Why would someone download video clips with embedded ads if there were another source for the same clips without the ads?
Ooh, ooh, I got this one:
Convenience.
The "other sources" you speak of have many problems associated with them. Sometimes what you get is flaky, or the time needed to take it is. You have the risk (however slight) of being sued. It may take you to some darker portions of the internet that would love to fuck up your browser or OS. (If you have a source that doesn't suffer these problems, please do share.)
Alternatively, you can go straight to the source, have a secure (and likely quicker) download and deal with a few ads. Even better, as online video becomes more viable the ads you see might actually interest you. The combination of what shows you've watched and regularly watch as well as profile information you list can make ads highly targeted, which advertisers love because they don't need a blanket campaign and broadcasters love because the advertisers are far more interested.
So it's not in HD? Big whoop. I don't know about you or the average user, but I don't have a 24" widescreen LCD monitor. HD on what I have will only be slightly better than SD, but will take up much more bandwidth. I'm okay with pixels.
I was wondering this, too. It may be that they have a loophole. My understanding of Safe Harbor is that they cannot be penalized for anything that they contain or that traverses their network so long as they treat all information equally and do not monitor the information for pieces of interest.
Because this list of websites is being provided by a third group (CMEC) and the ISPs just accept it unconditionally, they aren't actually policing content. It seems like the same idea of spam white/blacklists-- "We don't make the lists, we just take them from Company X and apply them."
It's still a horrible idea, but it might still give them Safe Harbor provisions. It also means that they won't check the veracity of any submitted site; of course, I wouldn't expect that anyway, as it would require interest, caring, and good customer service.
Today I heard on NPR that she is "open to the Vice-Presidential spot", even though she may not take it...she "just wants to be considered".
I've heard a large majority of the democrats I know say that "I would rather vote for McCain over [Obama|Hillary]." If it came down to an Obama/Hillary ticket vs. a McCain/Devil ticket, I think McCain would win.
After all the backstabbing and nastiness that Hillary's been spreading, I'd be surprised if Obama took her as VP, anyway. I'm sure he can find some other female who's better fit for the job, or just a white guy to put some "others" at ease.
Until the Bush administration, through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, made the change earlier this year, foreign national students typically worked for one year after graduation on their student visa while their employers filed for an H-1B visa. Tech industry groups, however, had sought the extension because of the backlog for H-1B visas.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. You ever have one of those friends who, when asked why, would say "because"? The Department of Homeland Security now seems to be "because".
What possible twisted snake-oil scenario would give the DHS authority to extend the stay of foreign workers? I can see a very extreme scenario where they could decrease the time because of some reported imminent threat or something, but them being able to extend it makes little sense to me. It's like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms selling off the wireless spectrum.
Or am I missing something? I admit that I'm not familiar with the intricacies of federal bureaus and who is under what secretary and given which powers. If someone can explain to me why this isn't just a pure abuse of the system by saying the word "terrist", please do so. A quick search of the previous Slashdot post and related articles isn't helping much. Do they control all of immigration? I thought that was someone else.
If this is truly a complete abuse of the department, I wonder if the public would react if the media groups picked up the story as administration abuse (hahaha... sure).
I'm just now getting around to playing the trilogy from last gen. I finished Sands of Time last week, and have been working through Warrior Within. Sands of Time was very enjoyable, Warrior Within feels like more of the same while fixing some problems with SoT (like the fixed camera going un-fixed when you move about).
However, while I don't consider them bad, both games seem "almost great". You may think it's the same thing as "good", but I view it in a different light-- Ubisoft had something wonderful going, but eventually decided that release dates were more important than polish.
In SoT, the camera would move about on its own disjointly, the controls moving with it, so you'd often turn yourself around in battle. Fixed cameras were far too distant to be of much help, though they gave you a nice view of the area. The camera would also change to be "dramatic", but more often would change so that you were now pointing the stick in the wrong direction and you die. Each "epic fight" concluded with an annoying "put away the swords" flash, and the forced visions at save points pretty much held your hand the entire game.
So far, in Warrior Within, they've fixed the fixed-camera problem as well as removing the "put away swords" sequence. Instead, they introduced a rather unintuitive combo sequence, where actions take a bit to carry out but your successive button sequences are still counted, making it hard to control the Prince if you decide to change what you're doing mid-fight. A problem that SoT had but is worse in WW is button mapping- buttons tend to be context sensitive (do you have your weapons out? Are you against a wall?) and when you press a button to zag you might zig instead. Furthermore, because it's so GRIMDARK, it's hard to spot any visual cues (where available) to time jumps and other actions. And lip-syncing+voice placement is just horrible.
I've not played Two Thrones yet, but I hear good things, so hopefully that removes some of these problems.
I make note of these things because they aren't just about the PoP series-- Ubisoft, in general, seems to be a company that's "almost great". I've played many of their games, such as XIII, Red Steel, and Farcry. Each of these games are fun (well, once you get over the aggravation of Red Steel's controls), but every game feels as if it could have been great. None of them have "polish", which keeps them at a B (or C+) grade instead of an A grade.
