The problem with this design and moving it thought is the fact that a CRT monitor case is easiest/safest to lift with the screen (ie: largest face) resting on your chest. Not something I'd reccomend trying with an LCD there.
Last time I tried, file transfers and direct connect don't work properly on the nonofficial clients. That could have changed (it's been a few months), but in the meantime, that's a good enough reason for me to use it.
No doubt, it hasn't stopped them before, it's just that there's generally a different set of rules involving minors. Pretty much anything you do as a minor and any records the gov keeps of it have to be destroyed when the kid turns 18. People tend to get rather pissy about this, even more so when the child's name is specifically attached to it, so I'd imagine that it just plain wouldn't be worth it from the perspective of a potentially major PR disaster for the law enforcement officers.
So your one experience with what, from your statements, appears to be old, unsupported hardware suddenly makes linux easier? From what I understand, you didn't actually use the camera in either linux or windows - you simply saw it as a generic mass storage device. If that's the case, it makes sense the XP would be the only windows that it'd work with out of the box - since it's the first version to have built in support for such "generic" devices. Really, think before you complain, you make the whole linux community look like mindless zealots otherwise, which is a label I'd like to avoid.
Just jumping in here to drop my opinion real quick. XP, speed wise, seems very dependent on how well organized you keep the machine, from my experience. The biggest factor seems to be eliminating any programs you do not NEED, especially ones that want to run in the background. It only takes one or two rougue background processes to slow down some key functions of XP considerably - for example, PGP (or any other program that modifies the windows shell) can cause major slowdowns to any right click menu.
The longest running XP install I have at the moment is about 14 months old - and it still runs nearly as fast as it did with a fresh install. Personally, if you want an XP install to last, you need to concern yourself far more with background processes, spyware, and clearing caches and temp files than you do with dangling registry keys - that's what's going to REALLY slow down your performance. Which is why it breaks my heart that I'm going to have to kill the install on this machine tommorow (it's about 8 months old), but such is the price of a shiny new motherboard and CPU.:)
I agree with you to an extent, and I think that the fact there there are still commercial releases being made based on the HL engine is a testament to its versatility (See Day of Defeat a couple of weeks ago). However, every engine has its limits, and there comes a point where a project simply pushes those limits too far. For all its versatility, the HL engine does have limitations in what's possible with map design - for example, player controlled vehicles outside of basic trains are near impossible to implement
I definitely agree with the idea that working from an existing engine if at all possible, as it does save tremendous amounts of dev time, but I'm also a believer that the technology should be adaptable to the game design - in short, I'm a believer in compromising design due to limited technology as little as possible. For example, on the project I just started, my team decided that there weren't really any engines out there that we could lisence that would be capable of meeting our requirements without extreme amounts of hacking, so we decided to go ahead and begin development on an engine of our own. While it's a lot of work, by doing this, we're not limiting ourselves to "what the engine is capable of." While I think it's possible to create something innovative within an existing framework, I think the likelihood of innovation increases if the development team decides what that framework is.
Yes, it's easy to get over ambitious in this way as well, but if your project manager does a good job of keeping an eye on progress, the design can be trimmed back as needed or possibly improved if time permits. Either way, you start out with a clean slate - anything is possible. If you want innovation to happen, this is the attitude that's needed.
Did you read his linked post? I see nothing on the Gator main page styating that it installs additional activity tacking software that is not unistalled when you uninstall Gator. Sure Gator itself isn't spyware - just like Kazaa itself isn't spyware. It's the additional crap bundled onto it that makes it such.
Of course you neglect that Bush stated during the 2000 campaign that American troops would not have gone into Kosovo had he been president. So Saddam, while a bad guy, but one that has been relatively dormant for years, is somehow more important to go after that Milosevic, who was actively and openly butchering thousands? Give me a break. Get off your moral high horse.
Except that the weapons inspectors hadn't been in country since '98 and were never really given a chance by the Bush administration to do their job. Bush was already making it very clear that it didn't matter what inspectors had to say anyway - he started one of the major thrusts for the war a full month before inspectors had given even their initial, "gut feeling" report to the UN - a report that ended up saying they hadn't had enough time to perform a true, factual assessment.
