The British use metric about as much Americans do. More like a "Standard to English" conversion SNAFU. Maybe they were measuring it in "stones" or some antiquated English measurement unit.
:) That sounds familiar, mine did something similar before I tried the electric fence. The only way to make sure he'd stick around was that you had to be home, then he was more than happy to be by your side, but once you headed out the door to goto work or left him outside all day he'd hop the fence. My final solution was a doggy door, he hardly ever took off after that. I guess given the option to be able to go inside and sleep on whatever furniture he wanted was more appealing than going around the block.
I put one of those on my dog because he like to go say hi to everyone in the neighboorhood. For a bout a week he refused to move out of the middle of the yard since he was so scared of the fence. That was until he figured out where the control box was and chewed it up, turning the fence off. I'm not saying he was smart enough to figure that out, he just managed to chew up the right thing, but he certaining didn't stay in the yard once he figured out the power was gone.
Nothing in life is an absolute or even remotely permanent. People can get used to all kinds of restrictions, but that doesn't mean that they'll stay that way for very long once the restrictions are lifted. Take a look at any riot or natural distaster for very recent examples.
Well it's kind of like a dog that's been kicked one to many times, it'll flinch every time someone comes near it.
Shitty graphics, load screens every other room, weak ass multi-player support, and very crappy mouse control where the standard for console/PC releases for a long time. They've gotten alot better about the graphics and the mouse control and the load screens are a little farther apart, though still to often. Multi-player tends to still enjoy intiment relations with donkeys though.
The only part of Oblivion that was an obvious Console left over was the inventory system. PC RPG's typically have a click and drag grid inventory, while consoles tend to have a long list scrolling inventory since that's what works better with console controlers. Other than that there was really nothing that awful about Oblivion.
Bioshock bitterness seems to me have more to do with too much hype, too many suckers, too much DRM and not enough game.
Gamers need to move to Missouri adopt the "Show Me" attitude instead of swallowing down everything the marketing machine spews out with the eagerness of $5 hooker between fixes.
Well so much for this generation of consoles being the end all be all "it just works, I don't have to upgrade every year" devices that were supposedly hamering the last nails into the coffin of PC gaming.
Looks to me like we'll be seeing XBOX and PC gaming being synonymous in the next year or two. They've already got the hardware rating system in Vista as well as USB adapters for their wireless 360 controlers. It's just a matter of adding direct game support for XBOX titles on the PC.
Considering how fast PC hardware advances in comparison to consoles there is no reason not too. The only thing they'll have to watch out for is letting the software developers get too far head of the average customer's hardware, the very reason many gamers have abandoned PC gaming in the first place.
Personally I would love to see this since I have already distilled my living room entertainment package down to a PC and a 40" LCD HD TV, and don't care spoil that with the noisy, anemic, unreliable, one trick pony, 360, just to be able to play the few console titles I'm interested in.
The concept of taxing email and IM became obsolete/impossible the moment people moved away from getting those services exlusively from their dial-up ISP. I'd like to see them try to track down every free email and IM service and try to squeeze money out of them. It just won't work.
What I can see is the Bells and other traditional POTS providers trying to weasel out of their traditional taxes owed to the government by claiming to be VOIP providers.
Actually that's not entirely true. I've found the best indicator of what hardware and software people are using currently in the Steam hardware survey. Vista has been steadily moving up every month. It's up to 7.9% penatration which is quite good considering how many people are supposedly not adopting it. The interesting fact that of the 89,000 people that have it running as their OS only 18000 actually have a video card installed that is capable of running Dx10. That says to me a fairly large percentage of non-enthusiests are getting it part of computer perchase.
There is other info on there that is surprising to see. From how much new gear is being used to how much hardware that was old 5 years ago is still being used.
For the average user, I'd say yes the market is and has been over served for more than a couple of years now. Most of the big PC builders are all shrinking in size. I agree PC's are going the way of the standard appliance, something to be replaced when it breaks, but not before.
Trend wise for the average user, things will slow to a crawl once the PC on a chip stage of developement is reached, we are getting close, but for the enthusiest it'll be some time before enough will be enough. I doubt gamers will stop running out every year to get the latest and the greatest until something along the lines of the Matrix or a holo-deck (or if girls become alot easier to talk to/date) is available.
I specifically remembering a friend bitching and moaning over needing 1286mb of RAM for win95 to run well and the fact that he couldn't find a replacement copy when he lost one of the 15 floppies needed to install it. The only versions available were on CD-ROM which he thought was a pointless device to buy.
People have been crying over software bloat for the last decade. I for one welcome all the bloat, I'll take that over command line monocrome screened computing anyday. Frankly until I can walk through a door and say to no one in particular "Computer begin program and have a holo-deck simulate my entire house, I don't think bloat will ever slow down, nor should it.
