Everytime some country proposes to introduce laws on spam you get a lot of idiots claiming that it will make no difference since everyone knows all spam comes from abroad or zombie machines. Guess this will shut them up once and for all eh? Why yes, I do believe in Santa Claus why do you ask?
If you contacted the company then the do-not-call list does not apply. If you never contacted the company then why the hell should they call you?
Remembering the story about the spam-lover a few months ago you might of course be someone who likes to be called by sales-drones but more likely you are just a person who like to cold-call people themselves and want to make it appear that this is in demand.
So give a concrete example were you where a business you wanted to call you couldn't because of the no-call-list.
I have bought stack and stacks of games over the years, still got a huge stack of CD's but the floppy stack is sadly gone (note to self do not hang wet wash over box of floppies.)
So I figure I got a moral right to download x-wing as I once paid for it. If you never bought it then you have no right to it. Buy a compilation CD and if that is not available then that doesn't give you any moral let alone legal right to download it.
Then again it would be trivial for game companies to make available their old games via pay-per-download or licensse their games to a company specializing in it.
The game industry is incredibily bad at doing business. It seems to totally have lost touch wich its audience. Selling ever more expensive games with less and less in them. I remember the original Lucasarts WWII games, battle of britain and Secret weapons of the luftwaffe. They came with THICK ringbound manuals that had excellent instructions on how to play the game as well as an historic overview of the war period covered and a analasys of the effect of the airwar. Compare this with the X-wing "leaflet" and you get the feeling the old game gave you a lot more bang for your buck.
GBA games are insanely priced especially those that are just old games repackaged. When you got an industry treathing its customers as consumers you get consumers acting as "thiefs".
Put something inside the box again, for that matter GET THE BOX BACK, and make a game worth buying. Less bugs on release, just because everyone got the internet doesn't mean the first action of installing a new game should be to patch it. If a game like say "Max payne" can be completed in a weekend price it accordingly. Learn about economy of scales, better to sell a lot of games at a low price then a few games at a high price.
BUT most important, if I buy a game I should get a license to use it for the rest of my life. Don't ask me to register just to send spam. When I register you should make it possible for me to always get the game again should I loose the CD's or floppy.
In short if you don't want people to "steal" don't be a thief youreselve.
Right, building an overpass wich once up needs only have maintenance every other decade and will be there for ever if you want it OR implementing some kinda controll system in every car in say the USA plus making it mandatory for every car that crosses the border just to solve something that has been solved?
More over overpasses are a lot safer, no problem with cars that are to long, breakdowns, everything else people have mentioned.
The idea would only work if ever we get those automated cars that we been seeing in "beyond 2000" even then a proper cloverleaf would be a lot less risky. UNTIL control is taken away from all the drivers this kinda stuff is impossible. Want an experts opinion? Ask an airtraffic controller. They make bloody sure that traffic DOES NOT CROSS EACH OTHER at the same altitude. Aircraft can be very thightly packed behind each other, even sandwiched that planes take off and land on the same runway but this only works because planes can escape in the vertical. If plane A is taking off while plane B is in position to land the moment A clears the runway and plane A has a problem plane B can escape by using its altitude and turning right. As long as plane A stays on the ground or turns left and uses a different altitude everything is safe. I am sure a pilot can explain better. He probably can also tell you what happens when this goes wrong and why most major airports have 1 runway for taking off and 1 for landing.
The idea of a road vehicle driving on rail part of the time, even the way of doing it (guidance by retractable wheel while power is supplied through the road wheels) is in daily use. Just check track maintenance vehicles.
I also seen several ideas on regular busses being fitted with guide systems so that could be driven without steering in between concrete guiderails. The advantage? It would require only track not a full road. The "hole" in the middle would make watering a lot lot easier while also leaving the area greener (and stop passenger cars from driving accross buslanes). At the same time the busdriver has less to concentrate on.
This idea seems more aimed at existing tracks. Plenty of places in the world where the old local railroad never been pulled up after the line was cancelled that could use the "faster" route for rural lines. I personally travelled by bus along a previous railroad route. Or rather the bus detoured a lot to zigzag accross highways while passing villages that if it had been following the railroad it could have served. I know because the railroad is used as a museum and the historical steam train journey is shorter then the bus journey.
So I do think the idea got some merrit, just not for freight. No big operator of a railroad is going to allow a vehicle like this. The biggest problem on the highspeed networks (where you need the signalling to be able to drive insanely fast in the worst of weather, old dutch commericial had a race driver boasting he could beat the speed limit in thick fog. He was sitting in a train:p ) is the number of vehicles that can be fitted. Better to run a few big trains then try to fit countless tiny busses on your major lines.
Since old rural lines tend to run from city center to village center a truck would have little point going there.
So a nice idea to breathe some life back into old rural lines without all the problems of busses (busses often don't really "fit" onto rural roads wich are often not designed for fast local traffic).
But as I said I seen this kinda thing before. About the closest I seen in practice is de "noord-zuid-as" bus "road" that operates in Amsterdam around the airport. Wich is a normal bus but a bit longer and drives on its own concrete road bypassing other traffic.
In Arnhem there is a trolley bus that can more easily leave the electric grid it is usually connected to by carrying its own generator. Allowing clean silent transport in the city but even more room to manouver then a normal trolley bus (they got tiny generators making off grid travel slow and noisy).
One thing I got a problem with however is their boasting about braking distances. Trains brake a lot slower and this is a good thing. People walk in a train, last thing you want is to stop so sudden all the people end up in the first carriage. Busses have a slight advantage that if they have an accident then it tends to be with passenger cars meaning they sorta just keep going. Fast braking with all your passengers loose is not a good thing. There been a few accidents with busses and lorries and the results are people dying at slow speeds. Unless this thing enforces the use of seatbelts they better make sure that emergency stop is not used.
You couldn't tell a packet to slowdown so as to arrive at the switch at the right time. Well not until they add the "slowdown" bit, not much change we are still waiting for the evil bit.