The only Ubisoft game I've played that seemed to have a hefty amount of polish was Rayman Raving Rabbids. Very fun, and I plan to get the sequels, but that's just one great of many sorta-good. If Ubisoft put the same amount of QA and polish into games that Valve seems to do (seriously, if you haven't played their games with commentary on, you're missing a lot of interesting information), they could have games I would call exceptional. Instead, they have the "good enough" mentality and boot it out the door for some extra cash.
This is why I don't have big aspirations for these new PoP games. Will they be good? Probably. Will they be great? Not unless Ubisoft has made great strides recently.
Drop Idle, Keep Comment bar
on
I Will Derive
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· Score: 3, Insightful
For those who don't know, Idle has been around for a few months now, though I know of no official announcement. This tells me that Slashdot is trying to throw it in under the radar, for whatever reason.
Please, Slashdot, drop this. This isn't Fark, this isn't Digg, this isn't StumbleUpon. While I don't hate those sites, this kind of stuff belongs there. Slashdot is about "hard" news (with an editorial bias) and science/tech industry, not "LOL THATS FUNNAYE". Not to say we can't have humor, but it should be the tongue-in-cheek or irony kind.
One good thing Idle does have-- the comment bar. Compared to the comment bar on regular Slashdot entries, this is light years ahead. It's much smoother, it doesn't take up a large amount of space on the left side (making some comments look longer than they really are), and overall is just cleaner.
Take that, go back o the old "Reply to This|Parent" stripe (instead of those unnecessarily large buttons), and you'll be doing Slashdot a great service.
But drop Idle first. Seriously, it's completely worthless. I'm really glad I'm not paying for this shit.
I have to agree. There was one time where, in a rather dark corridor, I opened a door and walked in. I heard a hiss, and expected them to attack from behind. I turned around, saw nothing, and shrugged, thinking it was further ahead.
As I turn around it jumps down right in front of me. I literally slam my keyboard and mouse in opposite direction and make a made scramble to recover them while firing aimlessly.
That happened once in Half-Life 2, as well, with one of those damned poison Headcrabs.
If you didn't like how they ran this test (and I agree with most of the complaints), A List Apart is running a follow-up survey over the internet. I almost missed this, as it isn't mentioned until the very end of the article.
You can find it at http://surveys.formulate.com.au/dtfu. It takes about three-five minutes. I just took it, and they appear to be using darker row colors now. It's still too narrow to see how useful it is when you have to scroll horizontally, but it's a small improvement at least.
I wondered about that, too. I didn't even notice the stripes until I saw the caption for the image, then had to look back up.
For quick swapping you only want to deal with the background, not the foreground, and so you have to consistently use light or dark colors so that the text doesn't disappear. Working around this is almost trivial, though, especially when using CSS and classes.
And, as another user said, stripes really become useful when you have large spans of columns to go through. I'd be interested to see this same thing re-conducted both with darker rows and with wider (requiring scrolling) tables.
In fact, it looks like they're doing a follow-up study. I just took it, and while the table is still narrow it also used darker row colors. (Though now you get a mix of tables, rather than a single one.)
A lot of the debates I see over things like ID and such are based around the term "theory". You and I know what it means in a scientific term, but when Joe Sixpack hears "theory", what they really think of is hypothesis. From Wikipedia, the Scientific Method is:
1. Define the question 2. Gather information and resources (observe) 3. Form hypothesis 4. Perform experiment and collect data 5. Analyze data 6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis 7. Publish results 8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
Joe Sixpack thinks of step three. Mr. Scientist thinks of step six (or so). The disconnection between the two groups is not just ideology but terminology.
Sadly, though, the whole thing goes back to a lack of education all around, so perhaps this point is moot. Still, whenever I see/hear someone talk about "theory" I feel the need to tell them "No, you have a hypothesis, which can't be scientifically tested".
The main page has a plain-text RSS link at the bottom, but it does make you go through a hoop to get to this page, which includes the link you gave as well as other RSS reader options.
Furthermore, if someone doesn't use RSS, but still wants no-flash Dilbert, you can still use that page (http://feeds.feedburner.com/DilbertDailyStrip) as your daily dose. It only shows the last five days, but it's nothing but the strips and text, so it's still a much better option than the main site.
I don't much care for the addition of flash (what's the point?). However, in the past I looked for an RSS feed for Dilbert and either I was stupid and missed it or it just didn't exist. But in the flash app that shows the comic, there's now a nice little "RSS" icon. So now I can read my daily Dilbert and not even need to use their new stinking flash!
I go to a fairly well-known engineering college that started a CS department 20 years or so ago. When I entered, I was gung-ho for doing Web development.
Now, five years later and graduating in June, I'm not even sure if I want to work with computers for my job.