Uh Skype already costs nothing a month talking Skype to skype, but if you insist on paying them you can get Skype-in for $5 a month to get a number in your destination country for unlimited free incoming calls and just buy minutes for Skype-out. I use $25-50 worth a minutes a year for skype out to call back to the US.
Most people never upgraded every couple of years anyway, but we are rapidly getting to the point where the typical PC uses(web/music/video/email/images) can be run well on the most modest a machines whether they have Linux,Windows, or OSX on them. That will have a bigger affect on sales than any environmental concerns.
That link you posted makes some flawed asumptions anyway. You buy a PC to do something, and that is part of the cost of it. The tree huggers pick something new to pull their hair out over every couple of years and the PC is it's current target. Think about what a PC replaces, a multitude of things that took energy and created polution to make. Here is the short list of what I no longer have in my home or no longer go out in public to do. I bet you a beer that a single PC is cheaper to make and operate than all these things and I'm sure there are many more that I missed.
Things I no longer have in my home:
Photography chemical dark room
CD player
DVD player
telephone
TV
Stereo
newspapers
magazines
encyclopedias
I no longer make trips to the...
the store (online purchasing)
the bank
the post office
government offices for info/paper work
to school(Online college education)
places and getting lost along the way, map directions
trips when the weather is bad at a distant location
...and so on.
There is one other thing I no longer pay much for any more and that is a winter heating bill. The combination of really good insulation and two PC's running 24/7 doing cancer research for Rosseta Stone (BOINC) keeps my house nice and warm and hopefully find cures for some really horrible diseases, not to shabby for something that uses half as much electricty as a fridge, not that a fridge even uses all that much in the first place.
It's not what things cost, but what you get in return.
Power supplies don't just magically use power when they are on. It takes a load (video card, motherboard, cpu, etc) to be drawing that power.
Now there is a question of efficiency, but that has nothing to do with it's power rating. A 400w power supply with a 60% efficiency rating is going to piss away more electricity in the form of heat that a 550w that is rated at 85% efficiency.
The el cheapo power supply with the lower rating may not cost much now, but you'll pay it all back in electricity and replacement costs.
No what they teach a guard is "If the situation looks wrong, then treat it as such, untill you know otherwise." In the really real world a bomb rarely looks like a "bomb", this isn't the fucking movies. The guards did the right thing.
Personally I don't see why anyone is defending her. When someone walks up and poke a bear with a stick to see if it's dead, we don't call them a "victim" when the bear rips their face off, we call them a dumb ass.
Actually Derigibles actually fall under powered flight, though powered flight is not actually a catagory used by the FAA. You are thinking of baloons. You have Fixed wing, rotary wing, lighter than air, and powered lift as catagories of aircraft.
Here are a basic list on restrictions for ultralight operation.
Used only for sport and recreation
Daylight operations only
No operations over congested areas
Used by a single occupant
Maximum five gallons of fuel
Yield right-of-way to all other aircraft
Operation in controlled airspace and restricted areas requires prior permission
You don't need a license if you are by yourself
Weight, speed, and fuel capacity are what would get you into into the FAR part 103 catagory of operating under ultralight rules, so a whether it be a hang glider, a ballon, derigible, or a sailplane as long as it falls under the max limits it's considered an ultralight.
Actually this jet pack thing might not pass muster since 24 knots is max speed allowed for ultralights and from what I've seen of other jet packs they go considerably faster than 24 knots. They probably end up falling under parachute regulations since you cannot actually take off or land from the ground in the thing.
Legacy compatibility is the hardware/software industry shooting itself in the foot.
The fact that they still include things like floppy drive, IDE devices, serial and parallel connections on motherboards is a perfect example. There is a market out there I'm sure for such things, but anyone that upgrades every year or two has moved on and won't be looking back.
Maybe it's too much to ask that they completely drop support for those in the software, but as far as hardware get rid of it already. They can always support niche users with add-on cards and the let rest of us move on.
Actually something like this is already regulated, but not in the way you think. There probably will be absolutley no requirements to get one other than a credit card or cash, since it's so small. The only restrictions will be where you fly it (airspace restriction) Whether it's a Rocketeer outfit or some yahoo with a lawnchair, 2 dozen helium ballons, and a BB-gun doesn't matter because the FAA could care less as long is it doesn't get in the way of regular aircraft.
You can go out right now and get the current equivalent, para-sails and hang gliders (powered or not) and go kill yourself nearly restriction free. I see no reason why this "new" jet wing will be any different.
Well people complained about cars not sounding right either when they first appeared on the road. It's coming full circle I guess. Besides with it being electric just hook up some speakers and get yourself a vehicle "Ringtone" so it can sound like whater you want.