In theory you could "synchronize" all the transmitters to a hub/switch so that there are never any collisions. However considering the speed of ethernet combined with the cost of an accurate enough clock I think the collisions are acceptable.
In a way (if I understood it right) a switch is more like a cloverleave style intersection, unlike a hub wich is a regular intersection and only 1 vehicle/packet can be on the intersection at one time, on a switch traffic wich doesn't cross destination or origin never crosses each other.
Kinda like how elevators when power is lost don't plunge through to the ground? Sorta like how most machines controlled by a computer when something goes wrong they shutdown?
Stop watching bad movies. If you want to see a computer controlled system like this on a smaller scale (or larger) look at computer controlled subways.
It is called an overpass. As you pointed out this isn't an intersection but a crossing. Just put the roads on different levels and you got no problems.
While intresting it is useless. If the cars are computer controlled you would never need a six lane highway. Why? Humans need lots of space to avoid driving into each other but computers could do it with milimeters to spare (or that is what is claimed) so you would have a 1 lane road with a safety strip for emergencies and such intersection would take the form of a clover leaf.
Now if they could do the same with vehicles turning it would be more intresting.
How exactly? Anyway dreamcast was first of the current generation. So it had the best catalog and won?
x-box was supposed to take over the console market. Instead it has the lowest sales of the current generation and is a total failure in japan wich is the current home of gaming. MS has so far only lost money on the project. Exactly how this all add up to anything else but failure?
I really don't get x-box fans. Dreamcast fans have no trouble admitting the financial failure of their console. Neither do all the fans of the non-gb handhelds. They freely admit nintendo beat them in sales. What makes X-box fans so unwilling to admit the truth?
and it was very smooth indeed, maybe you just can't afford proper PC hardware. Also the console kotor was a bug ridden mess whose bugs were fixed on PC launch and further bugs fixed with patches. Add some extra content, the capabilty of replay to edit the game to your own delight and I am 100% convinced you are an x-box fanboy.
PS2 a total crash? Riiiiiight. Where exactly do you get your sales figures from? Bill Gates wetdreams? Not being able to ship units fast enough is a good thing, it shows demand. You will note that MS had no problems with empty stores or people hitting each other over the head to get the last unit. Nope, the x-box stood there in the store totally undisturbed by crazed shoppers.
That you don't even have the intelligence of a deranged MS fanslave comes with the backward compatabilty of the PS2, a recent/. poll showed that many players found that a plus.
But you totally loose it with the dvd. Hello the x-box did the same.
Oh well. MS fanboys on/. God you must have an awfull time here.
If MS was a game company like nintendo or sega they would be dead. Just like all the others who tried it. MS own figures show that the x-box has only cost money. The only reason there is an x-box-2 coming up is because to MS even the gigantic losses of the x-box are small change. Their dream of owning the console market is to big a dream to give up and they got to much money anyway.
As for my statement that people don't like the x-box. Your right it is a 3 player market and MS finished last. Since GBA games sell at full price (at least over here) you could even argue that the gap between nintendo and sony is narrower, after all the money is made in game sales not in console sales so exactly why should nintendo care if it sells gamecube or gba games? But MS is last while they had cleared aimed to be number one. If this is not failure I don't know what is.
Judging from non-geek co-workers I meet I also get the idea that people have a PS2 or a PS2 and a x-box. Very few people seem to have just an x-box. Ofcourse just my experience is not worth much but I wonder how true this could be around the world.
Okay I am confused. what is the point?
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GPS Coke Can X-Rayed
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· Score: 3, Funny
If security sees something they don't trust then they call the bomb experts. Simple. Better a false alarm then having a plane blow up.
This seems to give the X-ray operators the idea that some cans can contain electronics. So all a terrorist now has to do is make his detonator be as neat as the coke can, thanks to the handy photo's and a x-ray operator will think "oh a suspicous thing oh no wait I seen that presentation this is one of them cans no need to check further".
I wonder about the "normal" can x-ray. Why is it all orange? Can x-rays pass through aluminium but not coca cola? For gods sake what have I been drinking all this time that stops x-rays?
So the perfect IED device is a can with a double wall, explosives inside, coke on the outside.
As a side note I have -5 -5.5 and have thought about this as lenses are costly and glasses are a nuisance. BUT now I see slightly bad (still able to read in bed without lenses or see a computer screen if I sit really close). Being blind seems infinitly worse.
Earlier this week a guy asked me if the busdriver was inside the bus he wanted. Apparantly he could see the bus and the number on it but enough to see the driver. The bus was empty as the driver had gone to get a snack.
Anyway he asked some more questions like that how many people in that car and such. His eyes looked ugly white (kinda like the horror version of geordi eyes) and he seemed to use a rounded small mirror on the end of a stick that he waved in small movements in front of his eyes.
I am raised to "not stare" so didn't ask him what kinda of handicap he had but my contact lenses certainly don't seem so much of a handicap. He is the third blind regular (presumbly working in the area) I seen at that station. 1 blind with stick and 1 with guide dog (pretty sure they are totally blind as I helped both when trains were detoured). At another station I felt kinda cheated when a girl with guidedog asked me for help and then once inside the train opened a normal book and started to read. Was before I learned that some people can only see in a tiny area of their vision. Enough to read but not enough to hurriedly board an unfamiliar train arriving on the wrong platform. Guess guidedogs can't read platform signs.
So with lenses I pretty much got perfect vision. While the laser could have me walking with a guide dog or wondering if that is a seat or a busdriver or tapping the ground for the specially ribbed tiles on the floor and hope no asshole has put his bike in the way. No thanks.
There even been/. stories on them. Really cleaning non-chemical polluted water is relativly easy. There are plenty of setups available that can be transported that will turn dirty (biological waste polluted water) into the ready to bottle water.