Interestingly, the CS program here requires two more Liberal Arts classes than any other degree. When I first started I thought this was horrible, but now I don't think so- my only issue is that the options for those classes were very limited. I think I'm better off for having taken those liberal arts classes- it gives me a better view of the world, which can indeed impact my coding and programming ability (and ability to get alone with others). (A CS professor told me that many of the LA teachers constantly find the CS students to be the better spoken and written of the class, which is slightly aside from the point but interesting.)
However, the campus is small, and has a very high ratio of men to women. There's little to do, and since I don't go to bars/clubs I don't have a lot of social things to go to. Furthermore, if, after a few years, you find that CS isn't your cup of tea you'll be in a better position to switch majors. Ideally the LA college has more courses for you to try and out and see what you like, plus you won't have to change colleges if you want a far remove major.
So I'd say ask yourself which is more important: -Killing yourself through four years of work, where you will surely learn computer stuff but have little knowledge outside that, or -Learning a bit less while still having a degree from a highly regarded college, but having more time and options for socializing? Also, women.
I can't say that I truly regret coming here- when I graduate I'll have the equivalent of two years of work experience (one in IT, one in web development) through the Co-op program. However, not a day goes by that I wonder where I'd be and what I'd be like if I had gone to a more generalized (and likely cheaper) college that could offer me more than just a major.
I can't speak towards what HR wants, only what I've experienced.
I'm a big GitS fan, though I prefer the series to the movies. This makes me wonder where they are going to take their material- while the series and movies had fairly similar settings, the plots were different. It also makes me wonder if they'll rip a story from one of the many to choose from, or just make a new story (hopefully with input from Masamune Shirow (and Kenji Kamiyama if they do the show)).
I hope they take a few things from the show, though. One of the favorite things in the show was the Tachikomas. They were like little children (with voices to match) armed with cannons and submachine guns. I would love to see these guys translate into real-life models (if only basic constructs enhanced by CG).
That said, I do echo the concerns of my peers- Hollywood has a way of fucking up things. I'm liking what I'm seeing with Speed Racer (mainly because it looks to be super cheesy in a good way), but the majority of video game adaptations have been horrendous. At least Uwe Boll isn't part of this. I'll try to reserve judgement until I actually see it.
For just the reason you allude to, is it obvious this needs to be done by VR? I mean, I'd think a mere camera would be fine for that. How often do you need to see the people you're meeting (or have them see you) other than from some particular angle?
I suppose that's true. The thought is that with a video monitor, no matter how big, you're still generally stuck at one angle from one level. If someone had, say, a highly-detailed model they wanted to show, it would be hard to do that with the video monitor without a lot of extra hassle. There are some other things I can think of, like instant changes to "handouts", but that could be done with the use of a few Kindles and a fat pipe.
But then I suppose the added benefit of that wouldn't outweigh the cost involved in such a set up when it's basically a glorified 3D camera. Perhaps once things like texture feedback is "perfected" and put to use it would make more sense. Ah well, I'm sure we'll see this in the far future but with holograms instead of goggles.
Forget CyberWalk- how about CyberMeet?
on
Ready for a CyberWalk?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The article seems to have undergone the/. effect, so I can't tell if this treadmill will do things for elevation change. Steps might be too much at this point, but what about hills?
Anyway, while going through a virtual world as if I were really there sounds cool, especially in the realm of video games, I think virtualization technology better fits the office, though it might see harder adoption.
How many people need to be in an office building for a meeting? (Nevermind how useful the meeting actually is.) How many people travel thousands of miles to give one presentation, then fly back?
Why not move phone conferencing to the virtual age? Obviously, having everyone represented by an avatar would make the meeting a bit ludicrous for those not used to it. So, why not take a page from the movie industry and go blue screen?
The way I see it is that at various locations around the globe, there is a building full of meeting rooms. Large tables, nice chairs, but no decoration and it's all one color (say, blue). When people enter, they don a set of VR goggles. Cameras in both their goggles and around the room record people and project that real world scenario into this virtual world, then seen through the VR goggles. Then, whoever is "hosting" the meeting can set up or choose from various themes to decorate the virtual rooms. Various tools allow people to project into this virtual world, to get up and walk around, hell even virtual notes.
Obviously, something would need to be done about the goggles such that either they were more like sunglasses or they were somehow removed in the digital projection. And it would take some serious hardware to do a good projection as well as including real-time video. But I believe that this kind of thing would be a big boon for international visits- now you only have to worry about time zones, not planes, hotels, and car rides. Fuel savings, cost savings (once the tech gets there), time savings. If done well enough, there would be no difference than if you were in person. Handshake aside, do you often make physical contact with the people you meet with? No dinner afterwards, unfortunately.
You could have a meeting with potential clients in Japan and be home in an hour.
It's not just that, though- it's that the buttons themselves take up far too much space and leave too much white space.
The old style, where there was just a green bar with text links, worked perfectly. Why do we need to have buttons? Okay, perhaps you want them to stand out a bit more- so just give them a border and a different background. They don't need all that extra space.
