Overwatch's implementation of loot boxes is slightly different from the standpoint of the rewards being merely cosmetic in nature. It doesn't unlock playability per se. My issue with loot boxes and other forms of progression reward systems is that game content (which you believe you paid for) is locked behind a door that can only be opened through either 1) a potentially obscene amount of time or 2) an indeterminable amount of cash. My first frustration with this was in Mass Effect 3, where individual characters for multiplayer were locked behind a loot based system. Try as I might I kept unlocking more skins for characters I already had instead of the new characters I really wanted to play. They didn't even offer those characters through direct sale so the ONLY way to obtain them was to gamble money buying loot boxes. I don't mind cosmetics being a gamble, but don't lock game altering characters/weapons/powerups behind a system where those with more time/money have an advantage. We all bought the game and she be able to compete in the multiplayer game modes based on pure skill.
Even if Bitcoins stay the same in value, it beats the living shit out of gold, and is far more secure against theft.
Probably not a lot of gold owners sweating it out over the fear of their gold being stolen via the internet, or becoming worthless if their computers crash or they forget a password. But now we're getting into the differences between a store of value and a currency. Gold is a store of value, you don't use it for transactions as it's not well suited for that. Bitcoin wants to be a currency, but has its own shortcomings there (and let's not even get started discussing the number of high profile thefts of bitcoin to date...)
Unless they start receiving public funding, I have to disagree. I don't care which candidate it's against, these are private companies run with private money and if they want to push personal agendas to either attract or deter potential customers, that's their right. If you're going to go to Facebook or Twitter for objective news, you're already barking up the wrong tree. These are social sites, where people post all manner of mindless rants, T&A, and pet photos. It should not be your primary source of objective news.
I really don't see a problem with the way that Tesla has implemented this or the name they choose to call it by. Clearly you are going to have some people who push it to the extreme and those people will suffer (or possibly die) because of it. I don't really see how this is all that different from cruise control in general. Cruise control was originally designed to alleviate the physical stress of maintaining a constant speed over long distances (for similar reasons that it exists on planes). Adding the ability for the car to maintain itself in a lane is a further iteration of that, as is the car's limited ability to respond to obstacles in its way. Guess what, if you set cruise control on your car and don't pay attention to changes in traffic ahead of you, you may slam into a car going slower than you, yet none of our cars warn us when we engage cruise control that we should keep checking for cars in front of us (I'm sure it's in the manual in the glove box though). Should Tesla change the name of the feature? I suppose they could, I doubt it would modify anyone's behavior. It doesn't take you that long to realize what the car appears to be able to do before you'll let it steer, accelerate, and brake, regardless of what's it called or what warning messages are read to you.
Problem is, with mobile carriers abusing us on data limits, most people are thankful that their phones will find an open network and use it to update their Facebook feeds in the background. So it's not just about maintaining a list of AP's, but also checking if you have permission to get on them.
Oh like in GNU/Linux/BSD utils are just kosher and standardized... please... each tiny utility comes from few other schools of command line switches and are usually different. Threre is no standardisation of switches in commands used on Linux. Usually if you need to do something comples (that you haven't yet memorized) you need to open other terminal window with manual to do it. Of course this is a different *convention* from PowerShell but PS is not that bad - it is just different.
Couldn't agree more. In fact, on the topic of SSH, it baffles me that the port option is different between ssh and scope. In ssh it's "-p" but in scp it's "-P". Who made that decision?
The fallacy in your argument is that the other person's behavior (slower driving) causes more accidents due to his speed. I'd wager that's not the case. It likely causes more accidents due to everyone else's impatience. An example would be if everyone drove 5 mph the likelihood of a car accident fatality would plummet. Why? Because there just isn't enough energy imparted in a 5-10mph collision with a modern vehicle to cause any loss of life. So don't try and sell me that their slowness causes accidents. It only creates a dangerous situation when other people on the road can't cope.
Your argument also addresses a few things I did not. For one, stoplight timing is an issue and, as you said, it can be set to correspond to the speed limit. If so, then little is gained by speeding, and I have no argument with you there. Remember that my argument is that cars should not exceed the speed limit.