So why ain't they being used? Well they are. The real problem in the areas that still don't have clean water is war and corruption. A rich country can send a hundred of such devices but if they all end up in the houses of the rich instead of hooked up to the village water supply then it don't mean shit. Worse that aid is even anti-aid as it is reinforcing the problems that caused the shortage in the first place. Africa grows enough food to feed the continent AND export. Problem is that it doesn't get to the right place in time. Water is even simpler, thousands if years of life have made sure people live near water supplys. Those that didn't didn't have kid. Social evolution or something. But war moves people where nature doesn't supply for them. Off fertile watered land and into the desert.
This particulair solution is of no use. Why? It is a throw away filter attached to the ration. Wastefull (it would make them totally dependent on a constant supply of MRE from the west). To truly solve the drinking problem you need something that can supply a village for years, not a single person with 1 meal. As said the tech exists to supply the village. Problem is getting it in the right place and keeping it up and running, not so much a tech problem but a human problem. If the funds for spare parts are stolen or the parts never arrive or the fuel is used in cars to drive around the local rich etc etc etc. War is a nice one too. Everytime aid has solved a crisis and it looks like a country in africa is getting back on its feet war breaks out.
The tech solved the clean water problem. Now the politicians need to solve the war problem. Personally I am not holding my breath. Still next time you get a little note in the mailbox that the water supply is going to be cut for a few hours for maintenance don't curse eh, others have it far worse.
I am a PC gamer but sorta follow the consoles a bit to see if they ever going to supply the kinda games I like (not so far but the gba is a lot of fun).
Anyway, how often has a company done better with their second console? The only recent "new" player is sony and they had a hit straight off.
So people don't like the x-box and are not buying it. So you are in a store, you are ignoring the x=box stand and looking for playstation/pc/gba games/hardware. Why should you then look at the x-box2 stand? Sequels are rarely bigger hits.
MS never had the advantage of the new-comer, people not having bad experience with you, as the numerious bsod jokes about the x-box showed. Now they have an even worse reputation. They are still the bsod company (many many people still run 98 according to ms itself) and have now a failed console to drag them down.
So MS only really stand a chance if they got some killer games out on launch. Games that are so "must play" that people are willing to overcome the reasons they didn't buy the x-box and not be willing to wait for the PS3.
The only real killer game for the x-box is halo, halo2 is also x-box1 I believe so what exactly have they lined up for the x-box2?
But perhaps far worse for MS is the PSP and the Nintendo DS. The economy is down and people already have consoles. What they may not have is a handheld. You can only spend your money once so what do you buy, another console for the living room despite the fact that it has very few games out for it? OR do you buy a new toy you don't have yet, the PSP? You get a cool new thingy to play with and can then wait for the PS3 to come out and then compare wich is the better buy. The PS3 probably has that backward compatibilty thing so you throw out the current console (PS2 of course, nobody has an x-box) and replace it with the newer version and still play all the old games.
Geez IMPROVE THE GODDAMN PROGRAMMS. You know something funny? One of the longer running programs on the bbc and copied to dutch tv is "Have I got news for you" a program that has 1 host (now rotating on the bbc with celebs after the original hosts had a scandal) and two two man teams with a regular on each time and a celeb as guest. The hosts asks topical news questions and the teams answer either with the right answer or a funny one or often both.
It sounds like it would never appeal to the mainstream (it started on bbc2 wich should tell you enough) but it does. Other stuff has come and gone but that show is still there with only the host now changed.
So why oh why is the bbc showing more and more reality shows and wondering why the viewers are dropping off left right and center? (where as no-one has attempted to duplicate the success of hignfy despite the fact that it only runs a few weeks per year and there is news year round)
Are tv-makers so dumb that they just can't see that while their programs may score high with focus groups there is one tiny little problem with focus groups? That people with real jobs and lifes just don't have the time to sit on a focus group.
Here is a single golden rule for tv. DO NOT AIR 2 OF THE SAME TYPE OF PROGRAMS AFTER EACH OTHER OR ON TWO CHANNELS. Just look at the bbc schedule. Multiple cooking, home improvement, reality crap, soaps, gardening. Nothing to get me watching. Not that I mind cooking shows. BUT NOT 2 behind each other. Jeez.
This patent seems silly to the extreem. If ever implemented it will be the final proof that tv-makers have lost all touch with reality. JUST make programs people want to watch. Do not try to appeal to all people at the same time as noone will like that. But also make sure that the people not attracted the current 30 minute program have something to watch afterwards.
What is really killing tv is that if there is only 1 watchable program at say 9:30 then the risk is that person remembers to late and never turns the tv on at all.
Instead you want to say get a person to watch at 8:00 to something that sorta interests them, then sit through the program at 8:30 that doesn't totally repulse them, then be slightly interested by something they didn't expect at 9:00 and finally at 9:30 ready for their program and hopefully to stay for the rest of the evening.
That is at least how tv worked for me, I had it on in the background and if something came along that intrested me I watch, if something didn't I might switch channels and watch something else while doing other stuff. But nowadays I get repulsed even having the current crap on mute. So I don't watch at all, not even the hot stuff, not the mildly intresting stuff (and for dutch tv) certainly not the commercials.
As a side not isn't there plenty of prior art, I seen plenty of "quizes" that asked you about something you seen on the program or read in an article. Hardly new.
The only thing that would really work is a trusted 3rd party. Seller sends good to 3rd party, buyer send money, clerk at 3rd party does a check (money is easy but also check the goods are what the seller claims and what the buyer expects) then if all checks out send the item to tbe buyer and the money to the seller. Case closed, impossible to do fraud.
An obvious candidate for that 3rd party role would be the national postal service. They got the network, the security, they already do this service in dutch it is called rembours, the items is shipped but instead of paying the shipping company you pay the postal clerk, the only extra is the checking of the goods. Shouldn't be too hard to add. And it might make up for the fact that less and less mail is send.
Maybe I should send them this idea, might put ebay out of business overnight. A trusted company with its own cops and deleviry used to dealing around the world. Mmmm, how exactly do you apply for a patent?