I'm also annoyed by the added space between abbreviated comments. Perhaps a bit easier to read, it makes the page much longer without a lot of added benefit.
My last complaint is the new Keybindings list. While it's great for those who like their keyboard, I'm an old (new?) school chap- I get by fine with my PgDn button and mouse. (Mainly the PgDn button.) So it would be nice if those could be hidden for us who make no use of them.
If I had to be pigeon-holed, I'd say "I like it with a but". However, as crappy as idle.slashdot seems to be (lol Digg), I love the discussion system there and it far surpasses this one. The comments bar is along the top instead of the side, which gives much more width for comments themselves, which is especially useful as you get into an increasing number of children posts. I actually recommend to Slashdot that they throw out this new discussion design and just use the idle.slashdot.org discussion one (with less green, perhaps). Of course, looking at idle now they've incorporated most of the complaints I listed above with this style. Still, having the bar along the top is much better for discussion layout.
Back in the heyday of free hosting services like Geocities and Fortunecity, small sites (mainly by and for fans) didn't rely a whole lot on search engines to drive traffic. Much more common and trusted were instead Webrings. For those who never partook: a webring is a loose community of related websites. It was moderated by a handful of people, and each site would put a little Webring script at the bottom of their page(s). This allowed users to surf between related content without having to go to some external website. It built more trust between the websites.
While I have not RTFA (this is Slashdot, after all), the summary makes it sound like the combination of Webrings and "Top X" lists, both of which are used much less now and don't carry as much weight but still require user interaction on a grand scale.
I'd be interested to see how this kind of search engine turns out- however, you also have the problem of "majority think", so searching for, say, evolution might have a first result for a page "debunking" it. But then I browse at +4, so I shouldn't complain.
I remember once getting an incensed missive from the owner of asdfg.com who complained about emails we were sending him regarding updates of our product. Turned out that a user had entered that domain when he registered the product in an attempt to not get our emails.
Heh. When I'm feeling less vulgar and need a fake address, I use the e-mail address "bob@bob.com". I never thought about who might actually get the e-mails and see what kind of sites I visit. Visiting bob.com just now, I can't tell what the hell they do, so I'm not as worried about them getting annoyed by reckless e-mail.
However, I do know the annoyance that what wrong addresses can do. Even on a single-user basis, it can be annoying as hell. I have an alternative gmail address that was supposed to be used for purely business purposes ("what's a tukaro?"). I have a rather generic name, even including the middle name, so it took some time to find one that fit and was free.
As it turns out, someone decided to get this same handle, but for a yahoo (or some other) account. I'm not sure if the guy was moving from or to the account, but he changed his address and wound up changing a lot of his accounts to use my gmail address. It was funny at first when I'd get a newsletter or something (just removed myself), but then he would order stuff with my e-mail address. (The companies he signed up with apparently don't bother to confirm addresses when you change them, so I got no mail when he did so.) First was a record from some Yahoo! store. I explained the situation, he had paid and everything, but they cancelled the order and said it was fraud. (They later added an update with the e-mail I sent them.) Not my intention, but on well.
Later he purchased a vase or something from Overstock.com. I was able to change his password to get in (good thing they don't just send a plain-text one) and got his mailing address (I had access to the phone number but did not write it down). I then contacted Overstock about the situation- they said they would try to contact him and continue to ship the order. A day or two later he had recovered the account and changed the address.
I was fine to let it be at that point, but this guy must have been some great kind of idiot. A few months later he apparently needs a loan for a car, so he heads to Roadloans.com. Not only does he put in my address, but he summarily gets denied and my account is suddenly littered with spam. I don't post this address anywhere (except for one resume page on a personal domain, which a bot would have to luck upon because it's not linked anywhere and has a non-obvious URL), so I'm fairly certain his sign up with roadloans caused it.
At this point, I got fed up, grabbed the physical address I had for him, and wrote out a rather stern letter telling him that he needs to stop this, that I'm getting tired of it, and that he should consider himself lucky that the account didn't belong to a nefarious individual. I sent it off in the mail and haven't had a problem since. The first and last thing I got meant for him had a time difference of a year and a half. Makes me wonder what else he's signed me up for.
Rather funny after the fact, but fairly annoying during the whole thing. I still get spam to that account, too, though it's decreased. I can't imagine the aggravation that would be caused from hundreds or more people putting his domain address down.
Ha ha, oh wow. I can't even think of something to say to beat down that kind of attitude, the suggestion is so flabbergasting. It's like a credit card company told me that to pay off my debts my mom should become a whore. Not an analogous situation, but it causes the same kind of "wtf" attitude.
Sadly, if the UK implements it there will be more reason to do so as well in the US. If it does happen, it likely won't be in place before Bush leaves office, but I have little reason to believe the next President won't do the same (exception of, perhaps, Obama). It would just take longer to implement because they would have to do it more under the radar since we still have guns.
