I like Max Payne, but the frequent and long load times are just sucking the fun out of it. Start a level, get creamed in 10 seconds by some tough situation, then wait >45 sec to reload - repeat indefinitely - just isn't fun. I don't mind hammering on the same terminal challenge for prolonged periods, but when the majority of the gaming session is sitting there doing nothing while waiting for the load meter to progress (or, worse, watching the same uninterruptable cinematics eat up time doing nothing useful (at least load times are loading something)), well, I'll go do something else like wash dishes. For me, the most frustrating part of Max Payne wasn't the combat, it was the jumping puzzles during the drug-induced fever-dreams. Those were a royal pain in the ass.
I ran into one in Final Fantasy VII - I made it most of the way through the game, and was on the way to fight Sephiroth... when I ran out of money and potions, and I'd used the Moogle just far enough that I couldn't make it back to the shop. So, I was kind of screwed.
One of these days, I'm going to play all the way through the game again, and at least make it to the Sephiroth fight... one of these days...
Well, if DJ Drama's gotten anything out of this arrest, he's got one more person buying his mixtapes - me (who isn't particularly into rap). That, and I would be interested to see if this ends up causing some ill will to be shown to the RIAA from some of the established rap labels (imagine, if you will, Suge Knight, Will Smith, Dr. Dre, and Jay Z joining forces against the RIAA, because of this... or something - Nahhhhh).
One other utterly stupid question - how much of the recorded CO2 emmissions can be counted for exhalation? This isn't so much an "how does that data effect global warming" question as much as it is as "I'm curious" question.
The US and Europe have not scaled back GHG emissions; they're still increasing. Maybe increasing at a slower rate though (I can't remember what the current estimates are)
In any specific areas? I remember that emission controls were put on power plants, and the use of freon in air conditioners and refrigerators was scaled back, plus a few other things. Do you have some data to point me towards (say, comparing emissions in the late 70s and the present)?
Also, what about emissions elsewhere, such as Russia, India, China, the Middle East, and Mexico (and other 2nd and 3rd World countries with a industrial (and oil producing) economic base)?
I'll have to wait on reading your links when I get home as the corporate web filter has those sites blocked.
...because some comments by James Burke on the first series of Connections (which I've been re-watching) have had the wheels in my brain turning for a few weeks now. Specifically, Burke says that it was warmer in England prior (as in within a generation prior) to the medieval ice-age then it was "now" ("now" being when the program was aired - 1979).
So, this has had me wondering - what proof do we have that the global warming is primarily caused by humans? Also, considering that humans have greatly reduced their emission of pollutants since the industrial revolution (or, for that matter, the 1970s), what effect has that had on global warming. From what all I've heard, despite our best efforts to scale back the use of greenhouse gasses in the US and Europe, things are still getting worse. This leads me to my three points.
What evidence is there that global warming is primarily caused by humans, and that the effects of any enviromental factors (such as sun-spot cycles, for instance), are minimal at best?
How does the emission of greenhouse gases in first world nations (like the US and UK) relate to the emission of those gasses in the third world? If more gasses are being emitted in third world nations, why are the governments of first world nations getting hammered for this.
This, more than anything else, stinks of promoting groupthink. By penalizing those who disagree with the analysis of humanity's impact on climate change, they will prevent people from speaking their minds and prevent opposing viewpoints (which could end up strengthing the theories about how global warming occurs) from being expressed.
This has been one big nuisance suit by SCOX *HOPING* IBM would pay them off or buy them out to silence them. IBM's attitude has been "millions for defense, not one cent for tribute". They know paying SCOX off would prompt a flood of copycat suits from other busted vendors. Or, to put it another way (and to quote Rudyard Kipling):
"That if once you have paid him the Danegeld, You never get rid of the Dane."
The coffee thing was frivolous. She put the cup of coffee between her legs while driving round and burned herself, it's just plain moronic. She also got second degree burns from said cup of coffee. If it had spilled on her hands, or if she had drunk it, she still would have been burned, just in different places. If the coffee's hot enough to give third degree burns, it's too hot. Furthermore, the car was not in motion - it was parked at the time. (See: Wikipedia entry on the suit)
MS should have a program whereby if you tell them first and let them patch it, they'll give some program or hardware (Zune?) to the first reporter of the bug, but if the exploit is released (by anyone) to the wild before the patch, then the offer is null and void. Assuming MS would play fair (and not have an insider leak the bug 2 hours before the patch), seems fair and easy good business for MS. Surely the cost of a Zune or a laptop would be less than the bad press costs. Meh. There'd be those people who would just want to piss in the pool and publicly release the exploits pre-patch just to fuck over the guy who told Microsoft.
