There's a fine line between throttling certain types of traffic by default and giving preference.
Smart algorithms can make limited bandwidth work better for everyone. Most of us do something like this ourselves. We'll limit upload speed on a torrent so we can keep surfing. We'll set a a lower priority on a download to get something else done quicker.
An intelligent algorithm that says "Hey, everyone's eating some shit here, non-realtime applications have to eat shit first..." is actually a reasonably fair way of dealing with this. If it takes you 30 seconds longer to download a song from itunes your frustration is going to be far smaller than the frustration of someone watching a youtube video that stutters 15 times for 2 seconds each.
I'm a Cox customer, and I'm fine with it. You can get your pandora stream now, and I'll be patient on the new Chiodos album. I'll get my Lost streamed first, and that funny video your lesbian aunt sent of her 10 cats can wait a little longer.
I used to hate alignment restrictions because I didn't think they reflected reality. Then I adjusted my thinking to realize that none of the game really effects reality. In D&D alignment is a real force. Poison is, for instance, always evil. It almost exclusively used by evil characters, monsters, and gods.
My problem with these alignment restrictions in modern D&D is that it is an obvious mixing of setting with rules. It seemed that one of the goals of 3.0 was to truly separate setting from core rules. Though the Greyhawk was supposedly the "default" setting, no D&D game I ever played in was set there, and there were indeed a number.
I guess what I'm saying is that I would clarification on this as well. It's a reasonable question and it deserves a detailed answer. D&D has so many settings that at this point integrating too many seemingly oddball rules into the initial rulebook seems ridiculous. I am fine with the fact that in certain settings good and evil are absolute entities and there is no gray area. I love the fact that historically D&D is played in those settings. However, modern gamers don't like such a black and white portrayal of morality. Personally, I don't think it belongs in core rules, especially to a game that primarily seems to be played in custom settings.
Maybe I am missing something because I do not keep up with en world (or even play D&D anymore at this point) but is there a reason you are equating Warlord with Paladin beyond the fact that paladin's traditionally have healing magic and you equate the Leader roll with "healer"?
I admit to not having read much about these classes, but if I had to asses I would picture the warlord as more of a general with abilities that increase their allies's effectiveness and not really as a healer at all. That said, I'm not sure there is a reason that fighter's shouldn't have access to these abilities instead, but generally speaking I dislike classes a whole, so I will always be looking to lower the number of classes and increase the diversity within a class.
I just don't see what makes warlord and paladin match up so logically I guess. Paladin did always seem like an odd sort of setting-based class rather than a simple archetype (which is what base classes should be, in my opinion) though.
I remember the slashdot comments about the iPod when it first debuted. For those who don't, let's just say it looked about like these comments on the Kindle, lots of hate everywhere from people who had never seen, let alone used the device. The complaints were pretty much identical, too (DRM!, too expensive!, how is this better than a laptop?).
Thus, I'll go ahead and predict the success of the Kindle here and now. Within 2 years 90% of slashdot readers will own one, and those who don't will own a knock off that runs open source firmware.
These people are not investors. They did not get "scammed". Those of us who read the article know that this scientist did not even approach them for cash. Rather, news of his plight got out and people wanted to donate. He is a respected particle physicist with a theory that is a little odd. He wants to perform a relatively cheap experiment which should show whether his theory has enough going for it to be worth further examination. If these experiments fail, oh well, back to the drawing board.
This is the way science is SUPPOSED to work. There's nothing wrong with being skeptical, but acting like this guy is a scam artist is ridiculous. This guy runs a super collider, yet everyone here is so damn sure they understand quantum phenomenon better than he does.
I'm so late to the part at this, that doubt it will even be read. Still: GIRLS LOVE DR. MARIO. Fire that game up, set yourself with the necessary handicap, and then have at it.
No. As a journalist, you're obliged to think critically.
Everything has it's place. A four-minute piece is not a fucking expose. Sometimes to get anything done you have to take people on their word.
That isn't to say I agree with everything he had to say. However, I don't think there is anything wrong with "monitoring" the internet. That is, internet protocols are built so that much of the traffic is public. Especially when you get down to the simple hubs. While I'm not so ok with governments grabbing information using subpeonas to rip information out of ISPs and search engines, I think they have as much right to the packets that hit their network cards as anyone else. The real problem with this article is the criminal angle with which encryption is used. Encryption should never be criminalized by any society that values privacy. Granted, this is a BBC piece and privacy is less valued in the UK than the US, so maybe he falls more in line with the norm there.