Well the sentiment here definitely seems to lean toward "let me speed, limits are for dummies" camp. I, for one, would be in favor of a system that enforced posted speed limit signs. Each day that I take to the road I'm putting my life and those of my family members at risk because some other driver HAS to get to the next red light faster than me. I've also found that in many areas around me, speed limits are entirely unenforced, creating a situation where there is a posted limit of 55 mph but an average speed of about 75 mph. If you choose to be the law-abiding citizen, then you are met with inconsiderate gestures and road rage for being, what I can only assume they deem to be, a douche.
Perhaps if everyone were actually restricted to going the same maximum speed, then the maximum speed might be increased slightly due to less variability. That is what has always perplexed me about the resistance to automated cars. People seem to be in a rush to get places, presumably out of some need for transportation efficiency. But think of how much more efficient the entire system would be if it were automated? Following distances could be reduced, speeds increased, stop lights practically eliminated, the list goes on. My safety, and those that choose life, should be given priority on roads and for their sake, cars should be limited in reasonable ways to ensure compliance with posted limits and other traffic laws. Remember that driving is not a right, it's a privilege, and my safety shouldn't be subject to someone else's desire to see if their raised 4x4 is stable at 95 mph in the rain.
With a stable currency you're unlikely to lose money that way... as opposed to an untimely investment in a speculative market where you may lose 0-100% of your value which you may or may not have the time to wait out for that value to return, but don't take it from me, take it from the millions of baby boomers who wanted to retire in 2008 but then had to work another 10 years because their investments lost a big chunk of value. I'll bet the money in their mattresses didn't get affected much.
I agree with some of what you're saying, but I think the biggest thing holding back Linux on the Desktop is all the duplicity of development effort carried out on the hundreds of various distributions. If we want Linux to be a competitor, we need to stop forking. There's clearly enough development taking place to support a competitive operating system, but we're spreading that effort too thin by trying to maintain and improve a dozen window managers, two dozen email clients, a hundred music players, and a few dozen package managers, etc. I get it, everyone thinks they have a better idea and 1 in 10 of those actually is better. But just think about how great an OS we could have at this point if all of that effort had been put into perfecting just one or two products. If we limited ourselves to one or two distros then it would be easier for all of that development work to be put into creating a standard set of gui tools for configuration settings so that the use doesn't have to open a terminal prompt to change something. If we focused our collective efforts on one set of PDF viewers / music players / IM clients, etc, we could pull together an OS that is AS polished as OS X is.
I install Linux on a "desktop" every 2 years or so just to see how things have improved and every time I do that, even with the same distro, there have been numerous changes but very few improvements. There's a new picture manager app, or a new default email client, but the feature sets haven't improved much. If we can get to that level of polish and consistency, then we'll open that door to more market penetration which will then hopefully lead to solutions for the other 2 problems:
1) Drivers (mentioned already on this page) 2) Commercial application support (also already mentioned)
Both of those are important, but their solution becomes easier if we can create a standard linux distribution that they can focus their efforts around.
Agreed. There are also OpenMP implementations for doing your parallel processing. If you're running on a Xeon processor then I would SERIOUSLY consider Intel's linux fortran compiler as it will provide the best performance by far.
I understand that, I'm merely adding that the USB standard does not alleviate 'cable headaches'. I still have to maintain a stockpile of USB cables to support USB devices despite the existence of a standard. Now if Apple devices required a proprietary connector on the computer or charger side I could see people getting more up in arms about this, but they don't, it's still USB-A. Having to bring that cable with me isn't really inconvenient since I would just be bringing a micro-USB cable with me instead if I had an Android phone. It's still a cable. And I see how you could say that you're more likely to be able to find someone with a spare micro-USB cable for you to borrow while on the road, but why on earth would you rely on that and not bring one? Secondly, with nearly 1 in 2 smartphones sold in the US being an Apple iPhone, I'm probably going to be able to find a cable somewhere if it came down to that. (Yes, I realize that isn't representative of global market share).
While I agree that the point of USB was to remove hassle, I think they failed monumentally at it. I have a ton of USB cables around here and you know why? Because they offered a variety of USB port sizes, for what purpose I'm not sure. Type A, Type B, mini-A, mini-B, micro-A, micro-B and now the USB-3.0 plugs. Compound that with female and male (yes, I have some NAS drives that have male ports for some unknown reason. So now, just to support USB, I have to keep 3-6 cables lying around. So is USB really the ideal solution to all of device connectivity woes?