And if you send it to the law firm, the lawyer will bill her for the time it takes to forward the mail.
I was thinking more like the lawyer/firm would just hold on to it until the next time she visits them (or vice versa).
Would they really bill her for each letter they pass on to her, even if they just keep them until the next get-together? That seems ridiculous, but I don't know lawyers. Can anyone confirm this? And if that is the case, we'd have to think of something else. A support website may help, but I don't know if it would have the same impact as personal typed letters. Hmm.
I agree, and the best way to do this may be societal support. I don't know Ms. Anderson, so I have no idea what qualms she has about a material settlement out of court. She may very well be willing to do this for the long haul, just to make the RIAA STFU & GTFO.
However, even if she's set on this, showing support from the outside will help her (and her lawyer, who I'm sure is hoping for a nice chunk of change) to reaffirm her will. If she's not completely set on it, outside support would help her see that this has effects reaching more than just the time the RIAA forced her to waste.
The best way I can think of to do this is a personal letter. Something short, personally signed, saying "You're fighting the good fight, tally ho!" and made via snail mail. Obviously, getting her home address might not be the best idea. Does anyone know a good way to go about this? Perhaps send mail to the law firm/individual representing her?
Slashdot Mirror
Ooh, ooh, I got this one:
Convenience.
The "other sources" you speak of have many problems associated with them. Sometimes what you get is flaky, or the time needed to take it is. You have the risk (however slight) of being sued. It may take you to some darker portions of the internet that would love to fuck up your browser or OS. (If you have a source that doesn't suffer these problems, please do share.)
Alternatively, you can go straight to the source, have a secure (and likely quicker) download and deal with a few ads. Even better, as online video becomes more viable the ads you see might actually interest you. The combination of what shows you've watched and regularly watch as well as profile information you list can make ads highly targeted, which advertisers love because they don't need a blanket campaign and broadcasters love because the advertisers are far more interested.
So it's not in HD? Big whoop. I don't know about you or the average user, but I don't have a 24" widescreen LCD monitor. HD on what I have will only be slightly better than SD, but will take up much more bandwidth. I'm okay with pixels.
Why should we disprove
it? It's their claim, so they should
have to put up proof.
I was wondering this, too. It may be that they have a loophole. My understanding of Safe Harbor is that they cannot be penalized for anything that they contain or that traverses their network so long as they treat all information equally and do not monitor the information for pieces of interest.
Because this list of websites is being provided by a third group (CMEC) and the ISPs just accept it unconditionally, they aren't actually policing content. It seems like the same idea of spam white/blacklists-- "We don't make the lists, we just take them from Company X and apply them."
It's still a horrible idea, but it might still give them Safe Harbor provisions. It also means that they won't check the veracity of any submitted site; of course, I wouldn't expect that anyway, as it would require interest, caring, and good customer service.
After all the backstabbing and nastiness that Hillary's been spreading, I'd be surprised if Obama took her as VP, anyway. I'm sure he can find some other female who's better fit for the job, or just a white guy to put some "others" at ease.
What possible twisted snake-oil scenario would give the DHS authority to extend the stay of foreign workers? I can see a very extreme scenario where they could decrease the time because of some reported imminent threat or something, but them being able to extend it makes little sense to me. It's like the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms selling off the wireless spectrum.
Or am I missing something? I admit that I'm not familiar with the intricacies of federal bureaus and who is under what secretary and given which powers. If someone can explain to me why this isn't just a pure abuse of the system by saying the word "terrist", please do so. A quick search of the previous Slashdot post and related articles isn't helping much. Do they control all of immigration? I thought that was someone else.
If this is truly a complete abuse of the department, I wonder if the public would react if the media groups picked up the story as administration abuse (hahaha... sure).
I'm just now getting around to playing the trilogy from last gen. I finished Sands of Time last week, and have been working through Warrior Within. Sands of Time was very enjoyable, Warrior Within feels like more of the same while fixing some problems with SoT (like the fixed camera going un-fixed when you move about).
However, while I don't consider them bad, both games seem "almost great". You may think it's the same thing as "good", but I view it in a different light-- Ubisoft had something wonderful going, but eventually decided that release dates were more important than polish.
In SoT, the camera would move about on its own disjointly, the controls moving with it, so you'd often turn yourself around in battle. Fixed cameras were far too distant to be of much help, though they gave you a nice view of the area. The camera would also change to be "dramatic", but more often would change so that you were now pointing the stick in the wrong direction and you die. Each "epic fight" concluded with an annoying "put away the swords" flash, and the forced visions at save points pretty much held your hand the entire game.
So far, in Warrior Within, they've fixed the fixed-camera problem as well as removing the "put away swords" sequence. Instead, they introduced a rather unintuitive combo sequence, where actions take a bit to carry out but your successive button sequences are still counted, making it hard to control the Prince if you decide to change what you're doing mid-fight. A problem that SoT had but is worse in WW is button mapping- buttons tend to be context sensitive (do you have your weapons out? Are you against a wall?) and when you press a button to zag you might zig instead. Furthermore, because it's so GRIMDARK, it's hard to spot any visual cues (where available) to time jumps and other actions. And lip-syncing+voice placement is just horrible.