This guy wanted a laptop on the cheap. Do you really think that he thought this laptop was 100% legal? Exactly where are all these "new never used in box" items coming from? People impulse buying computers?
I have a hard time believing that anybody doesn't know this kinda stuff falls of lorries. Straight throught the locked doors.
If a deal sounds to good to be true. Then it is. Simple advice. If you absolutly must buy from ebay then only do face-to-face. You wouldn't buy a used car over the net would you?
On the other hand maybe I am just a suspicious bugger.
It is the fighting in game balance. The Imp vs Reb "story" is done by wich percentage of each group completes the quest. So if you got 2 imps and 1 complets it vs 1 million rebs with 499.000 completing the quest the imps win.
The pvp combat and to a lesser extent the pve combat is unbalanced. PvP is most notable with many classes just not able to take part as their is always some uber-kiddie with every exploit and the one power macro who just can't be stopped.
But the more serious problem is that the game just isn't fun. Whatever made half-life so much greater the quake makes SWG so much less then and this is really nasty, any game out there.
I have played it for a few months and I slowly come to the realisation that there are no unbalances bugs or lack of content. The entire game from beginning to end is just wrong. It seems like every decission they took they took the one that was the least fun. I think that if you really sat down with the game, noted every irritant and then build a game with those you would have the perfect MMORPG. There is something there but sony is unable to bring it out, they tried for two years and honestly it is only getting worse.
Of course those who still play it will defend it, they are like smokers who say they like smoking, SWG has one thing, like EQ it is addicting, the addicition is you searching for the little bit of fun that Sony has missed. You think that just around the next skill box, the next job there is gonna be fun. There isn't.
I had the situation 2 times. The first with windows 2000 and exactly the same hardware except first time I installed with only the 1 cpu and the other a dummy. I then managed to get someone to give up his old P3 cpu and reinstalled. I immidiatly noticed that what was before a slow even unstable system (slow meaning just plain slow and "gui hangs/not redrawing" and even just complete freezes. Afterwards the extra cpu was installed and the same basic software was installed it became a very nice system indeed. Pure speed wasn't as good as a more modern system but it always responded and had none of the dreaded explorer hanging while opening a large dir or worse my music skipping.
More recently I had it with windows XP pre SP1, however here the motherboard changed from a asus single P3 to a dual P3, however the change was remarkeble (why XP on a P3 my athlon caught fire, damn those things get hot), previously XP was just the old windows, hanging at times and just not that good. With the dual it truly became good. No crashes or freezes or unexplained reboots.
Of course these are hardly scientific results but I noticed the same on Linux. Dual machines just seem better even when using the same crappy brand hardware (asus is hardly a server grade motherboard maker).
As said I am not an expert am just describing my experiences so that another lay person can understand it. I run and maintain single and dual workstation/gamestations and servers and the duals just perform better.
I will avoid the tech terms (partly because they would confuse you, partly because I don't know them all but mostly because they ain't needed.
A single CPU computer can execute ONE instruction at the time. Meaning one program thread running at the time. But wait you say, my OS can run multiple programs at the same time. WRONG. It can't. It is a trick. It is running one program at the time but it is switching the program it is running really fast. There is however a problem with this. When it has switched to a program all the other programs are effectevily at the the mercy of the program now running INCLUDING the OS. Wich is why DOS and Windows and Linux and Mac OS and all the others had "hangups". With an extremely well written OS these hangups (when a program doesn't switch back to the OS) can be avoided but it still remains a case that all the programs and the OS are fighting for time on 1 single cpu.
So what happens when you add a cpu? Well a lot less switching PLUS if a program for whatever reason does not switch properly the OS can still be run on the other processor. Just making a windows box a dual CPU instantly makes it far more robuust. I encountered this myself with an old dell P3 that had a dual board but no dual CPU installed. Before I added a second CPU it was the usual windows crap of hangs and reboots and BSoD. Afterwards it ran as stable as a unix machine. Simple things like openeing a complex folder in exploder no longer "froze" the desktop as it could simple run exploder on one CPU and say word or my mp3 player on the other.
Don't forget too that there think like ATA harddrives and CD-ROM need the cpu to drive them. This takes a lot of long cycles and a lot of waiting, not so much CPU power as just time on the CPU. With a second one to do all the other tasks this makes everything run far smoother.
So what is better? Running 1 2ghz cpu or 2 1ghz cpu's? Depends. If you are running 1 program thread go with the 1 cpu. It will take all the cpu time but will not need to share it. If however you are running countless small threads go with the 2 or more solution. Threads will have access faster and you will loose less cpu time on the time needed to execute switches.
Oh yeah that is another problem. Switching between programs takes cpu time as well. It is not unknown for single CPU systems to spend so much time on switching they don't have time to run anything anymore. The old to many running programs problem known from windows but wich affects every OS.
Lastly there is a simple problem. Say you want real power do you go for a quad 2ghz or a single 8ghz. Answer? It is a trick, no such thing as a 8ghz cpu.
If you get the chance buy a second hand dual P3 and install windows 2000+ or Linux on it and be amazed. That old system will respond a lot faster underload then your 3ghz monster.
Name the price of those 4gb cards plus a player that can even handle them (many are restricted to 512mb expansion) add the two together and see how many iPod's you can buy for that that still has a couple of times the space.
Memorie devices do have longer battery lives as the moving HD sucks a lot of juice but for the fast majority of people that is not a problem. Use it a couple of hours a day, plug it into the recharger when home and you never run out. People have already been trained to empty their pockets and recharge with phones and pda's.
Although I got to admit that I am currently looking for a cheap memory device since my current Nomad Zen battery life of about 8 hours means it often cuts out during work. Not good if you work in a factory and you have to spend the last hour of the night shift without music to keep you going.
So you think the best way to make friends is to speak a language they don't understand? To spam an english community with portugese?
Of couse you don't.
Neither do I think do those who do this kinda thing, they are like the gnaa and "ME TOO" aolers. God knows what motivates them but I don't think it is making friends.
