supposedly equal to 100 watt incandescents. I liked them so much that I replaced all of the bulbs I could in my apartment with the CFLs. The colour is exactly the kind I like, basically a slightly bluer version of daylight. There's no flicker, no buzzing, no downside at all.
I used to work for EB Games before Gamestop purchased the company, and we didn't sell used games as new ever.
Yours may not have, but others did. The last time I bought games from EB was when both of them (which I bought "new") had clearly been used. One of them even had spots on the bottom of the disc where liquid (hopefully a drink) had been spilled.
Some of them also still allow the "checkout" of new games by employees, which is essentially the same thing.
I don't buy games in brick and mortar stores at all anymore because I was fed up with this. I buy them online, because I've never done that and gotten anything other than a game in packaging sealed by the manufacturer.
I've replaced two failed RAID controllers in the last year. Both of them were Compaq SmartArray boards, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4-5 years old.
Simple - most client-server apps don't handle high latencies like you find in a WAN. All those database round-trips kill performance when you have 250ms latency.
I would argue that that's only true if qualified as "most poorly-written client-server apps". There is a plague of "enterprise" software vendors out there who can't be bothered to develop decent software and use Citrix or terminal services in general as a magic bullet to make up for their incompetent application design. I am looking at you, Merant or whatever you're calling yourselves these days. I am looking at the companies that sell "database" "applications" which are really just complicated Excel macros.
You know what the solution is? It's not thin clients or some other buzzword. It's for big corporations to stop buying shitty software. Microsoft gets a bad rap sometimes, but they are a billion times better than "enterprise" software companies that don't make or sell consumer products, but leech exclusively off of large businesses.
These A123 cells are already in production and use.
Maybe with all the profit they're going to generate, they can hire a marketing team to come up with a name that doesn't sound like they're a fly-by-night, back-of-a-van scam.
and I want studs for mounting sunglasses that don't have to go around my head.
You could get that right now if you wanted. Haven't you seen the scalp implants that let people mount metal spikes on their heads? Sort of a stainless-steel mohawk?
IMO it's not worth the trouble though. If the stud gets snagged on something when you're falling or moving fast for some other reason, you're going to do some serious damage to yourself.
What needs to be said though is that having an article about Pikachu doesn't make Wikipedia less worthwhile, nor does not having the article make it more so. It makes it more worthwhile precisely because some people might want to look up Pikachu. Some, however, might want to look up the school...but it's "not notable", according to some people whose only hint it exists came when the article was created, so any trace of it was removed from Wikipedia. That definitely makes Wikipedia far less useful, at least to these people who couldn't give a fuck what a Pikachu is.
Yes, I realize now that my original comment might have made it seem like I think those articles should be removed. I don't. The more the merrier. I just think it's ridiculous that anyone (including the GP) would claim that fictional back story for a pop culture sci fi series is more "notable" than real facts about a real place in the real world.
I have trouble imagining just how dorky someone would have to be to argue that the fictional motivations behind a fictional treaty in the backstory for a fictional universe - at least three layers removed from the "real world" as we like to call it (e.g. "the Treaty of Algeron was signed in 2311 [1], following the Tomed Incident" - and note that "Tomed Incident" links to a ludicrously detailed history of the Romulan Empire itself) - is more notable than concrete facts about an actual place. And I make that accusation as someone who hacks videogames for fun, is a fan of both Star Trek *and* Star Wars, and has a physics equation tattooed on his arm.
Star Trek isn't "notable" because of the Treaty of Algeron, it's notable because of its impact on Western culture and specifically its vision of the future and making "serious" sci-fi television and film possible today. Claiming that because the series itself is notable, any scrap of fictional information related to it is also notable just makes people look foolish, and Wikipedia look like a joke.
This is moderated funny (and it is), but it is also a good point. There is some awesome content on Wikipedia, but IMO they have their priorities all screwed up. (Again, IMO) if they allow sci-fi dorks to post reams of material on completely fictional topics, they have no basis for deleting any factual article, no matter how obscure or rarely-viewed.