What I find ironic is the fact that it was demanded that the inspectors provide concrete proof that Iraq did NOT have WMDs in mere weeks, but get pissy when they're expected to prove that they were there in the same time frame - remember, proving something is possible given proper evidence. Disproving something is damn near impossible, since it assumes the given condition is true, you just haven't found "it" yet.
Except I'm pretty sure you're going to be sending more than one bit per pixel. Last time I checked, you could print more than pure black and white with postscript - meaning to print even simple grayscale, you're gonna be be using at least 8bpp. When most people say B&W, they really mean grayscale, and I'm sure the bitmap would contain much more than pure grayscale information anyway.
I agreed with you until you got up to your auto-engine comparison.
Wenkel Rotary - um, you are aware that these things eat gas at a much higher rate than a standard combustion engine, right? This and a number of mechanical issues are JUST now starting to be addressed in the new Renesis motor Mazda is dropping in the RX-8.
Hybrid - Your options in the US are a Toyota Prius, Honda Insight, and just very recently a Honda Civic. Hybrid is a compromise, and it works well for small cars like the Prius and Insight, but, to be honest, I wasn't all that impressed with the mileage gains on the Civic. I imagine that this trend continues as you move up to larger vehicles. Hybrids have never been intended to be mainstream vehicles, and they're marketed as such. They're for the economy/environmentally conscious.
Fuel Cell - I really don't know what you're talking about here. Every major auto manufacturer, GM and Chrysler in particular, have major fuel cell research ongoing. The fact is FC technology is still too primitive for mass deployment. Not to mention once it is ready in that regard, fueling infrastructure has to be rolled out.
So really, why was this post modded +4? Are geeks less tech saavy about their cars than the rest of their lives?
Understandable. I would just be more careful with your wording in the future. As you posted it, you sounded rather like a stubborn old man that was so set in their ways that nothing could persuade you to believe anything differently. Which is exactly what the OP was railing against. Remember, it's often not what you say - it's how you say it.
So quick to flame needlessly? Yes, newer models have failed because they were flawed. But that doesn't mean a newer model isn't capable of obsoleting an older one. It's just the older ones manage to stay alive longer since they generally have the bank accounts that allow them to take the hits for a while before finally dying, as they should if you ask me.
Well, his distinction made sense to me. If you can produce viable offspring, then it's the same species. IE: a dog is of the same species as a dog, regardless of breed. In short, you can breed a dog with another dog of any breed, and the offspring will be able to produce offspring.
His definition of genus would be one step removed from that - if the genetic similarity is close enough to produce offspring, but not viable offspring - IE: a mule or the end result of mating a dog with a coyote. You get offspring, but they can't further reproduce.
I agree with you that it really is a more abstract distinction, I just thought that his definition seemed logical.
Yeah, but I think his point was that the difference isn't really as significant as you were making it out to be. If you figure that there are 35,000-40,000 genes, then if humans and chimps are a 99.4% match, that means that there are only something like 210-240 differences in the entire genome set. I don't feel like going through the math to prove it, but that's a fairly significant similarity, not difference.
Think about it - if you had a bank of 40,000 switches and asked 2 people to randomly flip every switch, and only ~200 of their choices were different, I'd say that the end result was pretty damn similar. Now if you lower the similarity to just, say, 95%, the suddenly you have 2,000 differences, which, while still similar, I wouldn't group in the same category as the 99.4% match. Anyway, I'll probably do some more research to find out about similarities between other species, just because the topic has piqued my interest, so you may see a double post from me.:)
Oh, agreed. I wasn't saying that the bike saying Ducati was a bad thing - only that I noticed it, and that I only noticed it because I cared. Kind of like the freeway scene with Trinity driving the XLR and the twins in the Escalade. Come to think of it, the only places I can think of any "Product Placement" are the highway scene - and those were all cars/bikes. And hell, if you're gonna destroy a $50,000 car, might as well destroy the $50,000 car you're being given for free, right?:)
I must've been a bit ambiguous with my post, sorry. I didn't say I felt the scenes should be cut from the movie, just that they should be cut in length.