Why would it be "silly"? If the point of benchmarking is to compare "like" things, and the same game is written for both ecosystems, why wouldn't the concerned consumer want to know that game X runs 20% faster on device Y, regardless of whether device Y is android or iOS? The only people concerned with these benchmarks must be looking for that 5% difference. So if that's what they want, then knowing that another platform gets them that 5% should be just as important as knowing the performance spread among devices of the same OS.
I completely agree. They are late, they've been 2-4 years behind the curve for the last half decade at least. But I don't believe they are beyond saving. With Windows XP support ending many business will be forced to upgrade to Windows 7/8 which should produce a healthy revenue stream for Microsoft. You're right that they need to focus intelligently on do-all mobile device (like the Ubuntu Edge smartphone). Something that allows today's average enterprise worker to dock and work effectively at work, then jump on the train or go to a meeting and be productive all on one device. A failed tablet doesn't spell the end, it took google many years for Android to take off in the tablet space and they're still gaining momentum. If it weren't for how inexpensive android phones were, they'd probably still be playing catchup as well. The Surface came out too late and at too high of a cost to compete in the market space, especially when you consider the lackluster app ecosystem that was backing it. A $600 tablet that has a lower resolution and slower processor than my phone just can't cut it in this market. Here's to hoping round two is more impressive, cause I love good competition.
I get it, you're pissed. You (the general population posting in these forums) hate Microsoft, this is a chance to try and get others to rally behind you. You claim that this is the feature/policy that broke the camels back and now you definitely will not be buying an xbox ever again. To you, charging for video streaming is just one more way that "the man" is trying to stick it to you. Last time it was Netflix, those bastards.
I tend to approach it from the other perspective. For the last 6 years I've been getting a great online experience. A reliable multiplayer utopia where I can have persistent chat rooms independent of what activity my friends are currently engaged in (ps3? no), access to countless media streaming services like netflix, hbo go, xfinity, vevo, syfy, espn, mlb.tv, etc., and it all costs me about $3 / mo (I don't know why people would pay full retail which is $5 / mo when the memberships are regularly on sale from Newegg and the like for ~$37 online). Outrageous, right? Well I don't think so. I think that's a hell of a deal for what I get. The PS3 fans are right in stating that they can use their consoles without PS+ to do this stuff but I know they're lying through their teeth OR they just don't know any better cause they've never tried XBLG. The PS chat system is HORRIBLE and you have what, 4 or 5 video streaming services and no audio services outside of Sony's own personal offerings? With channels like VEVO on the xbox I have 24 hours a day of music video streaming, on demand, any artist I want, my own personal MTV. Prefer music in the background, fire up Last.fm. Video rentals? Got those too from more sources than the PS3 can touch.
So while you see this as an affront to your console gaming experience, I see it as one MORE feature that my $3 / mo was getting me. Now I can stream video of me getting tea-bagged to all my friends, damn life is sweet.
Three layers of security doesn't really relate to pressure at all. Temperature is much more critical as it relates to fuel integrity. Fuel is encased in Zinc and during emergency situations the main objective is to keep the temperature of the fuel below the melting temperature of the zinc alloy so that it remains contained. People should not be "scared", they should be educated. Secondly, we don't need thorium reactors to increase safety. The current generation of plants being designed and approved have many passive safety features and there are many more coming to market over the next decade which are entirely passive yet still based on uranium fuel cycles. I'd love to see fusion technology as much as anyone else, but as a commercial technology we're still a couple decades off.
Politics makes nuclear fission expensive, not the technology. The technology is well understood, the fuel is abundant and inexpensive. The problem is that 1) the industry is so over-regulated due to public fear of catastrophe that the plants have 3+ layers of safety and redundancy at every level which is expensive and 2) the fear of terrorists obtaining weapons-grade nuclear material is considered to be high enough that we throw away a LOT of energy rich fuel to avoid getting in the situation where that fuel can be used to make a bomb.
