Because stalkers often target celebrities, who happen to be more important than the rest of us. They would have gotten the upgrrade to exclude poor, unimportant normal people, but laws cost so much as it is these days, who can afford to buy them 'as shown'?
Comparing Microsoft's industry strongarming to Appple's proprietary iTunes formating is akin to setting the Federal Government next to your long distance provider.
There are dozens of companies making mp3 players, and several other notable online music stores, most of which offer similar prices and quality. Furthermore, Apple does not attempt to prevent you from using other online music stores.
They may encourage you to stay loyal, but they do not lock you out if you refuse to sign an exclusive contract, which is what Microsoft has been doing for a long time with OEMs.
It is recognized that Microsoft currently has a monopoly; they control vastly more desktops thant he competition, and they are obviously not very interested in playing nice, certainly not when it doesn't benefit them. Therefore they are, or should be, held to a different set of standards.
If your power company started extorting money from you by threating to shut off your power, that is an abuse of monopoly. If your cell phone company says that you have to use one of their approved phones, that is something that isnt' even important enough to finish the comparison.
Who needs libraries or public parks anyhow? Joe Sixpack rarely uses either, so why would he want to pay for them?
The problem is that many people are stupid, or selfish, or both, and would rather spend their money on overpriced consumer goods and services with little value.
It is up to the government to ensure that we still have culture and public services in the future.
Just because Joe doesn't see the value of the 20% research bonus provided by the local library doesn't mean that intelligent people that might actually use it should be required to use a privately owned 'Rent-a-Book' store.
Of course, regarding public schools I would have to agree with you by and large, but rolling out wifi is only marginally more difficult than installing public drinking fountains. Securing the network may be a different story however...
So you are saying that none of the taxpayer's money should be spent on projects that actually benefit taxpayers? All of it should rightly go to crazy people that live in boxes and welfare leeches?
The chronically homeless and poverty stricken are generally the result of societal influences, and are not something that can be solved simply by throwing the city's budget at it.
I am sure there is a hefty portion of the budget already going towards various programs, but most of them are likely stopgap measures instead of education about birth control and financial planning, two of the largest (legal) hurdles faced by those below the poverty line.
Indeed; few other first world countries have such a stigma against using your mind for more noble functions. Having extended experience with computers and programming brings a label of 'pathetic nerds', while useless sports knowledge and statistics is often considered par for the course.
Luckily I was in the gifted program in Junior High and High School, where all of the teachers were dedicated Masters holders, and a much smaller percentage of students had an active criminal record.
No doubt partially responsible is the fact that intellectual careers, even in the upper echelons, are generally long term group based projects with little individual recognition for the scientists. It is the company or academic insitution that gets most of the credit.
Sure, there is the Nobel prize, but it is playing cath up and is so behind the times that when it awards someone for a contribution to everyday life, that contribution has most likely already become commonplace, so most people, if they even hear about it, think "Oh, he invented the microwave, that's nice, but those have been around forever..."
Meanwhile sports teams with annual grosses exceding countries demand that hundred of millions be spent on a new stadium or else they will abandon the city for green pastures.
I say that an additional 10% tax needs to be placed on all sports salaries greater than one million a year, with all of that tax revenue going towards funding for research and dedvelopment of things that will actually benefit mankind. Hell, put another 10% on salaries over two million and put that towards societal reforms.
Capitalism is great, but there is no reasonf or it to be unbridled like it is today. such a tiny percentage of people controlling a vasty majoority of wealth is pointless and harms the long term potential of our country.
My father has a blackberry from work that he has been quite pleased with, aside from the fact that now he has no excuse for not keeping up with e-mail.
Blackberries serve as data relays; although they can store a fair number of emails or other text based information, information about over two hudunred million people is a bit out of the question for these little gadgets, so for that reason, as well as security concerns, they likely retrieve data on a subjecct and then discard it after a while.
They will also most likely be programmed to only work within a certain radius of the base server(s), and each has its own id and could be located it lost or stolen. If someone steals one it is more likely to wind up in a pawn shop than in the hands of a dastardly spammer or identity thief.
Of course, bored or mischievious officers are likely to pull up records on anyone that catches their eye rather than suspicous or otherwise investigation-worthy targets. With the numerous checkpoints and ever present security it would not be difficult to get social security numberes from people with a simple "Airport Security, Ma'am".