If you'd re-read my first post - I liked the scenes. I think they were important. It's just that they ran so damn long that I lost interest in them before they were over. The rave scene, for example, was very cool and had a definite point, but it was overly repetitive. It could've stood some serious clipping without damaging its purpose in any way.
Actually, necessity is directly tied to good film making. There are several scenes in the movie that would have been much better off had they been a good bit shorter, which wouldn't have been a big deal - if it weren't a chronic condition. The agents scene and the rave scene in particular stand out in my mind in this category. I think they definitely helped push the plot along and were important to the story, they were just drug too long.
I just wanted to pipe in here real quick - don't let the reviews discourage you too much. I had the same type attitude as you do now before some friends drug me to go see it last night, and my opinion completely reversed itself during the course of the movie. It's true that there are a number of scenes that are left running just too damn long, but on a whole, it's actually a pretty good movie.
The rave scene runs too long, but the sex part of it isn't gratuitous sex just to have sex scene (well outside of the breasts, that part was pointless), it was supposed to convey the passion between Neo and Trinity, it's just that the whole sequence was poorly edited and comes across as emotionless
As for product placement, I really didn't notice it if it's there. For example, there's a scene involving motorcycles, and I happened to notice that the bike had "Ducatti 996" decal'd on it, but that's only because I have an interest in bikes to begin with. The movie's not perfect, but it's far from a sequel that was made only to exploit the fanbase - it's a sequel made to continue the story.
It means that the religion is recognized as existing, and as such, people that practice it can't be discriminated against on the basis of their religion. The Constitution is merely saying that the state is not allowed to ENDORSE (a) religion. Which is why I don't understand why the "Under God" part of the pledge being declared unconstitutional caused such a flap, other than for zealousness - it implies endorsement of religion. But that's an argument that belongs elsewhere, lest I stray offtopic.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with this design and moving it thought is the fact that a CRT monitor case is easiest/safest to lift with the screen (ie: largest face) resting on your chest. Not something I'd reccomend trying with an LCD there.
Last time I tried, file transfers and direct connect don't work properly on the nonofficial clients. That could have changed (it's been a few months), but in the meantime, that's a good enough reason for me to use it.
No doubt, it hasn't stopped them before, it's just that there's generally a different set of rules involving minors. Pretty much anything you do as a minor and any records the gov keeps of it have to be destroyed when the kid turns 18. People tend to get rather pissy about this, even more so when the child's name is specifically attached to it, so I'd imagine that it just plain wouldn't be worth it from the perspective of a potentially major PR disaster for the law enforcement officers.
Keep in mind that these kids are all minors - even getting their names to put on any kind of tracking "list" would be more than a little illegal.
So your one experience with what, from your statements, appears to be old, unsupported hardware suddenly makes linux easier? From what I understand, you didn't actually use the camera in either linux or windows - you simply saw it as a generic mass storage device. If that's the case, it makes sense the XP would be the only windows that it'd work with out of the box - since it's the first version to have built in support for such "generic" devices. Really, think before you complain, you make the whole linux community look like mindless zealots otherwise, which is a label I'd like to avoid.
Just jumping in here to drop my opinion real quick. XP, speed wise, seems very dependent on how well organized you keep the machine, from my experience. The biggest factor seems to be eliminating any programs you do not NEED, especially ones that want to run in the background. It only takes one or two rougue background processes to slow down some key functions of XP considerably - for example, PGP (or any other program that modifies the windows shell) can cause major slowdowns to any right click menu.
:)
The longest running XP install I have at the moment is about 14 months old - and it still runs nearly as fast as it did with a fresh install. Personally, if you want an XP install to last, you need to concern yourself far more with background processes, spyware, and clearing caches and temp files than you do with dangling registry keys - that's what's going to REALLY slow down your performance. Which is why it breaks my heart that I'm going to have to kill the install on this machine tommorow (it's about 8 months old), but such is the price of a shiny new motherboard and CPU.