Anyhow about the science curriculum in US schools, they are actually not that bad.
When creationism is taught as science, and evolution is merely a theory that can be easily discarded, then yes, I'd say the science curriculum in US schools is lacking.
Which is only happening in the minority of schools.
This isn't even news anymore. The whole sordid saga of sex.com was reported on wired.com at least 5 years ago! Why is this making the rounds now? Because, it wasn't over 5 years ago. It's almost over now. Maybe.
Hopefully (in a future "wave") we'll finally have episodes of Blake's 7 legally available in the states (instead of either bootlegging them or getting them in a PAL VHS tape or Region 2 DVD from the UK).
Well then, as we're not talking about a corporate network (so we can't fire the senior citizens who are opening the attachments and clicking the links on the phishing E-Mails), what solution do you propose?
Confiscating senior citizens computers and demanding they get a "computing license" before they get a new one?
Requiring seniors to use Mac OS and Linux (which, by the way, I suggested in the section you cut out)?
Banning seniors from using the internet entirely?
Other
I'd certainly like to know.
So, essentially, the solution they give for #6 is hiring users who are already educated. Now, the concept is good - don't waste the company time by teaching users, get users who have been taught by other people and are already qualified. But that advice is meant for businesses, and the IT departments there. If you start taking this into the real world (because, in many ways, the business world is not the real world), then it gets stupid. Some where down the line, the user has to learn how to be secure, either by being taught by somebody, or teaching themselves.
So, suppose we decide that people should teach themselves, rather then being taught. Teaching yourself, before anything else, needs motivation. You have to want to take the time to teach yourself. So, assuming, for the sake of this example, that businesses are following the advice in #6 - and are all hiring people who already know how to be secure - then people who want to be in the workforce will be teaching themselves how to be secure. This leaves two groups of people to really worry about - retirees (who have left the work force), and kids who have not entered the work force (and the entry of the work force has not yet entered their minds).
Of those two, the first group (retirees) is more difficult to worry about than the second group. As the parents will have entered the work force, they'll have practiced what I will call "security behaviors" on their home computer, such as installing a firewall, proactive anti-virus software, and proactive anti-malware software, using third-party browsers and E-Mail clients like Firefox and Thunderbird, and possibly even not using Windows. The senior citizen in the other hand, will be either living on their own or in a retirement community, and quite possibly will have no intention of ever returning to the work force. If they have not acquired security behaviors from before they retired, by leaving the work force they no longer have any incentive to obtain those behaviors. By neglecting to teach them security behaviors now, they're now more at risk to getting infected by viruses and malware, and becoming part of the botnets that affect all users of the internet, whether they practice security behaviors or not. As it is, a solution to minimize the damage is fairly simple. Offer classes and clinics (free of charge to the attendees), organized by a non-profit organization, at retirement homes and senior centers, to teach senior citizens security behaviors and giving out free CDs with, say, the free versions of AVG & Zone Alarm, as well as Spybot, Firefox, and Thunderbird, as well as having CDs with a user-friendly Linux distro on them - so that they can do what they have been taught. And hold these clinics regularly, so people have an opportunity not only to attend, but to attend multiple times. Hopefully, this way retirees will be able to pick up some, if not all of the security behaviors practiced by/.ers and, hopefully, cut down the size of some of these botnets, and thus hopefully making the internet a little safer for everybody (and without passing any laws that would necessarily regulate the internet).
I recently helped an elderly neighbor secure her computer (I was paid for this service, and I make sure I do get paid every time I get called over for help) by installing some good firewall and anti-virus programs (as well as setting up Firefox and Thunderbird for their primary browsers. When I ran a virus scan on her computer (I installed AVG, as her McAfee subscription had expired), I found several viruses and malware programs on there, all of which I removed, which came with games she downloaded (stuff like mahjong and solitaire). I regret not writing down what viruses she had gotten infected with, so I could find out what she did.
I did the same thing on my grandmother's computer as well (when she was alive), and odds are there are a lot of seniors who are online and engage in a lot of bad habits that we know are bad - including running IE with minimal protections, opening strange attachments, and so forth. This is not a new problem, and, frankly, a problem that only education (or getting 75% of seniors to switch to Mac OS or Linux) can fix.