I wandered into an editorial discussion once on what a high school needed to do to qualify as "noteworthy" enough to not have an article about it deleted. I'm sorry, but any high school in the real world is more "noteworthy" than the Treaty of Algeron, Pikachu, or the E-Wing Starfighter.
I really feel like Wikipedia is a brilliant idea that's going to be killed off or crippled by the nerdy bureaucrats who seem to control the editorial process. I know I have no interest in posting content there given their criteria for deleting articles.
The problem with Run As (at least pre-Vista - I haven't tried it on Vista yet) is that Windows wasn't really designed to have multiple apps running under different user contexts in the same window station. It mostly works, but you'll run across things like:
- It's possible to do a Run As on Windows Explorer, but not the way you'd think. You have to call IExplore.exe with some funny flags. - If you do that, and use your new Explorer window to open a command prompt, ctrl-C doesn't work in it, so you can't abort script execution and whatnot. - A Run As'd Explorer window doesn't automatically refresh. Do if you want to create a new folder and go into it, the steps are create new folder, hit F5, rename "New Folder" to something else, hit F5, double-click on the folder. - Because Windows enables those annoying default sounds for every user profile, you have to go into the Sounds control panel in your Run As'd Explorer window and disable them or you'll get a bunch of clicky beepy crap. - There are restrictions on connecting to a network share twice from the same machine with different user credentials. So if you are using a share on some server as your regular account, you can't also go in as your superuser account. Closing the share as the regular user isn't always enough, sometimes Windows still refuses to do it (cached credentials?)
Anyway, it's better than nothing, but still not great.
I agree with you. However, I don't think the ability to copy will necessarily lead to the downfall of major media corporations.
For the last 15-20 years, since I was a kid, I've found out about music and movies in ways that weren't profitable to the people who made them. Copying tapes and CDs from friends and the library, downloading mp3s and DVD/TV rips, etc. But I've then gone on to buy a ton of them. Why? Because if I like something enough to watch/listen to it, I like it enough to support more of it being made. I also think it's really ghetto and tacky when peoples' entire media collection is recordable media with titles written in magic marker.
I have no problem spending money on media. But I do have a problem with spending it on media I don't know if I will like. So when e.g. the MPAA sends a warning to my ISP because they think I downloaded a movie off of BitTorrent, it means I won't be buying any new movies, because I won't have any way to see them first (and also it makes me angry that they're effectively trying to get my internet service cancelled, despite my being a much more valuable media customer than the average). I'm on call at work too much to see movies in theatres. I hate television because of the fixed schedule and ads, and I'm not going to spend hundreds of dollars for a DVR to make up for the deficiencies of the format.
The solution here isn't a technical one, IMO. It's:
a - Make people realize that if they don't support something, it will go away. b - Don't expect kids to buy everything, because *they don't have money*. They probably will when they're older. c - Realize that offending customers and paying companies like BayTSP costs more in the long run than taking a small (paper-only) hit on piracy. d - Play up the cheap-ass factor about people who only have bootleg media. Make it the new backwards baseball cap and 40 oz malt liquor.
For some reason, liberals online have turned this word into some sort of insult
I personally see it as a negative description of someone because:
- The neo-conservative philosophy is neither new nor conservative. It's fascism, a la Italy in the 1930s. If you aren't familiar with it, do yourself a favour and read up. Fascist may not mean what you think it means. - Generally, neo-conservatives are members of the Republican party, and most high-profile Republicans are neo-conservatives. However, their fascist beliefs are in most cases greatly opposed to what has traditionally been the aim of the Republican party. They are feeding off of traditional Republicans who haven't realized that only the name is the same now. More of them seem to be realizing that the longer the current administration is in power.
I suppose it's possible that you're right, and that it used to mean something different. Even so, it doesn't now. "Neo-conservative" in the popular lexicon refers to someone who believes in the ideals of the Project for a New American Century. Whether they realize it or not, they are therefore believers in fascism.
I think it would be inaccurate to label me a "liberal," if you think I'm particularly biased because of that. I believe in a strong military (at least in the context of the current era) and support the right of private citizens to own guns, for example. I believe in complete personal freedom (barring things like theft and assault that directly impact other people in a quantifiable, negative way), but I also believe in heavy limitations on government *and* private groups (corporations, clubs, etc) because I consider them both a threat to personal liberty when they're unchecked.