Slashdot Mirror
Overwatch's implementation of loot boxes is slightly different from the standpoint of the rewards being merely cosmetic in nature. It doesn't unlock playability per se. My issue with loot boxes and other forms of progression reward systems is that game content (which you believe you paid for) is locked behind a door that can only be opened through either 1) a potentially obscene amount of time or 2) an indeterminable amount of cash. My first frustration with this was in Mass Effect 3, where individual characters for multiplayer were locked behind a loot based system. Try as I might I kept unlocking more skins for characters I already had instead of the new characters I really wanted to play. They didn't even offer those characters through direct sale so the ONLY way to obtain them was to gamble money buying loot boxes. I don't mind cosmetics being a gamble, but don't lock game altering characters/weapons/powerups behind a system where those with more time/money have an advantage. We all bought the game and she be able to compete in the multiplayer game modes based on pure skill.
Even if Bitcoins stay the same in value, it beats the living shit out of gold, and is far more secure against theft.
Probably not a lot of gold owners sweating it out over the fear of their gold being stolen via the internet, or becoming worthless if their computers crash or they forget a password. But now we're getting into the differences between a store of value and a currency. Gold is a store of value, you don't use it for transactions as it's not well suited for that. Bitcoin wants to be a currency, but has its own shortcomings there (and let's not even get started discussing the number of high profile thefts of bitcoin to date ...)
You know, except for 2007-2010, during the financial crisis, when home values plunged about 30%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Unless they start receiving public funding, I have to disagree. I don't care which candidate it's against, these are private companies run with private money and if they want to push personal agendas to either attract or deter potential customers, that's their right. If you're going to go to Facebook or Twitter for objective news, you're already barking up the wrong tree. These are social sites, where people post all manner of mindless rants, T&A, and pet photos. It should not be your primary source of objective news.
I really don't see a problem with the way that Tesla has implemented this or the name they choose to call it by. Clearly you are going to have some people who push it to the extreme and those people will suffer (or possibly die) because of it. I don't really see how this is all that different from cruise control in general. Cruise control was originally designed to alleviate the physical stress of maintaining a constant speed over long distances (for similar reasons that it exists on planes). Adding the ability for the car to maintain itself in a lane is a further iteration of that, as is the car's limited ability to respond to obstacles in its way. Guess what, if you set cruise control on your car and don't pay attention to changes in traffic ahead of you, you may slam into a car going slower than you, yet none of our cars warn us when we engage cruise control that we should keep checking for cars in front of us (I'm sure it's in the manual in the glove box though). Should Tesla change the name of the feature? I suppose they could, I doubt it would modify anyone's behavior. It doesn't take you that long to realize what the car appears to be able to do before you'll let it steer, accelerate, and brake, regardless of what's it called or what warning messages are read to you.
Umm, an iPhone 6S Plus with 128GB of memory is already $950 ...
Problem is, with mobile carriers abusing us on data limits, most people are thankful that their phones will find an open network and use it to update their Facebook feeds in the background. So it's not just about maintaining a list of AP's, but also checking if you have permission to get on them.
Oh like in GNU/Linux/BSD utils are just kosher and standardized... please... each tiny utility comes from few other schools of command line switches and are usually different. Threre is no standardisation of switches in commands used on Linux. Usually if you need to do something comples (that you haven't yet memorized) you need to open other terminal window with manual to do it. Of course this is a different *convention* from PowerShell but PS is not that bad - it is just different.
Couldn't agree more. In fact, on the topic of SSH, it baffles me that the port option is different between ssh and scope. In ssh it's "-p" but in scp it's "-P". Who made that decision?
The fallacy in your argument is that the other person's behavior (slower driving) causes more accidents due to his speed. I'd wager that's not the case. It likely causes more accidents due to everyone else's impatience. An example would be if everyone drove 5 mph the likelihood of a car accident fatality would plummet. Why? Because there just isn't enough energy imparted in a 5-10mph collision with a modern vehicle to cause any loss of life. So don't try and sell me that their slowness causes accidents. It only creates a dangerous situation when other people on the road can't cope.
Your argument also addresses a few things I did not. For one, stoplight timing is an issue and, as you said, it can be set to correspond to the speed limit. If so, then little is gained by speeding, and I have no argument with you there. Remember that my argument is that cars should not exceed the speed limit.
Well the sentiment here definitely seems to lean toward "let me speed, limits are for dummies" camp. I, for one, would be in favor of a system that enforced posted speed limit signs. Each day that I take to the road I'm putting my life and those of my family members at risk because some other driver HAS to get to the next red light faster than me. I've also found that in many areas around me, speed limits are entirely unenforced, creating a situation where there is a posted limit of 55 mph but an average speed of about 75 mph. If you choose to be the law-abiding citizen, then you are met with inconsiderate gestures and road rage for being, what I can only assume they deem to be, a douche.