They need a new review system
on
BioShock Review
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I never understood why my Dad always hated the movies I liked as a kid, well now that I'm his age I understand completely. It is becoming rarer and rarer that I see a movie that is truly original or revolutionary and sadly, entertaining to me.
I think gaming is finally starting to suffer from the same thing. To the typical new gamer Bioshock may seem like a wonderful, revolutionary game, but to be honest other than the graphics there is nothing in the game that I haven't in a dozen games over the last 15 years I've been playing then on the PC. It's not a bad game, but it's no 10 out of 10, at least not from where I'm sitting.
Maybe I'm just being cynical, but at this point I suspect WoW will continue to dominate until Blizzard creates WoW2. It's so far ahead of all the other MMORPGs on the market that I don't see anyone being able to displace it.
I remember them saying the same thing about Ever Quest, that the only thing that could displace it was Ever Quest 2. That didn't turn out to be too accurate. I think WOW will run it's course and then most people will move on.
Folding@home has some updates on their site. 26gf is not much anymore, considering they are taling about getting 100gf out of a single ATI X1950 card and are working on supporting multi GPU systems. I've seen motherboards that support as many as four video cards, if they can get the bugs worked out that would be quite the big deal.
Of course this is speciallized software by one group. I think if AMD/ATI delivers on their promises of having 4+ multi-core CPU's that have GPU's mixed in with them and support built into the various OS's well see some true super computers that'll sit on the desktop without the need to make a cluster.
Slashdot Mirror
The British use metric about as much Americans do. More like a "Standard to English" conversion SNAFU. Maybe they were measuring it in "stones" or some antiquated English measurement unit.
The story shouldn't say "consumers clueless about online tracking", it should just say, "consumers are just clueless".
:) That sounds familiar, mine did something similar before I tried the electric fence. The only way to make sure he'd stick around was that you had to be home, then he was more than happy to be by your side, but once you headed out the door to goto work or left him outside all day he'd hop the fence. My final solution was a doggy door, he hardly ever took off after that. I guess given the option to be able to go inside and sleep on whatever furniture he wanted was more appealing than going around the block.
Nothing in life is an absolute or even remotely permanent. People can get used to all kinds of restrictions, but that doesn't mean that they'll stay that way for very long once the restrictions are lifted. Take a look at any riot or natural distaster for very recent examples.
Shitty graphics, load screens every other room, weak ass multi-player support, and very crappy mouse control where the standard for console/PC releases for a long time. They've gotten alot better about the graphics and the mouse control and the load screens are a little farther apart, though still to often. Multi-player tends to still enjoy intiment relations with donkeys though.
The only part of Oblivion that was an obvious Console left over was the inventory system. PC RPG's typically have a click and drag grid inventory, while consoles tend to have a long list scrolling inventory since that's what works better with console controlers. Other than that there was really nothing that awful about Oblivion.
Bioshock bitterness seems to me have more to do with too much hype, too many suckers, too much DRM and not enough game.
Gamers need to move to Missouri adopt the "Show Me" attitude instead of swallowing down everything the marketing machine spews out with the eagerness of $5 hooker between fixes.
Looks to me like we'll be seeing XBOX and PC gaming being synonymous in the next year or two. They've already got the hardware rating system in Vista as well as USB adapters for their wireless 360 controlers. It's just a matter of adding direct game support for XBOX titles on the PC.
Considering how fast PC hardware advances in comparison to consoles there is no reason not too. The only thing they'll have to watch out for is letting the software developers get too far head of the average customer's hardware, the very reason many gamers have abandoned PC gaming in the first place.
Personally I would love to see this since I have already distilled my living room entertainment package down to a PC and a 40" LCD HD TV, and don't care spoil that with the noisy, anemic, unreliable, one trick pony, 360, just to be able to play the few console titles I'm interested in.
Nope. VoIP comes in many forms, most of the better ones come from companies that are not ISP's or traditional phone companies.
What I can see is the Bells and other traditional POTS providers trying to weasel out of their traditional taxes owed to the government by claiming to be VOIP providers.
There is other info on there that is surprising to see. From how much new gear is being used to how much hardware that was old 5 years ago is still being used.
Trend wise for the average user, things will slow to a crawl once the PC on a chip stage of developement is reached, we are getting close, but for the enthusiest it'll be some time before enough will be enough. I doubt gamers will stop running out every year to get the latest and the greatest until something along the lines of the Matrix or a holo-deck (or if girls become alot easier to talk to/date) is available.
People have been crying over software bloat for the last decade. I for one welcome all the bloat, I'll take that over command line monocrome screened computing anyday. Frankly until I can walk through a door and say to no one in particular "Computer begin program and have a holo-deck simulate my entire house, I don't think bloat will ever slow down, nor should it.