It should be interesting to see how this pans out. While it certainly does have some merit, I am glad it is not being rolled out at an airport that I might actually need to use.
This seems to fill a niche where people had been asking for a wide selection of limited use, low quality songs that can be legitmately downloaded for next to nothing, in order to hear new artists or screen songs before spending more money on a high quality version that they get to keep.
You don't need cd quality sound to determine whtether a song is worth your dollar, and most songs you can pass judgement after a play or two.
Of course, 350,000 songs is not exactly an extensive library, especially since one can assume a fair portion is top forty fare, but they are no doubt planning on expanding their selections.
The article seems to point towards the conclusion that as the graphics become more and more refined, the issue becomes one of animation; The more a polygonal face resembles reality, the more we expect it to move realistically, and yet at the same time there are many more vertices to move around in many more directions.
At the core of the issue is that graphics by nature are an intermediary art form; the artist manipulates a medium, and the audience sees the final product, created over many hours of work and to the artists' satisfaction (Or the insistence of the one paying the artists.)
Animation of the human form extends from this familiar territory into that of performance art, where the medium is the artist's body, and the audience sees the result of many hours of practice and performance.
We expect cartoons, even realistic ones, to have at least some exaggeration in motion, if not form. Until recently computer graphcis fell into this category and thus our minds allowed them to bend the rules, but that time has passed. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is an example of this, however I think that the animation issues present in the movie are resulting more from financial and time crunnches than a lack of understanding and expertise on the part of the artists.
Not only are animators responsible for believable body physics, but now they must produce realistic facial expressions and body nuances, because the brains of those watching are identifying the characters onscreen as human in appearancee, but not in motion, and that descrepancy can only be remedied by the puppeteers commanding ten thousand strings.
Click rates, or the number of times people click on an ad, could explain the growth of pop-up ads. Marketers say between 2 percent and 5 percent of the people who receive them will respond with a click. That compares with less than 0.35 percent for the most widely used ad on the Net today, static banners, according to an ad server report from DoubleClick.
"Pop-unders still yield the best performance,"
This probably has something to do with the fact that a large percentage of pop ups use deceptive techniques to get someone to click on them unwittingly.
From 'System Needs to Update, click anywhere in this window to Update your system', to 'Your system is not secure, click anywhere in this window to secure your system', to "Error Xb3t10-2, click anywhere in this window to continue", to ads that simulate windows and have their own 'close' buttons that are just part of the ad graphics, (Even I have accidentally clicked on those a few times,) there are myriad different 'strategies' that advertiseers use to trick people into thinking that the pop up is not an ad, but an essential message from their computer machine that they should obey.
Meanwhile, people have learned that 'click to win' banner ads generally aren't worth their time, and so they have stopped clicking on them as often as they used to.
With the current batch of viruses growing larger and more dangerous, there will be more people that know they should be worried abotu viruses,,but don't know what they should do about it. ANy official sounding windows that pop up will likely garner a click, even if they suspect it is an ad, 'just in case'. It doesn't cost them anything, that they can see.
As to floaters and various flash ads, browser makers and macromedia need to take some responsibility and provide options to prevent that kind of crap. Going to a website and then having a floating ad with motion and sound that I cannot close, or an ad that floats over what I am trying to read, is quite irritating, and I will never purchase.
For some companies that I normally buy from, I have sent letters explaining that their intrusive ads have caused me to lower my expenditures on their products. Generally I get back a canned response that places the blame on the advertising firm that made the ad. Apparently advertising firms are privateers now, that companies give payment and blessing to, and then take no respoinsibility for.
Console graphic programmers know exactly what hardware they will be dealing with, and what that hardware is capable of. They can test and tweak to refine the framerate and level of detail, and push the hardware to its limits.
Likewise, consoles and their games do not require configuration, multiple driver versions, or myriad other things that PC gamers need to deal with.
Having a dozen different consoles that support this standard would mean that games that perform well on some might not do so well on others. Developer testing and standards adheretion should rule out complete incompatibility, but it would still be no small deal of trouble for the consumer.
But then, the consumer is never high on Microsoft's list of concerns. The hardware at this point is largely irrelevant; while the leap from the graphically inadequete Nintendo 64 and Playstation to their next generation counterparts was a marked improvement, the generation after will benefit from no such revolution.
Graphic evolution only props up consoles for so long; eventually the graphics become largely ignored, and the gameplay and art design take the forefront.