Perhaps if everyone were actually restricted to going the same maximum speed, then the maximum speed might be increased slightly due to less variability. That is what has always perplexed me about the resistance to automated cars. People seem to be in a rush to get places, presumably out of some need for transportation efficiency. But think of how much more efficient the entire system would be if it were automated? Following distances could be reduced, speeds increased, stop lights practically eliminated, the list goes on. My safety, and those that choose life, should be given priority on roads and for their sake, cars should be limited in reasonable ways to ensure compliance with posted limits and other traffic laws. Remember that driving is not a right, it's a privilege, and my safety shouldn't be subject to someone else's desire to see if their raised 4x4 is stable at 95 mph in the rain.
With a stable currency you're unlikely to lose money that way ... as opposed to an untimely investment in a speculative market where you may lose 0-100% of your value which you may or may not have the time to wait out for that value to return, but don't take it from me, take it from the millions of baby boomers who wanted to retire in 2008 but then had to work another 10 years because their investments lost a big chunk of value. I'll bet the money in their mattresses didn't get affected much.
I agree with some of what you're saying, but I think the biggest thing holding back Linux on the Desktop is all the duplicity of development effort carried out on the hundreds of various distributions. If we want Linux to be a competitor, we need to stop forking. There's clearly enough development taking place to support a competitive operating system, but we're spreading that effort too thin by trying to maintain and improve a dozen window managers, two dozen email clients, a hundred music players, and a few dozen package managers, etc. I get it, everyone thinks they have a better idea and 1 in 10 of those actually is better. But just think about how great an OS we could have at this point if all of that effort had been put into perfecting just one or two products. If we limited ourselves to one or two distros then it would be easier for all of that development work to be put into creating a standard set of gui tools for configuration settings so that the use doesn't have to open a terminal prompt to change something. If we focused our collective efforts on one set of PDF viewers / music players / IM clients, etc, we could pull together an OS that is AS polished as OS X is.
I install Linux on a "desktop" every 2 years or so just to see how things have improved and every time I do that, even with the same distro, there have been numerous changes but very few improvements. There's a new picture manager app, or a new default email client, but the feature sets haven't improved much. If we can get to that level of polish and consistency, then we'll open that door to more market penetration which will then hopefully lead to solutions for the other 2 problems:
1) Drivers (mentioned already on this page)
2) Commercial application support (also already mentioned)
Both of those are important, but their solution becomes easier if we can create a standard linux distribution that they can focus their efforts around.
Agreed. There are also OpenMP implementations for doing your parallel processing. If you're running on a Xeon processor then I would SERIOUSLY consider Intel's linux fortran compiler as it will provide the best performance by far.
I understand that, I'm merely adding that the USB standard does not alleviate 'cable headaches'. I still have to maintain a stockpile of USB cables to support USB devices despite the existence of a standard. Now if Apple devices required a proprietary connector on the computer or charger side I could see people getting more up in arms about this, but they don't, it's still USB-A. Having to bring that cable with me isn't really inconvenient since I would just be bringing a micro-USB cable with me instead if I had an Android phone. It's still a cable. And I see how you could say that you're more likely to be able to find someone with a spare micro-USB cable for you to borrow while on the road, but why on earth would you rely on that and not bring one? Secondly, with nearly 1 in 2 smartphones sold in the US being an Apple iPhone, I'm probably going to be able to find a cable somewhere if it came down to that. (Yes, I realize that isn't representative of global market share).
While I agree that the point of USB was to remove hassle, I think they failed monumentally at it. I have a ton of USB cables around here and you know why? Because they offered a variety of USB port sizes, for what purpose I'm not sure. Type A, Type B, mini-A, mini-B, micro-A, micro-B and now the USB-3.0 plugs. Compound that with female and male (yes, I have some NAS drives that have male ports for some unknown reason. So now, just to support USB, I have to keep 3-6 cables lying around. So is USB really the ideal solution to all of device connectivity woes?
