Just because you're poor doesn't mean you don't buy anything.
Poor people pay rent.
Poor people buy food.
Poor people pay for transportation to and from their jobs.
Poor people also pay for substances and activities that can distract them from the realities of their situation for a short time.
The employers (rich) set the wages at a level that barely covers the cost of the goods and services needed by the workers (poor) to survive day to day. Preventing them from collecting sufficient means to rise out of their situation.
Just because the people of earth are poor, doesn't mean they don't have a lot of money to spend. If an earth person makes $75,000 a year, and it costs that person $74,500 to get to and from work, eat, clothe him/herself and pay for shelter, that person is still poor. More so if the cost is higher than what they can earn.
It's not just products that make people rich. Food, shelter, transportation. These are things people need everyday, and can earn you a lot of profit.
"Well, thats your opinion. The Apollo astronauts knew they'd be home within 3 days if everything went ok. This is a whole different ball game."
The folks on the Mayflower knew they'd never be seeing home again, yet they set sail for a new land, and new opportunities. Adrenaline junkies? Maladjusted? No, I don't think so. I think your perspective may be skewed by a fear of the unknown and a desire to hold on to your current standard of living. Not everyone is motivated in such a way.
There is a lot more universe out there to discover. Some of it is across a mountain range, or across an ocean. But some of it is across a vast expanse of space. Let's go check it out! See what we can find. It just might be amazing.
I don't need to be on a domain to make full use of Outlook. Outlook Anywhere and an internet connection means that whatever device i can install Outlook 2003 or newer on, I can log into my Exchange server and check my mail, calendar, tasks, etc.
This is a bit off topic, but I noticed something that made me smile, and I couldn't let it pass. I know it was a typo, but i think it works better as you posted it.
each trying to make themselves the lessor of 2 evils.
I'm a fan of a good old fashioned Conspiracy. They are always entertaining! I have the most fun poking holes in the theory, and by the end, it sounds so ridiculous it is impossible to believe.
Now I don't want to add any credence to this theory, but I wanted to point out a couple inconsistencies with your skepticism.
First off, the FBI is a domestic agency. Their scope does not extend past the borders of the United States. To snoop in other countries, you need to go talk to other TLA's.
Second, "a few hundred million iOS devices in the wild" describes the global saturation, not just the US. The US population is currently about 314 million. So unless you are suggesting that every man, woman and child in America owns an iDevice, that number is much lower. A quick Google search indicates about 37 million, so having a list of 12 million devices is not unreasonable. (Roughly 1/3. About the same ratio you suggested in your comment)
That doesn't mean the list came from the FBI, just that the idea can't be dismissed based on the reasons you provided.
Part of designing a launch vehicle and a habitat plan will need to include sufficient storage space for food supplies. In order to know how much space your food supplies need, you will need to know what food will be included, thus the need to plan the menu.
Or are you suggesting that you don't need to know how much mass and volume your foodstuffs take when designing a launch/transport vehicle, and habitat?
And you don't think hiring people to design and manufacture the equipment for such a journey would create jobs?
That's not what he taught them at all.
If my son is about to stick a fork in the electrical outlet, and I yell "stop," I don't want him to decide whether or not I am right, or if he doesn't care and wants to do it anyway. He is about to engage in a dangerous, life threatening activity. I want him to know that when I yell stop, that means right now, no questions, just stop. We can have a discussion about how I'm a terrible father, and how i never let him do what he wants afterwards, but in the immediate moments surrounding the event, thinking has no place.
There's a safe time and place to discuss the virtues of, say, not running out into the road without looking. But when the child runs into the road in front of the moving car, you NEED immediate, unquestioned obedience, not free thought.
It isn't that I want him to be a mindless automaton, but that I want him to obey when it matters, and he may not be aware of when it matters. If I'm a terrible parent, i might abuse that, but that is a different discussion.
Children's minds develop over time. They are not immediately capable of critical thinking. That is why babies scream, and throw fits when they are hungry. It may be counterproductive, but they can't comprehend anything beyond "feed me." They get better at it as they grow older, but it takes time. Most of the High School students I have known over the years struggle with the logic problems from Geometry class.