I have been on a retro kick lately, and playing 8 and 16 bit games. In those days game designers had just enough machine to have decent graphics but not enough for a game to rely on them without anything interesting behind them, although plenty of games tried.
While graphics have advanced quite rapidly in the past decade, gameplay is progressing much more slowly. Which certainly makes sense; whereas art is a factor of time and hardware, game design is a much more complicated beast to wrangle with.
Hopefully those in charge will realize that graphics are nearing a glass ceiling, and will sllow more freedom to game designers to make interesting and unique gameplay experiences, rather than relying on the old assumption that polygon and texture layers directly relate to sales.
Should a store be able to prevent a customer in their store from looking at a competitor's advertisement that they brought in with them? Or sue the advertised company?
How about if they recieve text messages when in one store about a sale in a competing store elsewhere in the mall?
Obviously a store can refuse business to anyone, but to say that a third party can be sued because of the actions of a random consumer while on the grounds, real or virtual, of another store is rather absurd.
Spyware needs to be dealt with, but whatever site I am viewing in my browser does not have exclusive rights to my attention or to my(nonexistant) consumer spending.
I like analagies, so here is another; picture in picture for televisions. Advertisement for McDonald's on your primary channel, so you flip through to another channel in the secondary picture, where there is an advertisement for Wendy's.
Obviously the targeted aspect makes things somewhat different, but it is still the customer that is ultimately in control of the exposure to advertising.
As long as the advertisments are not overtly deceptive then I do not see any legal issues with this technique.
But for the good of humanity, spyware makers need to be brought into control and held accountable for their viruses, because that is what most of them qualify as, EULA or no.
[quote]Besides, if you really need to find people you can get the police helicopter with IR sensors to comb the woods with your search and rescue team in an emergency.[/quote]
So instead of a tracking system, law enforcement in the area has to go on full alert every time an inexperienced moron gets himself into trouble in the wild? Hunting for a single person in even just a few dozen square miles is difficult and time consuming.
And generally the type of people that get lost or injured are the type that fail to take precautions such as those you listed, because they are too busy taking flash pictures with their thosuand dollar digital camera or listening to their celebrity-hosted trail guide on CD.
You can take the moron out of the city, but in the woods he is still a moron.
So instead of having a conventinal series of small explosives to blast apart the rocket and disperse the payload when and where the attackers want it, it is designed to break apart when hit by a giant laser?
Terrorists are getting lazy these days...
And defense systems are ideally situated between a potential target and that target's enemy
Theoretically anti-defense systems could be designed to make special paylod weapons detonate or what not when struck by a laser, but counter-counter measures are to be expected. And such a method would be neither cheap nor simple.
Besides, as the article states, this weapon is primarily intended to shoot down convention weapons.
And then, the next breraking story would be about a Wired article about pending litigation against an online news forum web site for large scale copyright infringement.
At least you still have your wildly outdated xenophobic, ill-informed views that we all eat boiled pig anus at each and every meal.
Well I didn't before, but I might now; however I was referring to stereotype of bland British food rather than the...colorful...'traditional' meals of the Isles.
Regardless, it is good that you have many fond memories of Stonehenge, and likely other ancient structures and formations, but I do not see a cause to claim that this project is unfarily feeding on the fame of the original structures.
The scientist is not saying "look, we had druids here too, come to New Zealand instead of England if your want to see Stonehend; ours is better, nyaa!"; such a claim would be pure nonsense.
Rather, he is striving to spread knowledge and understanding, a noble goal under any circumstances.
Who's country precisely did you mean? I am not really sure that the modern Britism Isles can claim stonehenge as their 'heritage' when it was built thousands of years ago by a very different people, who were later nearly erradicated by the Romans.
The next thing you know they will be stealing your Arthurian mythology.
If the free wireless internet access is funded via advertisements, then those ads are not spam. Television ads are not spam; spam is widespread and unsolicited advertisement.
This is not to say that advertising is not often irritating and intrusive, but beggars can not be browsers without being subjected to ads.
Of course, they could very well be monitoring and recording what you are doing online, above and beyond simple browsing information, in the name of 'targeted marketing'. But that is for the tin foil crowd to determine; I do not have a laptop, let alone use wireless access in public locations, so I am not too concerned about the privacy implications, 'First they came for the WiFiers' be damned.
While Knights of the Old Republic may certainly be open, it is not 'branching' at all.