Is that so hard to understand? Any tourist guide book can teach you that line and the repsonses. "Yeah sure" "Nee sorry" "Want to buy some good weed?" etc etc
Sure holland may be an exception, plenty of foreigners say this, as the fast majority of us speak and understand english fairly well. Not fluent but less face it your a yank, raping the english language for centuries and your proud of it.
So it is bit of give and take, we can't expect americans to learn a second language because america doesn't have any communities inside that speak another language (that is a bullshit excuse, they do). The valid excuse, if americans travel a bit they have to learn an awfull lot of languages just for a trip to europe. Dutch, german, french, danish, swedish, italian, portugese and if they visit england hardest of all, english.
BUT it isn't impossible for them to learn at least the opening lines. It is not like you even need to be fluent in them. Just make a tiny little effort.
Although I must admit that personally I find it rude to speak dutch when their is an english speaker present. Fluent english is a valuable skill to have for any dutch working person and excluding a co-worker at the cost of brushing up your language skills just doesn't make sense.
Filter people based on their nationality. Yikes. The human race already has far to much liking to filter the world according to groups. Do we really need to make this even easier?
Oh I don't like french, filter french people. I don't like americans, filter americans.
Humans are talkers and we need to talk, there is just one hurdle remaining and that is a common language (love is but aids is killing that one plus gf tends to be rather unsupporting of me going talking to that blonde with the intrestting tits^H^H^H^H^Hdialect).
English is of course acceptable to everyone who speaks it but to those who don't it is a difficult one to pick up, and human beings being the selfish assholes they are, and they would prefer the english speakers to learn their language.
The truly insane want everyone to learn esperanto. A language nobody finds easy and no established base.
Personally I am dutch so english is the natural choice for me. (dutch is far far to difficult for the foreigners to learn without very good training, it can be done but you need an expensive course)
What I am wondering is if brazillians learn english as a second language like we do in holland and are just either poor students or incredible assholes (speaking english to an american isn't kow-towing, it is showing you are a smarter, a truly cultured person doesn't limit himself to one language). Oh well people being anti-social on the net, what a suprise eh?
Slashdot Mirror
Everytime some country proposes to introduce laws on spam you get a lot of idiots claiming that it will make no difference since everyone knows all spam comes from abroad or zombie machines. Guess this will shut them up once and for all eh? Why yes, I do believe in Santa Claus why do you ask?
Remembering the story about the spam-lover a few months ago you might of course be someone who likes to be called by sales-drones but more likely you are just a person who like to cold-call people themselves and want to make it appear that this is in demand.
So give a concrete example were you where a business you wanted to call you couldn't because of the no-call-list.
So I figure I got a moral right to download x-wing as I once paid for it. If you never bought it then you have no right to it. Buy a compilation CD and if that is not available then that doesn't give you any moral let alone legal right to download it.
Then again it would be trivial for game companies to make available their old games via pay-per-download or licensse their games to a company specializing in it.
The game industry is incredibily bad at doing business. It seems to totally have lost touch wich its audience. Selling ever more expensive games with less and less in them. I remember the original Lucasarts WWII games, battle of britain and Secret weapons of the luftwaffe. They came with THICK ringbound manuals that had excellent instructions on how to play the game as well as an historic overview of the war period covered and a analasys of the effect of the airwar. Compare this with the X-wing "leaflet" and you get the feeling the old game gave you a lot more bang for your buck.
GBA games are insanely priced especially those that are just old games repackaged. When you got an industry treathing its customers as consumers you get consumers acting as "thiefs".
Put something inside the box again, for that matter GET THE BOX BACK, and make a game worth buying. Less bugs on release, just because everyone got the internet doesn't mean the first action of installing a new game should be to patch it. If a game like say "Max payne" can be completed in a weekend price it accordingly. Learn about economy of scales, better to sell a lot of games at a low price then a few games at a high price.
BUT most important, if I buy a game I should get a license to use it for the rest of my life. Don't ask me to register just to send spam. When I register you should make it possible for me to always get the game again should I loose the CD's or floppy.
In short if you don't want people to "steal" don't be a thief youreselve.
More over overpasses are a lot safer, no problem with cars that are to long, breakdowns, everything else people have mentioned.
The idea would only work if ever we get those automated cars that we been seeing in "beyond 2000" even then a proper cloverleaf would be a lot less risky. UNTIL control is taken away from all the drivers this kinda stuff is impossible. Want an experts opinion? Ask an airtraffic controller. They make bloody sure that traffic DOES NOT CROSS EACH OTHER at the same altitude. Aircraft can be very thightly packed behind each other, even sandwiched that planes take off and land on the same runway but this only works because planes can escape in the vertical. If plane A is taking off while plane B is in position to land the moment A clears the runway and plane A has a problem plane B can escape by using its altitude and turning right. As long as plane A stays on the ground or turns left and uses a different altitude everything is safe. I am sure a pilot can explain better. He probably can also tell you what happens when this goes wrong and why most major airports have 1 runway for taking off and 1 for landing.
I also seen several ideas on regular busses being fitted with guide systems so that could be driven without steering in between concrete guiderails. The advantage? It would require only track not a full road. The "hole" in the middle would make watering a lot lot easier while also leaving the area greener (and stop passenger cars from driving accross buslanes). At the same time the busdriver has less to concentrate on.
This idea seems more aimed at existing tracks. Plenty of places in the world where the old local railroad never been pulled up after the line was cancelled that could use the "faster" route for rural lines. I personally travelled by bus along a previous railroad route. Or rather the bus detoured a lot to zigzag accross highways while passing villages that if it had been following the railroad it could have served. I know because the railroad is used as a museum and the historical steam train journey is shorter then the bus journey.
So I do think the idea got some merrit, just not for freight. No big operator of a railroad is going to allow a vehicle like this. The biggest problem on the highspeed networks (where you need the signalling to be able to drive insanely fast in the worst of weather, old dutch commericial had a race driver boasting he could beat the speed limit in thick fog. He was sitting in a train :p ) is the number of vehicles that can be fitted. Better to run a few big trains then try to fit countless tiny busses on your major lines.