IBM's probably holding off until it's finished decapitating SCO, putting holy wafer in its mouth, a stake in its heart, and then burying it at a crossroads. After all, Microsoft is an opponent you want to give your full attention.
In the mean time I'm cuing up "Ride of The Valkyries" (as there isn't really a "Ride of the Nazgul" track on the soundtracks to any of the LotR soundtracks) to play once IBM decides to take the fight to Microsoft.
In retaliation, Sergey Brin has just announced plans to buy the L.A. Clippers.
What would make that even funnier, is if with Brin as owner, the Clippers won the NBA Championship. I would predict that the moment that happened, Cuban's head would not only explode, but the splatter would land in the form of a 350-page rant about how the Clipper's victory was the result of a Vast Conspiracy between the NBA Referee's association, Commissioner Stern, Google, and the Bavarian Illuminati.
As it is, anymore I'd say that Cuban has become (if he wasn't from the beginning) an 100% certified attention-whoring assclown.
Slashdot Mirror
I ran into one in Final Fantasy VII - I made it most of the way through the game, and was on the way to fight Sephiroth... when I ran out of money and potions, and I'd used the Moogle just far enough that I couldn't make it back to the shop. So, I was kind of screwed.
One of these days, I'm going to play all the way through the game again, and at least make it to the Sephiroth fight... one of these days...
So... that's what the kids are calling it these days. ;-)
That's when you hit 'em with a Thor Shot.
Well, if DJ Drama's gotten anything out of this arrest, he's got one more person buying his mixtapes - me (who isn't particularly into rap). That, and I would be interested to see if this ends up causing some ill will to be shown to the RIAA from some of the established rap labels (imagine, if you will, Suge Knight, Will Smith, Dr. Dre, and Jay Z joining forces against the RIAA, because of this... or something - Nahhhhh).
One other utterly stupid question - how much of the recorded CO2 emmissions can be counted for exhalation? This isn't so much an "how does that data effect global warming" question as much as it is as "I'm curious" question.
In any specific areas? I remember that emission controls were put on power plants, and the use of freon in air conditioners and refrigerators was scaled back, plus a few other things. Do you have some data to point me towards (say, comparing emissions in the late 70s and the present)?
Also, what about emissions elsewhere, such as Russia, India, China, the Middle East, and Mexico (and other 2nd and 3rd World countries with a industrial (and oil producing) economic base)?
I'll have to wait on reading your links when I get home as the corporate web filter has those sites blocked.
...because some comments by James Burke on the first series of Connections (which I've been re-watching) have had the wheels in my brain turning for a few weeks now. Specifically, Burke says that it was warmer in England prior (as in within a generation prior) to the medieval ice-age then it was "now" ("now" being when the program was aired - 1979).
So, this has had me wondering - what proof do we have that the global warming is primarily caused by humans? Also, considering that humans have greatly reduced their emission of pollutants since the industrial revolution (or, for that matter, the 1970s), what effect has that had on global warming. From what all I've heard, despite our best efforts to scale back the use of greenhouse gasses in the US and Europe, things are still getting worse. This leads me to my three points.
Or, to put it another way (and to quote Rudyard Kipling):
"That if once you have paid him the Danegeld,
You never get rid of the Dane."
She also got second degree burns from said cup of coffee. If it had spilled on her hands, or if she had drunk it, she still would have been burned, just in different places. If the coffee's hot enough to give third degree burns, it's too hot. Furthermore, the car was not in motion - it was parked at the time. (See: Wikipedia entry on the suit)
There was a review of the guy's book posted on /. several months ago. It wasn't precisely glowing...
When creationism is taught as science, and evolution is merely a theory that can be easily discarded, then yes, I'd say the science curriculum in US schools is lacking.
Which is only happening in the minority of schools.Hopefully (in a future "wave") we'll finally have episodes of Blake's 7 legally available in the states (instead of either bootlegging them or getting them in a PAL VHS tape or Region 2 DVD from the UK).
Well then, as we're not talking about a corporate network (so we can't fire the senior citizens who are opening the attachments and clicking the links on the phishing E-Mails), what solution do you propose?
- Confiscating senior citizens computers and demanding they get a "computing license" before they get a new one?
- Requiring seniors to use Mac OS and Linux (which, by the way, I suggested in the section you cut out)?
- Banning seniors from using the internet entirely?