I used to do tech support. The "what operating system do you use" was already the question that created the most ridiculous answers. Sounds like that question just got a whole lot more fun.
They were completely fair to Dark Age of Camelot. Is a shoutout not good enough for a game that is nearing the end of it's lifecycle? Seriously. I'm sure PvP on DAoC is better than WoW, but WoW has solid PvP and is in its prime.
The battlegrounds being FPS-ish isn't a problem. WoW PvP is rather balanaced and definitely fun. The lack of consequence is its only real problem.
Please, you're confusing FMB with cinematics. Cinematics are what happen when you, the player, stop worrying about the controls and sit back and watch. It doesn't matter if this is an FMV or a scripted scene animated via the game engine. That is a cinematic. Do they count? Yes, of course. In almost any game where a story is told it will be necessary to use some type of cinematic. How important those are depend entirely on how integral story is to the game. Serious Sam does just fine without cinematics. You don't care about the story in that. FF3 (American) had shit-tons of cinematics, and they are a huge part of what made it great.
That is not impossible. Improbable, as the law of conservation of energy prohibits energy being created out of nothing, but not impossible.
Well, no shit. However, it is easy to demonstrate the range of the human metabolism. There are people who don't eat a ton, but are still "overweight," and no, I'm not talking about the 500 pound guy who says "It's genetic!" He's just a fatty. I'm talking about people who eat reasonably, but will never look "fit" by cultural standarads. If a virus were to decrease the function of thyroid or adrenal glands, or somehow increase the efficiency of digestion mechanisms, it could easily account for a gain in weight.
I agree that it is tough to believe that a virus could make an average joe into a 300 pound goliath. I don't find it difficult to believe that a virus could cause a person to put on 5-15 pounds over the course of a year due to metabolic changes. Add to that questionable eating habits, slowed metabolism due to aging, and modern cultur that doesn't value excercise... you can see how a virus could be one more contributor to a number of issues that cause obesity.
His point is that people read non-fiction to learn about something as opposed to entertainment. This doesn't mean that there's more inherent value to works of non-fiction. However, from an educational standpoint a non-fiction work is likely aimed at teaching me something; be it history, math, current events, etc.
How often do you see someone reading a Danielle Steel or Stephen King novel as opposed to some Stephen Hawking? You read the fiction when you need a break from the world around and the non-fiction when you want to know more about the world around you.
It always sounds easy to destroy an argument you don't understand.
It is irrelevant whether Lord of the Rings was was a book first. It is irrelevant whether that book was written yesterday or 1000 years ago. The thrust of the idea is that movie plots and characters are becoming more complex. Whether those plots and characters are entirely new or lifted wholecloth from another art form is moot.
So, I'm probably too late for anyone to notice, but I'll post anyways.
It is completely unnecessary for a change of hands or the root servers to take place. The mechanisms are already there for any country to effectively free itself from the evil grasp of the U.S. At least this is true if the motivating factor truly is a fear of the U.S. crippling other economies by use of it's control of DNS servers.
Any country could simply keep up daily clones of the root servers. They could then legislate that ISPs and Universities use these clones exclusively. The clones could even directly reference the actual rootservers until such a time as access to those root servers is denied, at which point it could failover to it's own database.
This prevents the scenario where the U.S. messes with your country by breaking the rootservers. If we decided to split you at least have a relatively up to date domain name service structure and you go from there.
People are thinking about these white knights the wrong way.
First of all, they almost always use the same vulnerability as the virus they exist to destroy. Thus if you are already immunizied you have nothing to fear from this white knight. You won't get it. It won't touch your system. Stop crying.
If however you are unpatched then it is only a matter of time before the worm the white knight is trying to kill gets to you. The worm WILL cause you problems either by using your system in DDOS attacks, sharing your files, logging your keystrokes, etc. It will also harm other people's systems by using your system to attack others. The white knight MAY harm your system and it MAY harm other systems. Either way it is less damaging than the actual worm.
In other words it is always better to get the white knight than to get the worm. If you aren't patched you deserve whatever you get. An even better white knight would donate your computer to someone who knows how to use it.
While I completely agree with everything you said it was still so hopelessly off topic that my only reaction is to think that you are either a retard or a jackass. You see, if you are retarded then you may have trouble comprehending the post to which you replied and may have thought it was about hydrogen fuel cells as a method of solving fuel problems, when in fact it was about the inneffeciency of combustion engines. However, if you AREN'T retarded (and it's doubtful you are) then you MUST be a jackass because you refused to read and think about the post and then respond reasonably.
You are the perfect example of how someone can post a perfectly reasonable, true statement and still look like an asshole.