Since old rural lines tend to run from city center to village center a truck would have little point going there.
So a nice idea to breathe some life back into old rural lines without all the problems of busses (busses often don't really "fit" onto rural roads wich are often not designed for fast local traffic).
But as I said I seen this kinda thing before. About the closest I seen in practice is de "noord-zuid-as" bus "road" that operates in Amsterdam around the airport. Wich is a normal bus but a bit longer and drives on its own concrete road bypassing other traffic.
In Arnhem there is a trolley bus that can more easily leave the electric grid it is usually connected to by carrying its own generator. Allowing clean silent transport in the city but even more room to manouver then a normal trolley bus (they got tiny generators making off grid travel slow and noisy).
One thing I got a problem with however is their boasting about braking distances. Trains brake a lot slower and this is a good thing. People walk in a train, last thing you want is to stop so sudden all the people end up in the first carriage. Busses have a slight advantage that if they have an accident then it tends to be with passenger cars meaning they sorta just keep going. Fast braking with all your passengers loose is not a good thing. There been a few accidents with busses and lorries and the results are people dying at slow speeds. Unless this thing enforces the use of seatbelts they better make sure that emergency stop is not used.
In theory you could "synchronize" all the transmitters to a hub/switch so that there are never any collisions. However considering the speed of ethernet combined with the cost of an accurate enough clock I think the collisions are acceptable.
In a way (if I understood it right) a switch is more like a cloverleave style intersection, unlike a hub wich is a regular intersection and only 1 vehicle/packet can be on the intersection at one time, on a switch traffic wich doesn't cross destination or origin never crosses each other.
Then again maybe I am wrong.
Stop watching bad movies. If you want to see a computer controlled system like this on a smaller scale (or larger) look at computer controlled subways.
While intresting it is useless. If the cars are computer controlled you would never need a six lane highway. Why? Humans need lots of space to avoid driving into each other but computers could do it with milimeters to spare (or that is what is claimed) so you would have a 1 lane road with a safety strip for emergencies and such intersection would take the form of a clover leaf.
Now if they could do the same with vehicles turning it would be more intresting.
x-box was supposed to take over the console market. Instead it has the lowest sales of the current generation and is a total failure in japan wich is the current home of gaming. MS has so far only lost money on the project. Exactly how this all add up to anything else but failure?
I really don't get x-box fans. Dreamcast fans have no trouble admitting the financial failure of their console. Neither do all the fans of the non-gb handhelds. They freely admit nintendo beat them in sales. What makes X-box fans so unwilling to admit the truth?
PS2 a total crash? Riiiiiight. Where exactly do you get your sales figures from? Bill Gates wetdreams? Not being able to ship units fast enough is a good thing, it shows demand. You will note that MS had no problems with empty stores or people hitting each other over the head to get the last unit. Nope, the x-box stood there in the store totally undisturbed by crazed shoppers.
That you don't even have the intelligence of a deranged MS fanslave comes with the backward compatabilty of the PS2, a recent /. poll showed that many players found that a plus.
But you totally loose it with the dvd. Hello the x-box did the same.
Oh well. MS fanboys on /. God you must have an awfull time here.
As for my statement that people don't like the x-box. Your right it is a 3 player market and MS finished last. Since GBA games sell at full price (at least over here) you could even argue that the gap between nintendo and sony is narrower, after all the money is made in game sales not in console sales so exactly why should nintendo care if it sells gamecube or gba games? But MS is last while they had cleared aimed to be number one. If this is not failure I don't know what is.
Judging from non-geek co-workers I meet I also get the idea that people have a PS2 or a PS2 and a x-box. Very few people seem to have just an x-box. Ofcourse just my experience is not worth much but I wonder how true this could be around the world.
This seems to give the X-ray operators the idea that some cans can contain electronics. So all a terrorist now has to do is make his detonator be as neat as the coke can, thanks to the handy photo's and a x-ray operator will think "oh a suspicous thing oh no wait I seen that presentation this is one of them cans no need to check further".
I wonder about the "normal" can x-ray. Why is it all orange? Can x-rays pass through aluminium but not coca cola? For gods sake what have I been drinking all this time that stops x-rays?
So the perfect IED device is a can with a double wall, explosives inside, coke on the outside.
As a side note I have -5 -5.5 and have thought about this as lenses are costly and glasses are a nuisance. BUT now I see slightly bad (still able to read in bed without lenses or see a computer screen if I sit really close). Being blind seems infinitly worse.
Earlier this week a guy asked me if the busdriver was inside the bus he wanted. Apparantly he could see the bus and the number on it but enough to see the driver. The bus was empty as the driver had gone to get a snack.
Anyway he asked some more questions like that how many people in that car and such. His eyes looked ugly white (kinda like the horror version of geordi eyes) and he seemed to use a rounded small mirror on the end of a stick that he waved in small movements in front of his eyes.
I am raised to "not stare" so didn't ask him what kinda of handicap he had but my contact lenses certainly don't seem so much of a handicap. He is the third blind regular (presumbly working in the area) I seen at that station. 1 blind with stick and 1 with guide dog (pretty sure they are totally blind as I helped both when trains were detoured). At another station I felt kinda cheated when a girl with guidedog asked me for help and then once inside the train opened a normal book and started to read. Was before I learned that some people can only see in a tiny area of their vision. Enough to read but not enough to hurriedly board an unfamiliar train arriving on the wrong platform. Guess guidedogs can't read platform signs.
So with lenses I pretty much got perfect vision. While the laser could have me walking with a guide dog or wondering if that is a seat or a busdriver or tapping the ground for the specially ribbed tiles on the floor and hope no asshole has put his bike in the way. No thanks.