Uh Skype already costs nothing a month talking Skype to skype, but if you insist on paying them you can get Skype-in for $5 a month to get a number in your destination country for unlimited free incoming calls and just buy minutes for Skype-out. I use $25-50 worth a minutes a year for skype out to call back to the US.
That link you posted makes some flawed asumptions anyway. You buy a PC to do something, and that is part of the cost of it. The tree huggers pick something new to pull their hair out over every couple of years and the PC is it's current target. Think about what a PC replaces, a multitude of things that took energy and created polution to make. Here is the short list of what I no longer have in my home or no longer go out in public to do. I bet you a beer that a single PC is cheaper to make and operate than all these things and I'm sure there are many more that I missed.
Things I no longer have in my home:
Photography chemical dark room
CD player
DVD player
telephone
TV
Stereo
newspapers
magazines
encyclopedias
I no longer make trips to the...
the store (online purchasing)
the bank
the post office
government offices for info/paper work
to school(Online college education)
places and getting lost along the way, map directions
trips when the weather is bad at a distant location
There is one other thing I no longer pay much for any more and that is a winter heating bill. The combination of really good insulation and two PC's running 24/7 doing cancer research for Rosseta Stone (BOINC) keeps my house nice and warm and hopefully find cures for some really horrible diseases, not to shabby for something that uses half as much electricty as a fridge, not that a fridge even uses all that much in the first place.
It's not what things cost, but what you get in return.
Internet use has cut my heating bill in the winter by 75%. My two computers keep my house toasty and warm.
Power supplies don't just magically use power when they are on. It takes a load (video card, motherboard, cpu, etc) to be drawing that power.
Now there is a question of efficiency, but that has nothing to do with it's power rating. A 400w power supply with a 60% efficiency rating is going to piss away more electricity in the form of heat that a 550w that is rated at 85% efficiency.
The el cheapo power supply with the lower rating may not cost much now, but you'll pay it all back in electricity and replacement costs.
The only thing shocking about this was it was news a year and a half ago and some of you just are hearing about it now.
Personally I don't see why anyone is defending her. When someone walks up and poke a bear with a stick to see if it's dead, we don't call them a "victim" when the bear rips their face off, we call them a dumb ass.
Here are a basic list on restrictions for ultralight operation.
Used only for sport and recreation
Daylight operations only
No operations over congested areas
Used by a single occupant
Maximum five gallons of fuel
Yield right-of-way to all other aircraft
Operation in controlled airspace and restricted areas requires prior permission
You don't need a license if you are by yourself
Weight, speed, and fuel capacity are what would get you into into the FAR part 103 catagory of operating under ultralight rules, so a whether it be a hang glider, a ballon, derigible, or a sailplane as long as it falls under the max limits it's considered an ultralight.
Actually this jet pack thing might not pass muster since 24 knots is max speed allowed for ultralights and from what I've seen of other jet packs they go considerably faster than 24 knots. They probably end up falling under parachute regulations since you cannot actually take off or land from the ground in the thing.
Who knows? Call the FAA I guess.
The fact that they still include things like floppy drive, IDE devices, serial and parallel connections on motherboards is a perfect example. There is a market out there I'm sure for such things, but anyone that upgrades every year or two has moved on and won't be looking back.
Maybe it's too much to ask that they completely drop support for those in the software, but as far as hardware get rid of it already. They can always support niche users with add-on cards and the let rest of us move on.
You can go out right now and get the current equivalent, para-sails and hang gliders (powered or not) and go kill yourself nearly restriction free. I see no reason why this "new" jet wing will be any different.
Well people complained about cars not sounding right either when they first appeared on the road. It's coming full circle I guess. Besides with it being electric just hook up some speakers and get yourself a vehicle "Ringtone" so it can sound like whater you want.
I think gaming is finally starting to suffer from the same thing. To the typical new gamer Bioshock may seem like a wonderful, revolutionary game, but to be honest other than the graphics there is nothing in the game that I haven't in a dozen games over the last 15 years I've been playing then on the PC. It's not a bad game, but it's no 10 out of 10, at least not from where I'm sitting.
P
I remember them saying the same thing about Ever Quest, that the only thing that could displace it was Ever Quest 2. That didn't turn out to be too accurate. I think WOW will run it's course and then most people will move on.
I was thinking the same thing. My 4x4 pickup truck can go 5000 on one tank of fuel as well, as long as the tank holds at least 250 gallons.
Of course this is speciallized software by one group. I think if AMD/ATI delivers on their promises of having 4+ multi-core CPU's that have GPU's mixed in with them and support built into the various OS's well see some true super computers that'll sit on the desktop without the need to make a cluster.