Yeah, I thought so. Go fuck yourself you arrogant asshole. I am 100% for honesty in filmmaking and Michael Moore hasn't really been the poster child for that. The best example is Bowling For Columbine. However, Fahrenheit 911 does not play loosely with the facts (well, except at the start... give him a break, he's a pissed a off fat guy).
Anyways, I'm willing to bet you haven't seen nor put serious thought to the content of Fahrenheit 911 and until you do your opinion means jack shit. Thank you, please die now.
Most people don't buy their DVD software anyways, well, not directly at least. They get it from the OEM when they order a PC or DVD drive.
Cyberlink is (IMO) trying to position itself as the only choice for legitimate dvd software for those OEMs now offering Linux PCs. If they find this move profitable it could encourage other companies to produce linux software as well.
These things are ATRAC only. No thanks Sony. Take your shitty music player back to the drawing board.
Seriously ATRAC got the worst rating for 128kbps in the Hydrogen Audio Forums competition. The worst! Does anyone want to spend $200 - $500 on a player that will only play the lowest of the low? I certainly don't. Rio karma plays ogg and mp3 and wma and flac if you want lossless. Sony is the king! They should be destroying Rio and Apple by making a player people want! They should support every possible format. Especially those that are free to support (vorbis and flac come to mind).
Excellent description. Someone like you should host a centrist news show where they dig through the crap that conservative and liberal media spew out and somehow pull the truth from it.
There is a reason that everyone doesn't get their own offices and that reason isn't so that the boss can spy on you... well, at least not entirely so that the boss can spy on you.
That reason is that office space is expensive. Big wooden doors are expensive. Real walls are expensive. The extra space they take up is expensive.
Nobody really likes cubicles, but if the President of nVidia can put up with working in one then you should be able to.
So the flight didn't go perfect. There were problems, but there is a long ways between "almost failed" and "failed". So there are kinks and I'm sure this flight gave the engineers the information they need to improve on the design.
Look at it this way, the last time NASA screwed up people died. Scaled Composites screwed up and a craft buckled slightly but returned home safely. I think they are doing alright.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a fine line between throttling certain types of traffic by default and giving preference.
Smart algorithms can make limited bandwidth work better for everyone. Most of us do something like this ourselves. We'll limit upload speed on a torrent so we can keep surfing. We'll set a a lower priority on a download to get something else done quicker.
An intelligent algorithm that says "Hey, everyone's eating some shit here, non-realtime applications have to eat shit first..." is actually a reasonably fair way of dealing with this. If it takes you 30 seconds longer to download a song from itunes your frustration is going to be far smaller than the frustration of someone watching a youtube video that stutters 15 times for 2 seconds each.
I'm a Cox customer, and I'm fine with it. You can get your pandora stream now, and I'll be patient on the new Chiodos album. I'll get my Lost streamed first, and that funny video your lesbian aunt sent of her 10 cats can wait a little longer.
I used to hate alignment restrictions because I didn't think they reflected reality. Then I adjusted my thinking to realize that none of the game really effects reality. In D&D alignment is a real force. Poison is, for instance, always evil. It almost exclusively used by evil characters, monsters, and gods.
My problem with these alignment restrictions in modern D&D is that it is an obvious mixing of setting with rules. It seemed that one of the goals of 3.0 was to truly separate setting from core rules. Though the Greyhawk was supposedly the "default" setting, no D&D game I ever played in was set there, and there were indeed a number.
I guess what I'm saying is that I would clarification on this as well. It's a reasonable question and it deserves a detailed answer. D&D has so many settings that at this point integrating too many seemingly oddball rules into the initial rulebook seems ridiculous. I am fine with the fact that in certain settings good and evil are absolute entities and there is no gray area. I love the fact that historically D&D is played in those settings. However, modern gamers don't like such a black and white portrayal of morality. Personally, I don't think it belongs in core rules, especially to a game that primarily seems to be played in custom settings.
Maybe I am missing something because I do not keep up with en world (or even play D&D anymore at this point) but is there a reason you are equating Warlord with Paladin beyond the fact that paladin's traditionally have healing magic and you equate the Leader roll with "healer"? I admit to not having read much about these classes, but if I had to asses I would picture the warlord as more of a general with abilities that increase their allies's effectiveness and not really as a healer at all. That said, I'm not sure there is a reason that fighter's shouldn't have access to these abilities instead, but generally speaking I dislike classes a whole, so I will always be looking to lower the number of classes and increase the diversity within a class. I just don't see what makes warlord and paladin match up so logically I guess. Paladin did always seem like an odd sort of setting-based class rather than a simple archetype (which is what base classes should be, in my opinion) though.