Obviously, both parties in power are moving away from where I think America should be headed, but the neo-conservative fascists are also destabilizing the entire world while they're at it.
Slashdot Mirror
There's an infamous ricochet sound that's appeared in dozens of movies.
According to one of my music/audio professors back at University, the reason for that is that it's very, very difficult to get a real ricochet to happen (I assume this is qualified by "...in a way that's safe for the shooter and audio engineer."). I seem to remember something about the people who recorded it having someone shoot thousands of rounds to get a handful of ricochets on tape.
I would assume that they used them as placeholder early on, which is a very common thing
Why would any developer take that kind of high-risk chance? Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but using crappy "sketch" textures would prevent this kind of huge potential legal issue *and* make it very obvious which textures still needed to be replaced before release.
For a slightly scarier version, try Vernor Vinge's use of focus in A Fire Upon the Deep.
Vernor Vinge was exactly what I thought of as well. Although wasn't it A Deepness in the Sky that had focus?
So where does that leave me? Im sure there are others that feel the same way.
Like me. Online gaming just isn't my thing, and I won't play an offline game that requires online auth to install and/or play because I've been bitten too many times by software whose publisher dropped off the face of the planet. The games I like are the ones with stories I can get attached to, and I can't do that if I know that five or ten years down the line I won't be able to play through it again. Even if it's only once - like when I replayed Wasteland at University back in 1999 or so - the ability to do so is important to me.
It seems that if a small group like ZERT can release a patch in a couple days [isotf.org], a company with purse strings like MS should be able to release a supported patch in less than four months!
There's a difference between a quick hack and a properly-written and -tested patch. Please don't fall victim to the belief that just because white/grey-hat hackers can do something quickly, they are doing it in a way that is robust enough to work in an enterprise-scale deployment, and comprehensively solves the root problem.
Well, the real question in this case isn't "is 4 equal to 4.0?" it's "is 100 equal to 1000000100000000000000000000000?"* and I think that both programmers and mathematicians can agree on the answer to that.
* assuming IEEE-754 single-precision.
I'm sure they'll claim "nothing will change"
Things are already changing.
I signed up with Speakeasy several years ago, and was always impressed with their quick and friendly tech support. I also liked supporting a business that had grown from a small local company to something more successful - I remember using the monochrome dumb terminals they had for free lynx usage in their coffeehouse back in the mid-90s.
In December I decided to switch to their OneLink product, because I wasn't using my home phone anymore. It took a month for them to send someone from Covad out and to call the right number when they got there. I ended up taking 3-4 days off of work because (unlike the phone/cable/power companies) Covad can't be bothered to keep keys to locked utility rooms at apartment buildings. However, once it was finally hooked up it worked great, even if I did have to buy yet another DSL modem.
Then, a month after I switched, they sent me a bill with an extra $300 tacked on for "missed appointments" with the Covad techs. I called them up and they would only remove one of them. I figured there was no way out of it and paid it but decided to cancel my service. When I did, they told me that by using it for more than 25 days, I had implicitly agreed to a 12-month contract with a $300 early termination fee. I asked them how it was possible to agree to a contract without signing anything, speaking anything, or even clicking on an "I accept" type button, but they insisted it was true. I'm still disputing that fee.
I suppose they were just gearing up to switch over to the Best Buy model of customer "service". It was especially thoughtful of them to not bill me for the alleged "missed appointments" until I'd already supposedly agreed to their 12-month "contract".
I read an article awhile ago that was about how NASA had actually gotten in touch with the team who designed the prop spacesuits for e.g. Armageddon for that very reason. Looking at the pictures in the article, it seems that that plan didn't really go anywhere.
It's too bad, because I agree with you. Although personally my favourite were the ones in 2001/2010.
Don't worry, Teddy Roosevelt is on the job.
if rsync was bundled into a browser file-saving interface, chat and web portal tool.