Press Windows-L. That'll lock it. or you can just click the start button, click the little arrow next to "install updates and shutdown" and choose lock. no keyboard required.
Right click on the taskbar next to the clock. That will get you a context menu with Task Manager listed as an option.
Most people use the start menu to shut down and reboot the computer. Did you miss that 90's joke?
While Ctrl-Alt-Del is still around, and still available for quite a few things, such as the previously mentioned functions, it is no longer required.
It's that way in Pro and Ultimate as well in stand-alone/workgroup. The only time you lose that screen in Windows 7, and get the Ctrl-Alt-Del, is when you add it to a domain.
And of course there are ways to make it auto-login and bypass the ctrl-alt-del screen anyway. I've been doing that since NT4.0. It's a built in feature of XP.
Uh, no. All that would happen is your taxes will be raised to cover the additional costs. If there is enough political support to back this kind of project, there will be enough money and power behind it to obfuscate the tax increases necessary to continue funding it.
You can't fight the government by wasting their money. They perfected that process long ago.
Someone somewhere will come up with a study showing how these kinds of crimes have not increased in frequency since they started monitoring for them, even though they can demonstrate an increase in relevant search traffic. See how much additional crime they're preventing!
There is a time and a place for story, but not every fricken GAME needs a story.
I don't think his point was that every game needs a story, but that there needs to be a reason to keep playing.
Tetris is one game that has amazing game play. He wasn't suggesting that it needed a story to make it viable, but that people need a reason to keep playing a game. Games like Tetris can survive on gameplay alone, but that is a very rare thing. I'm sure anyone here can list dozens of games like Tetris that are just great games, but in comparison to all the simple, no story games with mediocre, or worse gameplay, they are rare.
But that is how these games keep players coming back. One more round, one more block, one more turn, I'll stop after I build this next item. ,
Great story based games are equally rare. They are just as hard to create. There are still thousands of terrible ones out there, but every now and then we get a game that has both an amazing story as well as great game play. People that don't care about story can ignore or skip it, and can keep coming back to play the game they love, people that want the story can revel in the cut-scenes/lore and immerse themselves in a world that is deep and rich.
I believe that too often game developers realize their grand design is too shallow to hold interest, so they throw a story on it, and hope that glosses over the shortcomings. Just because some people do it wrong doesn't mean that the whole concept is wrong.
So you are right, not every game needs a story. But every game needs something compelling to convince players to come back and play again. For some that is a well told story. For others, it is an entertaining premise with amusing mechanics. For some, they fail on both accounts, but produce the game anyway.
So what's his point? He knows better than the consumers?
What I took away from the article was that he is incapable of writing a story that translates well into a game, so in order for more of his games to sell, everyone should stop creating compelling interactive entertainment, and just stick to the basic concepts of mindless smashing/shooting/crashing games that he makes.
I looked at the list of games he has developed. None of them interest me, and I haven't played a second of any of them.
Either he thinks I'm not really enjoying the games I purchase, or he is pouting because even though his games seem to sell well, They don't get the accolades or attention that story driven titles do. My opinion is that his games, while probably fun, are forgettable, since they have no story, or characters to take away with you when you're done playing. Once the euphoria of smashing stuff fades, there's no remaining idea for your brain to dwell on.
Let me be the parent that is contrary to those you have talked to so far.
I want my kids safe. More than anything else, I want my kids safe. But I also want them safe from the intruding eyes of some semi-anonymous individual in the government, or it's subcontracted security services.
As the parent I take the safety of my children very seriously, and I am not willing to entrust that to another individual, or organization. Individuals and organizations have reasons for existing that may not coincide with my own. They have their own agendas that may or may not include actually protecting my children from harm. I'm glad the police forces exist, and I welcome any assistance they can lend towards the protection of my children. But I do not put the responsibility on them to protect me and mine.
A police state isn't the solution for anything but laziness and blame shifting. If you need a police state so you know who to point the finger at when you fail your children, perhaps you should be focusing on things other than procreation.
The computer devices that Babbage designed were mechanical, not digital. If those had caught on, someone would have put effort into reducing the size of those computer devices, especially if they were games that might need a little portability. lighter metals also require less energy to move, and keep moving. Smaller, lighter, faster mechanical machines require lighter, stronger metals. Strangely enough, so do mechanical devices that are intended to fly.