I remember the slashdot comments about the iPod when it first debuted. For those who don't, let's just say it looked about like these comments on the Kindle, lots of hate everywhere from people who had never seen, let alone used the device. The complaints were pretty much identical, too (DRM!, too expensive!, how is this better than a laptop?).
Thus, I'll go ahead and predict the success of the Kindle here and now. Within 2 years 90% of slashdot readers will own one, and those who don't will own a knock off that runs open source firmware.
Most of the comments here make no sense.
These people are not investors. They did not get "scammed". Those of us who read the article know that this scientist did not even approach them for cash. Rather, news of his plight got out and people wanted to donate. He is a respected particle physicist with a theory that is a little odd. He wants to perform a relatively cheap experiment which should show whether his theory has enough going for it to be worth further examination. If these experiments fail, oh well, back to the drawing board.
This is the way science is SUPPOSED to work. There's nothing wrong with being skeptical, but acting like this guy is a scam artist is ridiculous. This guy runs a super collider, yet everyone here is so damn sure they understand quantum phenomenon better than he does.
I'm so late to the part at this, that doubt it will even be read. Still: GIRLS LOVE DR. MARIO. Fire that game up, set yourself with the necessary handicap, and then have at it.
She'll be better than you within 2 weeks.
No. As a journalist, you're obliged to think critically.
Everything has it's place. A four-minute piece is not a fucking expose. Sometimes to get anything done you have to take people on their word.
That isn't to say I agree with everything he had to say. However, I don't think there is anything wrong with "monitoring" the internet. That is, internet protocols are built so that much of the traffic is public. Especially when you get down to the simple hubs. While I'm not so ok with governments grabbing information using subpeonas to rip information out of ISPs and search engines, I think they have as much right to the packets that hit their network cards as anyone else. The real problem with this article is the criminal angle with which encryption is used. Encryption should never be criminalized by any society that values privacy. Granted, this is a BBC piece and privacy is less valued in the UK than the US, so maybe he falls more in line with the norm there.
I used to do tech support. The "what operating system do you use" was already the question that created the most ridiculous answers. Sounds like that question just got a whole lot more fun.
They were completely fair to Dark Age of Camelot. Is a shoutout not good enough for a game that is nearing the end of it's lifecycle? Seriously. I'm sure PvP on DAoC is better than WoW, but WoW has solid PvP and is in its prime.
The battlegrounds being FPS-ish isn't a problem. WoW PvP is rather balanaced and definitely fun. The lack of consequence is its only real problem.
Please, you're confusing FMB with cinematics. Cinematics are what happen when you, the player, stop worrying about the controls and sit back and watch. It doesn't matter if this is an FMV or a scripted scene animated via the game engine. That is a cinematic. Do they count? Yes, of course. In almost any game where a story is told it will be necessary to use some type of cinematic. How important those are depend entirely on how integral story is to the game. Serious Sam does just fine without cinematics. You don't care about the story in that. FF3 (American) had shit-tons of cinematics, and they are a huge part of what made it great.
That is not impossible. Improbable, as the law of conservation of energy prohibits energy being created out of nothing, but not impossible.
Well, no shit. However, it is easy to demonstrate the range of the human metabolism. There are people who don't eat a ton, but are still "overweight," and no, I'm not talking about the 500 pound guy who says "It's genetic!" He's just a fatty. I'm talking about people who eat reasonably, but will never look "fit" by cultural standarads. If a virus were to decrease the function of thyroid or adrenal glands, or somehow increase the efficiency of digestion mechanisms, it could easily account for a gain in weight.
I agree that it is tough to believe that a virus could make an average joe into a 300 pound goliath. I don't find it difficult to believe that a virus could cause a person to put on 5-15 pounds over the course of a year due to metabolic changes. Add to that questionable eating habits, slowed metabolism due to aging, and modern cultur that doesn't value excercise... you can see how a virus could be one more contributor to a number of issues that cause obesity.
His point is that people read non-fiction to learn about something as opposed to entertainment. This doesn't mean that there's more inherent value to works of non-fiction. However, from an educational standpoint a non-fiction work is likely aimed at teaching me something; be it history, math, current events, etc.
How often do you see someone reading a Danielle Steel or Stephen King novel as opposed to some Stephen Hawking? You read the fiction when you need a break from the world around and the non-fiction when you want to know more about the world around you.
It always sounds easy to destroy an argument you don't understand.