I've not played Two Thrones yet, but I hear good things, so hopefully that removes some of these problems.
I make note of these things because they aren't just about the PoP series-- Ubisoft, in general, seems to be a company that's "almost great". I've played many of their games, such as XIII, Red Steel, and Farcry. Each of these games are fun (well, once you get over the aggravation of Red Steel's controls), but every game feels as if it could have been great. None of them have "polish", which keeps them at a B (or C+) grade instead of an A grade.
The only Ubisoft game I've played that seemed to have a hefty amount of polish was Rayman Raving Rabbids. Very fun, and I plan to get the sequels, but that's just one great of many sorta-good. If Ubisoft put the same amount of QA and polish into games that Valve seems to do (seriously, if you haven't played their games with commentary on, you're missing a lot of interesting information), they could have games I would call exceptional. Instead, they have the "good enough" mentality and boot it out the door for some extra cash.
This is why I don't have big aspirations for these new PoP games. Will they be good? Probably. Will they be great? Not unless Ubisoft has made great strides recently.
For those who don't know, Idle has been around for a few months now, though I know of no official announcement. This tells me that Slashdot is trying to throw it in under the radar, for whatever reason.
Please, Slashdot, drop this. This isn't Fark, this isn't Digg, this isn't StumbleUpon. While I don't hate those sites, this kind of stuff belongs there. Slashdot is about "hard" news (with an editorial bias) and science/tech industry, not "LOL THATS FUNNAYE". Not to say we can't have humor, but it should be the tongue-in-cheek or irony kind.
One good thing Idle does have-- the comment bar. Compared to the comment bar on regular Slashdot entries, this is light years ahead. It's much smoother, it doesn't take up a large amount of space on the left side (making some comments look longer than they really are), and overall is just cleaner.
Take that, go back o the old "Reply to This|Parent" stripe (instead of those unnecessarily large buttons), and you'll be doing Slashdot a great service.
But drop Idle first. Seriously, it's completely worthless. I'm really glad I'm not paying for this shit.
But can it make julienned fries?
I have to agree. There was one time where, in a rather dark corridor, I opened a door and walked in. I heard a hiss, and expected them to attack from behind. I turned around, saw nothing, and shrugged, thinking it was further ahead.
As I turn around it jumps down right in front of me. I literally slam my keyboard and mouse in opposite direction and make a made scramble to recover them while firing aimlessly.
That happened once in Half-Life 2, as well, with one of those damned poison Headcrabs.
If you didn't like how they ran this test (and I agree with most of the complaints), A List Apart is running a follow-up survey over the internet. I almost missed this, as it isn't mentioned until the very end of the article.
You can find it at http://surveys.formulate.com.au/dtfu. It takes about three-five minutes. I just took it, and they appear to be using darker row colors now. It's still too narrow to see how useful it is when you have to scroll horizontally, but it's a small improvement at least.
I wondered about that, too. I didn't even notice the stripes until I saw the caption for the image, then had to look back up.
For quick swapping you only want to deal with the background, not the foreground, and so you have to consistently use light or dark colors so that the text doesn't disappear. Working around this is almost trivial, though, especially when using CSS and classes.
And, as another user said, stripes really become useful when you have large spans of columns to go through. I'd be interested to see this same thing re-conducted both with darker rows and with wider (requiring scrolling) tables.
In fact, it looks like they're doing a follow-up study. I just took it, and while the table is still narrow it also used darker row colors. (Though now you get a mix of tables, rather than a single one.)
Sadly, though, the whole thing goes back to a lack of education all around, so perhaps this point is moot. Still, whenever I see/hear someone talk about "theory" I feel the need to tell them "No, you have a hypothesis, which can't be scientifically tested".
The main page has a plain-text RSS link at the bottom, but it does make you go through a hoop to get to this page, which includes the link you gave as well as other RSS reader options.
Furthermore, if someone doesn't use RSS, but still wants no-flash Dilbert, you can still use that page (http://feeds.feedburner.com/DilbertDailyStrip) as your daily dose. It only shows the last five days, but it's nothing but the strips and text, so it's still a much better option than the main site.
I don't much care for the addition of flash (what's the point?). However, in the past I looked for an RSS feed for Dilbert and either I was stupid and missed it or it just didn't exist. But in the flash app that shows the comic, there's now a nice little "RSS" icon. So now I can read my daily Dilbert and not even need to use their new stinking flash!
Personally, I consider this a win.
This could be the incident you speak of. :)
(Or at least super similar.)
I go to a fairly well-known engineering college that started a CS department 20 years or so ago. When I entered, I was gung-ho for doing Web development.
Now, five years later and graduating in June, I'm not even sure if I want to work with computers for my job.