If lighter and stronger materials had been available when aviation was in it's infancy, it's quite probable that flight technology would have progressed faster, since aircraft wouldn't weigh as much.
So in the context of this situation, computing has a lot to do with metallurgy.
No it's not. It took me about 3 seconds to get to 7' 8" using your "Royal Pain" method, but I resorted to using a calculator to get to 2.34 rather than put the effort into going through the subtraction (gotta do borrowing).
I may suck at math, but I can do board feet calculations without significant thought.
Europeans make fun of Americans because we don't learn multiple languages like they do. Then they also poke fun because we won't conform to their one way of notating measurements.
Make you a deal: Declare Americanized English as the global standard for language, and we'll convert our measurements to your SI.
I have. Both through CD/T-shirt bundles on the Web (ok, well I got this one as a gift, but if I hadn't told my mother-in-law where to find Scott Riggan on the web I would never have received it), and by purchasing cd's, DVD's and T-shirts from artists while on tour, or at a music festival.
I'm interested in compelling music, not the tripe the radio says I have to like.
Am I the only one who finds this amusing? I mean... wow. Whatever monkey at Sony that approved this scheme must be soiling their armor by now.
Probably not. Don't forget that World of Warcraft is the largest US MMORPG competitor to Everquest and Everquest 2. One of the major anoyances in EQ was the mudflation caused by scripters and plat sellers.
Sony wouldn't shed a tear at all if they "accidentally" caused Blizzard grief.
There's no indication in the series that she had been turned into the ultimate killing machine
Apparently you havent seen the episode "War Stories." River shoots 3 guys dead with her eyes closed. One shot each. In one of the other episodes (can't recall the title at the moment) she goes after Jayne with a knife in such a fashion that implies she is comfortable with it's use in such a context.
There's plenty of pre-existing evidence pointing to her violent tendencies. The "Buffyication" of River isn't new on the big screen, Wheedon just hadn't finished telling us what was going on with her when they canceled the show.
There are voice pagers available that play a recorded message. Requires no hand contact.
But the big thing is that with the phones on the walls (or desk/counter tops) they should be getting cleaned by housekeeping whenever the room is vacated. If not then the issue is lack of clenliness not the dirty instrument.
The problem is that doctors don't leave their cells to be cleaned, they take them home, and to other patient rooms.
But yeah, it seems to me that the issue is about washing hands not banning Cell phones.
There are a number of aftermarket ink resellers. The best thing to do is go down to your local printer sales place and look at the ink. Find the cheapest one and figure out which printer it works with. Usually though it takes a little time after a new printer is released for the aftermarket vendors to catch up. Generally the cheapest ink is available for the oldest printers, not the new ones.
However, I should point out that HP (and I would imagine Lexmark, Cannon and Epson as wel) has patented their ink formula, and they don't share. That means the aftermarket companies do not have the correct ink formula that the cartridge and the printer were designed to use. I realize that most of the AM inks work fine, but it voids your warranty. If you call HP for support and they discover that you have been using AM cartridges they may not help (we were told not to, but most of us did anyway with a strong admonition not to use AM carts again).
Decide if you need color in a new printer. If you plan on primarially printing documents (school papers and the like) look seriously at a laser printer. The initial investment is high, but the cost per page is fractional. And there are a number of online auctions that offer used laser printers at inkjet prices. I have an old HP Laserjet III with about 45,000 pages on it. The lifetime on those things is about 300,000 or so. The III is big and bulky but you get the idea. Go find a cheap laser on the net (get two so you have spare parts if it's an older one) and print to your hearts content...
Except the average consumer doesn't know why they should care. Lexmark printers are cheap and often given away with a new PC. So why not take it? When it comes time to replace the cartridge and realize there is no other option besides the Lexmark ink, they will buy it anyway, because $32 is cheaper than $180 for a new HP printer.
And next time they buy a computer, they will accept the free lexmark, complain about the lack of ink cartridge options, and proceed to allow their kids to print off banners of Spongebob Squarepants from Nickelodeon.com.