I saw a presentation on Groove a few months ago, and this is actually what I didn't like about it. What's with companies trying to reinvent the wheel? They're never going to build their own chat, messaging, etc tools that are as good as the standalone products. Why don't they focus on making the unique aspects of their product strong?
I did think the P2P file replication thing was a cool idea, although I can't see the company I work for making use of it. In terms of what we do, Groove would basically be a less effective SharePoint.
On top of this, Blackberry and Treos didn't get their patches until late, and you need to do those AFTER the Exchange/Outlook patches.
If you could get the Blackberry patch to work at all, that is.
For whatever reason, RIM thought it would be clever to distribute a "helper" rather than an actual patch. You can push it out from the BES, but all it does is install a little utility on the handhelds which then MUST use internet access to download the real version of the patch that's applicable to that handheld and firmware version.
Once I'd gotten the internet access part working on the backend (which required a huge kludge because of RIM's braindead "everything is done via a single service account instead of using the user's own credentials" model) I discovered that the only handhelds which would correctly install the patch were the Pearls, which allegedly don't need to be patched anyway.
Even if you *do* get the patch to install, it does not correct existing appointments. So you either have to delete and recreate all of them, or wipe and reactivate the handheld. Neither one is practical. What we'd end up with is Blackberry users who had a mix of appointments that were off by an hour or not, with no way of telling which is which. So we're delaying the patch until *after* DST would have switched anyway, so that when it flips in the fall there will have been plenty of time for appointments scheduled in advance to have been created after the patch was applied.
The US government are a bunch of morons for allowing this DST change, but the tech companies providing patches have handled the situation at least as poorly.
It's a legitimate question.
I just started using PHP a few months ago for a few utilities on one of my websites. There are a ton of things about the language that seem half-assed. In particular I'm thinking of:
- The entire mysql library, which I have to use right now because mysqli apparently isn't enabled by default in PHP 4 and my current host won't turn it on or upgrade to PHP 5. Why is the default behaviour to force the use of SQL injection-vulnerable code?
- There is no equivalent of a "contains" method for the string class, with strpos() being the recommended alternative. strpos() returns 0 if a string doesn't contain the specified substring... or it contains it at position 0. So to do a true "does this string contain some substring?" check requires using both strpos() *and* a separate check between the substring and a new substring made from the original string but chopped off at the length of the substring you're checking for.
- Dynamically-typed variables. Worst code/script idea evar. Yes, I realize PHP is not alone in this.
Basically to me it looks like the *ix version of VBScript. In its favour, it does use curly braces instead of MS' stupid "If something Then doSomeOtherThing End If" syntax.
I may be wrong in assuming this, but it seems likely that the security system would detect a brute force attempt pretty quickly.
Even if it doesn't, halfway competent security staff would notice the attempt right away. One of the guys here showed me how their monitoring system works once - any time someone uses an invalid card (whether it's deactivated or just doesn't have access to that door) or the door is held open too long, or anything else out of the ordinary happens, the security cameras take snapshots of the whole area around the door. The events are very visibly highlighted in the monitoring console as well, if no one happens to be paying attention at the time.
Yes, you could also disable the cameras in some way, but my point is that there's no really covert way to do it.
I have tried some modern CFL bulbs quite recently. They suck. I for one welcome our efficient incandencent patent holding overlords.
Which ones did you try? I was really skeptical and said as much the last time there was a CFL-related article here. When I was a kid my mom bought a bunch of the crappy old flickery buzzy kind and I assumed there was no way to make them something I'd tolerate.
A few days later I went out and bought a couple of GE 6500K CFL bulbs - the kind that consume 23 watts but are supposedly equal to 100 watt incandescents. I liked them so much that I replaced all of the bulbs I could in my apartment with the CFLs. The colour is exactly the kind I like, basically a slightly bluer version of daylight. There's no flicker, no buzzing, no downside at all.
I used to work for EB Games before Gamestop purchased the company, and we didn't sell used games as new ever.
Yours may not have, but others did. The last time I bought games from EB was when both of them (which I bought "new") had clearly been used. One of them even had spots on the bottom of the disc where liquid (hopefully a drink) had been spilled.