Interestingly, the CS program here requires two more Liberal Arts classes than any other degree. When I first started I thought this was horrible, but now I don't think so- my only issue is that the options for those classes were very limited. I think I'm better off for having taken those liberal arts classes- it gives me a better view of the world, which can indeed impact my coding and programming ability (and ability to get alone with others). (A CS professor told me that many of the LA teachers constantly find the CS students to be the better spoken and written of the class, which is slightly aside from the point but interesting.)
However, the campus is small, and has a very high ratio of men to women. There's little to do, and since I don't go to bars/clubs I don't have a lot of social things to go to. Furthermore, if, after a few years, you find that CS isn't your cup of tea you'll be in a better position to switch majors. Ideally the LA college has more courses for you to try and out and see what you like, plus you won't have to change colleges if you want a far remove major.
So I'd say ask yourself which is more important:
-Killing yourself through four years of work, where you will surely learn computer stuff but have little knowledge outside that, or
-Learning a bit less while still having a degree from a highly regarded college, but having more time and options for socializing? Also, women.
I can't say that I truly regret coming here- when I graduate I'll have the equivalent of two years of work experience (one in IT, one in web development) through the Co-op program. However, not a day goes by that I wonder where I'd be and what I'd be like if I had gone to a more generalized (and likely cheaper) college that could offer me more than just a major.
I can't speak towards what HR wants, only what I've experienced.
I'm a big GitS fan, though I prefer the series to the movies. This makes me wonder where they are going to take their material- while the series and movies had fairly similar settings, the plots were different. It also makes me wonder if they'll rip a story from one of the many to choose from, or just make a new story (hopefully with input from Masamune Shirow (and Kenji Kamiyama if they do the show)).
I hope they take a few things from the show, though. One of the favorite things in the show was the Tachikomas. They were like little children (with voices to match) armed with cannons and submachine guns. I would love to see these guys translate into real-life models (if only basic constructs enhanced by CG).
That said, I do echo the concerns of my peers- Hollywood has a way of fucking up things. I'm liking what I'm seeing with Speed Racer (mainly because it looks to be super cheesy in a good way), but the majority of video game adaptations have been horrendous. At least Uwe Boll isn't part of this. I'll try to reserve judgement until I actually see it.
But then I suppose the added benefit of that wouldn't outweigh the cost involved in such a set up when it's basically a glorified 3D camera. Perhaps once things like texture feedback is "perfected" and put to use it would make more sense. Ah well, I'm sure we'll see this in the far future but with holograms instead of goggles.
The article seems to have undergone the /. effect, so I can't tell if this treadmill will do things for elevation change. Steps might be too much at this point, but what about hills?
Anyway, while going through a virtual world as if I were really there sounds cool, especially in the realm of video games, I think virtualization technology better fits the office, though it might see harder adoption.
How many people need to be in an office building for a meeting? (Nevermind how useful the meeting actually is.) How many people travel thousands of miles to give one presentation, then fly back?
Why not move phone conferencing to the virtual age? Obviously, having everyone represented by an avatar would make the meeting a bit ludicrous for those not used to it. So, why not take a page from the movie industry and go blue screen?
The way I see it is that at various locations around the globe, there is a building full of meeting rooms. Large tables, nice chairs, but no decoration and it's all one color (say, blue). When people enter, they don a set of VR goggles. Cameras in both their goggles and around the room record people and project that real world scenario into this virtual world, then seen through the VR goggles. Then, whoever is "hosting" the meeting can set up or choose from various themes to decorate the virtual rooms. Various tools allow people to project into this virtual world, to get up and walk around, hell even virtual notes.
Obviously, something would need to be done about the goggles such that either they were more like sunglasses or they were somehow removed in the digital projection. And it would take some serious hardware to do a good projection as well as including real-time video. But I believe that this kind of thing would be a big boon for international visits- now you only have to worry about time zones, not planes, hotels, and car rides. Fuel savings, cost savings (once the tech gets there), time savings. If done well enough, there would be no difference than if you were in person. Handshake aside, do you often make physical contact with the people you meet with? No dinner afterwards, unfortunately.
You could have a meeting with potential clients in Japan and be home in an hour.
It's not just that, though- it's that the buttons themselves take up far too much space and leave too much white space.
The old style, where there was just a green bar with text links, worked perfectly. Why do we need to have buttons? Okay, perhaps you want them to stand out a bit more- so just give them a border and a different background. They don't need all that extra space.
I'm also annoyed by the added space between abbreviated comments. Perhaps a bit easier to read, it makes the page much longer without a lot of added benefit.
My last complaint is the new Keybindings list. While it's great for those who like their keyboard, I'm an old (new?) school chap- I get by fine with my PgDn button and mouse. (Mainly the PgDn button.) So it would be nice if those could be hidden for us who make no use of them.