- Other
I'd certainly like to know.So, essentially, the solution they give for #6 is hiring users who are already educated. Now, the concept is good - don't waste the company time by teaching users, get users who have been taught by other people and are already qualified. But that advice is meant for businesses, and the IT departments there. If you start taking this into the real world (because, in many ways, the business world is not the real world), then it gets stupid. Some where down the line, the user has to learn how to be secure, either by being taught by somebody, or teaching themselves.
So, suppose we decide that people should teach themselves, rather then being taught. Teaching yourself, before anything else, needs motivation. You have to want to take the time to teach yourself. So, assuming, for the sake of this example, that businesses are following the advice in #6 - and are all hiring people who already know how to be secure - then people who want to be in the workforce will be teaching themselves how to be secure. This leaves two groups of people to really worry about - retirees (who have left the work force), and kids who have not entered the work force (and the entry of the work force has not yet entered their minds).
Of those two, the first group (retirees) is more difficult to worry about than the second group. As the parents will have entered the work force, they'll have practiced what I will call "security behaviors" on their home computer, such as installing a firewall, proactive anti-virus software, and proactive anti-malware software, using third-party browsers and E-Mail clients like Firefox and Thunderbird, and possibly even not using Windows. The senior citizen in the other hand, will be either living on their own or in a retirement community, and quite possibly will have no intention of ever returning to the work force. If they have not acquired security behaviors from before they retired, by leaving the work force they no longer have any incentive to obtain those behaviors. By neglecting to teach them security behaviors now, they're now more at risk to getting infected by viruses and malware, and becoming part of the botnets that affect all users of the internet, whether they practice security behaviors or not. As it is, a solution to minimize the damage is fairly simple. Offer classes and clinics (free of charge to the attendees), organized by a non-profit organization, at retirement homes and senior centers, to teach senior citizens security behaviors and giving out free CDs with, say, the free versions of AVG & Zone Alarm, as well as Spybot, Firefox, and Thunderbird, as well as having CDs with a user-friendly Linux distro on them - so that they can do what they have been taught. And hold these clinics regularly, so people have an opportunity not only to attend, but to attend multiple times. Hopefully, this way retirees will be able to pick up some, if not all of the security behaviors practiced by /.ers and, hopefully, cut down the size of some of these botnets, and thus hopefully making the internet a little safer for everybody (and without passing any laws that would necessarily regulate the internet).
I recently helped an elderly neighbor secure her computer (I was paid for this service, and I make sure I do get paid every time I get called over for help) by installing some good firewall and anti-virus programs (as well as setting up Firefox and Thunderbird for their primary browsers. When I ran a virus scan on her computer (I installed AVG, as her McAfee subscription had expired), I found several viruses and malware programs on there, all of which I removed, which came with games she downloaded (stuff like mahjong and solitaire). I regret not writing down what viruses she had gotten infected with, so I could find out what she did.
I did the same thing on my grandmother's computer as well (when she was alive), and odds are there are a lot of seniors who are online and engage in a lot of bad habits that we know are bad - including running IE with minimal protections, opening strange attachments, and so forth. This is not a new problem, and, frankly, a problem that only education (or getting 75% of seniors to switch to Mac OS or Linux) can fix.It isn't relevant! It should be a "Ballmer Borg" icon. Duh!
IBM's probably holding off until it's finished decapitating SCO, putting holy wafer in its mouth, a stake in its heart, and then burying it at a crossroads. After all, Microsoft is an opponent you want to give your full attention. In the mean time I'm cuing up "Ride of The Valkyries" (as there isn't really a "Ride of the Nazgul" track on the soundtracks to any of the LotR soundtracks) to play once IBM decides to take the fight to Microsoft.
What would make that even funnier, is if with Brin as owner, the Clippers won the NBA Championship. I would predict that the moment that happened, Cuban's head would not only explode, but the splatter would land in the form of a 350-page rant about how the Clipper's victory was the result of a Vast Conspiracy between the NBA Referee's association, Commissioner Stern, Google, and the Bavarian Illuminati.
As it is, anymore I'd say that Cuban has become (if he wasn't from the beginning) an 100% certified attention-whoring assclown.
Mod parent up - punny.
Didn't a Repairman Jack novel have a gadget that did this as the McGuffin?
My question is, how many of these sites are phishing sites?
Well, you could make a joke along the lines of "I will swallow your soul (cakes)!"