When you really get down to it, the storyline is as interactive as Half-Life's.; There is only one story impacting descision that you actually get to make in the entire game, right at the end, that only affects the ending.
Even the 'character development' with the other player controlled characters was purely linear. You just click whatever, and they might get mad, but that jsut delays their sub plot.
The gameplay, graphics, and voice acting were all superb, but the plot and scripting could have used a few more weeks to increase the complexity.
Desipte the likelyhood that you are simply throwing out flame bait, I felt I would respond.
Why shouldn't one see their competior's come up first on an indpendant list with no binding contract between the lister and the listees? And especially so when the one on top does have a contract with the one doing the listing?
Regarding JewWatch; the pagerank system does not indicate what sites that google feels are superior sites, it ranks by popularity. If JewWatch is linked to by more sites than actual jewish sites, why should it not be listed first? Moving it around when it is not an illegal site would damage google's credibility.
Furthermore, there is nothing in google's policy stating that they would remove sites if someone gathers 50,000, or any number, of 'online signatures'(also known as 'the most pointless and ineffective political tool ever').
Someone at google, without the proper authority to do so, replied to an inquiry about JewWatch with a response akin to "If enough petitions are gathered, w e will look into it". You can search on snopes.com for more details,,for now it is time to sleep.
Other companies are not prohibited from mentioning another companies name, especially when those other companies are offering comparisons between similar companies, or information about a specific company.
Obviously a company cannot claim that their competitor's products will kill your family and set your house on fire (unless of course, the product in question is the "Famil-Cide 3000x: Flamethrower Edition"), but they can use another companies name in association with facts and figures that are either obviously true or obviously opinion.
Of coruse, I am speaking generally, and there are many ins and outs of trademark law, but company names, especially when they double as stock market identification, are hardly banished form the lexicon of competing businesses, let alone third parties that are not even in the same markets.
Your search - AXA - did not match any documents. No pages were found containing "AXA".
If AXA doesn't show up on google at all, obviously it cannot be confused with a competitor.
Aside form websites that contain or link to illegal content, google should be able to do whatever it wants regarding page rank, advertisements, and anything else. Unless a company is paying them money, they owe that company nothing. If the sponsered links are off to the side and labeled, the opportunity for confusion is slim when dealing with anyone of average intellect.
But then, everything of course needs to be designed with the most moronic fool in mind, no matter how much it inconveniences the rest of us...
You and your replies seem to be missing the point that it is not a model; it is a playset designed for small children like the one in the photograph. He also says that it is quite sturdy, and designed to not have small piece come off during use.
It is a labor of love that a caring father created for his children, not to impress the denizens of slashdot. I strongly doubt he had anything to do with this getting posted on the front page, and seeing as how he isn't willing to ship it he doesn't benefit much from it.
I think for an object made largely from wood and decals it looks quite good, and most eight year olds would be thrilled with it, not to mention the envy of their friends. Just because it isn't covered in molded plastic doesn't make it less impressive.
For someone who still plays with toys, you are rather crtical of how someone else spends their time. Don't take that the wrong way; I paint and convert tabletop figures all the time; I just don't project arbitrary standards inappropriately over the internet.
Now we can have morons holding one phone up to the radio, while talking to their friends on a second phone about the song they are listening to, and driving with their knees.
As previously concluded above, the service is overpriced for something that google provides for free form the safety of your own home.
Although, we might get osme interesting stories about wrecks caused by people trying to figure out the name of that song about "Dead Man's Curve"...
You seem to be under the impression that secretive and trench-clad gestapo will be following foreigners around with goggles that identify fingerprints instantly and without any of that messy powder.
Finding fingerprints takes time and training, and fingerprint match searches take time and resources as well. If the government wanted to gather data that it could use against guests in our country there are more effective and less expensive things that could be done, such as smart cards that must be used when buying certain items or going to certain places.
And why do so many partake of the stigma that fingerprinti ng is onyl for criminals? Many parents have their children fingerprinted so that they can be identified, as do many that suffer from mental disorders or other medical conditions where they might not be able to identify themselves.
Also, if you lose your passport, you will more than likely be able to expediate the process of a replacement if your fingerprints can confirm your identity.
The tens of thousands of fingerprints that are taken are going to sit in the FBI datacenter along with all the rest. If someone searches for your prints, chances are that you are either a suspect or a victim. And if you are already a suspect, not having fingerprints on file isn't going to reduce suspicion.