Some of them also still allow the "checkout" of new games by employees, which is essentially the same thing.
I don't buy games in brick and mortar stores at all anymore because I was fed up with this. I buy them online, because I've never done that and gotten anything other than a game in packaging sealed by the manufacturer.
I've replaced two failed RAID controllers in the last year. Both of them were Compaq SmartArray boards, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4-5 years old.
Simple - most client-server apps don't handle high latencies like you find in a WAN. All those database round-trips kill performance when you have 250ms latency.
I would argue that that's only true if qualified as "most poorly-written client-server apps". There is a plague of "enterprise" software vendors out there who can't be bothered to develop decent software and use Citrix or terminal services in general as a magic bullet to make up for their incompetent application design. I am looking at you, Merant or whatever you're calling yourselves these days. I am looking at the companies that sell "database" "applications" which are really just complicated Excel macros.
You know what the solution is? It's not thin clients or some other buzzword. It's for big corporations to stop buying shitty software. Microsoft gets a bad rap sometimes, but they are a billion times better than "enterprise" software companies that don't make or sell consumer products, but leech exclusively off of large businesses.
These A123 cells are already in production and use.
Maybe with all the profit they're going to generate, they can hire a marketing team to come up with a name that doesn't sound like they're a fly-by-night, back-of-a-van scam.
Pretty cool information, by the way.
and I want studs for mounting sunglasses that don't have to go around my head.
You could get that right now if you wanted. Haven't you seen the scalp implants that let people mount metal spikes on their heads? Sort of a stainless-steel mohawk?
IMO it's not worth the trouble though. If the stud gets snagged on something when you're falling or moving fast for some other reason, you're going to do some serious damage to yourself.
What needs to be said though is that having an article about Pikachu doesn't make Wikipedia less worthwhile, nor does not having the article make it more so. It makes it more worthwhile precisely because some people might want to look up Pikachu. Some, however, might want to look up the school...but it's "not notable", according to some people whose only hint it exists came when the article was created, so any trace of it was removed from Wikipedia. That definitely makes Wikipedia far less useful, at least to these people who couldn't give a fuck what a Pikachu is.
Yes, I realize now that my original comment might have made it seem like I think those articles should be removed. I don't. The more the merrier. I just think it's ridiculous that anyone (including the GP) would claim that fictional back story for a pop culture sci fi series is more "notable" than real facts about a real place in the real world.
I have trouble imagining just how dorky someone would have to be to argue that the fictional motivations behind a fictional treaty in the backstory for a fictional universe - at least three layers removed from the "real world" as we like to call it (e.g. "the Treaty of Algeron was signed in 2311 [1], following the Tomed Incident" - and note that "Tomed Incident" links to a ludicrously detailed history of the Romulan Empire itself) - is more notable than concrete facts about an actual place. And I make that accusation as someone who hacks videogames for fun, is a fan of both Star Trek *and* Star Wars, and has a physics equation tattooed on his arm.
Star Trek isn't "notable" because of the Treaty of Algeron, it's notable because of its impact on Western culture and specifically its vision of the future and making "serious" sci-fi television and film possible today. Claiming that because the series itself is notable, any scrap of fictional information related to it is also notable just makes people look foolish, and Wikipedia look like a joke.
This is moderated funny (and it is), but it is also a good point. There is some awesome content on Wikipedia, but IMO they have their priorities all screwed up. (Again, IMO) if they allow sci-fi dorks to post reams of material on completely fictional topics, they have no basis for deleting any factual article, no matter how obscure or rarely-viewed.
I wandered into an editorial discussion once on what a high school needed to do to qualify as "noteworthy" enough to not have an article about it deleted. I'm sorry, but any high school in the real world is more "noteworthy" than the Treaty of Algeron, Pikachu, or the E-Wing Starfighter.
I really feel like Wikipedia is a brilliant idea that's going to be killed off or crippled by the nerdy bureaucrats who seem to control the editorial process. I know I have no interest in posting content there given their criteria for deleting articles.
I've been running Vista RTM since release and I hardly see any UAC prompts.