I agree with you to an extent, and I think that the fact there there are still commercial releases being made based on the HL engine is a testament to its versatility (See Day of Defeat a couple of weeks ago). However, every engine has its limits, and there comes a point where a project simply pushes those limits too far. For all its versatility, the HL engine does have limitations in what's possible with map design - for example, player controlled vehicles outside of basic trains are near impossible to implement
I definitely agree with the idea that working from an existing engine if at all possible, as it does save tremendous amounts of dev time, but I'm also a believer that the technology should be adaptable to the game design - in short, I'm a believer in compromising design due to limited technology as little as possible. For example, on the project I just started, my team decided that there weren't really any engines out there that we could lisence that would be capable of meeting our requirements without extreme amounts of hacking, so we decided to go ahead and begin development on an engine of our own. While it's a lot of work, by doing this, we're not limiting ourselves to "what the engine is capable of." While I think it's possible to create something innovative within an existing framework, I think the likelihood of innovation increases if the development team decides what that framework is.
Yes, it's easy to get over ambitious in this way as well, but if your project manager does a good job of keeping an eye on progress, the design can be trimmed back as needed or possibly improved if time permits. Either way, you start out with a clean slate - anything is possible. If you want innovation to happen, this is the attitude that's needed.
Did you read his linked post? I see nothing on the Gator main page styating that it installs additional activity tacking software that is not unistalled when you uninstall Gator. Sure Gator itself isn't spyware - just like Kazaa itself isn't spyware. It's the additional crap bundled onto it that makes it such.
Of course you neglect that Bush stated during the 2000 campaign that American troops would not have gone into Kosovo had he been president. So Saddam, while a bad guy, but one that has been relatively dormant for years, is somehow more important to go after that Milosevic, who was actively and openly butchering thousands? Give me a break. Get off your moral high horse.
Except that the weapons inspectors hadn't been in country since '98 and were never really given a chance by the Bush administration to do their job. Bush was already making it very clear that it didn't matter what inspectors had to say anyway - he started one of the major thrusts for the war a full month before inspectors had given even their initial, "gut feeling" report to the UN - a report that ended up saying they hadn't had enough time to perform a true, factual assessment.
What I find ironic is the fact that it was demanded that the inspectors provide concrete proof that Iraq did NOT have WMDs in mere weeks, but get pissy when they're expected to prove that they were there in the same time frame - remember, proving something is possible given proper evidence. Disproving something is damn near impossible, since it assumes the given condition is true, you just haven't found "it" yet.
You might be surprised/interested to know that the same situation applies here in the states too.
Except I'm pretty sure you're going to be sending more than one bit per pixel. Last time I checked, you could print more than pure black and white with postscript - meaning to print even simple grayscale, you're gonna be be using at least 8bpp. When most people say B&W, they really mean grayscale, and I'm sure the bitmap would contain much more than pure grayscale information anyway.
I agreed with you until you got up to your auto-engine comparison.
Wenkel Rotary - um, you are aware that these things eat gas at a much higher rate than a standard combustion engine, right? This and a number of mechanical issues are JUST now starting to be addressed in the new Renesis motor Mazda is dropping in the RX-8.
Hybrid - Your options in the US are a Toyota Prius, Honda Insight, and just very recently a Honda Civic. Hybrid is a compromise, and it works well for small cars like the Prius and Insight, but, to be honest, I wasn't all that impressed with the mileage gains on the Civic. I imagine that this trend continues as you move up to larger vehicles. Hybrids have never been intended to be mainstream vehicles, and they're marketed as such. They're for the economy/environmentally conscious.
Fuel Cell - I really don't know what you're talking about here. Every major auto manufacturer, GM and Chrysler in particular, have major fuel cell research ongoing. The fact is FC technology is still too primitive for mass deployment. Not to mention once it is ready in that regard, fueling infrastructure has to be rolled out.
So really, why was this post modded +4? Are geeks less tech saavy about their cars than the rest of their lives?
Understandable. I would just be more careful with your wording in the future. As you posted it, you sounded rather like a stubborn old man that was so set in their ways that nothing could persuade you to believe anything differently. Which is exactly what the OP was railing against. Remember, it's often not what you say - it's how you say it.
So quick to flame needlessly? Yes, newer models have failed because they were flawed. But that doesn't mean a newer model isn't capable of obsoleting an older one. It's just the older ones manage to stay alive longer since they generally have the bank accounts that allow them to take the hits for a while before finally dying, as they should if you ask me.