Slashdot Mirror
Because stalkers often target celebrities, who happen to be more important than the rest of us. They would have gotten the upgrrade to exclude poor, unimportant normal people, but laws cost so much as it is these days, who can afford to buy them 'as shown'?
Comparing Microsoft's industry strongarming to Appple's proprietary iTunes formating is akin to setting the Federal Government next to your long distance provider.
There are dozens of companies making mp3 players, and several other notable online music stores, most of which offer similar prices and quality. Furthermore, Apple does not attempt to prevent you from using other online music stores.
They may encourage you to stay loyal, but they do not lock you out if you refuse to sign an exclusive contract, which is what Microsoft has been doing for a long time with OEMs.
It is recognized that Microsoft currently has a monopoly; they control vastly more desktops thant he competition, and they are obviously not very interested in playing nice, certainly not when it doesn't benefit them. Therefore they are, or should be, held to a different set of standards.
If your power company started extorting money from you by threating to shut off your power, that is an abuse of monopoly. If your cell phone company says that you have to use one of their approved phones, that is something that isnt' even important enough to finish the comparison.
Warning, sleep deprived ramblings ahead!
Who needs libraries or public parks anyhow? Joe Sixpack rarely uses either, so why would he want to pay for them?
The problem is that many people are stupid, or selfish, or both, and would rather spend their money on overpriced consumer goods and services with little value.
It is up to the government to ensure that we still have culture and public services in the future.
Just because Joe doesn't see the value of the 20% research bonus provided by the local library doesn't mean that intelligent people that might actually use it should be required to use a privately owned 'Rent-a-Book' store.
Of course, regarding public schools I would have to agree with you by and large, but rolling out wifi is only marginally more difficult than installing public drinking fountains. Securing the network may be a different story however...
Warning, hyperbole and stereotypes ahead!
So you are saying that none of the taxpayer's money should be spent on projects that actually benefit taxpayers? All of it should rightly go to crazy people that live in boxes and welfare leeches?
The chronically homeless and poverty stricken are generally the result of societal influences, and are not something that can be solved simply by throwing the city's budget at it.
I am sure there is a hefty portion of the budget already going towards various programs, but most of them are likely stopgap measures instead of education about birth control and financial planning, two of the largest (legal) hurdles faced by those below the poverty line.
Indeed; few other first world countries have such a stigma against using your mind for more noble functions. Having extended experience with computers and programming brings a label of 'pathetic nerds', while useless sports knowledge and statistics is often considered par for the course.
Luckily I was in the gifted program in Junior High and High School, where all of the teachers were dedicated Masters holders, and a much smaller percentage of students had an active criminal record.
No doubt partially responsible is the fact that intellectual careers, even in the upper echelons, are generally long term group based projects with little individual recognition for the scientists. It is the company or academic insitution that gets most of the credit.
Sure, there is the Nobel prize, but it is playing cath up and is so behind the times that when it awards someone for a contribution to everyday life, that contribution has most likely already become commonplace, so most people, if they even hear about it, think "Oh, he invented the microwave, that's nice, but those have been around forever..."
Meanwhile sports teams with annual grosses exceding countries demand that hundred of millions be spent on a new stadium or else they will abandon the city for green pastures.
I say that an additional 10% tax needs to be placed on all sports salaries greater than one million a year, with all of that tax revenue going towards funding for research and dedvelopment of things that will actually benefit mankind. Hell, put another 10% on salaries over two million and put that towards societal reforms.
Capitalism is great, but there is no reasonf or it to be unbridled like it is today. such a tiny percentage of people controlling a vasty majoority of wealth is pointless and harms the long term potential of our country.
Well that certainly go off track a bit.
My father has a blackberry from work that he has been quite pleased with, aside from the fact that now he has no excuse for not keeping up with e-mail.
Blackberries serve as data relays; although they can store a fair number of emails or other text based information, information about over two hudunred million people is a bit out of the question for these little gadgets, so for that reason, as well as security concerns, they likely retrieve data on a subjecct and then discard it after a while.
They will also most likely be programmed to only work within a certain radius of the base server(s), and each has its own id and could be located it lost or stolen. If someone steals one it is more likely to wind up in a pawn shop than in the hands of a dastardly spammer or identity thief.