The average user doesn't care, and if they do, don't know how to go about changing it.
My guess is that the average user is lazy, and would rather spend twice as much on the ink instead of being bothered to educate themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because you're poor doesn't mean you don't buy anything.
Poor people pay rent.
Poor people buy food.
Poor people pay for transportation to and from their jobs.
Poor people also pay for substances and activities that can distract them from the realities of their situation for a short time.
The employers (rich) set the wages at a level that barely covers the cost of the goods and services needed by the workers (poor) to survive day to day. Preventing them from collecting sufficient means to rise out of their situation.
Just because the people of earth are poor, doesn't mean they don't have a lot of money to spend. If an earth person makes $75,000 a year, and it costs that person $74,500 to get to and from work, eat, clothe him/herself and pay for shelter, that person is still poor. More so if the cost is higher than what they can earn.
It's not just products that make people rich. Food, shelter, transportation. These are things people need everyday, and can earn you a lot of profit.
"Well, thats your opinion. The Apollo astronauts knew they'd be home within 3 days if everything went ok. This is a whole different ball game." The folks on the Mayflower knew they'd never be seeing home again, yet they set sail for a new land, and new opportunities. Adrenaline junkies? Maladjusted? No, I don't think so. I think your perspective may be skewed by a fear of the unknown and a desire to hold on to your current standard of living. Not everyone is motivated in such a way.
There is a lot more universe out there to discover. Some of it is across a mountain range, or across an ocean. But some of it is across a vast expanse of space. Let's go check it out! See what we can find. It just might be amazing.
Yet.
I don't need to be on a domain to make full use of Outlook. Outlook Anywhere and an internet connection means that whatever device i can install Outlook 2003 or newer on, I can log into my Exchange server and check my mail, calendar, tasks, etc.
So much meaning.
I'm a fan of a good old fashioned Conspiracy. They are always entertaining! I have the most fun poking holes in the theory, and by the end, it sounds so ridiculous it is impossible to believe.
Now I don't want to add any credence to this theory, but I wanted to point out a couple inconsistencies with your skepticism.
First off, the FBI is a domestic agency. Their scope does not extend past the borders of the United States. To snoop in other countries, you need to go talk to other TLA's.
Second, "a few hundred million iOS devices in the wild" describes the global saturation, not just the US. The US population is currently about 314 million. So unless you are suggesting that every man, woman and child in America owns an iDevice, that number is much lower. A quick Google search indicates about 37 million, so having a list of 12 million devices is not unreasonable. (Roughly 1/3. About the same ratio you suggested in your comment)
That doesn't mean the list came from the FBI, just that the idea can't be dismissed based on the reasons you provided.
Part of designing a launch vehicle and a habitat plan will need to include sufficient storage space for food supplies. In order to know how much space your food supplies need, you will need to know what food will be included, thus the need to plan the menu.
Or are you suggesting that you don't need to know how much mass and volume your foodstuffs take when designing a launch/transport vehicle, and habitat?
And you don't think hiring people to design and manufacture the equipment for such a journey would create jobs?
Where do you think Microsoft stole the idea?
That's not what he taught them at all. If my son is about to stick a fork in the electrical outlet, and I yell "stop," I don't want him to decide whether or not I am right, or if he doesn't care and wants to do it anyway. He is about to engage in a dangerous, life threatening activity. I want him to know that when I yell stop, that means right now, no questions, just stop. We can have a discussion about how I'm a terrible father, and how i never let him do what he wants afterwards, but in the immediate moments surrounding the event, thinking has no place.
There's a safe time and place to discuss the virtues of, say, not running out into the road without looking. But when the child runs into the road in front of the moving car, you NEED immediate, unquestioned obedience, not free thought.
It isn't that I want him to be a mindless automaton, but that I want him to obey when it matters, and he may not be aware of when it matters. If I'm a terrible parent, i might abuse that, but that is a different discussion.
Children's minds develop over time. They are not immediately capable of critical thinking. That is why babies scream, and throw fits when they are hungry. It may be counterproductive, but they can't comprehend anything beyond "feed me." They get better at it as they grow older, but it takes time. Most of the High School students I have known over the years struggle with the logic problems from Geometry class.