Why would it be "silly"? If the point of benchmarking is to compare "like" things, and the same game is written for both ecosystems, why wouldn't the concerned consumer want to know that game X runs 20% faster on device Y, regardless of whether device Y is android or iOS? The only people concerned with these benchmarks must be looking for that 5% difference. So if that's what they want, then knowing that another platform gets them that 5% should be just as important as knowing the performance spread among devices of the same OS.
I completely agree. They are late, they've been 2-4 years behind the curve for the last half decade at least. But I don't believe they are beyond saving. With Windows XP support ending many business will be forced to upgrade to Windows 7/8 which should produce a healthy revenue stream for Microsoft. You're right that they need to focus intelligently on do-all mobile device (like the Ubuntu Edge smartphone). Something that allows today's average enterprise worker to dock and work effectively at work, then jump on the train or go to a meeting and be productive all on one device. A failed tablet doesn't spell the end, it took google many years for Android to take off in the tablet space and they're still gaining momentum. If it weren't for how inexpensive android phones were, they'd probably still be playing catchup as well. The Surface came out too late and at too high of a cost to compete in the market space, especially when you consider the lackluster app ecosystem that was backing it. A $600 tablet that has a lower resolution and slower processor than my phone just can't cut it in this market. Here's to hoping round two is more impressive, cause I love good competition.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/09/xbox-one-home-gold/
The rules are changing.
Check they news! http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/09/xbox-one-home-gold/ One gold account per Xbox one will allow everyone to access the services.
Microsoft announced today that you'll only need one gold account per device (and it can actually be shared between a 360 and Xbox One).
http://www.engadget.com/2013/08/09/xbox-one-home-gold/
I get it, you're pissed. You (the general population posting in these forums) hate Microsoft, this is a chance to try and get others to rally behind you. You claim that this is the feature/policy that broke the camels back and now you definitely will not be buying an xbox ever again. To you, charging for video streaming is just one more way that "the man" is trying to stick it to you. Last time it was Netflix, those bastards.
I tend to approach it from the other perspective. For the last 6 years I've been getting a great online experience. A reliable multiplayer utopia where I can have persistent chat rooms independent of what activity my friends are currently engaged in (ps3? no), access to countless media streaming services like netflix, hbo go, xfinity, vevo, syfy, espn, mlb.tv, etc., and it all costs me about $3 / mo (I don't know why people would pay full retail which is $5 / mo when the memberships are regularly on sale from Newegg and the like for ~$37 online). Outrageous, right? Well I don't think so. I think that's a hell of a deal for what I get. The PS3 fans are right in stating that they can use their consoles without PS+ to do this stuff but I know they're lying through their teeth OR they just don't know any better cause they've never tried XBLG. The PS chat system is HORRIBLE and you have what, 4 or 5 video streaming services and no audio services outside of Sony's own personal offerings? With channels like VEVO on the xbox I have 24 hours a day of music video streaming, on demand, any artist I want, my own personal MTV. Prefer music in the background, fire up Last.fm. Video rentals? Got those too from more sources than the PS3 can touch.
So while you see this as an affront to your console gaming experience, I see it as one MORE feature that my $3 / mo was getting me. Now I can stream video of me getting tea-bagged to all my friends, damn life is sweet.
Three layers of security doesn't really relate to pressure at all. Temperature is much more critical as it relates to fuel integrity. Fuel is encased in Zinc and during emergency situations the main objective is to keep the temperature of the fuel below the melting temperature of the zinc alloy so that it remains contained. People should not be "scared", they should be educated. Secondly, we don't need thorium reactors to increase safety. The current generation of plants being designed and approved have many passive safety features and there are many more coming to market over the next decade which are entirely passive yet still based on uranium fuel cycles. I'd love to see fusion technology as much as anyone else, but as a commercial technology we're still a couple decades off.
Not true, actually a good portion of the domestic (US) nuclear fuel is coming from both domestic and foreign (Russia) weapon dismantling programs.
Politics makes nuclear fission expensive, not the technology. The technology is well understood, the fuel is abundant and inexpensive. The problem is that 1) the industry is so over-regulated due to public fear of catastrophe that the plants have 3+ layers of safety and redundancy at every level which is expensive and 2) the fear of terrorists obtaining weapons-grade nuclear material is considered to be high enough that we throw away a LOT of energy rich fuel to avoid getting in the situation where that fuel can be used to make a bomb.
Wikipedia to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_grid