Of course, bored or mischievious officers are likely to pull up records on anyone that catches their eye rather than suspicous or otherwise investigation-worthy targets. With the numerous checkpoints and ever present security it would not be difficult to get social security numberes from people with a simple "Airport Security, Ma'am".
It should be interesting to see how this pans out. While it certainly does have some merit, I am glad it is not being rolled out at an airport that I might actually need to use.
This seems to fill a niche where people had been asking for a wide selection of limited use, low quality songs that can be legitmately downloaded for next to nothing, in order to hear new artists or screen songs before spending more money on a high quality version that they get to keep.
You don't need cd quality sound to determine whtether a song is worth your dollar, and most songs you can pass judgement after a play or two.
Of course, 350,000 songs is not exactly an extensive library, especially since one can assume a fair portion is top forty fare, but they are no doubt planning on expanding their selections.
The article seems to point towards the conclusion that as the graphics become more and more refined, the issue becomes one of animation; The more a polygonal face resembles reality, the more we expect it to move realistically, and yet at the same time there are many more vertices to move around in many more directions.
At the core of the issue is that graphics by nature are an intermediary art form; the artist manipulates a medium, and the audience sees the final product, created over many hours of work and to the artists' satisfaction (Or the insistence of the one paying the artists.)
Animation of the human form extends from this familiar territory into that of performance art, where the medium is the artist's body, and the audience sees the result of many hours of practice and performance.
We expect cartoons, even realistic ones, to have at least some exaggeration in motion, if not form. Until recently computer graphcis fell into this category and thus our minds allowed them to bend the rules, but that time has passed. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is an example of this, however I think that the animation issues present in the movie are resulting more from financial and time crunnches than a lack of understanding and expertise on the part of the artists.
Not only are animators responsible for believable body physics, but now they must produce realistic facial expressions and body nuances, because the brains of those watching are identifying the characters onscreen as human in appearancee, but not in motion, and that descrepancy can only be remedied by the puppeteers commanding ten thousand strings.
This probably has something to do with the fact that a large percentage of pop ups use deceptive techniques to get someone to click on them unwittingly.
From 'System Needs to Update, click anywhere in this window to Update your system', to 'Your system is not secure, click anywhere in this window to secure your system', to "Error Xb3t10-2, click anywhere in this window to continue", to ads that simulate windows and have their own 'close' buttons that are just part of the ad graphics, (Even I have accidentally clicked on those a few times,) there are myriad different 'strategies' that advertiseers use to trick people into thinking that the pop up is not an ad, but an essential message from their computer machine that they should obey.
Meanwhile, people have learned that 'click to win' banner ads generally aren't worth their time, and so they have stopped clicking on them as often as they used to.
With the current batch of viruses growing larger and more dangerous, there will be more people that know they should be worried abotu viruses,
As to floaters and various flash ads, browser makers and macromedia need to take some responsibility and provide options to prevent that kind of crap. Going to a website and then having a floating ad with motion and sound that I cannot close, or an ad that floats over what I am trying to read, is quite irritating, and I will never purchase.
For some companies that I normally buy from, I have sent letters explaining that their intrusive ads have caused me to lower my expenditures on their products. Generally I get back a canned response that places the blame on the advertising firm that made the ad. Apparently advertising firms are privateers now, that companies give payment and blessing to, and then take no respoinsibility for.
...are standardization and reliability.
Console graphic programmers know exactly what hardware they will be dealing with, and what that hardware is capable of. They can test and tweak to refine the framerate and level of detail, and push the hardware to its limits.
Likewise, consoles and their games do not require configuration, multiple driver versions, or myriad other things that PC gamers need to deal with.
Having a dozen different consoles that support this standard would mean that games that perform well on some might not do so well on others. Developer testing and standards adheretion should rule out complete incompatibility, but it would still be no small deal of trouble for the consumer.
But then, the consumer is never high on Microsoft's list of concerns. The hardware at this point is largely irrelevant; while the leap from the graphically inadequete Nintendo 64 and Playstation to their next generation counterparts was a marked improvement, the generation after will benefit from no such revolution.
Graphic evolution only props up consoles for so long; eventually the graphics become largely ignored, and the gameplay and art design take the forefront.
I have been on a retro kick lately, and playing 8 and 16 bit games. In those days game designers had just enough machine to have decent graphics but not enough for a game to rely on them without anything interesting behind them, although plenty of games tried.