Press Windows-L. That'll lock it. or you can just click the start button, click the little arrow next to "install updates and shutdown" and choose lock. no keyboard required.
Right click on the taskbar next to the clock. That will get you a context menu with Task Manager listed as an option.
Most people use the start menu to shut down and reboot the computer. Did you miss that 90's joke?
While Ctrl-Alt-Del is still around, and still available for quite a few things, such as the previously mentioned functions, it is no longer required.
It's that way in Pro and Ultimate as well in stand-alone/workgroup. The only time you lose that screen in Windows 7, and get the Ctrl-Alt-Del, is when you add it to a domain.
And of course there are ways to make it auto-login and bypass the ctrl-alt-del screen anyway. I've been doing that since NT4.0. It's a built in feature of XP.
Uh, no. All that would happen is your taxes will be raised to cover the additional costs. If there is enough political support to back this kind of project, there will be enough money and power behind it to obfuscate the tax increases necessary to continue funding it.
You can't fight the government by wasting their money. They perfected that process long ago.
Someone somewhere will come up with a study showing how these kinds of crimes have not increased in frequency since they started monitoring for them, even though they can demonstrate an increase in relevant search traffic. See how much additional crime they're preventing!
Has the behavior of the TSA taught us nothing?
>
There is a time and a place for story, but not every fricken GAME needs a story.
I don't think his point was that every game needs a story, but that there needs to be a reason to keep playing.
Tetris is one game that has amazing game play. He wasn't suggesting that it needed a story to make it viable, but that people need a reason to keep playing a game. Games like Tetris can survive on gameplay alone, but that is a very rare thing. I'm sure anyone here can list dozens of games like Tetris that are just great games, but in comparison to all the simple, no story games with mediocre, or worse gameplay, they are rare.
But that is how these games keep players coming back. One more round, one more block, one more turn, I'll stop after I build this next item.
,
Great story based games are equally rare. They are just as hard to create. There are still thousands of terrible ones out there, but every now and then we get a game that has both an amazing story as well as great game play. People that don't care about story can ignore or skip it, and can keep coming back to play the game they love, people that want the story can revel in the cut-scenes/lore and immerse themselves in a world that is deep and rich.
I believe that too often game developers realize their grand design is too shallow to hold interest, so they throw a story on it, and hope that glosses over the shortcomings. Just because some people do it wrong doesn't mean that the whole concept is wrong.
So you are right, not every game needs a story. But every game needs something compelling to convince players to come back and play again. For some that is a well told story. For others, it is an entertaining premise with amusing mechanics. For some, they fail on both accounts, but produce the game anyway.
So what's his point? He knows better than the consumers?
What I took away from the article was that he is incapable of writing a story that translates well into a game, so in order for more of his games to sell, everyone should stop creating compelling interactive entertainment, and just stick to the basic concepts of mindless smashing/shooting/crashing games that he makes.
I looked at the list of games he has developed. None of them interest me, and I haven't played a second of any of them.
Either he thinks I'm not really enjoying the games I purchase, or he is pouting because even though his games seem to sell well, They don't get the accolades or attention that story driven titles do. My opinion is that his games, while probably fun, are forgettable, since they have no story, or characters to take away with you when you're done playing. Once the euphoria of smashing stuff fades, there's no remaining idea for your brain to dwell on.
Let me be the parent that is contrary to those you have talked to so far.
I want my kids safe. More than anything else, I want my kids safe. But I also want them safe from the intruding eyes of some semi-anonymous individual in the government, or it's subcontracted security services.
As the parent I take the safety of my children very seriously, and I am not willing to entrust that to another individual, or organization. Individuals and organizations have reasons for existing that may not coincide with my own. They have their own agendas that may or may not include actually protecting my children from harm. I'm glad the police forces exist, and I welcome any assistance they can lend towards the protection of my children. But I do not put the responsibility on them to protect me and mine.
A police state isn't the solution for anything but laziness and blame shifting. If you need a police state so you know who to point the finger at when you fail your children, perhaps you should be focusing on things other than procreation.