It is irrelevant whether Lord of the Rings was was a book first. It is irrelevant whether that book was written yesterday or 1000 years ago. The thrust of the idea is that movie plots and characters are becoming more complex. Whether those plots and characters are entirely new or lifted wholecloth from another art form is moot.
So, I'm probably too late for anyone to notice, but I'll post anyways.
It is completely unnecessary for a change of hands or the root servers to take place. The mechanisms are already there for any country to effectively free itself from the evil grasp of the U.S. At least this is true if the motivating factor truly is a fear of the U.S. crippling other economies by use of it's control of DNS servers.
Any country could simply keep up daily clones of the root servers. They could then legislate that ISPs and Universities use these clones exclusively. The clones could even directly reference the actual rootservers until such a time as access to those root servers is denied, at which point it could failover to it's own database.
This prevents the scenario where the U.S. messes with your country by breaking the rootservers. If we decided to split you at least have a relatively up to date domain name service structure and you go from there.
People are thinking about these white knights the wrong way.
First of all, they almost always use the same vulnerability as the virus they exist to destroy. Thus if you are already immunizied you have nothing to fear from this white knight. You won't get it. It won't touch your system. Stop crying.
If however you are unpatched then it is only a matter of time before the worm the white knight is trying to kill gets to you. The worm WILL cause you problems either by using your system in DDOS attacks, sharing your files, logging your keystrokes, etc. It will also harm other people's systems by using your system to attack others. The white knight MAY harm your system and it MAY harm other systems. Either way it is less damaging than the actual worm.
In other words it is always better to get the white knight than to get the worm. If you aren't patched you deserve whatever you get. An even better white knight would donate your computer to someone who knows how to use it.
While I completely agree with everything you said it was still so hopelessly off topic that my only reaction is to think that you are either a retard or a jackass. You see, if you are retarded then you may have trouble comprehending the post to which you replied and may have thought it was about hydrogen fuel cells as a method of solving fuel problems, when in fact it was about the inneffeciency of combustion engines. However, if you AREN'T retarded (and it's doubtful you are) then you MUST be a jackass because you refused to read and think about the post and then respond reasonably.
You are the perfect example of how someone can post a perfectly reasonable, true statement and still look like an asshole.
Have you even seen Fahrenheit 9/11?
Yeah, I thought so. Go fuck yourself you arrogant asshole. I am 100% for honesty in filmmaking and Michael Moore hasn't really been the poster child for that. The best example is Bowling For Columbine. However, Fahrenheit 911 does not play loosely with the facts (well, except at the start... give him a break, he's a pissed a off fat guy).
Anyways, I'm willing to bet you haven't seen nor put serious thought to the content of Fahrenheit 911 and until you do your opinion means jack shit. Thank you, please die now.
Most people don't buy their DVD software anyways, well, not directly at least. They get it from the OEM when they order a PC or DVD drive.
Cyberlink is (IMO) trying to position itself as the only choice for legitimate dvd software for those OEMs now offering Linux PCs. If they find this move profitable it could encourage other companies to produce linux software as well.
These things are ATRAC only. No thanks Sony. Take your shitty music player back to the drawing board.
Seriously ATRAC got the worst rating for 128kbps in the Hydrogen Audio Forums competition. The worst! Does anyone want to spend $200 - $500 on a player that will only play the lowest of the low? I certainly don't. Rio karma plays ogg and mp3 and wma and flac if you want lossless. Sony is the king! They should be destroying Rio and Apple by making a player people want! They should support every possible format. Especially those that are free to support (vorbis and flac come to mind).
Excellent description. Someone like you should host a centrist news show where they dig through the crap that conservative and liberal media spew out and somehow pull the truth from it.
Hardly a rebuttal. He does a good job of changing the subject though.
There is a reason that everyone doesn't get their own offices and that reason isn't so that the boss can spy on you... well, at least not entirely so that the boss can spy on you.
That reason is that office space is expensive. Big wooden doors are expensive. Real walls are expensive. The extra space they take up is expensive.
Nobody really likes cubicles, but if the President of nVidia can put up with working in one then you should be able to.
I if I could go back in time and get on that craft with him I would. Then I would be an astronaut right now!
So the flight didn't go perfect. There were problems, but there is a long ways between "almost failed" and "failed". So there are kinks and I'm sure this flight gave the engineers the information they need to improve on the design.
Look at it this way, the last time NASA screwed up people died. Scaled Composites screwed up and a craft buckled slightly but returned home safely. I think they are doing alright.
how do i go about hitting you up?