So why ain't they being used? Well they are. The real problem in the areas that still don't have clean water is war and corruption. A rich country can send a hundred of such devices but if they all end up in the houses of the rich instead of hooked up to the village water supply then it don't mean shit. Worse that aid is even anti-aid as it is reinforcing the problems that caused the shortage in the first place. Africa grows enough food to feed the continent AND export. Problem is that it doesn't get to the right place in time. Water is even simpler, thousands if years of life have made sure people live near water supplys. Those that didn't didn't have kid. Social evolution or something. But war moves people where nature doesn't supply for them. Off fertile watered land and into the desert.
This particulair solution is of no use. Why? It is a throw away filter attached to the ration. Wastefull (it would make them totally dependent on a constant supply of MRE from the west). To truly solve the drinking problem you need something that can supply a village for years, not a single person with 1 meal. As said the tech exists to supply the village. Problem is getting it in the right place and keeping it up and running, not so much a tech problem but a human problem. If the funds for spare parts are stolen or the parts never arrive or the fuel is used in cars to drive around the local rich etc etc etc. War is a nice one too. Everytime aid has solved a crisis and it looks like a country in africa is getting back on its feet war breaks out.
The tech solved the clean water problem. Now the politicians need to solve the war problem. Personally I am not holding my breath. Still next time you get a little note in the mailbox that the water supply is going to be cut for a few hours for maintenance don't curse eh, others have it far worse.
Anyway, how often has a company done better with their second console? The only recent "new" player is sony and they had a hit straight off.
So people don't like the x-box and are not buying it. So you are in a store, you are ignoring the x=box stand and looking for playstation/pc/gba games/hardware. Why should you then look at the x-box2 stand? Sequels are rarely bigger hits.
MS never had the advantage of the new-comer, people not having bad experience with you, as the numerious bsod jokes about the x-box showed. Now they have an even worse reputation. They are still the bsod company (many many people still run 98 according to ms itself) and have now a failed console to drag them down.
So MS only really stand a chance if they got some killer games out on launch. Games that are so "must play" that people are willing to overcome the reasons they didn't buy the x-box and not be willing to wait for the PS3.
The only real killer game for the x-box is halo, halo2 is also x-box1 I believe so what exactly have they lined up for the x-box2?
But perhaps far worse for MS is the PSP and the Nintendo DS. The economy is down and people already have consoles. What they may not have is a handheld. You can only spend your money once so what do you buy, another console for the living room despite the fact that it has very few games out for it? OR do you buy a new toy you don't have yet, the PSP? You get a cool new thingy to play with and can then wait for the PS3 to come out and then compare wich is the better buy. The PS3 probably has that backward compatibilty thing so you throw out the current console (PS2 of course, nobody has an x-box) and replace it with the newer version and still play all the old games.
No MS doesn't have it easy.
It sounds like it would never appeal to the mainstream (it started on bbc2 wich should tell you enough) but it does. Other stuff has come and gone but that show is still there with only the host now changed.
So why oh why is the bbc showing more and more reality shows and wondering why the viewers are dropping off left right and center? (where as no-one has attempted to duplicate the success of hignfy despite the fact that it only runs a few weeks per year and there is news year round)
Are tv-makers so dumb that they just can't see that while their programs may score high with focus groups there is one tiny little problem with focus groups? That people with real jobs and lifes just don't have the time to sit on a focus group.
Here is a single golden rule for tv. DO NOT AIR 2 OF THE SAME TYPE OF PROGRAMS AFTER EACH OTHER OR ON TWO CHANNELS. Just look at the bbc schedule. Multiple cooking, home improvement, reality crap, soaps, gardening. Nothing to get me watching. Not that I mind cooking shows. BUT NOT 2 behind each other. Jeez.
This patent seems silly to the extreem. If ever implemented it will be the final proof that tv-makers have lost all touch with reality. JUST make programs people want to watch. Do not try to appeal to all people at the same time as noone will like that. But also make sure that the people not attracted the current 30 minute program have something to watch afterwards.
What is really killing tv is that if there is only 1 watchable program at say 9:30 then the risk is that person remembers to late and never turns the tv on at all.
Instead you want to say get a person to watch at 8:00 to something that sorta interests them, then sit through the program at 8:30 that doesn't totally repulse them, then be slightly interested by something they didn't expect at 9:00 and finally at 9:30 ready for their program and hopefully to stay for the rest of the evening.
That is at least how tv worked for me, I had it on in the background and if something came along that intrested me I watch, if something didn't I might switch channels and watch something else while doing other stuff. But nowadays I get repulsed even having the current crap on mute. So I don't watch at all, not even the hot stuff, not the mildly intresting stuff (and for dutch tv) certainly not the commercials.
As a side not isn't there plenty of prior art, I seen plenty of "quizes" that asked you about something you seen on the program or read in an article. Hardly new.
An obvious candidate for that 3rd party role would be the national postal service. They got the network, the security, they already do this service in dutch it is called rembours, the items is shipped but instead of paying the shipping company you pay the postal clerk, the only extra is the checking of the goods. Shouldn't be too hard to add. And it might make up for the fact that less and less mail is send.
Maybe I should send them this idea, might put ebay out of business overnight. A trusted company with its own cops and deleviry used to dealing around the world. Mmmm, how exactly do you apply for a patent?
I have a hard time believing that anybody doesn't know this kinda stuff falls of lorries. Straight throught the locked doors.
If a deal sounds to good to be true. Then it is. Simple advice. If you absolutly must buy from ebay then only do face-to-face. You wouldn't buy a used car over the net would you?
On the other hand maybe I am just a suspicious bugger.
The pvp combat and to a lesser extent the pve combat is unbalanced. PvP is most notable with many classes just not able to take part as their is always some uber-kiddie with every exploit and the one power macro who just can't be stopped.
But the more serious problem is that the game just isn't fun. Whatever made half-life so much greater the quake makes SWG so much less then and this is really nasty, any game out there.