Well, his distinction made sense to me. If you can produce viable offspring, then it's the same species. IE: a dog is of the same species as a dog, regardless of breed. In short, you can breed a dog with another dog of any breed, and the offspring will be able to produce offspring.
His definition of genus would be one step removed from that - if the genetic similarity is close enough to produce offspring, but not viable offspring - IE: a mule or the end result of mating a dog with a coyote. You get offspring, but they can't further reproduce.
I agree with you that it really is a more abstract distinction, I just thought that his definition seemed logical.
Yeah, but I think his point was that the difference isn't really as significant as you were making it out to be. If you figure that there are 35,000-40,000 genes, then if humans and chimps are a 99.4% match, that means that there are only something like 210-240 differences in the entire genome set. I don't feel like going through the math to prove it, but that's a fairly significant similarity, not difference.
:)
Think about it - if you had a bank of 40,000 switches and asked 2 people to randomly flip every switch, and only ~200 of their choices were different, I'd say that the end result was pretty damn similar. Now if you lower the similarity to just, say, 95%, the suddenly you have 2,000 differences, which, while still similar, I wouldn't group in the same category as the 99.4% match. Anyway, I'll probably do some more research to find out about similarities between other species, just because the topic has piqued my interest, so you may see a double post from me.
No offense taken here, I thought your sig was pretty funny actually, hence why I pointed it out. I agree, people do need to lighten up.
Take a look at the capitalization. I believe he's telling you to contract a respiratory disease *nods*
Oh, agreed. I wasn't saying that the bike saying Ducati was a bad thing - only that I noticed it, and that I only noticed it because I cared. Kind of like the freeway scene with Trinity driving the XLR and the twins in the Escalade. Come to think of it, the only places I can think of any "Product Placement" are the highway scene - and those were all cars/bikes. And hell, if you're gonna destroy a $50,000 car, might as well destroy the $50,000 car you're being given for free, right? :)
I must've been a bit ambiguous with my post, sorry. I didn't say I felt the scenes should be cut from the movie, just that they should be cut in length.
If you'd re-read my first post - I liked the scenes. I think they were important. It's just that they ran so damn long that I lost interest in them before they were over. The rave scene, for example, was very cool and had a definite point, but it was overly repetitive. It could've stood some serious clipping without damaging its purpose in any way.
But that's just my opinion.
Actually, necessity is directly tied to good film making. There are several scenes in the movie that would have been much better off had they been a good bit shorter, which wouldn't have been a big deal - if it weren't a chronic condition. The agents scene and the rave scene in particular stand out in my mind in this category. I think they definitely helped push the plot along and were important to the story, they were just drug too long.
I just wanted to pipe in here real quick - don't let the reviews discourage you too much. I had the same type attitude as you do now before some friends drug me to go see it last night, and my opinion completely reversed itself during the course of the movie. It's true that there are a number of scenes that are left running just too damn long, but on a whole, it's actually a pretty good movie.
The rave scene runs too long, but the sex part of it isn't gratuitous sex just to have sex scene (well outside of the breasts, that part was pointless), it was supposed to convey the passion between Neo and Trinity, it's just that the whole sequence was poorly edited and comes across as emotionless
As for product placement, I really didn't notice it if it's there. For example, there's a scene involving motorcycles, and I happened to notice that the bike had "Ducatti 996" decal'd on it, but that's only because I have an interest in bikes to begin with. The movie's not perfect, but it's far from a sequel that was made only to exploit the fanbase - it's a sequel made to continue the story.
"And it's presence."
it's = it is
its = denotes ownership
I normally refrain from playing grammar cop, but it's annoying when people incorrectly correct people.
It means that the religion is recognized as existing, and as such, people that practice it can't be discriminated against on the basis of their religion. The Constitution is merely saying that the state is not allowed to ENDORSE (a) religion. Which is why I don't understand why the "Under God" part of the pledge being declared unconstitutional caused such a flap, other than for zealousness - it implies endorsement of religion. But that's an argument that belongs elsewhere, lest I stray offtopic.