While graphics have advanced quite rapidly in the past decade, gameplay is progressing much more slowly. Which certainly makes sense; whereas art is a factor of time and hardware, game design is a much more complicated beast to wrangle with.
Hopefully those in charge will realize that graphics are nearing a glass ceiling, and will sllow more freedom to game designers to make interesting and unique gameplay experiences, rather than relying on the old assumption that polygon and texture layers directly relate to sales.
Should a store be able to prevent a customer in their store from looking at a competitor's advertisement that they brought in with them? Or sue the advertised company?
How about if they recieve text messages when in one store about a sale in a competing store elsewhere in the mall?
Obviously a store can refuse business to anyone, but to say that a third party can be sued because of the actions of a random consumer while on the grounds, real or virtual, of another store is rather absurd.
Spyware needs to be dealt with, but whatever site I am viewing in my browser does not have exclusive rights to my attention or to my(nonexistant) consumer spending.
I like analagies, so here is another; picture in picture for televisions. Advertisement for McDonald's on your primary channel, so you flip through to another channel in the secondary picture, where there is an advertisement for Wendy's.
Obviously the targeted aspect makes things somewhat different, but it is still the customer that is ultimately in control of the exposure to advertising.
As long as the advertisments are not overtly deceptive then I do not see any legal issues with this technique.
But for the good of humanity, spyware makers need to be brought into control and held accountable for their viruses, because that is what most of them qualify as, EULA or no.
[quote]Besides, if you really need to find people you can get the police helicopter with IR sensors to comb the woods with your search and rescue team in an emergency.[/quote]
So instead of a tracking system, law enforcement in the area has to go on full alert every time an inexperienced moron gets himself into trouble in the wild? Hunting for a single person in even just a few dozen square miles is difficult and time consuming.
And generally the type of people that get lost or injured are the type that fail to take precautions such as those you listed, because they are too busy taking flash pictures with their thosuand dollar digital camera or listening to their celebrity-hosted trail guide on CD.
You can take the moron out of the city, but in the woods he is still a moron.
So instead of having a conventinal series of small explosives to blast apart the rocket and disperse the payload when and where the attackers want it, it is designed to break apart when hit by a giant laser?
Terrorists are getting lazy these days...
And defense systems are ideally situated between a potential target and that target's enemy
Theoretically anti-defense systems could be designed to make special paylod weapons detonate or what not when struck by a laser, but counter-counter measures are to be expected. And such a method would be neither cheap nor simple.
Besides, as the article states, this weapon is primarily intended to shoot down convention weapons.
And then, the next breraking story would be about a Wired article about pending litigation against an online news forum web site for large scale copyright infringement.
At least you still have your wildly outdated xenophobic, ill-informed views that we all eat boiled pig anus at each and every meal.
Well I didn't before, but I might now; however I was referring to stereotype of bland British food rather than the...colorful...'traditional' meals of the Isles.
Regardless, it is good that you have many fond memories of Stonehenge, and likely other ancient structures and formations, but I do not see a cause to claim that this project is unfarily feeding on the fame of the original structures.
The scientist is not saying "look, we had druids here too, come to New Zealand instead of England if your want to see Stonehend; ours is better, nyaa!"; such a claim would be pure nonsense.
Rather, he is striving to spread knowledge and understanding, a noble goal under any circumstances.
Who's country precisely did you mean? I am not really sure that the modern Britism Isles can claim stonehenge as their 'heritage' when it was built thousands of years ago by a very different people, who were later nearly erradicated by the Romans.
The next thing you know they will be stealing your Arthurian mythology.
At least your still have your cuisine...
If the free wireless internet access is funded via advertisements, then those ads are not spam. Television ads are not spam; spam is widespread and unsolicited advertisement.
This is not to say that advertising is not often irritating and intrusive, but beggars can not be browsers without being subjected to ads.
Of course, they could very well be monitoring and recording what you are doing online, above and beyond simple browsing information, in the name of 'targeted marketing'. But that is for the tin foil crowd to determine; I do not have a laptop, let alone use wireless access in public locations, so I am not too concerned about the privacy implications, 'First they came for the WiFiers' be damned.
While Knights of the Old Republic may certainly be open, it is not 'branching' at all.
When you really get down to it, the storyline is as interactive as Half-Life's.; There is only one story impacting descision that you actually get to make in the entire game, right at the end, that only affects the ending.