The computer devices that Babbage designed were mechanical, not digital. If those had caught on, someone would have put effort into reducing the size of those computer devices, especially if they were games that might need a little portability. lighter metals also require less energy to move, and keep moving. Smaller, lighter, faster mechanical machines require lighter, stronger metals. Strangely enough, so do mechanical devices that are intended to fly.
If lighter and stronger materials had been available when aviation was in it's infancy, it's quite probable that flight technology would have progressed faster, since aircraft wouldn't weigh as much.
So in the context of this situation, computing has a lot to do with metallurgy.
I thought we wanted change? Action was the previous administration.
My doctor uses an iPad...
No it's not. It took me about 3 seconds to get to 7' 8" using your "Royal Pain" method, but I resorted to using a calculator to get to 2.34 rather than put the effort into going through the subtraction (gotta do borrowing).
I may suck at math, but I can do board feet calculations without significant thought.
Europeans make fun of Americans because we don't learn multiple languages like they do. Then they also poke fun because we won't conform to their one way of notating measurements.
Make you a deal: Declare Americanized English as the global standard for language, and we'll convert our measurements to your SI.
I have. Both through CD/T-shirt bundles on the Web (ok, well I got this one as a gift, but if I hadn't told my mother-in-law where to find Scott Riggan on the web I would never have received it), and by purchasing cd's, DVD's and T-shirts from artists while on tour, or at a music festival.
I'm interested in compelling music, not the tripe the radio says I have to like.
Sony wouldn't shed a tear at all if they "accidentally" caused Blizzard grief.
There's no indication in the series that she had been turned into the ultimate killing machine
Apparently you havent seen the episode "War Stories." River shoots 3 guys dead with her eyes closed. One shot each. In one of the other episodes (can't recall the title at the moment) she goes after Jayne with a knife in such a fashion that implies she is comfortable with it's use in such a context.
There's plenty of pre-existing evidence pointing to her violent tendencies. The "Buffyication" of River isn't new on the big screen, Wheedon just hadn't finished telling us what was going on with her when they canceled the show.
There are voice pagers available that play a recorded message. Requires no hand contact. But the big thing is that with the phones on the walls (or desk/counter tops) they should be getting cleaned by housekeeping whenever the room is vacated. If not then the issue is lack of clenliness not the dirty instrument. The problem is that doctors don't leave their cells to be cleaned, they take them home, and to other patient rooms. But yeah, it seems to me that the issue is about washing hands not banning Cell phones.
There are a number of aftermarket ink resellers. The best thing to do is go down to your local printer sales place and look at the ink. Find the cheapest one and figure out which printer it works with. Usually though it takes a little time after a new printer is released for the aftermarket vendors to catch up. Generally the cheapest ink is available for the oldest printers, not the new ones.
However, I should point out that HP (and I would imagine Lexmark, Cannon and Epson as wel) has patented their ink formula, and they don't share. That means the aftermarket companies do not have the correct ink formula that the cartridge and the printer were designed to use. I realize that most of the AM inks work fine, but it voids your warranty. If you call HP for support and they discover that you have been using AM cartridges they may not help (we were told not to, but most of us did anyway with a strong admonition not to use AM carts again).
Decide if you need color in a new printer. If you plan on primarially printing documents (school papers and the like) look seriously at a laser printer. The initial investment is high, but the cost per page is fractional. And there are a number of online auctions that offer used laser printers at inkjet prices. I have an old HP Laserjet III with about 45,000 pages on it. The lifetime on those things is about 300,000 or so. The III is big and bulky but you get the idea. Go find a cheap laser on the net (get two so you have spare parts if it's an older one) and print to your hearts content...
Except the average consumer doesn't know why they should care. Lexmark printers are cheap and often given away with a new PC. So why not take it? When it comes time to replace the cartridge and realize there is no other option besides the Lexmark ink, they will buy it anyway, because $32 is cheaper than $180 for a new HP printer. And next time they buy a computer, they will accept the free lexmark, complain about the lack of ink cartridge options, and proceed to allow their kids to print off banners of Spongebob Squarepants from Nickelodeon.com. The average user doesn't care, and if they do, don't know how to go about changing it. My guess is that the average user is lazy, and would rather spend twice as much on the ink instead of being bothered to educate themselves.