I have played it for a few months and I slowly come to the realisation that there are no unbalances bugs or lack of content. The entire game from beginning to end is just wrong. It seems like every decission they took they took the one that was the least fun. I think that if you really sat down with the game, noted every irritant and then build a game with those you would have the perfect MMORPG. There is something there but sony is unable to bring it out, they tried for two years and honestly it is only getting worse.
Of course those who still play it will defend it, they are like smokers who say they like smoking, SWG has one thing, like EQ it is addicting, the addicition is you searching for the little bit of fun that Sony has missed. You think that just around the next skill box, the next job there is gonna be fun. There isn't.
Perhaps MMORPG's themselves are flawed.
More recently I had it with windows XP pre SP1, however here the motherboard changed from a asus single P3 to a dual P3, however the change was remarkeble (why XP on a P3 my athlon caught fire, damn those things get hot), previously XP was just the old windows, hanging at times and just not that good. With the dual it truly became good. No crashes or freezes or unexplained reboots.
Of course these are hardly scientific results but I noticed the same on Linux. Dual machines just seem better even when using the same crappy brand hardware (asus is hardly a server grade motherboard maker).
As said I am not an expert am just describing my experiences so that another lay person can understand it. I run and maintain single and dual workstation/gamestations and servers and the duals just perform better.
I will avoid the tech terms (partly because they would confuse you, partly because I don't know them all but mostly because they ain't needed.
A single CPU computer can execute ONE instruction at the time. Meaning one program thread running at the time. But wait you say, my OS can run multiple programs at the same time. WRONG. It can't. It is a trick. It is running one program at the time but it is switching the program it is running really fast. There is however a problem with this. When it has switched to a program all the other programs are effectevily at the the mercy of the program now running INCLUDING the OS. Wich is why DOS and Windows and Linux and Mac OS and all the others had "hangups". With an extremely well written OS these hangups (when a program doesn't switch back to the OS) can be avoided but it still remains a case that all the programs and the OS are fighting for time on 1 single cpu.
So what happens when you add a cpu? Well a lot less switching PLUS if a program for whatever reason does not switch properly the OS can still be run on the other processor. Just making a windows box a dual CPU instantly makes it far more robuust. I encountered this myself with an old dell P3 that had a dual board but no dual CPU installed. Before I added a second CPU it was the usual windows crap of hangs and reboots and BSoD. Afterwards it ran as stable as a unix machine. Simple things like openeing a complex folder in exploder no longer "froze" the desktop as it could simple run exploder on one CPU and say word or my mp3 player on the other.
Don't forget too that there think like ATA harddrives and CD-ROM need the cpu to drive them. This takes a lot of long cycles and a lot of waiting, not so much CPU power as just time on the CPU. With a second one to do all the other tasks this makes everything run far smoother.
So what is better? Running 1 2ghz cpu or 2 1ghz cpu's? Depends. If you are running 1 program thread go with the 1 cpu. It will take all the cpu time but will not need to share it. If however you are running countless small threads go with the 2 or more solution. Threads will have access faster and you will loose less cpu time on the time needed to execute switches.
Oh yeah that is another problem. Switching between programs takes cpu time as well. It is not unknown for single CPU systems to spend so much time on switching they don't have time to run anything anymore. The old to many running programs problem known from windows but wich affects every OS.
Lastly there is a simple problem. Say you want real power do you go for a quad 2ghz or a single 8ghz. Answer? It is a trick, no such thing as a 8ghz cpu.
If you get the chance buy a second hand dual P3 and install windows 2000+ or Linux on it and be amazed. That old system will respond a lot faster underload then your 3ghz monster.
Memorie devices do have longer battery lives as the moving HD sucks a lot of juice but for the fast majority of people that is not a problem. Use it a couple of hours a day, plug it into the recharger when home and you never run out. People have already been trained to empty their pockets and recharge with phones and pda's.
Although I got to admit that I am currently looking for a cheap memory device since my current Nomad Zen battery life of about 8 hours means it often cuts out during work. Not good if you work in a factory and you have to spend the last hour of the night shift without music to keep you going.
Of couse you don't.
Neither do I think do those who do this kinda thing, they are like the gnaa and "ME TOO" aolers. God knows what motivates them but I don't think it is making friends.
Sure holland may be an exception, plenty of foreigners say this, as the fast majority of us speak and understand english fairly well. Not fluent but less face it your a yank, raping the english language for centuries and your proud of it.
So it is bit of give and take, we can't expect americans to learn a second language because america doesn't have any communities inside that speak another language (that is a bullshit excuse, they do). The valid excuse, if americans travel a bit they have to learn an awfull lot of languages just for a trip to europe. Dutch, german, french, danish, swedish, italian, portugese and if they visit england hardest of all, english.
BUT it isn't impossible for them to learn at least the opening lines. It is not like you even need to be fluent in them. Just make a tiny little effort.
Although I must admit that personally I find it rude to speak dutch when their is an english speaker present. Fluent english is a valuable skill to have for any dutch working person and excluding a co-worker at the cost of brushing up your language skills just doesn't make sense.
Oh I don't like french, filter french people. I don't like americans, filter americans.
Humans are talkers and we need to talk, there is just one hurdle remaining and that is a common language (love is but aids is killing that one plus gf tends to be rather unsupporting of me going talking to that blonde with the intrestting tits^H^H^H^H^Hdialect).
English is of course acceptable to everyone who speaks it but to those who don't it is a difficult one to pick up, and human beings being the selfish assholes they are, and they would prefer the english speakers to learn their language.
The truly insane want everyone to learn esperanto. A language nobody finds easy and no established base.
Personally I am dutch so english is the natural choice for me. (dutch is far far to difficult for the foreigners to learn without very good training, it can be done but you need an expensive course)
What I am wondering is if brazillians learn english as a second language like we do in holland and are just either poor students or incredible assholes (speaking english to an american isn't kow-towing, it is showing you are a smarter, a truly cultured person doesn't limit himself to one language). Oh well people being anti-social on the net, what a suprise eh?