I've also been running it since release and I *never* see UAC prompts, because the first thing I do after a Vista installation is turn it off.
The problem with Run As (at least pre-Vista - I haven't tried it on Vista yet) is that Windows wasn't really designed to have multiple apps running under different user contexts in the same window station. It mostly works, but you'll run across things like:
- It's possible to do a Run As on Windows Explorer, but not the way you'd think. You have to call IExplore.exe with some funny flags.
- If you do that, and use your new Explorer window to open a command prompt, ctrl-C doesn't work in it, so you can't abort script execution and whatnot.
- A Run As'd Explorer window doesn't automatically refresh. Do if you want to create a new folder and go into it, the steps are create new folder, hit F5, rename "New Folder" to something else, hit F5, double-click on the folder.
- Because Windows enables those annoying default sounds for every user profile, you have to go into the Sounds control panel in your Run As'd Explorer window and disable them or you'll get a bunch of clicky beepy crap.
- There are restrictions on connecting to a network share twice from the same machine with different user credentials. So if you are using a share on some server as your regular account, you can't also go in as your superuser account. Closing the share as the regular user isn't always enough, sometimes Windows still refuses to do it (cached credentials?)
Anyway, it's better than nothing, but still not great.
I agree with you. However, I don't think the ability to copy will necessarily lead to the downfall of major media corporations.
For the last 15-20 years, since I was a kid, I've found out about music and movies in ways that weren't profitable to the people who made them. Copying tapes and CDs from friends and the library, downloading mp3s and DVD/TV rips, etc. But I've then gone on to buy a ton of them. Why? Because if I like something enough to watch/listen to it, I like it enough to support more of it being made. I also think it's really ghetto and tacky when peoples' entire media collection is recordable media with titles written in magic marker.
I have no problem spending money on media. But I do have a problem with spending it on media I don't know if I will like. So when e.g. the MPAA sends a warning to my ISP because they think I downloaded a movie off of BitTorrent, it means I won't be buying any new movies, because I won't have any way to see them first (and also it makes me angry that they're effectively trying to get my internet service cancelled, despite my being a much more valuable media customer than the average). I'm on call at work too much to see movies in theatres. I hate television because of the fixed schedule and ads, and I'm not going to spend hundreds of dollars for a DVR to make up for the deficiencies of the format.
The solution here isn't a technical one, IMO. It's:
a - Make people realize that if they don't support something, it will go away.
b - Don't expect kids to buy everything, because *they don't have money*. They probably will when they're older.
c - Realize that offending customers and paying companies like BayTSP costs more in the long run than taking a small (paper-only) hit on piracy.
d - Play up the cheap-ass factor about people who only have bootleg media. Make it the new backwards baseball cap and 40 oz malt liquor.
For some reason, liberals online have turned this word into some sort of insult
I personally see it as a negative description of someone because:
- The neo-conservative philosophy is neither new nor conservative. It's fascism, a la Italy in the 1930s. If you aren't familiar with it, do yourself a favour and read up. Fascist may not mean what you think it means.
- Generally, neo-conservatives are members of the Republican party, and most high-profile Republicans are neo-conservatives. However, their fascist beliefs are in most cases greatly opposed to what has traditionally been the aim of the Republican party. They are feeding off of traditional Republicans who haven't realized that only the name is the same now. More of them seem to be realizing that the longer the current administration is in power.
I suppose it's possible that you're right, and that it used to mean something different. Even so, it doesn't now. "Neo-conservative" in the popular lexicon refers to someone who believes in the ideals of the Project for a New American Century. Whether they realize it or not, they are therefore believers in fascism.
I think it would be inaccurate to label me a "liberal," if you think I'm particularly biased because of that. I believe in a strong military (at least in the context of the current era) and support the right of private citizens to own guns, for example. I believe in complete personal freedom (barring things like theft and assault that directly impact other people in a quantifiable, negative way), but I also believe in heavy limitations on government *and* private groups (corporations, clubs, etc) because I consider them both a threat to personal liberty when they're unchecked.
Obviously, both parties in power are moving away from where I think America should be headed, but the neo-conservative fascists are also destabilizing the entire world while they're at it.