If I had to be pigeon-holed, I'd say "I like it with a but". However, as crappy as idle.slashdot seems to be (lol Digg), I love the discussion system there and it far surpasses this one. The comments bar is along the top instead of the side, which gives much more width for comments themselves, which is especially useful as you get into an increasing number of children posts. I actually recommend to Slashdot that they throw out this new discussion design and just use the idle.slashdot.org discussion one (with less green, perhaps). Of course, looking at idle now they've incorporated most of the complaints I listed above with this style. Still, having the bar along the top is much better for discussion layout.
Back in the heyday of free hosting services like Geocities and Fortunecity, small sites (mainly by and for fans) didn't rely a whole lot on search engines to drive traffic. Much more common and trusted were instead Webrings. For those who never partook: a webring is a loose community of related websites. It was moderated by a handful of people, and each site would put a little Webring script at the bottom of their page(s). This allowed users to surf between related content without having to go to some external website. It built more trust between the websites.
While I have not RTFA (this is Slashdot, after all), the summary makes it sound like the combination of Webrings and "Top X" lists, both of which are used much less now and don't carry as much weight but still require user interaction on a grand scale.
I'd be interested to see how this kind of search engine turns out- however, you also have the problem of "majority think", so searching for, say, evolution might have a first result for a page "debunking" it. But then I browse at +4, so I shouldn't complain.
However, I do know the annoyance that what wrong addresses can do. Even on a single-user basis, it can be annoying as hell. I have an alternative gmail address that was supposed to be used for purely business purposes ("what's a tukaro?"). I have a rather generic name, even including the middle name, so it took some time to find one that fit and was free.
As it turns out, someone decided to get this same handle, but for a yahoo (or some other) account. I'm not sure if the guy was moving from or to the account, but he changed his address and wound up changing a lot of his accounts to use my gmail address. It was funny at first when I'd get a newsletter or something (just removed myself), but then he would order stuff with my e-mail address. (The companies he signed up with apparently don't bother to confirm addresses when you change them, so I got no mail when he did so.) First was a record from some Yahoo! store. I explained the situation, he had paid and everything, but they cancelled the order and said it was fraud. (They later added an update with the e-mail I sent them.) Not my intention, but on well.
Later he purchased a vase or something from Overstock.com. I was able to change his password to get in (good thing they don't just send a plain-text one) and got his mailing address (I had access to the phone number but did not write it down). I then contacted Overstock about the situation- they said they would try to contact him and continue to ship the order. A day or two later he had recovered the account and changed the address.
I was fine to let it be at that point, but this guy must have been some great kind of idiot. A few months later he apparently needs a loan for a car, so he heads to Roadloans.com. Not only does he put in my address, but he summarily gets denied and my account is suddenly littered with spam. I don't post this address anywhere (except for one resume page on a personal domain, which a bot would have to luck upon because it's not linked anywhere and has a non-obvious URL), so I'm fairly certain his sign up with roadloans caused it.
At this point, I got fed up, grabbed the physical address I had for him, and wrote out a rather stern letter telling him that he needs to stop this, that I'm getting tired of it, and that he should consider himself lucky that the account didn't belong to a nefarious individual. I sent it off in the mail and haven't had a problem since. The first and last thing I got meant for him had a time difference of a year and a half. Makes me wonder what else he's signed me up for.
Rather funny after the fact, but fairly annoying during the whole thing. I still get spam to that account, too, though it's decreased. I can't imagine the aggravation that would be caused from hundreds or more people putting his domain address down.
Ha ha, oh wow. I can't even think of something to say to beat down that kind of attitude, the suggestion is so flabbergasting. It's like a credit card company told me that to pay off my debts my mom should become a whore. Not an analogous situation, but it causes the same kind of "wtf" attitude.
Sadly, if the UK implements it there will be more reason to do so as well in the US. If it does happen, it likely won't be in place before Bush leaves office, but I have little reason to believe the next President won't do the same (exception of, perhaps, Obama). It would just take longer to implement because they would have to do it more under the radar since we still have guns.
Would they really bill her for each letter they pass on to her, even if they just keep them until the next get-together? That seems ridiculous, but I don't know lawyers. Can anyone confirm this? And if that is the case, we'd have to think of something else. A support website may help, but I don't know if it would have the same impact as personal typed letters. Hmm.
I agree, and the best way to do this may be societal support. I don't know Ms. Anderson, so I have no idea what qualms she has about a material settlement out of court. She may very well be willing to do this for the long haul, just to make the RIAA STFU & GTFO.
However, even if she's set on this, showing support from the outside will help her (and her lawyer, who I'm sure is hoping for a nice chunk of change) to reaffirm her will. If she's not completely set on it, outside support would help her see that this has effects reaching more than just the time the RIAA forced her to waste.
The best way I can think of to do this is a personal letter. Something short, personally signed, saying "You're fighting the good fight, tally ho!" and made via snail mail. Obviously, getting her home address might not be the best idea. Does anyone know a good way to go about this? Perhaps send mail to the law firm/individual representing her?