Even the 'character development' with the other player controlled characters was purely linear. You just click whatever, and they might get mad, but that jsut delays their sub plot.
The gameplay, graphics, and voice acting were all superb, but the plot and scripting could have used a few more weeks to increase the complexity.
Desipte the likelyhood that you are simply throwing out flame bait, I felt I would respond.
,for now it is time to sleep.
Why shouldn't one see their competior's come up first on an indpendant list with no binding contract between the lister and the listees? And especially so when the one on top does have a contract with the one doing the listing?
Regarding JewWatch; the pagerank system does not indicate what sites that google feels are superior sites, it ranks by popularity. If JewWatch is linked to by more sites than actual jewish sites, why should it not be listed first? Moving it around when it is not an illegal site would damage google's credibility.
Furthermore, there is nothing in google's policy stating that they would remove sites if someone gathers 50,000, or any number, of 'online signatures'(also known as 'the most pointless and ineffective political tool ever').
Someone at google, without the proper authority to do so, replied to an inquiry about JewWatch with a response akin to "If enough petitions are gathered, w e will look into it". You can search on snopes.com for more details,
Other companies are not prohibited from mentioning another companies name, especially when those other companies are offering comparisons between similar companies, or information about a specific company.
Obviously a company cannot claim that their competitor's products will kill your family and set your house on fire (unless of course, the product in question is the "Famil-Cide 3000x: Flamethrower Edition"), but they can use another companies name in association with facts and figures that are either obviously true or obviously opinion.
Of coruse, I am speaking generally, and there are many ins and outs of trademark law, but company names, especially when they double as stock market identification, are hardly banished form the lexicon of competing businesses, let alone third parties that are not even in the same markets.
If AXA doesn't show up on google at all, obviously it cannot be confused with a competitor.
Aside form websites that contain or link to illegal content, google should be able to do whatever it wants regarding page rank, advertisements, and anything else. Unless a company is paying them money, they owe that company nothing. If the sponsered links are off to the side and labeled, the opportunity for confusion is slim when dealing with anyone of average intellect.
But then, everything of course needs to be designed with the most moronic fool in mind, no matter how much it inconveniences the rest of us...
You and your replies seem to be missing the point that it is not a model; it is a playset designed for small children like the one in the photograph. He also says that it is quite sturdy, and designed to not have small piece come off during use.
It is a labor of love that a caring father created for his children, not to impress the denizens of slashdot. I strongly doubt he had anything to do with this getting posted on the front page, and seeing as how he isn't willing to ship it he doesn't benefit much from it.
I think for an object made largely from wood and decals it looks quite good, and most eight year olds would be thrilled with it, not to mention the envy of their friends. Just because it isn't covered in molded plastic doesn't make it less impressive.
For someone who still plays with toys, you are rather crtical of how someone else spends their time. Don't take that the wrong way; I paint and convert tabletop figures all the time; I just don't project arbitrary standards inappropriately over the internet.
Now we can have morons holding one phone up to the radio, while talking to their friends on a second phone about the song they are listening to, and driving with their knees.
As previously concluded above, the service is overpriced for something that google provides for free form the safety of your own home.
Although, we might get osme interesting stories about wrecks caused by people trying to figure out the name of that song about "Dead Man's Curve"...
You seem to be under the impression that secretive and trench-clad gestapo will be following foreigners around with goggles that identify fingerprints instantly and without any of that messy powder.
Finding fingerprints takes time and training, and fingerprint match searches take time and resources as well. If the government wanted to gather data that it could use against guests in our country there are more effective and less expensive things that could be done, such as smart cards that must be used when buying certain items or going to certain places.
And why do so many partake of the stigma that fingerprinti ng is onyl for criminals? Many parents have their children fingerprinted so that they can be identified, as do many that suffer from mental disorders or other medical conditions where they might not be able to identify themselves.
Also, if you lose your passport, you will more than likely be able to expediate the process of a replacement if your fingerprints can confirm your identity.
The tens of thousands of fingerprints that are taken are going to sit in the FBI datacenter along with all the rest. If someone searches for your prints, chances are that you are either a suspect or a victim. And if you are already a suspect, not having fingerprints on file isn't going to reduce suspicion.
I love the smell of 'diplomacy' in the morning. *Sniiiiff* Smells like...Economic sanctions and illegal activity. Someday this war's going to begin...